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I have an older Windows XP Pro desktop with a couple TB of space that I want to use as a Media Server to my nettops, laptops and desktops around my home and home/office, however I'm worried that because it is not a server OS that it will has issues with so many connections being made.

Does anyone know the limit of computers that can connect to a Windows XP Pro desktop at the same time?

Would I be better off setting up a FreeNAS box? Or my old copy of Server 2003?

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It looks like the max number of connections for XP Pro is 10.

If you're using the pc as a dedicated "server" you could install a linux option which i believe allows as many as your pc can handle. I personally use Ubuntu server, but that doesn't have a gui interface. You could use ubuntu desktop or any other linux.

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Thanks for the quick and very helpful response. I've looking into Ubuntu Server and it looks interesting, however I'm pretty much a Windows nerd, program in .net and all of that, so I should for my own sake stick with a MS OS. Windows Server 2003 has been sitting in my CD booklet for too long. Time to give it a go. – Tyler Aug 27 '10 at 7:44
OpenFiler openfiler.com is easy to install and is administered via a web interface. The only gotcha with the configuration is that you need one deeper subfolder than expected when configuring samba shares. This took me about 3 days to figure out so follow the configuration guide exactly to avoid a headache. – Chris Nava Aug 27 '10 at 14:23
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