[ale] NT workstation to server

[gt1355b at prism.gatech.edu]

On 12 Jul, Dan Newcombe wrote:
> Does anyone know what one has to do to make the above change?  I was
> getting into an argument over our nt server manager (about MS's licensing,
> etc... vs. Linux) and wanted to show him this, as he says it is all
> technical.

O'Reilly has a white paper out covering this (see
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/windows/win95.update/ntwk4.html).  The
relevant part:

NTS and NTW are distinguished with the following registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions\ProductType

This is a string value that is interpreted as follows:

Value     Interpretation
"WinNT"     NT Workstation
"ServerNT"  NT Server
"LanmanNT"  NT Advanced Server

(Important Note:  Do NOT experiment with changing this setting to "LanmanNT"!)

...

Some Microsoft employees have privately admitted that the differences
between NTS and NTW 3.51 were minimal. However, they have gone on to claim
that now everything is different in version 4.0. We've already established
that in fact NTS 4.0 and NTW 4.0 have exactly the same kernel, and in fact
exactly the same of everything but the costly extras bundled in with NTS.

But what of the magical 3.51 "ProductType" registry setting? It's still
there, and it still plays the same role in 4.0 that it did in 3.51 in
distinguishing between the Server and Workstation modes (see table above).
Microsoft has merely added an additional registry setting, and made some
effort to prevent the user from changing these settings. The extra setting
is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup\SystemPrefix

The SystemPrefix value is a binary value which the kernel treats as two
DWORDs, of which the only important piece of information seems to be the bit
represented by the mask 0x04000000 in the high-order DWORD. If ProductType
is "ServerNT" or "LanmanNT", then this bit must be set. If ProductType is
"WinNT" then the bit must be off (any inconsistency results in a blue-screen
error at system boot).

The system spawns two worker threads that watch for, and override, changes
to the two registry keys. If an attempt is made to change ProductType, the
threads changes the settings back (really! you can see this happen if you
manually refresh in REGEDT32) and pops up the following warning box:

"The system has detected tampering with your registered product type.
This is a violation of your software license. Tampering with product
type is not permitted."

However, if the worker threads are overriden,* then after making these
changes and rebooting, a formerly NTW 4.0 system functions as an NTS 4.0
system. The NET ACCOUNTS command reports "Computer Role: SERVER" and the
taskbar start menu's bitmap changes from "Windows NT Workstation" to
"Windows NT Server".

Eamonn Sullivan of PC Week has confirmed that, when an NTW machine is
tweaked via the registry into an NTS machine, web performance "tests on this
"altered" Workstation were identical (within the margin of error) to
Server." (See PC Week article, "Simple way found to turn NT Workstation into
Server.")

(end quote)

There are better instructions available (including at
http://www.ntinternals.com) and programs (NTTune.com).  Most are currently
off-line for legal reasons, though ntinternals is supposed to be up
shortly....

If you're a warez dood, some of those sites will no doubt have
something.

later,
chris

--
Chris Ricker                                 gt1355b at prism.gatech.edu