Best way to set up win2000 server for client boxes running 98/me

Hello ppl and thanks in advance for any knowledge you can share...


This is essentially my first 2000 server set up, so i basically b.s.'d my way through it. It is working, and they seem to be happy with the reliability, but I can't help but thinking I could have set it up better if I had more knowledge. Currently I am poring through a win2000 text filing the holes in my knowledge base.
We took this 2000 server machine we built to a business client's (our lawyers) office. They have about 15 machines running different flavors of 9x/Me plus 1 XP box. This is a file/app (just one application) server which we are using to replace their 95-based file server. They are not too concerned with internal security with the exception of the user doing the payroll who we set up w/the XP box and saves/backs up all that stuff locally.
We set them up with one workgroup, added the users with the p/w as "password" and checked "user must change p/w at next logon". (which didn't work. they were not prompted to change anyway)...
Also, they have a chumpy dial-up web ramp which they use to share their dial-up internet service which MUST DO DHCP or it doesn't work, so we set up 2K as a stand-alone server.

I am wondering what the best way to set this 2000 server up would be for this environment. Also, what are the limitations of 9x-based machines here.

Obviously they don't want to upgrade their emachines to 2k pro at this time so, I would like to make this work in an efficient manner.

Sorry about the long post, thanks for your time.

to be honest with you, I'm not too keen on workgroups, so personally I'd set up a simple domain - with some rather tighter GPO restrictions on the XP payroll box. Have your server make the dial up and run ICS with dial on demand. The ics box then becomes a dhcp server assigning addresses in the range 192.168.0.x (the server takes 192.168.0.1) and uses NAT to act as a stripped down proxy server. I'd recommend using some firewall software and maybe even something like PGP or use the in-built EFS capability of win2k and xp to encrypt your payroll files.
check out the security section of windrivers for more info - I only just recently started learning about firewalls - and it's a subject worth reading about!

I would agree with above poster in that using a domain would be better then a workgroup. I believe though that you would have to reinstall win2k and designate it as a pdc at setup.

dude, there's no such thing as a pdc in win2k - there's only DCs and member servers - and a member server can be upgraded to a DC by running dcpromo from the run line - which installs AD. you'll need to install dns as well - you're best off buying a book to tell you how to do it - it can be pretty tricky if you've never used AD (active directory) before