XP Pro needed for networking?

[MjrTom]

We are running Windows NT on our server at work, and we recently bought a new computer that came loaded with Windows XP Home. Do I need to upgrade this new computer to Windows XP Pro in order to network to the NT machine? thanks....

 

[guaraguao]

No. What do you mean by "network" though? File-sharing (SMB), domain logon, exchange should all work just fine. In fact, WinXP is actually pretty much NT 5, so the XP computer is actually more updated than the NT one.

 

[stash]

File-sharing (SMB), domain logon, exchange should all work just fine

Domain logon will NOT work fine with XP Home. In fact, it wont work at all, since XP Home cannot be made a member of a domain. You can still map drives to servers that are part of a domain, but XP Home can't be an actual member of a domain.

If your network is running in a workgroup rather than a domain, than XP Home should be fine.

 

[MjrTom]

Guaraguao,
Thanks for the quick reply. We access the internet through the workstation with XP home (or we will once we get it to work properly!). I have a techy coming in to hook it up to the server, and they are the ones who told me that I had to upgrade from Home to Pro in order to network to the NT machine. Will all of the machines on my network then need to have the network disc loaded to them? (the one that I made while trying to install networking to the new XP machine). Thanks very much for your help. I can build a machine from scratch, but this networking thing is beyond me.
thanks again

 

[MjrTom]

Stash,
That sounds like the key.... "If your network is running in a workgroup rather than a domain, than XP Home should be fine. " I don't know enough about the setup to tell how we are configured. So I'll ask the guy. If we are just on a workgroup, I'll have him just hook us up without the upgrade.
Thanks for your help Stash....

 

[manly]

STaSh is correct, although I think XP Home is further limited by only supporting simple file sharing. In other words, no ACLs even for workgroup (peer to peer) networking.

If I'm not mistaken, simple file sharing essentially means everybody (in the workgroup) connects to only \\SERVER\SharedDocs

 

[stash]

Yeah that is right, I should've mentioned that.

A list of things that Home CANNOT and Pro CAN do:

* SMP support (multi-processor support)
* Roaming user profiles
* Remote desktop
* Access control
* Encrypting file system
* Offline files and folders
* Remote installation service
* Windows server domain support
* Group policy
* Software installation and maintenance
* Multi-lingual user interface support

 

[Bleep]

I think that one other thing is that you cannot be a power user in the home edition, you are limited to just a user or admiinistrator.

Bleep

 

[mboy]

Don't mess around. Get XP pro for sure. If u have an NT domain, you don't want to be running it as a workgroup as you SHOULD want authentication, so you need XP pro for that as everyone else has mentioned.

 

[cmv]

Originally posted by: mboy
Don't mess around. Get XP pro for sure. If u have an NT domain, you don't want to be running it as a workgroup as you SHOULD want authentication, so you need XP pro for that as everyone else has mentioned.

8 computers and they are using this for NAT or something to get out on the net? What windows domain? Heh... I'm sorta joking but odds they have a PDC are low IMHO.

Seriously, why not just pick up a little Linksys box, or something else, that has a firewall builtin and just use that? Or do you mean that you physically walk over to the XP machine to browse the web (re: "access the Internet")?