Using Account Templates
If you need to create a bunch of user accounts that are nearly identical, create a single account to be used as a standard template for the rest. Disable the account so that it can’t be used. Once you’ve done this, it’s easy to use the template to create other accounts:
In the User Manager for Domains window, select the account that you want to copy.
On the User menu, click Copy.
In the Copy of dialog box, fill in the details of the new account that you’re creating. When you’re done, click Add.
Cross-References: See Chapter 9 for details on creating user accounts with User Manager for Domains.
Speeding Up NTFS at a Price
As mentioned in earlier chapters, NTFS translates all of its long names for folders and files into equivalent 8.3 names that are acceptable to DOS, Windows 3.x, and other clients. If you have applications or users that perform many directory enumerations on an NTFS volume, you can disable 8.3 name generation to increase directory enumeration performance. This is especially effective for directories that contain many long names. To do this, under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem key, change the value of NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation from 0 to 1.
Caution: If you have DOS and Windows 3.x clients on your network, don’t make this change on an NTFS volume that may be shared over the network. These clients won’t be able to see folders and files with long filenames at all. No 8.3 translation will be provided.
Controlling CD-ROM AutoPlay
On both Windows 95 and Windows NT, when you insert a CD-ROM, the operating system automatically “plays” it, attempting to run a program called AUTORUN on the CD-ROM. If it’s equipped with this program, the CD-ROM typically enables you to install or explore it. (Inserting an audio CD in the drive causes the operating system to run the CD Player multimedia application.) This feature is called AutoPlay, which was originally introduced in Windows 95.
Note: This feature is called both AutoPlay and AutoRun in the software and Microsoft’s documentation. Both terms interchangeably refer to the same feature.
If you do much CD-ROM swapping and you don’t want NT to run the AUTORUN program every time you insert a disc, you can disable the feature completely by editing the registry. Under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom key, change the value of Autorun from 1 to 0. If you ever want to enable this feature again, change the value of Autorun back to 1.
TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR NT SERVER
Some of the NT troubles that you encounter will involve your server computer itself. Even before it’s connected to a network, you’ll need to worry about the health of its hardware and how to ensure that it has the latest and greatest operating system files installed. The following sections will help you through these rough spots.
Dealing with NMI Errors
Occasionally, you may have a computer running NT that gets intermittent or consistent NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt) errors. These high-priority signals are typically generated by memory parity errors, although some devices and motherboard components can cause them as well. If you get an NMI error, the first thing to do is check your RAM.
Here are some guidelines you can follow to minimize problems in this area:
Don’t use memory that has no parity checking. This is one way to eliminate the NMI parity error, but if you have memory problems, NT won’t be able to catch that you have bad data floating around your computer until it’s too late.
Use SIMMs that are the same brand and speed and avoid mixing and matching. Even if the speed of all of the SIMMs is fast enough for the motherboard, differences of 10ns can wreak havoc when running NT.
Use high-quality memory to get more uniformity in speed between SIMMs. In other words, don’t buy your memory off the street from a guy in a trench coat. You get what you pay for, and sometimes less.
Adjacent chips within a SIMM can also vary in speed. You can overcome this by increasing memory wait states in the BIOS, at the cost of degraded system performance.
Some SIMMs operate at their specified access speed until they warm up and slow down. If you encounter consistent NMI errors after the computer has reached its operating temperature, this may be the cause.
The same memory can fail on one computer and work on another due to differences in how the BIOS handles memory access timing. If you have multiple computers and lots of time, you can experiment with moving memory to other computers or changing BIOS memory wait state timing.
Note: Even if your computer runs just fine under DOS and Windows 3.x, Windows NT has a knack for uncovering hardware problems that you never knew you had. NT makes full use of system resources and may touch parts of memory or devices that DOS and Windows 3.x have never gone near. One computer manufacturer once observed to me, “Just running NT is the best overall memory hardware diagnostic I’ve ever seen.”
Replacing System Files
There may be occasions when a problem is traced to a missing or corrupted system file or you need to replace a system file with a newer version to fix a problem. An NT message might explicitly tell you what file needs replacement, or you may be directed by support personnel to replace a file that’s causing trouble.
One of the most common problems on Intel platforms is the “Couldn’t find NTLDR” error message. This often happens if your system partition is formatted as FAT and the NTLDR file is inadvertently deleted. To resolve this quickly, copy the file \I386\ NTLDR from your Windows NT Server CD-ROM to the root directory of drive C.
If a file is missing (perhaps due to accidental or malicious erasure), you can easily replace it from the Windows NT Server CD-ROM. Change to the appropriate platform folder on the CD-ROM (I386, ALPHA, MIPS, or PPC) and find the file that you need. Because most files on the CD-ROM are compressed, the last character of the filename will be an underscore (_). Use the EXPAND command-line utility to decompress the file and change its name to the correct one. Then, copy the expanded file to the appropriate location.
If you need to replace or update a specific file (say, a device driver) and that file is currently in use by the operating system, here’s how:
Retrieve the new system file in uncompressed form. (Use the EXPAND command, if the file is compressed on the CD-ROM.)
Rename the system file that you need to replace.
You’d think this would cause problems, but it doesn’t. As long as the file remains in use, you can change its name all day long.
Copy the replacement file into the location of the file that you’re replacing. Make sure that it has the correct filename.
Restart the computer. The new file is now in effect, and the old file (the one that you renamed) can be discarded or archived.
Determining if a Service Pack Is Installed
As you install successive Windows NT Service Pack updates on your NT computers, it’s handy to know how to tell whether a particular service pack has been installed on a specific computer. There are actually several places you can look, but the two easiest detection methods are
At a Command Prompt, type WINVER.
In Windows NT Explorer, click Help About Windows NT.
In either case, you’ll see a dialog box that contains version information. The service pack number, if any, is included to the right of the NT version number. Service packs are cumulative — if you have Service Pack 4 installed, it includes all changes from the previous three service packs.
If you need to check the service pack status on several NT computers remotely, your only option is to use the Registry Editor. Look in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion key. On computers running Windows NT 3.5 and later, if a service pack is installed, you’ll see a value entry named CSDVersion. Its value is set to the words “Service Pack” followed by the service pack number. On computers running Windows NT 3.1, CSDVersion will have a hexadecimal value indicating which service pack is installed.
Note: You may occasionally see an NT service pack referred to as a CSD, as in this registry entry. CSD stands for customer service disk, a term used by IBM back in the early OS/2 days to describe their patch releases. These days, both IBM and Microsoft refer to a patch release as a service pack.
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