School Networking question

[Guest]

I work at a school with a network of 8 Windows XP Pro machines in one room.
We use Windows Server 2003 software to manage the network.

We want to join 8 other machines in another room to the network. These
machines have Windows XP Media Center 2005 preloaded. Can these machines be
joined to our network and be fully functioning within the network? Or do we
need to put Windows XP Pro on them.

(FYI - Our network has login scripts, and going forward we want a centrally
managed virus scanner and net nanny type solution to prevent students from
visiting innapropriate sites.

I have heard that with Media Center machines you can access some network
resources but can't join these machines to a domain, which could pose
problems for login scripts and being part of a centrally managed virus
solution.)

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

I work at a school with a network of 8 Windows XP Pro machines in one
room. We use Windows Server 2003 software to manage the network.

We want to join 8 other machines in another room to the network.
These machines have Windows XP Media Center 2005 preloaded. Can
these machines be joined to our network and be fully functioning
within the network? Or do we need to put Windows XP Pro on them.

(FYI - Our network has login scripts, and going forward we want a
centrally managed virus scanner and net nanny type solution to
prevent students from visiting innapropriate sites.

I have heard that with Media Center machines you can access some
network resources but can't join these machines to a domain, which
could pose problems for login scripts and being part of a centrally
managed virus solution.)

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

You're correct; you cannot join WinXP MCE to a domain, and you won't get
group policy/centralized security/management/login script stuff if they just
access resources on the domain. Antivirus shouldn't be a problem, most of
the time, tho. Can't speak as to 'net nanny' stuff, but ISA or some third
party content filtering solution would be the way to go there.