Upgrading and Installing Member Servers

Determine Third-Party Software Compliance

Windows 2000 Server software that is logo-compliant (software designed for Windows 2000 Server) takes advantage of Windows 2000 Server features such as Active Directory. Any software written for Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 95, or Windows 98 should run properly under Windows 2000 Server. Software that was written for 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.x) or MS-DOS should work in a Windows 2000 Server environment, but is subject to the following considerations:

The software might require special configuration files, such as Autoexec.nt and Config.nt.
The 16-bit software might have or require special device drivers that are no longer available or are incompatible with Windows 2000 Server. In this case, contact the vendor who wrote the software and find out whether they currently have or are developing the device driver you need.

In all cases, you should thoroughly test all software on the Windows 2000 platform in a lab environment before risking downtime and data loss in a production environment. For more information about setting up a test environment, see "Building a Windows 2000 Test Lab,""Conducting Your Windows 2000 Pilot," and "Testing Applications for Compatibility with Windows 2000" in this book.