Upgrading to XP

[joe.n]

I have been informed by our IT department that we are looking to upgrade our operating system from the current Windows 2000 to Windows XP. Last fall we upgraded AutoCad from 2004 to ADT 2005 and I suspect we will be staying with that for a while.

My question . . . are there any "issues" that I should be aware with regarding this upgrade from a cad standpoint? I would like to make the "higher up" aware of any glitches that may affect either productivity or cad support.

Thanx,
Joseph Navin
Excel Engineering

[Glenn Pope]

You shouldn't have any problems as long as everything is a nice clean install.

[Ed Jobe]

Just make sure that cad users belong to the Power Users group.

[joe.n]

Ed,

Excuse the dumb question . . .

What do you mean by Power Users Group? Is this an actual users group or just a loose term to define the serious cad users?

Joe

[Wanderer]

Ed,

Excuse the dumb question . . .

What do you mean by Power Users Group? Is this an actual users group or just a loose term to define the serious cad users?

JoeIt's a classification within windows that sets certain rights for users.
look under your control panel > user accounts and you can see the options in there. You'll see the user accounts on the pc: the user name, the domain and their group (user, power user or administrator).

good luck with your upgrade.

[Ed Jobe]

Thanks Melanie.
Your IT guy would probably do this anyway, but I would seriously reccommend rebuilding the pc and installing XP fresh, as opposed to "upgrading". Its more work, but well worth it as far as stability goes.

[joe.n]

Thanx for the input so far.

I spoke with our IT guy right before lunch and he said that this will be happening in the next couple of weeks so I am going to come back next week and see if there are any additional comments. He also mentioned that we will be running Winsdows XP Professional, service pack 2 (if that matters) and that we will be receiving new pcs so it should be a fresh install.

Thanx, again

[Robert.Hall]

I remember there being some sort of issue between Windows XP Service Pack 2 and AutoCad. I would suggest making sure you have all the most current AutoCad patches.

[Glenn Pope]

I remember there being some sort of issue between Windows XP Service Pack 2 and AutoCad. I would suggest making sure you have all the most current AutoCad patches.
The only issue I know of was the Windows firewall blocking the communication center from contacting the Autodesk server. If you don't use the firewall you shouldn't have a problem.

[Mike.Perry]

Just make sure that cad users belong to the Power Users group.Hi

I believe that is only a requirement for AutoCAD 2002 users or below...

ID: TS70312 - Permissions required to run on Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?id=2867755&linkID=2475323&siteID=123112)

+

Below quotes come directly from AutoCAD 2004 reviews...


Support for installation without power user rights.
Operating Systems: AutoCAD 2004 is now Windows XP certified, and runs fine on Windows 2000 as well. Power user privileges are no longer required. Operating systems such as Windows 95/98/Me are not supported. In our opinion these operating systems were never stable enough to be considered for AutoCAD anyway.Have a good one, Mike

[jaberwok]

Yes.
Stuff that used to get saved to the registry is now saved to the user profile.

[glee.94356]

Autocad 2004 is stable on XP pro sp2. I assume 2005 should be too. You do not need to disable the firewall. Your IT guy should know what to do. You can allow autocad to communicate with autodesk. Either in your base firewall configuration or whatever viruscan program you have installed. (It's just allowing the domain or the IP).
XP pro is similar to win 2000 pro (think NT 5 vs. NT 5.1). It just has that product activation thing that 2000 does not.
If you like the microsoft office task bar, you won't get it in the new office installation. XP is meant to be more streamline. It sort of learns what you use on a regular basis and puts it in your start menu, wants to clean your desktop if you don't use certain icons, etc.
It's a good thing you are getting new computers. Clean install is always better. Some older machines don't have sufficient memory or computing power to run XP pro. May want to check if you have older plotters or printers and see if there is support for their drivers on XP.
XP pro is easy to use for the most part and fairly easy to configure for networks. Mid size and small firms will find it fairly friendly. Small firms particularly who know a little about networking should be able to handle it on their own. 2-3 person firms can network the machines fairly well. Either peer to peer or with win 2000 server. Do not disable the firewall like some web sites will tell you. All you have to do is allow your LAN network or assign IP addresses and provide them to the firewall. Even if you have a hardware installed firewall on your router, I think it's a good idea to have many layers of redundant security since most networks are now on the internet 24/7 with broadband access. Your IT guys will know this. Besides on smaller networks many of them have not turned on the firewall or configured it correctly on their routers.
Anyway, win pro sp2 is not bad. Built on NT and brings all the issues that were corrected on 2000 to it. Just that product activation thing. It ties that particular installation to that particular machine. if you ever want to reinstall XP on that machine, it becomes a little painful. As long as your IT guys backs up the Wpa.dbl for that machine and ensures he knows which OS serial number he used, when he reinstalls, all he has to do is replace that file while in safe mode and everything should be fine. As long as the same OS and serial number is used on the same computer. This is not a hack, just a easier work around.
Ok. nuff said. Probably more than you wanted. I need to get a life.