Windows XP as a replacement for
Windows 98 in a Computer Lab situation
There have been discussions of replacing Windows 98 with Windows XP through out the Computer labs at Austin Community College. Having been asked delve into the specifics of this topic we (Daniel Sellers and Gerry Hamilton) have proceeded to test various software packages and security policies on XP. Our tests included the ability to ghost, run programs, and potential security issuse.
Symantec Ghost 7.5 enterprise edition specifacally includes Ghostwalker, a program designed to resolve SID conflicts by generating new SIDs during the replecation process. For our tests however we used Ghost 2002 which allows only peer-to-peer replecation. This would be impracticle for use on a larger scale such as in a Lab. However without ghostwalker the only issue we encountered was with the Remote Assistance service on XP. They were able to log onto the existing Novell 5 server and access all shares. They were also able to log into our other test environment a Windows NT 4.0 server. The current version of ghost should be able to handle a mass ghosting as long as the XP program sysprep is used to ensure new SIDs are created on boot. However this does require a techinician to enter the product ID and activate the OS through the internet on each machine. Not neccisarily a serious draw back except for the amount of time involved in the final process of the ghosting. Over all this area does not present many issues for the roll out of the new OS.
When running in the Novell environment we encountered one potential security issue. When logging in with the Novell Client it impossible to gain access to the computer without a local user account. This would mean that a copy of all the users would have to be installed on every computer in the Lab. This could possibly be done prior to the initial image being taken from a client for ghosting thus copying the users across the network as well as the OS. However this would still be at best time consuming. This semester we had upward of 1000 users on our Novell server not a small task to copy them to all local machines. This problem can be avoided in several ways. First ZENworks by Novell includes a feature that overides the security settings on the local machine. However, they do not currently have a client out for Windows XP. When that does become available it would be the simplest way to workaround this problem. Another option would be to use Windows NT as the authentication server for an NT domain. This eleminates the local user problem allowing you to loginto the computer using a domain user account. This allows eleminates the sloer network sppeds that we encountered using the Novell Client. These speed decreases also exist in 2000 professional on the same network. If a coplete switch to NT is not desirable the best current solution is to use an NT server for authentication and then use gateway services for novell to allow access to the novell network.
There were very few issues with any software packages. The most serious being that Visible Analyst will not run on Windows XP at this time. We emailed the Visible analyst team about this and are waiting for them to reply to our email. Other possible software related issues include Personal Web Server. Personal Web Server does not come with Windows XP nor can it be installed on Windows XP. Due to the fact that XP is NT based it does not support PWS. It does however, support IIS which could possibly complicate the Intro to Web programming class. Other than these two issues XP appears to function well with our current software excpet that you must be the administrator to install any programs. This is only a problem if a class needs to install a program on the computers. The last issue is the GUI. It has a completely redesigned GUI which could make it difficult for new users/faculty to find their way around. The GUI can be set to Classic mode which uses the same GUI as windows 2000 which is nearly identacle to the Windwos 9x GUI.
Other than the issues outlined above the switch to XP should be rather uneventful. It is ghostable, runs most of the programs that would be required, and has very few security issues. Which makes it a viable alternative to Windows 9x.