mickbench

We have 1400 Win 2000 Laptops that use dial up networking to logon to the our network. They do this from the CTRL ATL DEL Screen. This is so that is maps network drives, logon scripts etc... Problem is, GP sets up Internet Explorer proxy. But the dial up connection they use to connect with is present, and is always seems to always dial a connection. Hence, when they cilck in Internet Explorer is asks to dial this connection. But they are already dialled up... We have to then set the connection to NEVER but it just doesn't seem to stay... Looked into GP and can't find anything to set this to never. You can set up a new connection, but this doesn't help as it doesn't set the correct modem and gives all sorts of errors.. Does anyone know a reg hack I could run in the logon script that domain users could run on startup when they first dial up to set this to never. Thanks, Mickbench

Got a real big problem... I need to deploy update Modem drivers and software to around 1400 laptops. I have created an MSI using Win-install LE for Windows 2000 that combines both the new drivers and the software package. The laptops have been imaged using Norton Multi-cast so they are already installed with no good drivers for a Compaq Laptop. Don't ask.. Someone hasn't tested very well here.. Now I have 1400 laptops that need new drivers and software to get the modems to dial out. A good percentage has already gone to users, so a recall maybe a mute point at this time... My plan is to send CD's with the MSI for the user to simply insert into there CD Drive. It is a autorun CD that starts the MSI for them. Problem is, it won't complete, as general users don't have access to the reg on Win 2000. How can I elevate the rights of the MSI to run as the local Admin Account. Once installed they can then dial into the network, and I will take care of the rest using Group Policy and Assigned MSI files to finish it off.. Thanks

I have managed to find a reg hack that changes the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer Value Name: AlwaysInstallElevated Value Data Types: REG_DWORD Changing this to 0 to 1 will let the msi install regardless of who is logged on... Now, I need to create a VBS Script that is called from a batch file using the run as command with this batch file to change this value. Attach this to the autorun CD.. Hopefully this may work.. Problem being, I don't know a great deal of VB Scripting.. Of cause the VBS will need to change the setting back again.. Anyone.!!

What is the best why to have a Win2000 Logon Script copy each user with a fresh normal.dot for Word 2000. I need to have this down to each user such as %username% Thanks Michael

Questions I was asked to answer to apply for a Administrator Job... Can anyone answer ALL these correctly.. I don't have the answers and I havnen't got the job either.. Windows 2000 Server · How can you revert AD to a version that was backed up on each of three domain controllers on a previous day · You are installing windows 2000 server on ten new computers. These computers will provide file and print services to branch offices. You want to install, configure and test windows 2000 server on the branch offices' computers before shipping them to the branch offices. The users of the branch offices should enter the computer names and serial numbers when they receive the computers. What should you do? · You configure a HP JetDirect device with an IP address of 10.4.20.200/16. You want to create and share a printer at a domain controller with an IP address of 10.5.20.50/16 that is connected to the TCP/IP port of the print device. When you enter the IP address of the device, you receive an error message. What should you do? · A temporary employee has left your company. This employee used encryption to secure files in a shared folder. The files must now be made available to a new employee. What should you do? · Your network consists of ten subnets that contain 10 domain controllers, 10 member servers, and numerous client computers. All servers run Windows 2000 server, and all clients run Windows 2000 Professional. Two domain controllers are DNS servers. You use only TCP/IP. You want client computers to be able to register and resolve addresses if a server fail. How should you configure the DNS servers so that all computers can resolve the address of all other computers by using DNS?

Clutch.. Beleive it or not, just been asked to attend another interview.. As for AD... It is very new... I have a book with over 800 pages and I am sure this only touches on a small part... I still can't get away from the fact that Windows 2000 can have more then one HOST name using DNS, as opposed to WINS and NETBIOS Resolution... Old skills die hard sometimes... Michael

Beleive it or not, I did give most of these pretty much the same answers... didn't really know what to do with question 2 as it was really not something I do... The DNS Resolving was the best one... I give that answer.. In the interview he wasn't happy... Two DNS Servers. One Primary, one Secondary... Use DHCP Lookup... Replicate between the two.. Job done.. If one Server goes down, you have another to resolve addresses.. Ask me, they were questions for solutions you would have to take time and some testing to implement...!! The AD was also a classic... It was not clear what they really wanted to gain from the restore... Anyhow... I felt a bit thick after that interview, but still.. Nice to see others give it a go... Clutch..!!! Well done..!! Michael

Does anyone know a batch script I can put into a Logon Script file to enable me to delete all contents of the c:\temp folder in windows NT 4.0 machines. It will need to be O/S dependent... i.e if they run Win 95/98 or 2000 it will look into the c:\windows\temp or c:\winnt\temp etc. I'm getting a few PC's that just don't empty the contents of the temp folder. CAD Workstations more then any... It can reach over 1 gig in temp data.. Thanks Michael

My CD-ROM Drive in Windows 2000 has ceased to work correctly. I know the drive isn’t broken as it works fine in Windows NT4.0 (I dual boot)but in windows 2000 it just says in the Device Manager – Device Status – Your registry might be corrupt – code 19 The Drive has a yellow exclamation mark and refuses to work. I have booted from Last Known Good Config. Didn’t work. Tried using regedt32 and ensuring current control set is set for system full control. It is. Even tried doing a full recovery install hasn’t worked. I just can’t for the life of me get this drive to work any longer. It did work. Does anyone know of a way to fix this with out having to re-install Windows 2000. Thanks

The CD-ROM works fine. It can even boot the Windows 2000 CD at start-up to let me do a repair installation. It just will not work in Windows 2000. I have Windows NT 4.0 installed and this O/S can use the drive with no problems. Its something to do with the reg hives for the Control Sets.. I'm sure of it.. But how to fix it, I don't as yet know. Thanks

I have a CISCO IP Router set to use NAT for our entire LAN. We also have a DHCP Server assigning all IP Addresses to clients. There are three servers and one Router Server1 192.1.1.1 DHCP Server2 192.1.1.2 Server3 192.1.1.3 CISCO Router is 192.1.1.4 (Gateway) IP address of Router is 194.112.37.6 this is fixed and assigned to our Domain name www.autocraftuk.com I getting a leased line installed and all IP addresses will remain the same. Even the Router as it is being upgraded to Lease and not ISDN dial. It will still use NAT. We have WINS Server on 192.1.1.1 and 192.1.1.2 I intend to install Primary DNS and run our own zonefiles. This will be 192.1.1.3 and move secondary WINS Server to 192.1.1.3 192.1.1.1 will remain the DHCP Server. 192.1.1.3 is having IIS 4.0 installed and this will be our web server. How do I configure this so that the IP Address of 192.1.1.3 (internal) goes outside to 194.112.37.6 and pulls the web pages from this server? The Router holds the IP Address and the Server doesn’t have two NICS installed. I don’t intend to use RIP or make the server mulit-homed. I would prefer to have the Router plugged direct into a HUB. As it is now. Then use NAT to map the IP Address to our subnet. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Ah Yes.. I forgot about mapping the IP address from NODE A to NODE B If I do this within my Router (which is NAT) any requests to access port 80 (HTTP) will end up being routed to whatever IP Address I set it to. It makes sense now.. Thanks for making it clear to me.

GP3 installs and runs fine in Windows 2000 with a TNT2 Ultra 32 Meg video card. With a PII 400Mhz and 128 Meg of memory, I can run it under Windows 2000 at 1024 x 768 with all the details turned on and still get 22 fps... Just enough to make it playable.. Enjoy your game... Michael

Mostly DHCP NACKS are when you have a multi-homed Server. One NIC on one Subnet, with another NIC on another Subnet. One NIC Could have 192.168.1.1 and the other could have 192.1.1.1 What happens is that the DHCP Server issues the IP Address from either subnet A or Subnet B. OK, not to get into two much math, you have two NETWORK ID, and one HOST ID. The MASK Could still be the same, say 255.255.255.0 but the DHCP will try and issue an IP Address from both subnets. When it fails to find a scope for the first Subnet, it issues a NACK, and tries the second and so on.... To solve, you create a superscope. This contains both subnets. You will have A Scope and B Scope. Now when the Client PC Asks for an IP address, it can issue this from either A or B. But this is only if you have a Multi-homed Server.... It looks to me like you have a TCP/IP binding with a STATIC IP Address... Check all Machines to ensure you haven't got any STATIC IP addresses..... Only the DHCP Server should have a STATIC IP. The best way to check is on NT Machines type ipconfig /all and Windows 98 Machines use the winipcfg.exe util and ask it to show more... Good luck..!!!

I agree with Bladerunner with McAfee 4.5. We have a site copy, and I installed it two W2K Machines. It was not good... Not only do the machines now take longer to boot, as bladerunnner says, the right click is painfully slow. In IE5.0 its very bad.... I just don't know what NAI have done with their software of just late... Exchange GS 4.5 is a joke. Netshield 2000 always stops the service after a scan (thats NT server 4.0 not W2K Server) and this latest 4.5 scan is not good.. Michael

MS do recommend that you split the swapfile across partitions with low I/O usage... I don't have a problem with that.. One of the Servers at work has 1280MB of actual physical memory. That would be a huge swapfile, so as we use RAID5 and have four 20gig SCSI Drives with 6 partitions of 10gigs each I split the swapfile. Its on the last 2 partitions in the array. 700MB each in fact. The last partitions are used for users home folders, and the usage on these is a whole lot less then the system partition, or the partition with SQL installed... The only problem with moving the swapfile of the system partition or boot partition is that if the computer crashes through a stop error, the crash.dmp file will not be created... But what to do... Have performance or have plenty of log data in case of a crash.. I prefer performance.. In the Case of W2K, you can configure a small 2MB swapfile for small 64KB Crash Dumps. But for full Kernel or complete system dump, you need a swapfile the size of your memory on the boot partition.. Phew.. that's it.. no more posts on this topic from me..

I'm running Windows 2000 with two 10 gig partitions on my Primary Hard Disk and a 4 gig partition on my Secondary Hard Disk slaved of my Primary.. This drive is used for general files such as word docs and downloaded zip files... Not much I/O usage on this drive, so my swapfile is on this drive.. I've got 128MB RAM, so my Swapfile is 190MB 128 to match my system memory plus 62 meg extra. It could max out at 382MB but fragmentation on this is going to be a problem... Yes, I agree setting pagefiles too large will cause it to fragment... So mine is 190 - 190. The min recommended by W2K... I've seen some that have set up a whole partition for swapfiles.. I NEVER recommend anyone does this.. Say you set a partition for 200MB for a swapfile... You have 128MB of RAM.. Fine, until you increase your system memory to say 256MB.. Now your partition isn't large enough, and you have to re-create it.. Too much trouble.. Its just best to use a drive that you use for general data.... As for the 2GB/4GB issues.. I was just saying how Windows NT (Includes 2000) allocates its memory... The VMM allocates memory in address spaces, and in theory it can be up to 2GB for applications. Windows NT runs all 32Bit Apps in its own memory space, and when the app hasn't been used for some time, it moves it into the backgroud using hard disk space. The space you allocated for your swapfile. This then allows other 32bit apps to be run with more actual RAM. Which makes it faster, as real RAM is MUCH Faster then FAKE RAM. What you have done sounds fine... If you have more then two general data drives with not much I/O usage, you could split that across both... But some would not agree with this.. But what ever, don't leave the swapfile on the system or boot partition.. These partitions have very high levels of I/O usage, and are not recommended for swapfiles. [This message has been edited by mickbench (edited 13 May 2000).]

If you have two drives, both drives on the primary IDE channel, and your CD Drive on the second IDE, with W2K installed on your system partition, its a good idea to use the second drive. Even though its slaved from your primary hard disk. The NT Memory Model is handled by the Kernel Mode, where as Apps are handled by a user mode, and thus, apps don't have control of VM or swapfiles. When you run an app in NT, the Virtual Memory Model gives apps what appears to be 4GB of memory. Well in fact thats 2GB for the Apps and 2GB for the O/S. Demand paging file... So it allocates more memory then is actually contained in the computer... My point is, that apps have no control of this, the NT Kernel takes care of this, so any app will still function, no matter where the Pagefile may be located... The idea behind the paging file is to enable you to swap between more applications then your system may have memory to run... If you have say word and excel open, and you haven't used word for some time, this gets put into the swap file, and excel is given more actual memory... Word is still running, but actually stored on the hard drive and not physical memory... So saying that an app won't run because the swapfile is located somewhere other then the system partition is like saying my word document won't load as Word is installed on the wrong partition... Now to get corrected by someone..!!!

I heard it may have been a Woman... Might explain the ILOVEYOU Subject header..!!! Anyhow, it hit our Exchange Server, but thankfully no one ran it.. I've since set up a rule in exchange to send *.VBS files to another folder for me to vet, and have disabled the .VBS ext in file types... This is not funny... It wasn't the worse virus I've ever seen.. The win32.CIH virus was perhaps worse in what it did... This was just a pain in the ass as it attacked multi-media files and took up time on e-mail servers.. It was a ***** it tried to download the password grabber as well... But looking into the code, I was amazed at how simple it really was... The reg entries were a work of art..!!! Good VBS code work, but still very wrong...

NTFS uses an enhanced binary tree to locate files. This is great for a large number of files located on one partition. Smaller partitions such as 500mb or lower wouldn't really gain much from this.. But 1 or more gig partitions would. FAT or FAT32, an enhanced version of FAT with better cluster support, uses Link Tables and means it can take longer to locate files on a drive with a lot of smaller files. NTFS also requires less defrags. Some would not agree with this, the reason why MS includes DISK-KEEPER with Win2000. Plus with NTFS its easy to choose the cluster size and NTFS supports much faster compression then FAT32 and has the compression attribute when you right click files. If windows 2000 is the *ONLY* o/s you are using, use NTFS. Use the CONVERT util to convert from FAT32 to NTFS if windows 2000 is installed on a FAT32 Partition. If you want to dual boot between DOS., WIn98/98 and 2000 ensure your system partition is at least FAT or FAT32. Hope this helps..

The NTOSKRNL.EXE file is just as important as the NTLDR and without it, your system isn't going to do much more... Its used by the system and the Kernel. In other words, you need to do a repair install... This will re-copy the file that is broken. It belongs in the %systemroot%\system32 folder and doing a repair will replace this file. It will also do system checks on your Drives to ensure you haven't got a bad sector.. Good Luck..!!!

Open regedit, Goto HKLM/software/microsoft/windows NT/Current Version and delete the aeDebug Hive. No more Dr.Watson The Log files are meant to tell you what files caused your app to fail. Have you read the log files?

If you have names registered when you type nbtstat -n, you don't need to configure the LMHOSTS file. It just helps with networks connected to the Internet, as it then won't try and resolve the NETBIOS Name across your Gateway. But one other thing I may think is wrong. Do you have RIP installed. I know WinNT Server 4.0 needs RIP to re-route TCP/IP Stacks across a multi-homed Server. You then enable TCP/IP routing on the NIC connected to the Internet. I haven't played around with W2K Server yet, so can't see if you can install this service or not. But check this... It may help.

Coming from the UK myself, I just want to say welcome..!!! I hope to enjoy your time in England.. Just watch your phone bill from this side of the pond. BT aren't know for letting Internet Users off lightly with their call charges..

when I messed about with ICS, I had to ensure that the machine that was routing to my ISDN TA to get a connection to the Internet had to have my ISP Primary and Secondary DNS entered in my NIC IP Properties. What this does, is if the IP address you try and ping is not located within your Network, from either, internal DNS, WINS or LMHosts, it will contact your ISP DNS to resolve the address. So if dialup force up the connection. In your case, just resolve out of your Network to the Internet. So get this from your ISP, and enter the DNS Numbers on Both Machines NIC. Goto a command prompt and type nbtstat -n to ensure that all local NETBIOS names are resolved to a Static IP Address. If so, you will know, as it will say UNIQUE or REGISTERED. If not then create LMHOST files for both machines. Look for a file call LMHOST.SAM and follow the instructions in this file. Then type netstat -r to check your gateway is routing to a correct NAT IP. With ICS and DNS all setup, you should be able to ping any IP on any machine with your GATEWAY and DNS IP addresses entered. Good Luck.