Upgrading Case equipment

I have a client that purchased 2 Case P2 stress machines with treadmills. The two appeared identical. I came in and wired both rooms for LAN access. I set the first machine up and connected to Windows 2008 R2 server and it worked right away after configuring network. I was just connected to a share to drop files, not joining domain or anything extra. This machine was using Windows XP. I booted up the other system however and it was Windows NT 4.0. Server 2008 R2 doesn't support Windows NT 4.0. I have tried all kinds of tricks including creating a share with full permissions to anyone and while the NT workstation can ping the server it wont allow it to connect to the share. I am not trying to add it to the domain or anything crazy. I just need it to connect and allow me to export results to it. My client was curious if it was possible to upgrade the NT machine to Windows XP. I told him I didn't think it would work because previous experience with GE Windows NT 4.0 workstations running Xeleris require that the version of the software matches the OS it was made for. So you had to upgrade the entire workstation, hardware, OS, and acquisition software. Have any of you had experience with connecting the old NT 4.0 Case machines to Server 2008 R2? (And yes I know if they had 2008 server it would work fine) Or any experience with upgrading the NT 4 OS on these machine to something like XP? Any help would be greatly appreciated.