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Messy W98 lan: need advice

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by bveazey

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This 6 machine office LAN looks very Frankensteinish...
1.My gut reaction is to reformat all of the hard drives and reinstall Windows 98 to regain continuity among the machines. (Good Idea?)
2.The N.I.C.s are all different brands and ages, and I'mnot sure that I can round up all of the driver-disks. (Are new, matching N.I.C.s needed?)
3.A Sales and Inventory Database is shared amoung the machines: Will changing the IP adresses, Protocals, computer ID and Workgroup names affect this shared program upon it's reinstalation?
Thanks, bveazey

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by cybernutguy

If it has been a good while and god knows who worked on them last or how many people have installed programs you might be well off to go ahead and reformat and install the os on these new machines.

I would recommend setting up one of the better machines as a primary domain controller on NT4 or Win2k and migrating those clients to the domain. Create your group policy on the server and have everyone authenticate to the PDC. Share the drives out and check permissions.

Figure options and time on rounding up nic drivers vs. the cost of installing new nic's on their network. Let them choose but pay yourself regardless of which route they take.

Put the Sales and Inventory Database on the server, share that drive out and map it to the client machines.

Recommend then implement a backup plan for that data off the server, daily backup, then archive the week. CDR, Zipdrive, something...

Changing IP's and machine names might have an effect on some programs so you might want to check with the vendor and see if a particular shared folder is needed.

Once implemented, it will be a cinch to add additional client machines down the road. ;-)

Hope some of this helps.

cybernutguy

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