A hint - to save your brain from imploding.

[Butuz]

Please, whatever you do, don't take a network consisting of 250 Win98 stations and 3 NT4 servers down on Wednesday 9am, to install Windows 2000 server and WinXP Pro by Friday at 5pm. Its not good for your health, trust me - i know.

The networks now up.

My head hurts, my body is broken, i have fainted in my leather chair, and sent my mum up the shops to fetch me beer.

I need beer. At least beer doesnt require any group policy objects to be configured for it to work. Nope, just open the can, and drink. Dont have to wait an hour to backup the can onto tape, or anything, just open, and drink.

Aaaah this is gonna be soooooo nice.......

Butuz

[acidrainy]

Heh, well done!

I bet the beer will be the sweetest one you will of ever had, enjoy

[Nimrod]

congrats I think

I know your group policy headache...

...all I can say is be thankfull you had AD, I am doing something similar (smaller scale) with win98 and winXp pro boxes...all need policies on them and they are only workgrouped

But my timescale is much higher

[Butuz]

Hehe I feel much better and more relaxed now!

Ack @ peer-peer. I couldnt go back, not after years of Win98/NT4 server goodness, and now the glorious power control and stability that is WinXP/2000&2003 Server.



Butuz

[Stringent]

Well provided you had PXE network cards, all your answer files, RIS server setup etc, shouldn't have been that bad!

hehe. Nice one man. You have earned that beer

[Knoxville]

A beer tastes so much better when you've earned it, i did the exact same thing after i finished all my xmas overtime.

Just sat back and had a few cold beers

[Russ]

try teaching 8 pensioners and brand new Patient system for the hospital, great fun, great..

[5lab]

tbh, one welsh business/school is better off cos of you but fuzz. you da man

[Slick]

lol just wait till monday morning when everything crashes

[Butuz]

tbh, one welsh business/school is better off cos of you but fuzz. you da man

Thats true.

If only they realised it and paid me appropriatly

Butuz

[Kezzer]

You would make our techies at our college wet themselves if they heard that. They are the laziest techies we have ever encountered. Good job doing all that though!

[redneck]

cool beans, well earned beer tastes teh sweetest.

[Class--]

CRIKEY!!!!
Well one thing is for sure all the work u did in that time scale was probably nothing compared to the time you have spent maintaing the win98 boxes ALL 250

Class

[Butuz]

Nah the W98 boxes where running RM connect - which makes it childs play to manage large numbers of boxes. I had the network running super sweet.

Butuz

[Twigman]

Take one company network of about 150+ computer, and a bank holiday weekend.
Had to change over 4 servers, and all the workstations from NT based, to 2000 and XP.
Also only got to start at midday on sturday cause of excessive backup taking beforehand (but i dont blame them).
Also they decided to upgrade hardware as well. Ram in some of the machines, BIOS updates for most of them, new soundcards, and some extras.
Also about 20 netowrk printers had to be set up, and only allow printing form certain areas and set defaults etc. Also individual user rights and different software for different people.
Plus all the servers and DNS and new net connection from ADSL.
We finished about midnight on Monday, had to work by 7AM next day. I went home I think some stayed through the night. Was only about 5 of us doing it. Also we had to write instructions for people to be able to use the new system and distribute that.
Got paid ok. And got free food and drink throughout which was good.
But it was a massive job. And the pressure if i didnt work was immense. Also some feck wits decided to come and work in the office during the weekend to keep up with their work and try and use the computers. That wasnt helpful.
But we managed it and its done. And it all worked smoothly.
Also RM sucks we have that at school and its terrible. (thats not a student "i cant play games" view, but also the view of the ICT and computing teachers as well and our head of technology blah blah blah...). Just seems to be written by muppets. Take an ok operating system and ruin it...lol

[Jiff Lemon]

Please, whatever you do, don't take a network consisting of 250 Win98 stations and 3 NT4 servers down on Wednesday 9am, to install Windows 2000 server and WinXP Pro by Friday at 5pm. Its not good for your health, trust me - i know.

Ah, forward planning the key here. Tis easily achievable in 3 days IF you have enough time to plan it.

*note to the people who demand such upgrades. "Enough planning time" DOES NOT equal a weeks notice.

Shame you didn't go 2k3 server, the Group Policy Manager plug in rox. Calculates the effective polices and ONLY shows you them. Actually... Wonder if it does work on 2k? I'll go hunt.

EDIT: Linkage

Run it from an XP workstation and you Should be laughing!