Windows NT Upgrades and Service Pack Awareness When Using Post.Office v3.1.2

Before upgrading (including adding service packs) your Windows NT operating system, we strongly encourage that you BACKUP your entire system (or at least your Post.Office registry keys and file systems). In some instances, users have reported that upgrading with just a service pack reset their registry information back to the default values. This caused them to lose their Post.Office account information and forced them to restore. (For more information on backing up Post.Office, please refer to the Backup and Restoration section of our Technical Support FAQ.)

Service Packs for Windows NT are available on the Microsoft FTP site:

• For Windows NT 3.51
• For Windows NT 4.0

Email servers, and in particular Post.Office, use many system resources and tend to exercise the operating system. As a result, new issues are discovered in these resource-intensive programs before being found in programs that are less resource intensive. Please be aware that some issues reported maybe a result of these operating system issues.

* Post.Office will be fully compatible with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 in the next major release, scheduled for June 1998.

NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 -- Certain Upgrade Scenarios Require Planning

Information from customers has shown mixed reviews with SP3 on their systems, with or without Post.Office installed. Many customers are running SP3 without incident, while a few users have reported that their systems were continually rebooting with various applications crashing.

The most significant issue relating to Post.Office and SP3 is in upgrading Post.Office after SP3 has been installed. Several of our customers have reported problems when performing a full upgrade of Post.Office after having first installed SP 3. However, our customers have been successful when first upgrading to the latest version of Post.Office before upgrading their systems to SP3. (This issue applies only to full upgrades, NOT patch upgrades, e.g., the patch upgrade from Post.Office 3.1.1 to Post.Office 3.1.2.)

Note: We realize that some systems require SP3 for certain applications. If you choose to perform a full Post.Office upgrade after installing SP3, please make sure that you properly review the backup and restore instructions as defined in our FAQ so that you feel comfortable restoring your server to the prior version of Post.Office, in the event that it is required.

SP3 Testing Results: We are finding that machines that have SP3 and were never installed with "SP2 and the Kernel" patch probably will not upgrade successfully, and restoration will be required to your prior version of Post.Office and SP1. Our tests show that the blue screen of death upgrade failure can occur when you upgrade to Post.Office (any version) if your system is configured in the following way:

• NT4.0 sp2, no hotfixes
• NT4.0 sp2, no hotfixes, plus sp3
• NT4.0 sp2, plus KRNL fix, plus sp3
• NT 4.0 sp2, no hotfixes, plus sp3, plus OOB fix

NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 -- Certain Upgrade Scenarios Require Planning

However, the blue screen of death upgrade failure does not seem to occur if your system is configured in one of the following ways:

• NT 4.0 sp1, no hotfixes
• NT 4.0 sp2, plus KRNL fix
• NT 4.0 sp2, plus KRNL fix, plus sp3, plus OOB fix

Because of this unstable environment, we cannot currently guarantee a smooth Post.Office upgrade process on systems already running SP3. Post.Office will be fully compatible with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 in the next major release, scheduled for early 1998.

NT 4.0 with Service Pack 2 -- Not recommended

There was concern in the industry about SP2 for NT 4.0. Microsoft has even released a kernel patch (available on their Web site) addressing some issues that users were encountering with this service pack.

As to its interoperability with Post.Office, several users have reported that it has affected their Web access and mail delivery; others say that it is working fine. Again, we are not recommending this service pack at this time.

NT 4.0 with Service Pack 1 -- Recommended

SP1 for NT 4.0 fixes some possible file corruption problems for highly accessed files (Microsoft bug number Q78303). We are recommending it if you are experiencing file corruption issues.

Upgrade From NT 4.0 to NT 4.0 with Service Pack 1 Issues

One user did report that installing the Service Pack on his server caused the Post.Office service to fail to start. We found that the upgrade process had modified the permissions and that the permissions for Post.Office had to be reset in order for the service to run in the post-upgrade environment.

Just to remind you, we always recommend backing up your Post.Office registry key and your Post.Office file systems prior to any operating system upgrade.

NT 4.0 without Service Packs -- Not Recommended

SP1 for NT 4.0 has been released by Microsoft and fixes some possible file corruption problems for highly accessed files (Microsoft bug number Q78303). We are currently recommending SP1 (see above) if you have file corruption issues in your operating system.

Upgrade from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 Issues

Multiple users have reported that running the upgrade from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 has reset their Registry information back to the default empty Registry. This caused them to lose any third party application definitions that were stored in the Registry. Please make sure that you have backed up all your Post.Office information (including the Post.Office Registry key and your Post.Office file systems) so that you could restore them if necessary. See the Backup/Restore section of our Technical Support FAQ.

NT 3.5.1 with Service Pack 5 -- Not Recommended

Users have reported resource related issues with Service Pack 5. We have had some users complain of their machines rebooting on a daily basis as well as receiving resource errors. At this point, we do not recommend upgrading to this pack.

Upgrade from NT 3.51 to Service Pack 5 Issues

No issues reported.

NT 3.5.1 with Service Pack 4 -- Required

There were many issues resolved with Service Pack 4 relating to hanging SMTP sockets. This Service Pack is now considered required for usage of Post.Office on an NT 3.5.1 host.

Upgrade from NT 3.51 to Service Pack 4 Issues

None reported to us at this time.