Windows 7 PCs in a Windows 2000 Domain

In my small business we needed to upgrade two computers for our programmers to Windows 7.  As a small business, we still use a Windows 2000 domain.  After encountering a number of problems, I finally have everything working smoothly.  To save other experts the headache of trying to do the (nearly) impossible I am sharing my findings.

First,
Prior to adding the computers to the domain you'll need to do two things:

1

Set up a Win7 domain administaation machine so you can edit and create the GPO's (Group Policy Options) for the Windows 7 machines. This machine can be either 32 or 64 bit. You will need to install RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools)

**Download it here: RSAT Link
**After installing RSAT you can follow the instructions in Post #5 here: Techspot

2

Next, download and install this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=976494
At this point any computer settings policy will work. Here's the catch:


In our mixed environment of XP and Windows 7, this meant that we had to move all user configuration settings from pre-existing policies and place them in one big user policy and apply that to all our users.  Keep in mind that some preferences in some GPO's will not work on Windows XP; e.g., the drive mapping options.  So as a work-around, we added a login script to map drives if and only if the machine was running Windows XP.

That's pretty much it.  Once the computer settings and user settings were working, you're all done. Remember, if you have a GPO to add printers, you will still need to figure out how to acquire Windows 7 32/64 bit drivers for your particular printer(s).