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diablo-26

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Changing from an NT 4.0 Domain to a Windows 2003 Domain.

Hello,

I work at a school and currently we have an old NT 4.0 Server as a PDC in the Freedom domain.

We only have about 50 users on it because we have just generic logins, not individual logins.

We have 7 Windows 2003 servers that are installed into this FREEDOM domain, none of them are set to be domain controllers.

If I wanted to switch control of the domain to a 2003 domain, which I want to do by just typing in those 50 users on the 2003 side...  I don't want to do a migrate, not just for 50 users.

So would I just type all of those users into one of my 2003 servers and then shutdown the NT 4.0 PDC and then assign the PDC role to one of the 2003 machines?  What can I expect to happen?  Will it propogate those users to the other 2003 servers automatically, or only if I make them BDC's?

Any help would be appreciated.   Kind of a wierd situtation... we have very old mixing with brand new.  But I would really like to do this switchover because NT is a lot more susceptible to virus attacks and what not than 2003.

Thanks,

M.
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MidnightOne
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diablo-26

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Midnight,

I'll do whatever works and is the easiest to pull off.  Just not sure if these Dell PowerEdge rack servers will take NT 4.0 or not...  I have one to play with, it doesn't have much on it.

Would a 2003 Domain cause any problems with our Windows 98 clients which we have maybe about 1/4 of the machines in our HS and MS are still Windows 98.   Everything else is XP.   Like should they just log in without noticing a difference?

Our FQDN is freedom.k12.pa.us, but isn't there a section where you name the domain for Pre-Windows 2000 machines?  I want to keep that just FREEDOM because all the clients will be looking for that domain name.

Also, I have a Windows 2003 server that we're running an attendance package on.  It has about 30 Users added to it who connect via terminal services.  These are NOT the same usernames that reside on the NT 4.0 PDC.   If I make one of the 2003 servers the PDC with the old NT box's 60 some users on it and then it replicates to this attedance server is that going to mess things all up?  Cause that attendance machine is a member of the FREEDOM domain as well.

I'm just worried about the trickle down effects since I haven't really dealt with 2003 domains that much.

Thanks so much for your help,

Matt
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