Month: September 2005

Today, Microsoft Released the Windows XP Shared Computer ToolKit version 1.0. It’s a very powerful tool for administrators of public computers. It combined almost all the tasks that administrators need to do with shared computers to eight simple steps. The figure below shows the interface. To configure a secure shared computer, we need to configure selected or all (recommended) steps from the 1st to the 8th. Click “Step 1” we will see the details of this step. It’s a cool instruction to teach us how to adjust the partitions for public computers. In “Step 2” we can do a couple … Continue reading Windows XP Shared Computer ToolKit

Windows NT Defragment Tool doesn’t defragment pages files and the registry hives. However, in some situations, we need to do this. For example, when we installed a new version of Windows Operating System with the upgrade install option. PageDefrag can help us with defragmenting page files and registry hives. Click “Defragment at next boot” radio box, and click “OK”, it will run defragment at the next time we start the computer. We can also set it to defragment at every boot, though I don’t recommend to do so.   PageDefrag can be downloaded on sysinternals.com.

I bought a new Dell Dimension 9100 computer last week with Windows XP Home. As an IT person, Windows XP Home edition is obviously not powerful enough for me. Luckily, I have an MSDN Universal subscription, so I planned to install Windows XP Professional for the new box. The first work to do was to create unattended installation. Why unattended? Because my new box comes without a floppy disk, but it comes with SATA hard drives. You know, I cannot press [F6] during text step mode without a floppy. I originally tried to create the unattended answer file and the custom … Continue reading Funny Windows XP Pro Installation Experience

The following KB describes why the logon screen turns black after you press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to log on to Windows Server 2003 and how to solve this problem. It’s pretty useful. This article also remind us, small problems may have serious effects and make administrators very confusing. As an IT Administrator, we should not forget to check small problems before additional diagnostics. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;906510

IT Administrators may use MMC every day. Almost all Microsoft Windows Administrative Tools are built into MMC. For example, Active Directory Users and Computers, Internet Information Server,  DHCP, DNS, etc. However, not all administrators discovered all great features offered by MMC. Actually MMC is a very flexible tool to create flexible administrative or management tools. First, let’s see “Taskpad View”. Create a new MMC project by clicking on “start – run – mmc”. In this example let’s change the name of the Console Root to “Server Tools“. Right click on “Console Root“, and click on “Rename”. Enter the new name “Server Tools”. Then, let’s … Continue reading Talk something about MMC, the Microsoft Management Console

Have you ever met a problem displaying an error message like “Error 066“? You will want to know what these numeric error messages mean under Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Be sure, you can know that. Simple click “start – run”, and enter “cmd” to open Command Console. Run the following command: C:\> net helpmsg ERROR_NUMBER For example, enter “net helpmsg 066”, it will display “The network resource type is not correct.”