My client has a file server running Novell Netware server 5.1 and
wants to migrate to Windows XP Pro, for sundry irrelevant reasons. Is
this even possible?  If so what steps and/or tools do I need, or
should I just back up the data, format the hard disk, and start from
scratch?  And in this case, would the network card even be recognized
by windows?  Please help, even very general info would be appreciated.

---

Clarification of Question by foodnerd-ga on 21 Jul 2005 10:42 PDT

OK, one step at a time I guess might get more responses - Is it
possible to completely unistall netware server from the machine, and
then perform a fresh XP install?  What is the best way to accomplish
this?

Well, if you do this then you're going to have to reconfigure all of
the workstation meaning remove the Netware client.

Yes, Windows XP should recognize all of the hardware.  

The problem is that there're no tools for migrating over the users and
files.  You're better off installing Microsoft Windows Server 2003
than installing Windows XP Pro.  Windows XP Pro is a workstation
platform, not a server platform.  Windows Server 2003 has the proper
migration tools for importing the objects in the Novell Directory
Service (eDirectory) tree.

Thanks so much for your comment z.  Yeah I feel 2003 server would be
better as well, but the guy apparently has "access" to XP Pro. 
Whatever that means.  I did a fair amount of research and though it
does seem to be a pretty involved process, netware to 2003 server
migration is at least well documented.  The only thing is this
particular box merely acts a file repository in a very smal 4-node
network, nothing else, so they won't be losing any real functionality
by going to a workstation platform.  I'm worried about BIOS
compatibility issues and wiping the disk within netware, which I am
all but completely unfamiliar with. They have about 15 g of file data
that's been backed up in non-native uncompressed, so I'm pretty
comfortable with that, it's really just getting netware off and XP on.
 Maybe I'll try one more time to talk him into 2003.  Thanks again!

Official Microsoft answer is Microsoft Directory Synchronization
Services (MSDSS) for NDS migration and Microsoft Client Services for
Netware for the file migration. But since it is only 4 node network...
(4 users?)

Make sure you do a good system backup before you do this.

1. Instead of following official process, you will need to find a
backup drive of approximately at least 15 gigs worth of data. The
drive will need to be formated in NTFS file system. Get the Services
for NetWare 5 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sfn/default.mspx).
This version will work on XP pro, get file migration utility to
migrate all the files over (if you want to preserve all of the user
rights) and MSDSS to migrate user / volume accounts over. If the
office does not care about this matter, simply attach the drive to
2000 or higher machine, add netware client to the machine and login to
the netware server that in need to migrating as admin of the root of
the NDS tree. Then, copy all of the volumes over to the NTFS drive. It
will not preserve the user rights /settings, but you will get all of
your files backed up.

At that point, simply install XP Pro on the server by booting with XP
disk, and wiping partition completely, installing instead NTFS
partition. Install XP pro as you would do in a normal process, name it
the same as netware server (so that the users do not loose their
mappings). After it is done, simply copy to a designated directory all
of the needed data that you collected from the netware server. Say you
copied from server NWSERVER volume SYS. Copy entire volume SYS any
directory of the xp pro, and share it as SYS.

Hope this helps.

Thanks sageres you make it sound ez man!  Will this method apply to
Netware 5.1?  I'm in the process of backing up all the file data on
tape using non-native data stream, which should be alble to be
restored to NTFS file system.  Do you think I should migrate to an
NTFS drive as a failsafe?  Thanks so much...

Hey foodnerd,

If you do not care on keeping the user accounts / rights for the files
that you are backing up -- you can use the non-NTFS type of partition.
Also, make sure that the tape is backing up supporting the long file
names! (Some backup software, and I am not familiar with what you are
using, strip / convert filenames to 8.3 MsDos format, which makes it
nearly impossible for the win32 software to run.) So just make sure
that when you restore that tape onto any partition, the long filenames
are written onto it ;-)