Can I monitor hosts running Windows NT 4?

Article ID: 276
Category: Monitoring
Updated: 2023-05-11

Windows NT 4.0 is supported until version 2.90, and starting with EventSentry v2.91, Windows NT 4.0 is no longer a supported platform. If you need to monitor a computer running Windows NT 4.0, then you will need to install the latest v2.90 agent on that computer. You can obtain older releases of EventSentry from the customer area.

Please read this chapter if you plan on using EventSentry v2.90 (or earlier) on Windows NT4. Some files might need to be updated or installed when using EventSentry on Windows NT4.

Management Application
If you plan on running the EventSentry management application on Windows NT4 then you might have to update the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries). If you receive the error message "The ordinal XXXX could not be located in the Dynamic Link Library MFC42.dll" when launching the GUI then you will have to update the MFC DLLs and reboot the computer.

To install this update, navigate to the folder where you installed EventSentry (e.g. C:\Program Files\EventSentry) and open the NT4 sub folder. There, double-click the file mfc42.exe to install the MFC update. Installing the MFC Update is not necessary if you run monitor a Windows NT 4 computer with the agent, as the agent does not depend on the MFC DLLs.

You will also have to follow the instructions in the following Performance Monitoring section.

Performance Monitoring
Starting with EventSentry v2.70, EventSentry offers performance monitoring features that depend on the pdh.dll dynamic library. This file is not present on Windows NT4 installations by default, but included in the EventSentry installations.

All computers running EventSentry software, including the management application and agent, will need to have the pdh.dll file present in the %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 directory (e.g. C:\Winnt\System32). The pdh.dll file is installed in the NT4 sub directory of the EventSentry installation directory. You can simply copy the file from there to the %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 directory:

Example:
C:\Program Files\EventSentry\NT4\pdh.dll -> C:\Winnt\System32\pdh.dll

Hardware Inventory
EventSentry uses WMI to gather and monitor hardware information from a computer. Windows NT4, by default, does not include a WMI provider. For the hardware inventory feature work, you will need to download and install the Windows Management Instrumentation CORE 1.5.

Database ODBC Drivers
Unlike later versions of Windows (including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista), Windows NT 4.0 does not include ODBC database drivers for MSSQL 2000 and MS Access by default. As such, you will have to download and install the latest version of MDAC in order to write information to a MSSQL or MS Access database.

Desktop Widgets
The widgets are not supported on Windows NT 4.0.