Windows 2000, upgrade or clean install

[kathanon]

I have to upgrade some of the machines on a mixed 98/W2K network, to Windows 2000. Can anyone tell me whether it would be better to do a completely clean install or simply upgrade. The programs can all be reinstalled if necessary without any problems. Also is it best to keep the FAT 32 system or change to NTFS?

Also I am wondering how easy it is to find drivers for some of the older machines for Windows 2000, I suppose the only way is to try it and see!!

Many thanks to all those who have replied to my other posts. I have found this site to be excellent;informative and really helpful, especially as I have taken over the care of a small network with very little experience

Kathy

 

[chrisp909]

A Clean install is the best way to go, all things being equal.

If there isn't a lot of data on the client machines and if the programs aren't disimilar on each PC just do one and get an imaging software like Ghost to do the rest. This will be the fastest most headache free method.

As far as the file system is concerned NTFS is more efficient and you might glean a small percnetage more actual storage space from the old HD's. It mostly has to do with security, you can protect individual drives(logical) and directories with NTFS.

How old and obscure are these computers that you are worried about the drivers? If 98 can Plug N Play them, 2000 will probably be able to. Most of the workstations I have are HP's with P2 450's in them. They take 2000 no prob with drivers or anything else. I have a Celeron 333 at home with all kinds of cheap crappy periferials on it, it found and got them all running.

 

[kathanon]

Thank you Chrisp909,

That's really helpful. The machines aren't that old really, the oldest is around 4 years old, in the order of P II 400MHz, it was more because when I was thinking of installing Windows 2000 at home, I got a long list of incompatabilities for things, such as display adapters and a few programs. The programs aren't a problem at work though, as it is mainly Office, anti virus and other programs that I know are fine with 2000.

Another thing is that the machines have all got really slow and clogged up with old programs. I am hoping that a clean install will speed them up a bit. As well as that a couple of the Windows 98 machines hang when shutting down.

I will do a clean install, and hope the drivers are there!

I don't have Norton Ghost, but was wondering whether a program like Drive Image (which I do have) would work in its place.

One last question. I think the hard drives all have enough space for Windows 2000,but the older machines have 64MB of RAM, would it be best to add some more?

Many thanks

Kathy

 

[Meldric]

Drive Image works fine for a W2k image. Of slight concern is that it is more "quarky", based on my experience, than Ghost.

Personally, I would upgrade to at least 128MB of RAM. W2k will run on 64, but I seem to see great speed increases by upping the RAM(I usually up to 256 though).

Roger

 

[kathanon]

Thank you Roger

I will get some more RAM and install it. Then do a clean install of Windows! I will also look at getting Norton Ghost for the office. I am presuming I would put an image of the drive + newly installed programs on the server and then use it on each machine.

Have a good weekend

Kathy

 

[kathanon]

It has just occured to me that maybe this won't work over a network. Is this correct and does the image file have to be in the same machine?

Thanks Kathy

 

[speaks]

Kath,

We've not tried 98 to 2k upgrades, but all other upgrades have been frought with problems. I would strongly suggest you do a virgin install. 2k with sp2 installs well on our older Zenith PII 233 128MB machines, so unless you're installing it on a lower spec box, you should find all the basic drivers included. It's worth downloading the latest screen drivers fro the suppliers site, just incase.

 

[Meldric]

With a little work you can put a image on the server and either push or pull it to the clients.

Ghost handles this MUCH more cleanly than Drive Image IMO.

Something to watch for Ghost Home edition does not allow you to authenticate to a domain(and my not provide any network ability at all). Ghost Enterprise does it all.

Drive Image Pro is now called DeployCenter. It is much improved over the original Drive Image Pro, but the network support is still lacking when compaired to Ghost.

Either way most of the problems you will have are with network boot disks.

Let me know if you need any more help.

Roger

 

[kathanon]

Thank you Roger,

I will see what I can do. I may just install W2K on each machine and load up the programmes, even though it will take longer, there are only 4 to do. I will get some more RAM today. Also it is good experience for me in a way, as I have never done this before. It is all really interesting, I have taken over care of a small network in a non profit organisation, and it is a really steep learning curve, even though I did some training a while ago. This site is proving immensely helpful. Many thanks for your help, the only thing I am a bit worried about now are device drivers, but I will try to download the latest ones.By the way, probably people know about this site but I found it really informative about Ghost.

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

Kathy

 

[kathanon]

Thank you Roger,

I will see what I can do. I may just install W2K on each machine and load up the programmes at this point, even though it will take longer, there are only 4 to do, all the rest were bought with 2000. I will get some more RAM today. Also it is good experience for me in a way, as I have never done this before. It is all really interesting, I have taken over care of a small network in a non profit organisation, and it is a really steep learning curve, even though I did some training a while ago. This site is proving immensely helpful. Many thanks for your help, the only thing I am a bit worried about now are device drivers, but I will try to download the latest ones.By the way, probably people already know about this site but I found it really informative about Ghost.

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

Kathy

 

[kathanon]

I have now done clean installs of Windows 2000 on 4 machines, plus Office (customised) plus service releases, plus several other programs, and think I would very much like to use a program like Ghost for the rest of them (thank you Meldric). We have a standard set up for our pc's, which would make it seem a sensible thing to do.

All of the newly installed windows 2000 machines except one (Fat32) are converted to NTFS. Some of the machines have only 3 Gb drives and some have 10 or 20.

I have a last question regarding transferring images . At the moment the enterprise edition is beyond our budget, but we can easily get Ghost 2002.

I am thinking, and please let me know if anyone can see any flaws in my reasoning, (not unlikely) the following

Get Ghost, get an IDE hard drive, say 20-30 GB, disconnect the secondary IDE channel to the CDROM and connect the drive there. Make an image of the existing set up, disconnect the drive, open another 98 machine, transfer the image from the extra drive to the 98 machine. So it will be an NTFS drive imaging to a FAT 32 drive, probably of a different size, or would it be best to convert the 98 machine to NTFS with the Windows 2000 CD first??

Ideally I would like to use an external hard drive, but am not sure how, or if it is possible.

Anyway I look forward to any comments on my plan

Thanks

Kathy

 

[racer766]

Ghost will replace the target partition with whatever file system is in the image. It doesn't matter what the target starts as, if the image is NTFS and the other conditions are satisfied (target is in the right size range, etc) Ghost will replace the current file system with NTFS.