Help me decide WinXP or Win9x & Novell NetWare 4.2

[compudog]

I need to get a PC quick for my employer. It must connect to an established Novell NetWare 4.2 server for file access and printers etc. I was looking to buy a Dell PC, but Dell only ships WinXP or 2K. What issues am I likely to encounter with this workstation and interoperability with the established Novell network? We currently have 12 worrkstation PC's on this LAN running Win9x with no problems. Am I worrying too much? Any help/guidance/suggestions appreciated.

 

[compudog]

^^Bump

 

[Nothinman]

Win2K or XP will be infinitely better than Win9X in every aspect, the only people I would recommend Win9X to are the ones I really hate.

MS' NetWare client connects to NDS just fine, and if you want you can download Novell's free client which has many more features.

 

[bozo1]

If you want to stick with 9x for uniformity on your network, you can certainly install it. If you purchase it with W2K or XP, Microsoft allows you to install a previous OS.

 

[SaigonK]

The Windows 2000 NDS client will connect to servers below 5.x only so you should be fine.
The Windows XP NDS client can connect to fully NDS aware servers so if you need to connect to a server that is 5.x you can do that with XP.

Watch for a few things, you wont be able to get to any NDPS printers using the native NDS client included with Windows, nor will you be able to use any of the NAL launched applications as the NDS client form Microsoft doesnt support this.
The Latest XP compatible client is available at Novell and it works very well, it will get rid of the fancy logon screen with Windows XP so be warned if you intend to use it that way.

Also, watch out for sticky profiles, Windows 2k and XP have gotten more lboated and in a novell netowkr it seems more often than not that the profiles are getting harder to get up to the server before getting disconnected.

 

[compudog]

I think I will go with a "White Box" clone with Win98 SE. But I will also make sure my management realizes that the future is here and WinXP is the way to go on the client. Unfortunately, we are on a 3 year cycle for computer upgrades and the start of this current cycle was just this past October. I will have to suffer along until October 2004 before it's in the budget for the next server/client upgrade.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Nothinman]

The Latest XP compatible client is available at Novell and it works very well, it will get rid of the fancy logon screen with Windows XP so be warned if you intend to use it that way.

It will get rid of the OS X looking login, but so will MS' NetWare client, and if you want you can set MS' GINA to be used if you don't like the Novell one, just not the OS X one.

 

[compudog]

So, If I get a desktop PC with Windows XP Home/Pro, I can get it to work with Novell NetWare 4.2 with all the same functionality as Win 9x? I will have to download the latest client software from Novell and install it on the XP box and everything will work? I know we have to start moving to the latest OS'es, but I don't want to upset the apple cart and make work for myself in the process.

 

[Nothinman]

So, If I get a desktop PC with Windows XP Home/Pro, I can get it to work with Novell NetWare 4.2 with all the same functionality as Win 9x?

The only functionality you'll be missing is the random blue screens and shoddy memory management. If you have any strange 3rd party or in house apps you should of course test them in XP, but most things should run fine.