Please Share Your Experience - Enterprise Windows XP to WIndows 7 3

[RobertIngles]

Hello all;

I am looking for experiences moving from XP to Windows 7 for 20,000+ devices. Can anyone offer some information or direct me to a discussion board so that I get some 1st hand accounts regarding processes and challenges?

Thanks
Robert

 

[linney]

You can try the Server Forums too.

Microsoft: Windows Server 2008

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1674

Sysprep a Windows 7 Machine – Start to Finish V2

http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-–-start-to-finish-v2

automate setup of software on 20 new win 7 pc's
thread1726-1643725

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

At the risk of asking the obvious.... is there some compelling business reason or need to do this?

As the desktop support team (several of them really sharp minds) at my Fortune 500 employer have discovered, there are many pieces of the puzzle that aren't going to work with Win 7 without making a significant investment in some aging technologies that haven't yet, but eventually will, over the next 5 years, be replaced with Capital project money. Unnecessarily forcing the issue today would make those costs, many of them measured in cubic dollars, fall under someone's O&M budget which likely has already had its pockets turned inside-out.

Secondly, there is nothing out there (yet) to mandate having Windows 7. Is there really anything from a productivity perspective that you can do with W7 that you weren't able to do with XP? Even if new PCs & Laptops come preloaded with W7 they all can be retrofitted with XP. We replace all preloaded drives with our standard corporate image anyway. We do have a number of new laptops in the organization running Windows 7, but none that require access to our SCADA systems or other legacy architecture.

Finally the argument that XP is an unsupported O/S is pure hogwash. As long as MS is still releasing critical updates (which they are) it's still supported. Perhaps not in the literal sense of being to call up MS product support with some bizarre issue, but not many enterprise customers (with huge internal I.T. resources) bother to call anyway. XP is still one of the most stable Microsoft OS's out there.

The only argument that can fairly be made is the hassle of having to support two different desktop images. Even so, your Desktop Support team should be very well versed in the old while getting up to speed with the new. They'll survive.

Only my 2¢ worth...




Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[goombawaho]

Not to answer the original question or anything like that......

MiteInMyBlood: My thoughts are that if there is any hope/need/desire/mandate to move to Windows 7 in the future, whenever that is, planning needs to begin today.

Planning for the desktops - will they handle Windows 7. If not, budget to replace or upgrade those that won't.

Planning to upgrade internal systems (databases) that won't handle Windows 7.

So, if you don't start parsing those dollars out and the scope of what needs to be done, it will never get started. Slapping a preliminary report on the costs involved in upgrading both desktop and application side onto the money peoples' desks is like a shot across the bow to get things going.

Somebody then has to buy in to getting into the budget. If nobody salutes when you run it up the flag pole, at least you've got it on record as to preliminary costs and impact to the company.

 

[cdogg]

Robert,
We support a mixed environment where I work, but that's primarily within the IT department. Those outside of IT will remain on XP in the foreseeable future for a lot of the reasons already stated. Getting Win7 to coexist had its list of challenges. For one, we use SCCM to distribute software and push out application updates. The problem is that the scripts and executables we use that work well in XP fail in Windows 7 mainly due to the new UAC (User Account Control) feature. UAC normally would prompt the user to confirm performing an administrative task, but some silent installs will just fail without warning. Not all of our pushes have trouble, but some do and are being reworked as time permits.

Then there's the browser. Not all add-ons work correctly in IE 8 and IE 9. Clients that rely on older add-ons for now will have to continue to cling onto XP running IE 6 or IE 7. Don't forget that 16-bit is completely out the window in Windows 7 (hopefully that's not a concern). And finally, there's the 64-bit version of Win7 to think about. When running a compatible installer, 32-bit apps will go into "Program Files (x86)" instead of just "Program Files". Also their respective registry entries will be listed under Wow6432Node (i.e. HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node). This will likely impact how you support and update them.

MitelInMyBlood makes a lot of points that you would likely hear from others in a similar position. Most are not faced with the requirement to upgrade or are even ready to abandon legacy apps that may be flaky at best under Windows 7. On the other hand, I can understand the interest to research and be prepared for that day when the virtual plug is finally pulled from XP. Certainly it is wise to consider industry trends and challenges to help form better short-term and long-term goals. Every company should have some vision of what it will take to shed outdated technologies in favor of a lean, versatile infrastructure.

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

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[cdogg]

Sorry, just thought I'd also point out that posting in forum656 may result in feedback with more focus on the organization as a whole yielding a different perspective altogether. There's not as much traffic there, but you'll eventually get some good replies.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

We absolutely are planning... that's why aging technologies are already earmarked for capital budget money over the next few years (5 at most). There's only so much money so you have to pace yourself.

I just don't see the need in throwing the baby out with the bathwater because you're starting an upcoming lease return cycle in the face. Not so many years ago they began taking away legacy serial ports and we all thought we'd just die without them. Of course we survived, though we did have to do some laptop trading-around internally until we could get all the old devices replaced with or upgraded to IP. Fortunately too for a while you could still find a few models with 9 pin serial ports and too there was those (less than dependable) serial port adaptors that mostly didn't work because the old software application was hard-coded to look for only IRQ4 and IRQ3.

What has to be considered any any PC O/S migration plan is that many of these machines aren't PC's in the general sense as much as they are actually "tools" we have adapted to the task at hand. You can redesign the carpenter's hammer all you want to but at the end of the day it still has to be able to drive nails.





Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[dilettante]

Eventually new hardware without legacy drivers can become an issue, XP will go non-support and security fixes won't be released, and new software you require will not support old-time Windows.

While these are not critical issues in the short term, the longer you wait the "behinder" you get.

The biggest changes actually came with Vista, Windows 7 being a relatively modest update akin to XP's SP2. While Microsoft's "XP Mode" has probably given them some incentive to keep XP SP3 on life support XP's end will come. Windows 8 is just around the next corner and it may well be a bigger change again.


There is a tendency to focus on deployment and administration, but foot dragging also makes it tougher to upgrade in-house and custom written applications. Reimplementation costs are wildly under estimated in most organizations, many such projects failing on a regular basis. Vendors working in that space don't help matters either, typically making unrealistic claims.

The cost of rewriting VB6, Delphi, FoxPro, etc. in .Net languages is a good case in point. Few organizations have transitioned their application suites, and where they have hybridized monsters with high support costs can result. Tools are only part of the equation, since the new-OS game changes exist no matter what your software was written in. Remediation of the existing code might have a better payback. .Net is hardly lean or versatile.

Even using legacy development tools targeting Windows XP means sacrificing things that either did not exist until Vista or must be deployed as optional updates to work on XP.


16-bit code is fully supported by Windows 7: on 32-bit Windows 7. If you need it you do have the option. Will you have that choice in Windows 8?

The sands of time are running out and this is very late in the game to be postponing the transition off XP. "We've been sitting on our laurels for 10 years" isn't much of an excuse. Vista and UAC have been a fact of life for almost 5 years now and Windows 7 changed few of the issues.

So I think it is really a question of how long you can wait while the hole you are in gets deeper.

 

[goombawaho]

MiteInMyBlood - I wasn't accusing your or anyone of not getting motivated, I was just trying to say what dillettante said very well in his post.

It's kind of like city infrastructure: we know the sewer and water pipes are getting old. Are we motivated to get it fixed?? Sure we are, but there is no money.

With IT stuff, it's even harder. Lot's of companies don't WANT to move forward out of fear, ignorance, not enough staff, etc. So you have to get past the first step (motivation/planning) before you even get to the budgeting.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

We have been rolling out W7 with quarterly lease returns for the past 9 months (3 lease return cycles) and for the most part it's going OK for most of the rank & file users who simply depend on their PC to access the MS Office suite. Where we're getting bitten and have to either roll back to or stay with XP is for our our various I.T. support folks. In fact, several of the I.T. folks today have both XP and W7 machines, for reasons already stated.

Metaphorically at least you could say that this train has left the station but not everyone has been able to jump on board. We have identified the non-conforming apps but in a large company such as ours, with 18,000 employees & business-critical 3rd party apps, the money necessary to fund all the behind-the-scenes or back room changes is measured in 7 figures and comes incrementally because "the problems" are masked so that the executive wing does not see them. It's been very difficult getting funding. The root issue is employee bonuses.

It's more important for everyone to get their bonuses than to go over budget and not get them. Without bonuses our annual merit increases (politically correct jargon for a pay raise) averages a meager 2%. The higher you are on the corporate ladder, the bigger your bonus, so you really can't go tilting at too many windmills.



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[wayne108]

The problem with slapping XP on a new PC is that eventualy the hardware mfg's will cease making drivers for XP. In a few cases new mobo mfgs already have ceased development of XP drivers.

 

[RobertIngles]

Good input everyone - thanks.

We anticipate at least one year of testing at which point we will do a methodical rollout over at least one year with new deployments arriving with WIN 7 image. Since this will bring us into the realm of 2013/2014 it's probably a good start for planning. I also feel that it would be nice to take full advantage of the lifecycle of the current XP inventory and without a doubt it is extremly stable and proven with all apps however it appears that most larger corporations take the possibility of their devices with XP being out of support as a potential critical issue that might lead to a more panicked deployment should even a minor issue arise that affects a large group of devices.

Has anyone done the per/device capital costs of moving from XP to WIN 7? I would be interested in doing a comparative to our budget in the case the question comes up on my end.