fizban2

Daemon, VLK would be nice and does make the whole licensing scheme a whole lot simpler. But it would be overkill for a company that small, they would never get anything back from the it, and they would never user the VLK to it full advantage.

if it is Enterprise addition, it should have active directory available to it, server 2003 is only one CD normally, if you go into the control panel and choose add /remove programs, then choose the windows components and see if you can find active directrory to install

wow thanks! that was mainly what I was looking for, but how would you go about finding the prices? CDW would be a good place to go, or if you buy PCs from dell or HP they can handle licensing also also there are different versions of Windows 2003 server, would there be a recommended version to buy for that amount of users and number of servers? Server 2003 standard would be fine for your environment, 2003 enterprise would only be needed if you wanted to create computer clusters or want hot swappable memory (is the servers support it) or a few other features. But the standard would work fine in your environment, thought that could be wrong base on the work your users do, if they are all engineers working in autocad or something you may need to rethink what you need. another question, do you have to buy additional licenses for the number of users for each server? there are 2 ways to do licensesing per server or per user/ device. you will most likely you per user / device

I see: 1 XP Pro VLK 1 2KPro VLK 1 Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition license Daemon He really doesn't have to spend that much on a volume licenses key, plus i don't think he has that available to him till he hits 250 users or more. [qoute name=Microsoft Webpage] Begin Choosing Your Solution Answer the preceding questions and consider which of the following volume licensing programs most accurately describes your organization and meets your priorities. Your Organization Has Fewer Than 250 Computers The Open License program's flexibility and low entry requirements make it a great program for organizations with fewer than 250 computers. Open License offers three variations to meet many organization's needs. Open License program offerings are available through a broad reseller channel base such as retail stores, solution providers, and online vendors. There are three Open License program offerings to choose from. • Open License Value. For organizations with as few as five desktops that would like the advantages of Software Assurance and the ability to spread payments annually. • Open License Volume. For customers able to acquire 500 points in a single pool upfront. This offering provides additional potential savings compared with the other Open License offerings. • Open License Business. This program requires an initial acquisition of only five licenses. Your Organization Has More Than 250 Computers If your organization has more than 250 computers, then you should consider the Select License, Enterprise Agreement, or Enterprise Agreement Subscription programs, which may fit your organization's software needs and acquisition models more closely. These programs are offered through Microsoft Large Account Resellers (LAR) and Microsoft Enterprise Software Advisors (ESA). • Select License is designed for organizations with mixed software and acquisition requirements. Select License customers receive a volume price level for each pool of software selected (applications, systems, or servers) based on a three-year software forecast. At the end of the agreement the customer can continue to use the software properly licensed and paid for. A customer can renew any Software Assurance that was acquired to continue receiving the associated benefits. • Enterprise Agreement is designed for organizations that prefer to standardize their Microsoft software throughout their organization based on the Microsoft enterprise products (Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Windows Professional desktop operating system upgrade, and Core Client Access License) at prices based on a three-year agreement term. At the end of the agreement, the customer can continue to use the software properly licensed and paid for. A customer can renew their Enterprise Agreement enrollment to continue to receive the associated benefits and use any later versions of the software that become available during that renewal term. • Enterprise Subscription Agreement is designed for organizations that prefer to standardize their Microsoft software throughout their organization based on the Microsoft enterprise products (Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Windows Professional desktop operating system upgrade, and Core Client Access License) at prices based on a three-year agreement term. At the end of the subscription the rights to use the software end and the customer must either uninstall the software or renew its Enterprise Subscription enrollment. [/qoute] http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/default.mspx you can check here more for licensing options for your company, most likely you wil end up going through CDW or dell or someone else for your licenese

Do you mean active directory?

here is what i see: 60 XP licenses 40 2000 licenses 6 server 2003 licenses 1 SQL server license 1 exchange 2003 license 1 terminal Server licence (based on cals though depending on how many people are gonna connect though it) IIS is built into 2003 you don't need a seperate license for that, neither the app or file printer servers (outside 2003) you probably would want to try and up grade all the machines to XP if possible, would be hard to find somplace to buy good licenses for it. where you looking for prices? or just what you would need?

Good choice N1k, It will save you hassle later on and should help the network out some too, less traffic from teh P2P clients, They are nothing but troulbe in a corperate environment

Most likely it is illegal, but yeah........

Just wanted to find out how people are admins on there PC's lots of people have virus and spam problems but most of those will go away if you logon and use an account on your PC that isn't an admin. with the runas command in XP you really have no need to be logged in as an admin all the time? Questions, Comments?

5219 was built with the 5219 build of Ximage that has not been released, you won't be able to mount the .WIM files from the vista 5219 DVD. Plus you can't delete things out of the WIM, you can copy them out and then put them into another folder then make a .wim of that but you only get read and write access to the files in the mounted folder

in the group policy just set the SUS server as the machine you want the machines on domain to connect to for updates, that way only updates that you approve will be available or installed.

What chili is trying to get at is that P2P isn't truly legal, just having it on a corporate machine puts that company at risk, say someone downloads a movie or song and some tracks the IP back to your company, now the company is is real trouble, doesn't matter who it is. the company is taking the heat now for having it on the network there. Just take it off...

in 2003 terminal services is installed by default with in Remote administration mode and will only allow 2 connections, install the full terminal services and set it in terminal services mode not remote administration

I would say close the ports as soon as you can, there is no reason why they should open, plus this is most likely eating up alot of your bandwith, on the network and on your internet connection.

if you just run the query (dsquery computer -stalepwd xx) does it return all the computers listed there?

Correct they are looking at the DC for DNS, this is not really a domain as much as a test machine where everything resides on the DC and i am loginning into the DC with the accounts. i will look at DNS again and see if there is something of there. but this is a fresh build, (3 days old) i built another DC yesterday and it does the same thing, only AD and DNS running on it currently. So i am pretty sure i haven't mucked something up yet. thanks for the advice though!

is this a corperate environment? or just something at home? running P2P will increase your security risk either way since you have to open the ports used by those programs and most of the ports are well known.

chili you are right, creaiting a MST is the right way to go to get outlook to auot configure, but creating the trusts and moving the mailboxs, they will autoconfigure for the new exchange server, we are currently doing something similar at my work now (Exchange 5.5 to 2k3).

Breaking down the DVD probably won't be possible yet. since they deploy vist a through the WIM format, it is looking for one wim file, you can break a wim into multiple parts but i don't think the vista setup manager would now how to deal with the multiple part wim. Since you have to use the setup to load vista you are sorta out of luck, best bet would be to get vista installed to machine get everything you want on it, then aquire ximage and create your own wim that you can break apart to CD size. Just my thought on it

how many users would you be migrating? would it be around 50? if so there are tools for migrating the users accounts from your current AD to another AD, as for the work stations. the same things can be done, but you will have to change each computers domain registration manually (take off the old domain and add to the new) As for the Mapi settings, if the new w2k3 exchange is setup correctly, the first time the user logs into exchange a new profile will be setup automatically. not to sure on the the exchange migration of account but there has to be a way to do it.

ixion, thanks for the info. do you know is this a feature for 2003? or jsut because it is a DC? just trying to understand why it requires the full logon name when the domain it is trying to logon to is listed below in the domains box. ah well just glad it works now. thanks again

ok, very wierd problem that i am having. fresh install of server 2003 standard (vm session) just installed AD and made the machine a DC, also have DNS installed but that is it. everything is set to defaults, AD is set for 2000 and higher. have added the domain users added to the Printer Operators so they can log onto the DC. Now the users logon is something.else ie (john.brown) use pre-2000 is jbrown. trying to logon with the proper logon name does not work. but using the pre-2000 jbrown will let him logon fine. not sure if i have set something up wrong in AD or what not but want to find out what is up. thanks in advance

what is the full domain name? when you use the domain it should be ie "dc=something,DC=com" for something.com, you need the full domain name. how many machines are suppose to be in the ou, and are the ou's that you are querying listed correctly on the same level?

path is just the location of the files that you will use to create the PE, using the offline mode is only needed when you are trying to add drivers to a PE you are creating. Note that you will need win PE 2005 or 2004 to build the proper PE, Not sure if it will work correctly with Bart Pe or not. the Path as is the examples would be the C:\WinPe\Windows\. all the path does is tell drvload were to load the files to.

thanks os2fan2, but you don't even have to go that far to get the PE to run on its own, just change the boot.ini to point to the boot.wim instead of the install.wim and it will load the pe only. if you mount the boot.wim you can change the startnet.cmd, no need to make the winpeshl.ini. [boot loader] timeout=0 default=ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS [operating systems] ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Longhorn PE" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /DETECTHAL /MININT /rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\sources\LHPE.wim /RDSDIHDRPATH=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\boot\boot.sdi /USENEWLOADER [/code} you can still use the boot.sdi to load the wim just change the name (in this case i changed it from install.wim to lhpe.wim. the Pe will load, if you haven't edited the startnet.cmd it will run a factory -winpe and then load to a command prompt. like you said at this point you could have loaded other software and such to make this more then just a delivery platform