Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

NT 4 Upgrade troubles

So last night ran into several problems trying to upgrade a newly created NT 4 Server that was promoted to the PDC role to Server 2003. Some if the issues I believe can be attributed to the age of the hardware we used, but needed, to get NT 4 installed in the first place (driver availability). Some of the problems might be attributed to the software media being used to first install NT 4 server and then the first attempted OEM 2003 CD (seems an OEM "repair" 2003 CD will not allow an upgrade, only a fresh install)
So today I worked on getting a NT 4 Server build in Hyper-V, it was a bit of a challenge and via some Internet searches with configuration tweeks I was able to get it done. Below is a list of settings for installing NT 4 server on Hyper-V:
1. Use an ISO image of the NT4 Server, not the actual CD (kept getting blue screen for inaccessible boot device)
2. Be sure to only use 1 CPU and select the "Limit CPU Functionality" check mark
3. Change the boot order to have the IDE Drive first and CDRom second
4. Remove the default Network Adapter and choose the Legacy Network Adapter
5. Make sure the VHD size is no more than 4GB

I know that some of this might seem easy, but working with an old OS like NT 4 is a challenge and hopefully these tips will help someone else out in the future (but really hope you actually don't ever need NT 4 again)

Also there is no Integration Services for NT 4 so be prepared for work with keyboard shortcuts if working on a RDP session to SCVMM or the Hyper-V server.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Interesting client project

Been working at a client here in Colorado to upgrade them from a Windows NT 4 domain to 2008 Active Directory and Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2007. Yes you read that right! The fun part is neither can be done in one move, both require going to 2003 levels first then to the final desired levels. This is a pretty small shop, about 100 users so it is not that bad, but working with NT 4 and Exchange 5.5 has made me really appreciate the new OS and Exchange versions.

Tonight is one of the big moves, upgrading a newly installed NT 4 BDC to PDC then upgrading the OS to 2003. Hopefully this goes pretty smooth. Over the next few days I will then be installing Exchange 2003 and migrating mailboxes to get to a much more stable and supportable environment. After this week it should be pretty easy to get to 2008 AD and Exchange 2007.

Wish me luck!