I have a customer who wants to upgrade several inter-tel systems from 5.118 to the latest software ver. without the licenses.
7.006 is the highest they can go right?
I believe 8.0 and above requires licenses.
And as far as I can remember its just a software flash, right? No firmware needs to be upgraded does it?

And they need to get their vm from NT to 2000

You still will need to get he correct 7.0 PAL chips on yer CPU's. You may also need to upgrade the T1 card and/or OPC firmware as well.

As far as the VM goes, get a 128MB stick of RAM, backup the avdap\db folder to a network resource, install Win2K WITHOUT the VM cards installed, fully patch the OS, install the VM cards and install whatever version avdap you need. Copy over yer saved avdap\db file and you are done w/ the heavy lifting.

just to add to Superfoneguy's reply the VM can be upgraded to the NT VM software 7.0 (all the way to 9.0 so far)without adding memory or upgrading to Win2K just remember to always backup the Avdap\db

Not a tech here, but aren't there some upgrades that need to be done 'in series' (e.g. have to go to 7.0 before 7.1)? This may be true for higher (8.x) s/w only...

Curious, is the NT VPU connected to the network?

Yes the VM is connected to the network

Is the VM WIN2003 compatible?
If we can put the VM on 2003 that would be even better.

2003 is not officially supported. The 2000 upgrade is really easy and I recommend it. Just make sure you get the RAM and follow the rest in my post above.

MDCOM1: I upgrade all pre-8.224 versions to 8.224, then to the newwest versions. I just upgraded a 4.2 Axxess to 9.118 using this method.

Is it part of a domain?
If so, is it a NT, 2000 or 2003 domain?

I'm just trying to understand why a Win2k upgrade is desired.

I'm pretty sure its part of an 03 domain.
They want it off NT cause its no longer supported.
They also want to be able to back it up to cdrw instead of floppy.

If it's on a domain I understand. NT isn't supported and neither is 2000 any longer. I know Inter-Tel ships the Win2000 Professional Embedded version which is supported until 2015, but the CD you're going to load isn't the Embedded version and I think 2007 kills that support, so no gain there. As for backing it up to floppy or CD; you already have it on the LAN, map a B: drive and be done with it.

I'm not against 2000 or anything along that line, I just don't believe in shoveling more overhead (the 2000 OS) on a low end machine with limited CPU power and I also don't like jacking around with a perfectly good machine, spefically one as mission critical as voice mail. Loadind a new OS on top of an existing is never the route you want to go if it can be avoided. Ask any I-T guy.

My .02

The VM machine is about 6 years old and they are worried about it dying on them so they want to build a new box and upgrade the OS to 2k or 03
They also use unified messaging so I'm not sure how it will affect it.

So if I got this right it will work on 03 but its not officially supported, right?
What problems could I run into using 03?

Again, why? Unless you have nothing but spare time to troubleshoot unsupported software combinations don't do it.

Do you plan to try the 2003 route on an Inter-Tel voice mail PC? Lots of luck! Make sure to read the minimum hardware requirements first.

I get the picture.
We are going with 2000

So Let me play this scenario out and you tell me if it is sound or if it has problems.
I get a new win 2000 box with everything but the aic and retorex boards, I copy the avdap to a network drive I then load the 7.06 vm software onto the a new hard drive on the new machine then copy the avdap from the old machine onto the new one then put the aic and retorex boards into the new machine.
Sound good?
Also could I put a parallel zip drive on the old machine and download all the vm greetings and messages to transfer them over to the new machine or is there an easier way?
Like I said its been awhile since I've done this and I want to be sure I don't screw it up or make it take forever.
I appreciate the help.

Windows 2000 is supported by Microsoft until the year 2010. They are no longer releasinng non-essential updates for it but will continue to publish hotfixes until 2010 and they continue to offer fee based support. Intertel's VPU ships with Windows 2000 professional and the EVMC runs on Linux. Microsoft was working on 2000 embedded but that idea was scrapped back in 2000 I believe and it never made it commercial.