We have a setup of around 30 desktop and laptop PCs in a peer to peer network (workgroup). The PCs are running a mix of Windows 2000, XP Home and XP Pro. As the number of PCs in the LAN has grown from around 10 a couple of years ago to around 30 now, the network has become slow. Network functionality is shared internet broadband access, shared folders on the PCs and also 4 shared printers.
One Win 2000 PC (Workstation OS) is used as a file server for some of the PCs. Now more of the PCs in the network needs to access data on this file server, and we get into problems with no more than 10 concurrent clients connecting to that PC. So we consider upgrade to Windows 2003 Server on this PC.
Our concern is: as there are (many) XP Home PCs in the LAN, these can not make proper use of Active Directory. I understand that XP Home PCs can connect to shares on the domain, but still am not sure if it would be a good idea to use a domain considering the XP Home PCs..?
Can we install and configure a Windows 2003 on the fileserver without a domain, and still achieve to speed up network traffic compared to now? What could be beneficial to do re. this?
This is for a non-profit organization with limited budgets, no indept knowledge re. Windows Server OS & Domain etc, and we need to keep things as simple and affordable as possible..