NT4 Server update - Advice please - security etc.

tonky

Hi.
Anyone done an update on NT4 Server recently?
Have NT4 Server SP3, Plan update to SP6a.
What's the story with all these 'Security Updates' on MS site?
Do I have to d/l and install all these items individually, can't see a
cumulative security update so far.
This is an overnight update so any assistance appreciated.

The best thing to do is install SP6 first, then go up to 6a. Only then should you download all the security updates, this helps prevent duplicate downloads. You can use Windows Update on NT as far as I know, but I think its the old version 3 engine.

tonky

Grand, thanks for that. Mucho coffee & mars bars looks like.
Cheers
E.

I better say again, whoops.

What I meant to say was to install SP6a first, then apply the SP6a rollup package. Had a memory lapse for a minute.

rolion

Hy,

My best advise will be to upgrade to Windows 2000 / 2003 Server !!
What are the reasons for keeping the old NT4 ??

Capt'n Midnight

rolion wrote:

Hy,

My best advise will be to upgrade to Windows 2000 / 2003 Server !!
What are the reasons for keeping the old NT4 ??

Cost - you can't upgrade the licenses so all the Sever licences and CAL's would have to be bought all over again.
Migration's can be painful even if they go smoothly
New HW may be needed (NT4 servers should have redundant drives at this stage)
you loose WINS - ok put that down as an advantage

( SP6 without the a is the broken one )
After SP6a you are looking for the SRP which is a security rollout. (14MB)
After this there are still another 30 odd patches depending on which level of IE you use - if you use a more recent version of IE then you can use windowsupdate.microsoft.com to do the updates.

QCHAIN.EXE is a m$ prog that allows you to apply all the patches with only one reboot - you run it each update one at a time and then qchain. Another option is to download the MSIA and run it from a windows 2000 PC to scan the server and see what it sees too.

NB. some patches are for workstation and not server so be careful if downloading or using other people patches !

List of patches on an NT4 server...
KB823803
KB824105
KB824146
KB825119
KB828035
KB828741
KB835732
KB839645
KB840987
KB841356
KB841533
KB841872
KB870763
KB873339
KB873350
KB885249
KB885835
KB885836
KB891711
Q147222
Q246009
Q299444
Q304158
Q312895
Q313829
Q318138
Q320206
Q323172
Q326830
Q810833
Q815021
Q817606
Q819696
Q823492
Q823559
Q840315
Q890175

rolion

rolion wrote:

Hy,

My best advise will be to upgrade to Windows 2000 / 2003 Server !!
What are the reasons for keeping the old NT4 ??

My attitude is "if it works, why change??"

I was in Brosna, Co. Kerry today in an accountants who were still running some 1987 software off an 8 MHz Amstrad 8086 with 640kb RAM! It was the oldest computer I've ever seen. I even had to park the hard disk's heads before powering it off!

Capt'n Midnight

Karsini wrote:

My attitude is "if it works, why change??"

I was in Brosna, Co. Kerry today in an accountants who were still running some 1987 software off an 8 MHz Amstrad 8086 with 640kb RAM! It was the oldest computer I've ever seen. I even had to park the hard disk's heads before powering it off!

Leave it running - soft boot only
small accountants are renowned for not spending on computers
do they have a contingency plan for when the drive wears out / lubricating oil evaporates ?

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

do they have a contingency plan for when the drive wears out / lubricating oil evaporates ?

Sorry for the OT post.

I have no idea to be honest, its a 30MB RLL drive so I'm surprised its lasted this long. They do backups on 720k floppies, lol.

rolion

Cost of licences:are you using the NT4 box in a business environment or is an educational organisation !?
I'm asking because the price will be different between them!

Thanks...

Capt'n Midnight

Karsini wrote:

Sorry for the OT post.

I have no idea to be honest, its a 30MB RLL drive so I'm surprised its lasted this long. They do backups on 720k floppies, lol.

Wouldn't be suprised to find it's actually a 20MB MFM drive reformatted.
At this stage I'd be afraid to touch it - but a copy of spinrite might be handy if you wanted to run diags on it.

rolion wrote:

Cost of licences:are you using the NT4 box in a business environment or is an educational organisation !?
I'm asking because the price will be different between them!

Thanks...

Microsoft offer cheap educational licenses. BUT AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) they don't have downgrade rights so not much use if you have old HW. Also if you remember a court case a while back where the were fined X billion - they paid most of the fine with educational licenses and PC's making huge inroads into a market in the US where Apple still had a large market share.

tba

thats funny
http://www.novell.com/linux/windowstolinux/publicservice/

Bebop

Yeh right......

If you wanna stay with NT4 Server then support & critical updates just won't be available, but if you are serious about your network you should plan to migrate to S2.3K, just one of its benefits, Volume Shadow copy Service is on its own worth the effort and expense

tonky

It's a question of economics, really. (Upgrade suggestions).
The installation of NT4 Server works fine and does the job.
It's pretty much a noddy setup.
Simple file server and backups.
I asked the question as I know from past experience that MS service packs etc can be gonky sometimes. Just did'nt want to be stuck at 3am, you know the story.
Thanks for the replies, everything went fine.
Now on to the next mission ....
Capt'n Midnight: thanks for the info.

osmethod

We use NT Server 4 in our production environment in work. SP6a was installed and then the SRP update followed byseveral cumulative updates.

NT4 SP3 does seem along way back. I followed these steps when we updated originally...

1. For all software running on the server I rang all companies whose software we were using and checked that their software was ok with NT4 SP6a + SRP + updates. e.g. our accoounts package had to have "opportunistic locking" turned off after updating....

2. I then imaged the hard drives as a fallback... much less pressure

3. Went and installed all updates

4. Fortunately, everything went smooth.

Osmethod