Performing Upgrade Installations from Windows NT 4.0 Server

Due to its already large installed base, the possibility that you may need to upgrade a Windows NT Server 4.0 installation to Windows 2000 Server is quite likely. Fortunately, the upgrade of a Windows NT 4.0 member server to a Windows 2000 member server is very straightforward. A Windows 2000 member server can reside comfortably in a workgroup, a Windows NT 4.0 domain, or a Windows 2000 domain.

The following are two common ways of upgrading a Windows NT 4.0 Server to Windows 2000:

• Attended

• Unattended

You can use the setup program from a network share or from a local CD-ROM (attended), or you can use the WINNT32 program from a network share (unattended). To perform an attended upgrade of a Windows NT 4.0 member server, follow these steps:

1. From the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, run Setup.exe.

2. When asked if you want to upgrade to Windows 2000, click Yes to continue.

3. In the Welcome to Windows 2000 Setup Wizard screen shown in Figure 2.16, choose Upgrade to Windows 2000 (Recommended) and click Next.

   Figure 2.16. Starting the upgrade to Windows 2000.

   

4. In the License Agreement screen, choose I Accept This Agreement and click Next. Note that you must accept the licensing agreement to continue with the installation of Windows 2000 Server.

5. In the Report System Compatibility screen, you are informed about any services that might not function properly when the upgrade is complete. Possible problematic services are disabled by the Setup program. On this screen, you can see more details about the problems that might occur by clicking Details or you can export the report to a text file for detailed investigation later by clicking Save As. Click the Next button when you are satisfied that the areas identified will not pose major problems.

6. The setup program will copy source files from the CD onto the hard drive and then restart the computer.

7. After restarting, the server enters a text mode setup routine where it extracts and copies additional setup files from the local hard drive location created previously. When that extraction and copy process is complete, the server reboots again and enters the GUI portion of the setup process. If you decided to have the Boot partition converted to NTFS, the conversion takes place after the first reboot, and Windows 2000 reboots again before entering the GUI setup.

8. The setup process continues with the remaining installation steps as detailed previously in the "CD-ROMBased Installation" section.

Unattended upgrades can also be performed using winnt32.exe from a network share. You have two primary options when installing in this way. First, you can use an answer file and a .udf file just like you would with a regular unattended installation. In this case, you can use the same wizard to help you create these files. Second, you could use winnt32.exe with the /unattend switch. This switch indicates that the installation is to progress without user input and that the answers to the setup questions are to be provided by looking at (and duplicating) the current Windows NT 4.0 configuration. For simple upgrades, such as member servers, this is the easiest method.