Win2K Pro vs XP

[jasonmorovich]

I am going to install and implement 2 Win2k Advanced Servers for file sharing, print server, and App Server. I went to a Win 2k Server training seminar and to make a long story short, was told that XP Pro will not work well with the Win 2k servers and that I should upgrade all my Win 95/98/ME's to Win 2k Pro and that I should downgrade all of my XP Pro's to Win 2k Pro. Is there any truth to this??
I'm new to the Win 2k world and there was alot of talk about policys not being pushed through to the 95/98/ME/XP workstations.
Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance....

[McBain]

There is most definitely truth in what you were advised!!!

I've been forced into rolling out XP in a W2K environment, despite my bitter opposition to doing so.
Result = absolute nightmare!

Quite apart from the trouble of policies (and network settings), the differences in default security settings, some very dodgy Microsoft patches and various other issues which need serious attention before rollout, the reliability and performance of XP is absolutely abysmal when compared to W2K workstations.
You need to at least double your hardware spec to get anywhere near the performance of a machine running 2000. For example, I have 2 home PC’s – 1 running a 550Mhz PIII with older memory, slower m/b etc but it performs with W2K equally, if not better than a P4 2.2Ghz running a standard XP setup (and that has a RAID array and super fast m/b,memory etc!!!!).
To get XP to run reasonably, you basically have to disable almost everything XP added so that it looks pretty much like Windows 2000!

Unless you absolutely have to, I strongly recommend you stay with W2K!!!
It has been one huge waste of time and money moving to XP , and has only turned a rock solid client platform (W2K) into an unreliable, slow client base with a helpdesk calls increasing over 50%.

W2K on the other hand is bar far the best, most reliable bit of software Microsoft has ever produced – my home PC has been running it 24/7 for the past 3 years without a single crash. When I tried XP, it crashed within 30 seconds of loading it.

[McBain]

Sorry was rambling on a bit there (and probably here too!)…

As an example, you mention problems getting policies down to XP.
Yep, this is all to do with the fact that XP doesn’t bother to wait for network connections before allowing people to log on. This can result in policies, roaming profiles, logon scripts and drive mappings not being run/mapped as the network connections they reside on are not available.
There is a policy setting that forces XP to wait for network connections, but I’ve found that this does not solve the problem in all cases – particularly with older Cisco switches which are slow to negotiate. As a result I had to apply another policy to force a logoff if a roaming profile fails to load, although this does not look good from a users point of view!
And so on and so on… this is just a clipit of the kind of grief you’re likely to come across.

[Rasbelin]

I haven't had any trouble running a server with Win 2000 Server on a network with Win XP Pro and Win 2000 Pro.

[netsurf]

i agree to what mcbain said. certainly win2k is by far better than the new windows xp. mcbain already gave the example and it was absolutely true. i installed both win2k and winxp pro on my 500mhz machine with a p2 asus m/b. i didn't experience any crash with xp, but surely things are not as smoothe as they are on the win2k environment. that's another brief example. i'm lazy to type on

[gazpeters]

I do think if your running 2000 Server you should run 2000 Pro on your client if possible, but to be honest I don't have to many problems.

I run 20 client machines with XP Pro with no difficulty to speak on a 2000 server.

The only problem I have is the security policys in active directory.

True Windows XP is a 'girlie' OS. The lads at microsoft must of been blitz when they made up that horrible blue/silver desktop.

But the moral of this story is XP Pro whatever they say is more suited to a small office or home and that XP Home is about as useful as a pair of ice skates in the middle of the Sahara desert.