=?Utf- said:
Can a company LAN be setup using Win Xp Pro for the server and workstations
running Win XP Home Edition, or is it necessary to have XP Pro on the
workstations as well?
Any computer can be a "Server", but in these groups, almost all of us
look at a server as a system running a "server operating system".
I've setup a few small offices (4 nodes) running Windows XP Prof SP2 as
the master station and the other 3 nodes running Windows XP Prof SP2 as
the slaves. The master has 6 shares and no printer shares. The master
has the same user/password accounts as the slaves, and all systems are
setup so that the user should NOT change their password.
The slaves have a logon.bat file that runs at startup in the ALL_USERS
profile, it deletes and maps the shares each time they log-on.
The printers are all connected to print server boxes, by IP, and
installed at each workstation - no printer is attached to a computer
directly. This lets users print without the other computers running.
The master station has a simple IDE RAID controller (RAID1) and a 40GB
Tape drive, all files are backed up every night. Nothing on the local
slaves is backed up at all. The users know that if they don't store it
on a network drive that it's not being backed up.
Since the 3 slave nodes are all clones of each other, there is a single
GHOST Image of 1 slave node stored on the server - in case a node is
lost, it can be restored by ghost in a couple minutes.
I would not consider doing this with XP Home edition, but it would work
the same.
I would not consider enabling the Guest Account, that's a bad idea.
You will see performance issues.
You should purchase a 5 CAL Windows 2003 Server OS for $600 and doing it
right.