Upgrades from 2000 to XP

shednik

Hello,

I have a question dealing with upgrades on a client from Windows 2000 Pro to XP Pro...wasn't sure if this should be in this area or under another exam so sorry if posted incorrectly.

Pretty much I'm in a Project Management course at my school and we have to make up a project plan, my group has chosen to preform an upgrade on about 500 clients. This plan is entirely fictitious but is to have us go through an illustrate all the steps needed to actually follow through with this.

Now I'm stuck on the deployment, after some googling I ended up on the A+ OS tech notes to answer my question of it being possible to deploy an unattended upgrade from 2000 to XP. so then the next question was would it require a user to initiate the upgrade on each PC or could this be something pushed out in group policy by creating a new OU for the PCs needing this upgrade and have a batch/script file to execute the necessary commands to initiate the upgrade from a server housing the i386 folder. Any ideas or experiences on this would be appreciated to help make this project better.

Thanks!

royal

You would create a distribution point on a server and share it out and configure permissions accordingly. Place the i386 contents in this directory.

You would then create a batch file that has the following:
net use x: \\fileserver\i386
x:\winnt32 /s: x:\ /unattend:\unattend.txt (Remove the spaces between the : x. I added the spaces so it wouldn't show up as .

You would then use setupmanager to create the answer file that allows you to create the answer file. You must make sure that the following line of code is in the answer file if you are upgrading from an NT based system: NTUpgrade=Yes.

Then place this answer file in that i386 directory.

You can then add the batch script as a login script or find other means for the user to initiate the automated setup. The problem with using a login script, is that when a user comes to work in the morning, they won't be able to work for a while. Alternatively, you can place the batch file in a logoff script. Or perhaps you can send out a mass e-mail saying that Friday night (or whenever), all computers will be remotely rebooted to do an upgrade. You can then place the batch file in a shutdown script and then use the shutdown command to remotely initiate shutdowns on the network.

Here's a good article which will help you out a bit more:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000pro/deploy/upgrdmigrate/winupgrd.mspx

shednik

Thanks royal,

Yea that seemed like it would work...would this be possible to be pushed out when the pc is rebooted to deploy that batch file or would the pc have to be logged in for this action to be done... not sure if it would need to be and then logged in with an AD user that is also an admin of the machine. I'll do some testing I've just never done anything with group policy so this will be an adventure, but thats the best way to learn....any other insights let me know guys

Thanks

royal

Well, that's one caveat. Yes the user has to be a local administrator to do this. You can do this in 2 different ways:

1. Going to every desktop and manually adding the user to the local administrator group. This is a terrible solution as you could just logon to the administrator account to kick-off the upgrade process.

2. To make things easier, this is a nice little trick I like to use to easily add a user to the local administrator group only when they are logged onto the machine. Go into the Restricted Users group policy and nest the Interactive Users group into the Local Administrator group.

If you do not want this insecurity, you can use SMS to do all of this as the SMS client has the privileges to do the upgrades. I cannot give you more details on how to do this as I am not an SMS guy.

royal

I just remembered something. You can actually kick off the install without doing anything in my last post. Use the Runas command which requires the secondary logon service to be started. The only problem is that with Runas, you can't supply the password in the runas command. A solution is to use a utility called TQrunas which is essentially runas which allows you to also supply a password for the Administrator account. You can find this utility here.

sprkymrk

Here is a white paper from MS on using SMS to deploy XP. In a real world scenario, with 500 computers, SMS will be the most likely solution.

Using Systems Management Server 2.0 to Deploy Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

shednik

thanks guys now i just have to test it all out and see if i can get it to work correctly...

jasonboche

In a real world scenario with 500 computers of varying hardware, I don't know that I would trust any sort of automated rollout without a boatload of testing first. The rollout needs to be seamless.

Some may disagree with me but upgrading any significant number of machines on the network through an automated script is a fairy tale and urban legend only read about in books and on Microsoft certification exams.

Before the script even has a chance to roll out, two things have happend which will foil any reasonable success rate:
1. 50% of your users have laptops. 10%-40% of those users took their laptops home for the weekend even after countless warning reminders were sent out via email during the weeks leading up to the rollout.

2. Of the remaining users who did not take their laptops home, 10% shut down their workstations even after countless warning reminders were sent out via email during the weeks leading up to the rollout.

In the real world, it works like this:
1. You successfully upgrade 80% of the machines on the initial planned upgrade date
2. Because 20% of the machines were missed, a second implementation must be planned.
3. On the 2nd implementation date, you get another 15%, leaving 5% of the machines still remaining.
4. Spend the next 6 weeks tracking down that remaining 5% and getting the stragglers upgraded. Usually these will be the high end business managers who have ignored all requests from the IT department because their egos tell them they are too important to be bothered by upgrades. Working with these egos can be difficult and requires an art in communication and negotiation skills.

shednik

Thanks will take that into account in the project plan, just wanted to see in theory if this could be done that way

jasonboche

shednik wrote:

Thanks will take that into account in the project plan, just wanted to see in theory if this could be done that way

Pretty much only in the classroom, which is where you are, so I guess it's going to work for you

ajs1976

Does the scenerio include a lot of different hardware, if not Ghost them.

sprkymrk

jasonboche wrote:

shednik wrote:

Thanks will take that into account in the project plan, just wanted to see in theory if this could be done that way

Pretty much only in the classroom, which is where you are, so I guess it's going to work for you

Works in real life with SMS and good written policies enforced by upper management. Been there, done that, real-life, no fairy tale, aproximately 500 clients. Remember, planning is 80%, execution is 20%.

Ditto NT4 to 2003 AD migration. Soon to find out if an Exchange 5.5 to 2003 migration will be as smooth.

jasonboche

Oh sure, it helps when you're waiving that gun around :P

shednik

ajs1976 wrote:

Does the scenerio include a lot of different hardware, if not Ghost them.

Well we thought up that but decided against doing a clean install...this is a fictitious company anyway, but I based it off of at my company at about a similar size with each department having many different kinds of software that is needed that this will be the best way to go IMO...no big deal though I just have to make it seem like it will work for the grade

sprkymrk

jasonboche wrote:

Oh sure, it helps when you're waiving that gun around :P

C'mon, you know and I know you're looking for an avatar of an Abrams Tank to trump my Custom Springfield 1911.

sprkymrk

shednik wrote:

ajs1976 wrote:

Does the scenerio include a lot of different hardware, if not Ghost them.

Well we thought up that but decided against doing a clean install...this is a fictitious company anyway, but I based it off of at my company at about a similar size with each department having many different kinds of software that is needed that this will be the best way to go IMO...no big deal though I just have to make it seem like it will work for the grade

I think you are on the right path. Ghosting is great, but it limits the ease of deploying custom applications as you stated, for differing client requirements. There are other options too, including Ghost Solution Suite, which is similar in many ways to SMS with ghost on top of it, but for your project I would continue with the AD/Group Policy or SMS route, as information will be more readily available on how to perform the tasks involved.