MCSE Window®s 2000 Professional Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam 70-210) [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional

Windows NT 4 supports only upgrades from previous Windows NT operating systems. Windows 2000, on the other hand, allows for many upgrade paths. The following is a list of Windows operating systems that you can directly upgrade to Windows 2000 Professional:

Windows NT 4 and 3.51

Windows 95 (all editions)

Windows 98 (all editions)

You can directly upgrade Windows NT 4 or 3.51 with or without SPs. Installing a specific SP before installation of Windows 2000 is not required when you are upgrading. SPs are discussed in the section "Deploying SPs," later in the chapter.

The easiest operating system to upgrade from is Windows NT because it shares a lot of features with Windows 2000, including its registry. You can upgrade Windows 95 and 98 quite smoothly as well, but you need to take some precautions, which are detailed in the next section.

Pre-Upgrade Checklist

Before you upgrade to Windows 2000 Professional, you need to check the current operating system configuration for any of the following areas that could cause conflicts during and after the upgrade process:

Hardware and software compatibility
The Windows 2000 Professional CD-ROM contains a utility called chkupgrd.exe, which scans the current operating system and hardware to see if there are any known items that are incompatible with Windows 2000 Professional. You can run the utility using various methods. One of the most common methods is to place the Windows 2000 CD-ROM in the computer and click the Upgrade option. The utility runs before the upgrade to alert you about any incompatibilities. However, if you are not prepared to perform an upgrade on the computer, you can run the utility by placing the Windows 2000 Professional CD-ROM in the computer, selecting Start, Run, and then typing drive_letter:\I386\winnt32.exe /checkupgradeonly (where drive_letter: is the drive letter your CD-ROM drive uses). The utility scans the system and creates a text file of the results, which you can save to the computer or print. chkupgrd.exe is also referred to as the Readiness Analyzer.

Update packs
Due to the major differences between the Windows 2000 registry and the registries of Windows 95 and 98, some applications may not work after the upgrade. Software vendors may supply an update pack (also called a migration DLL) that you can use during the upgrade process. You obtain an upgrade pack and place it on the local hard drive. During the upgrade process, the installer asks if any upgrade packs should be used. You need to select Yes and then enter the file path to the upgrade pack to continue the installation process.

Disk utilities
Windows 2000 Professional uses a new version of NTFS that causes conflicts with antivirus software and disk defragmenting software. You should remove such applications before you upgrade. After the upgrade, you should install only updated versions of applications that are known to be compatible with Windows 2000.

Drive compression
Before you upgrade, you should uncompress any drives that you have compressed by using DriveSpace or DoubleSpace. These Windows 95 and 98 drive compression utilities are incompatible with Windows 2000.