What is Option Pack 4?

A. Due to a lot of public pressure, Microsoft agreed to no longer include any new functionality in Service Packs, but would rather produce a separate add-on which would update various option components.

Option Pack 4 is the first of these (to keep in step with Service Pack 4) and can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/NT4OptPk/default.asp or is supplied as part of MSDN. The download is about 27MB.

If you download from the web you have to download a special program, download.exe, which you then run which downloads or installs the software.

Included in Option Pack 4 are:

More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/NTServer/nts/exec/overview/WhatNew.asp

To install the Option Pack you must be running Service Pack 3 or above (I tested with Service Pack 4 and you get warnings that it has not been tested on Service Pack 4 but it works fine) and you must have Internet Explorer 4.01 or above.

Once you start the installation you should click Next to the introduction screen and you will then have two options

If you select Upgrade Only then only existing components on the system will be upgrade to Option Pack 4 version, clicking Upgrade Plus allows you to install extra software.

If you select Upgrade Plus you can then choose which components to install. Items such as IIS have sub-components such as NNTP server (news) which you can optionally install.

Depending on the components you selected you will be asked some minor questions and then the machine will reboot.