fizban2

virtual servers and sandbox labs are your friends... test them out there, as for your question, questions like that have spark flame wars that would engulf this forum those are 3 very popular server OSs and it really will come down to 1 what the server will be used for 2 what the level of admin skill you have 3 what level on learning curve you are will to take to learn what you don't already know with a OS that you are only semi familiar with

that would be the IDE controller card on your mobo, check your motheboard manufacters site for updated drivers for it

if you really want to go to an extreme like that you should look into WYSE terminals... setting something like that up on a computer really destroys the potential of the machine, in GPO you can restrict the installation on any *.exe *.msi etc, that would take care of the install issue but again render everyone unable to install anything.

don't give your users admin rights, that will stop the installation issue, saving things to there local computer would require you to do something like setup roaming profiles or redirect there docs and folders to a server location and then limit there access to the windows drive

Live communication server

Not sure about everyone else but with or XP image (standard image for any machine in the company) we sit at around 2.4 gig for the ghost image size (1.9 in WIM for ) the image doesn't run on less then 256 megs of ram. lets face it, once you get office, patches and any LOB applications installed onto your system, the minimums for XP just won't cut it. i know i work for a larger company, but our standard computers now run with 2.8 p4 and 1 gig ram, 40 - 60 gig hd, i know hardware isn't cheap and everyone has a tight budget to meet but skimping on hardware hurts you so much more in the long run. so in our case upgrading the computers is now no longer an issue it is just user training. I know that we will not go to Vista within the next year, as we just have finished an all XP rollout to all users. but we had the same retraining issue there. everyone was so used to 2000 that just seeing XP freaked them out. But once they get past that initial fear that everything is different they are ok with the system, many are already good at it since they ran XP at home on the computers they had bought since XP came out, think about it come Febuary - march time all new computer will have vista installed (or XP) people will start using it at home and get used to it there. they won't know all the new features but they will get the hang of the UI. i fully agree with giving the product time to become more dependable as with any new OS there are many bugs that either were fixed or will be fixed when time permits. no matter how good MS is there will always be things that are missed, it is just human nature. any way, time to get off my soap box, anyway, i am pretty sure anyone buying computers for their company (large or small) is going to be buying machines that will be vista compatible or be withing the minimum range needed for vista in the next couple of months, if not, well then might be time to look into your buying tactics for new equipment.

if they release and windows updates for it i would be suprised, since it is still a beta they would most likely just incorperate the fix into the next beta. you probably won't see any updates for it till beta 2 or later

from a network admin point of view i can see vista looking not to good but think of some things taht it will be bringing to you. Network Access Protection, Updated GPOMC (~3000 options to adjust for vista) IP v4 and V6 for lan and Vlan consolidation if needed, New TCP/IP stack that allows for a new way for AV providers to hook into the stack for monitoring and prevention. There is alot that will be avialable from the network side, also quite a few tools that will be useful for end users. Windows Collaboration, windows backup and restore, faxing features( i know they have been around but better ones) just a few things that i see. Things i notice at work and from people i talk whether they be users or IT folk, there are many great features that are there just many don't even no they are there or just don't know how to use them. End user traing is especially useful in this case. but any way about vista. very smooth and runs decently well, for being a beta it optimizes itself VERY well, i can near similar preformance from a 1.86 P4m laptop to a 1.10 Centrino tablet, even for lower end systems the OS can run well enough to be survivable. even after loading Office and every app that our clients use.

Administrator level accounts no longer mean the same thing that they did in XP or 2000, even though you are an admin, there are many things that you still cannot do(change folder permissions install some drivers etc).

if intels site says that it is not supported, you most likely out of luck till they write drivers that will work for it, or someone else does

glad to here it was fixed!!!

disabling the license server really isn't a good idea, it is a very good tool for keeping track of licenses in a enterprise environment, even if this is a single server with 5 - 10 clients it is easy to keep track of all your licenses there.

so you setup an out of office message then correct? stating that you would be out of the office from X date to X date but when someone emailed you they never recieved the out of office message. do this sound like the problem?

i would go with the symantec veritas backup to backup the system rather then ghost, that is more of a image creation to to be used on multiple machines that will have the same image.

no vitrual memory means when ever your memory usage spike above one gig, the computer is going to complain. unless you have like 2 gig i wouldn't turn off virtual memory, a** the loading network connection, in the control panel go into network connections, at the top choose advanced and then advanced settings, change the binding order so that your primary netowrk card is first and if you have a wireless card that is last, this should help that loading section.

the first DC that is created in a domain will be the site license server, if there is no domain on a 2003 box go into the control panel and there will be the licensing tool, these are installed by default

could you give a better description of the problem? i am not sure anyway understands what you are looking for, what kind of exchange server is this? and what version of outlook

CSVDE and LDIFDE

Very excellant post prathapml, glad to see an unattended way to do this finally was lookinf for a way and you beat me to it, i'll have to try this tommorow at work

the office 12 server has some issues to say the least the beta 1 won't allow for the server to be installed... wait for the next refresh and it should be going, i couldn't get it going on 2003 R2 or longhorn server either

ok, need some clarification on association with exchange and AD (both 2003) the mailbox account is associated with the AD account by SID correct? i had thought this was so but some account issues have led me to wonder what else associates the 2

are all these users in csv or file that you can create into a csv? if so LDFIDE might work. goog it for more information

let me rebuild my image tonight and see if i can create the error that you are getting, i'll leave a note here tommorow on it

the entire AD DB is backedup in the system state. that includes any users and their passwords

what kind of image are you using? how was the image built? was the image sysprep'd? give a little more info on what was done with the image.