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Win 2000 Tips Category: Windows 20005 Tips Add HTML Wallpaper Category: Windows 2000 Under Win2K, Win98 or Internet Explorer 4.0, you can make your to-do list or any text-based document part of your wallpaper. Simply open Notepad and type whatever you want to appear on your desktop, then save the file with an .HTM extension. Right-click on the desktop, select Properties and click on the Web tab. Click on the New button, select "Web site" and click OK. Use the browse button to find your new file. Click OK, then OK again. Note that this is a real HTML document, because you gave it an .HTM extension. If you know how to create HTML documents by typing commands or using an authoring tool, you can spice it up with colors, sound, graphics, video, live links, ActiveX, Java or anything you choose. Add Video Wallpaper Category: Windows 2000 Add live, seamless video directly to your desktop using Microsoft Word. First, you'll need a free Word add-on called Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word, an .AVI file to display and, of course, Internet Explorer 4.0 (or Win98). After installing Internet Assistant, open Notepad and save the blank file as VIDEO.HTM. Open Word, then open the new VIDEO.HTM file. Select Picture from the Insert menu and select the "Video" tab. Use the browse button to select your .AVI file. Click OK and close Word. Right-click on the desktop, select Properties and click on the Desktop tab. Click on the New button, select "Web site" and click OK. Use the browse button to find VIDEO.HTM. Click OK, then OK again. Now you've got a live video on your desktop you can resize and move. Encrypt Files Category: Windows 2000 Windows 2000 lets you encrypt files and folders. Just open NT Explorer and right-click on the file or folder you'd like to encrypt. Migrate from Win95 Category: Windows 2000 Perhaps Microsoft is listening to its critics. Windows 2000 includes a migration path from Win95, which means most Win32 applications won't require reinstallation when you move from Win95 to Windows 2000. Use Active Desktop Category: Windows 2000 You don't have to wait for Windows 2000 or Win98 to use Active Desktop. Instead, simply download Internet Explorer 4.0 from Microsoft's Web site.

Win NT.....Tips.... A Booster Shot Category: Windows NT All By default, NT gives foreground applications the highest priority. However, you can adjust the priority of foreground and background applications by clicking on Control Panel/System/Performance and making the necessary slide-bar changes. A Few Pointers Category: Windows NT All Custom mouse pointers can give NT 4.0 a friendlier look. Double-click on the Mouse icon in Control Panel and select the Pointers tab. Pick from the list of available Schemes. If the list is empty, run Add/Remove Programs from Control Panel, select the Windows NT Setup tab, double-click Accessories and make sure the Mouse Pointers item is checked. The NT Resource Kit also includes tools for custom designing mouse pointers, including animated ones. A Key Save Category: Windows NT All You can never be too careful when working with the Registry. So in addition to backing up the Registry before you do any work there, you can also save any individual key before changing it. When you highlight the key in RegEdit, choose Registry/Export Registry File, name the file and click on Save. To restore the file's saved settings later, double-click on the file's icon from wherever you saved it to. A Quick Exit Category: Windows NT All To shut down a program listed on NT's taskbar, right-click on its button and choose Close. You may be prompted to terminate the program prematurely if it doesn't shut down in an orderly fashion. A Suite Surprise Category: Windows NT All NT/Alpha supports Word 97 and Excel 97; to run the remaining Office 97 apps on NT/Alpha, download FX!32 from Digital’s Web site ( http://www.workstation.digital.com/products/dpw/fx32.html ). A View from Afar Category: Windows NT All You can keep tabs on NT Server 4.0 and Internet Information Server via your browser while you're on the road. Simply point your browser to http://domainname/iisadmin (where domainname is your server's domain name), and you'll be prompted for your administrator name and password. From there you'll see an HTML-based configuration manager that follows many of the same prompts as the IIS configuration program. Note: You must install this feature when you first install IIS. An Imperfect Office Category: Windows NT All When you install Corel WordPerfect Office 7.0 in NT 4.0, it replaces WINNT\SYSTEM32\MAPI32.DLL with an older, Win95 version of that file. This could trigger error messages in other applications. To correct this problem, copy the original MAPI32.DLL file from the NT 4.0 installation CD into the system32 directory. Antidote for Assertion Failure Category: Windows NT All Don't panic if you start Internet Explorer and get an "Assertion Failure." This is Windows NT's rather convoluted way of telling you to set up your Internet connection. To do so, launch the Internet applet from Control Panel, select the Connection tab and click on Setup or Connect. Follow the on-screen instructions. If you already have Dial-Up Networking installed, you may need to remove and reinstall your networking components. Assume an Identity Category: Windows NT All Windows NT (but not Windows 95) has a handy feature for network administrators who normally use lower-privileged accounts for day-to-day computing activities. It's the Connect-As option; it lets you access secured network shares from your Windows NT Workstation. When you try to access a share unavailable to the current user account, NT presents a Connect-As dialog box prompting for a user name and password. You may enter an administrative account and password without logging out from the current session. ATAPI Warnings? Category: Windows NT All If you're using ATAPI/EIDE disk controllers, you might wonder what's going on if your event logs are filling up with entries such as this: Event ID: 26 Source: Atapi Type: Warning Description: The driver has detected that device \device\scsiport0 has old or out-of-date firmware. Reduced performance may result. When the machine is booting, the controller checks all the attached IDE devices to see if they support the advanced ATA attachment interface commands, such as multiblock I/O. If a device fails, the machine logs this event-but it doesn't necessarily mean the device is broken. However, if the device listed is supposed to support advanced ATA, it might be faulty. Audit Your System Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 will track, or audit, your system's network and security information. To enable auditing, go to Start/Programs/Administrative Tools and open User Manager for Domains. Select Policies/Audit and the events you want to track, then click on OK. This will start the logging process. You can view audited logs with the Event Viewer. Auto Updates Category: Windows NT All Confused about which patches, updates and add-ons you need? Wonder no more. Microsoft built a Web site called the Microsoft Download Wizard; it checks your Windows 95 installation, suggests file updates, and gives you the opportunity to download and install them. You can find Download Wizard at our Win95 Update Center ( http://www. winmag.com/win95/update95.htm ). Look for the Download Wizard on the bottom of the page. Avoid Lockups Category: Windows NT All One way to work ar ound a Windows NT Explorer crash is to have each Explorer window run as a separate process. To do this, run the Registry Editor and look in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree for the subkey Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. Create a new DWORD value called DesktopProcess and set its data field to 1. Quit the Editor, log off and log back on again. Now you can still get access to the taskbar and Desktop whenever a particular window freezes up. Best NTFS Category: Windows NT All The fastest NTFS partitions are newly created ones, not those that are converted from FAT. If you are able to, move your data off a FAT drive, delete the partition and create a fres h NTFS partition. The next step is to move the data onto the new partition. FAT-converted NTFS partitions are almost always fragmented, so you should defragment them with Executive Software's Diskeeper or a similar NT-only defrag tool. Beware FDISK Category: Windows NT All Always use Disk Administrator (WINDISK.EXE) instead of FDISK to make changes to logical drives in a mixed FAT/NTFS environment. Windows 9x's FDISK does not see NTFS logical drives in an extended partition and ignores them. For example, say you have a primary FAT partition (C:) and configure two logical drives in an extended partition NTFS (D:) and FAT (E:). Running FDISK will display C: and D:, but D: will really be the E: FAT partition. If you delete D:, you will really be deleting the FAT partition on E:. Big Fonts in NT Category: Windows NT All If you regularly manipulate big character sets, such as Far East fonts, you might want to expand the font cache allocated by editing its settings in the Registry. The FontCache key is located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft \Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontCache, and contains the following values: MaxSize: This is the maximum amount of address space reserved for each font cache, and has a default setting of 0x80 (128KB). MinInitSize: This is the minimum amount of memory initially committed for each font cache when the cache is allocated, and has a default setting of 0x4 (4KB). MinIncrSize: This is the minimum amount of memory committed each time the system increases the size of a font cache, and has a default setting of 0x4 (4KB). Far East fonts typically use anywhere from 4MB to 8MB each, so you might want to add that amount to the minimums if you use that much memory. Remember, however, if you increase the amount of memory that the font cache can use, you're reducing the memory available to NT. A Warmer Welcome Category: Windows NT All You can set a note to appear at log-on by editing the Registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. Change the LegalNoticeText subkey to a text string for the notice you want to display, and change the LegalNoticeCaption subkey to a text string that specifies a caption for the notice's dialog box. If you want to change the prompt itself, edit the LogonPrompt key. Add Message Storage Category: Windows NT All If you've got a small server store but your users have large hard drives, you can conserve Exchange Server disk space by having users create a personal store of information. Choosing personal storage (and private folders) keeps messages-especially those huge file attachments-on the users' local hard drives. This conserves message storage, but there's a downside: Users are notorious for accidental deletions and unscrupulous message maintenance. Alarming Developments Category: Windows NT All A good way to help prevent server crashes is to enable administrative alerts on critical parameters such as swap file size or free disk space. For example, to add an alert for page file size, launch Performance Monitor and select View/ Alert, then choose Edit/Add to Alert. From the Paging File object, pick the % Usage Peak option. If you set the alarm to go off when usage hits 90 percent, you'll receive a warning before NT starts expanding the page file automatically (which can degrade performance, especially on servers with less than 40MB of memory). Experiment and add alerts that work best in your own environment. All Ports Open Category: Windows NT All To run more than one instance of many server programs, assign different port numbers to each instance of the server. For Netscape servers, install all the servers in the same directory. NT. Big Memory ... Big Problems? Category: Windows NT All If you've installed NT 4.0 on a PC with more than 1.7GB of RAM, the operating system may not generate a MEMORY.DMP file if the system crashes, making it difficult to debug errors. Post-Service Pack 3 users can get a hot-fix for this at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt /winntpublic/fixes/usa/NT40/hotfixes-postSP3/2gcrash . Break IP Boundaries Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Utilities You can bind an unlimited number of IP addresses to a single network interface card under Windows NT. To add entries, open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Parameters\TCPIP and double-click on the IPAddress value name. Add each IP address on a new line. Then double-click on the SubnetMask value name and add each subnet mask on a new line. The order of the IP addresses and subnet masks must correspond. Restart your computer. Break IP Boundaries Category: Windows NT All You can bind an unlimited number of IP addresses to a single network interface card under Windows NT. To add entries, open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Parameters\TCPIP and double-click on the IPAddress value name. Add each IP address on a new line. Then double-click on the SubnetMask value name and add each subnet mask on a new line. The order of the IP addresses and subnet masks must correspond. Restart your computer. Bye Bye B ack Slash Category: Windows NT All Don't try to use the back slash from the command prompt to change drives. CMD.EXE won't let you and will give you an error message. Simply type the drive letter, followed by a colon, as in D: Bypass Password Protection Category: Windows NT All To delete or reset the content policy password for Internet Explorer, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion\Policies\Ratings and delete any subkeys under .default, plus any keys named "Value Name" or "Value Name Of." Restart IE and reconfigure the ratings as you like. C2 Security Manger Category: Windows NT All If you are concerned about security on your system (and who isn't?), check out the C2 Security Manager utility found in the NT Workstation Resource Kit. This program displays a number of security points on your system and their status with respect to vulnerability from unauthorized access. Cache This! Category: Windows NT All In the same Registry branch, the SecondLevelDataCache entry lets you specify how much L2 cache your system has. If this is set to 0 (DWORD), NT will assume you have only 256KB of L2 cache. If you have more than that, specify the value as a DWORD (for example, 512 for 512KB of L2 cache). You may see a significant boost in performance. Calibrate Calculator Category: Windows NT All After you install Service Pack 4, Calculator clears the display when you switch between Standard and Scientific views. If you want to switch between the views without losing information, you need to switch views by clicking MS, then choosing View and the view you want to switch to. Click on MR to recall the number you stored in the previous view. Call Me Back Category: Windows NT All Do you have Callback enabled on your NT Remote Access Server? If so, your clients can configure the Callback delay. The default is 12 seconds, but you can change it in the Registry. Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEMCurrentControlSet\Services\RasMan\PPP. Add a value with the name DefaultCallbackDelay (REG_DWORD) and set a decimal value to any number between 0 and 255 seconds (if you enter 0, Callback will be disabled). Can't Find AUTORUN.EXE Category: Windows NT All When you double-click a drive icon in Windows NT, you may receive a dialog box that says "Windows cannot find Autorun.exe. This program is needed for opening files of type 'file'." This means that someone (or something) created a file named AUTORUN.INF in the root directory. The solution is simple: Delete the file to restore your settings. Can't Join a Domain? Category: Windows NT All Despite having valid log-on credentials for a domain, some NT Workstation users receive this error: "Unable to connect to the domain controller for this domain. Either the user name or password entered is incorrect." Apparently this can occur if Server Message Block (SMB) signing is enabled on the primary domain controller (PDC). You need to either disable SMB signing on the PDC or enable it on the workstation that's trying to log on. To do this, you have to edit the Registry. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services \LanManServer\Parameters. Look for the EnableSecuritySignature and RequireSecuritySignature values; make them 1 to enable, 0 to disable. CD Boot Camp Category: Windows NT All To quickly install NT on a machine t hat has a CD-ROM with boot support, you can boot the NT CD-ROM and dive right into installation without creating setup disks. Check your BIOS's boot options to make sure your computer supports CD-ROM booting. Also, many SCSI cards will support booting from a SCSI CD-ROM even if the host computer doesn't. Change NumLock State Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT lets you decide if you want NumLock on or off whenever you log on. Find the key HKCU\ControlPanel\Keyboard and change the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators. Set the value to 0 to turn NumLock off; make the value 2 if you want NumLock on. Change on the Fly Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0's Dynamic Display Settings let you change screen resolution and color depth on the fly. Go to Control Panel, double-click on the Display icon and select the Settings tab. Reset the color depth in the Color Palette and the screen resolution in the Desktop area. Click on OK, and the settings will take effect immediately. Change the Logon Message Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry You can change the text displayed on the NT log-on screen above the user name and password. Set a string value at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\LogonPrompt to the message you want to display. Choose an NT Registry Editor Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry The original registry editor, REGEDT32 understands features specific to the NT registry such as hives, security settings and environment-expanded values. It presents key values in a hard-to-read fashion, there are no right-click Context menus and the search function works only with key names. Starting with NT 4.0, the Windows 95 Registry Editor (RegEdit) is available for use with NT (see picture). RegEdit has much better features than those of REGEDT32. Clean Up That Messy Page File Category: Windows NT All At the end of a busy day, your page file (or swap file) can contain endless fragments of your work. If you're security-conscious, you can prevent others from recovering those fragments by setting your PC to wipe the page file clean at shutdown. Open the Registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\Session Manager\Memory Management. Set the ClearPageFileAtShutdown key to a DWORD value of 1 to enable page-file bulldozing. Clear the Docs List Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface To purge the Document List on the Start Menu periodically, create a command script called DELDOCS.CMD with the following command: @ECHO OFF DEL /Q %UserProfile%\recent\*.* Create a shortcut to this script on your Desktop or Start menu. Close Apps Before Dial-Up Category: Windows NT All Make sure you close all applications (even games) before connecting via Dial-Up Networking to a resource on another LAN or the Internet. Windows NT, like Windows 95 and 98, keeps TCP/IP addresses open for applications to communicate with other applications. If you have one open, you'll have two application concurrent TCP/IP addresses open when you try t o dial up, and the service will usually fail to authenticate you. Close Sesame Category: Windows NT All Strengthen NT's security by enforcing strict password policies. From the User Manager for Domains application, select Policies/Account. In the resulting dialog box, you can set age limits for passwords and deactivate accounts after a specified number of failed log-in attempts, among other options. CMD Extensions Category: Windows NT All In a Windows NT 4.0 command processor window (CMD.EXE), command extensions are enabled by default. To find out more about command extensions, type CMD /X /? in a CMD window. This will give you a list of system commands that are enhanced by the extensions. Type the name of an enhanced command followed by the help switch ( /? ) to see how the command is affected. Color-Code Compressed Files Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface You can change the color that NT Explorer uses to indicate compressed files. Go to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and change the AltColor key to a hex representation of the color in question. White, for instance, would be ffffff00 (the last two digits must always be 00). Colorful Commands Category: Windows NT All You can change the colors of NT's Command Prompt text and background. Right-click on the Command Prompt icon and choose Properties/Colors. Use the Screen Text and Screen Background radio buttons and the color squares to select new default colors. You can also temporarily change colors while working in the Command Prompt window. Use the following color command: Color bf where b is the background color and f is the foreground color. Then use these color commands: 0 = black, 1 = blue, 2 = green, 3 = aqua, 4 = red, 5 = purple, 6 = yellow, 7 = white, 8 = gray, 9 = light blue, a = light green, b = light aqua, c = light red, d = light purple, e = light yellow, f = bright white. For example, if you wanted a gray background with purple text, you would use the command: color 85 Combat Registry Bloat Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface As Registry entries are added and deleted, the Registry may get bloated and need to be cleaned up. Run RDISK /S to compact the Registry. Combat Registry Bloat Category: Windows NT All As Registry entries are added and deleted, the Registry may get bloated and need to be cleaned up. Run RDISK /S to compact the Registry. Command Desktop Folders Category: Windows NT All You can get a folder view of the current directory or its parent folder within an NT command prompt by typing Start. (with one period) or Start.. (with two periods) Command-Line Purge Category: Windows NT All A fast way to purge all TMP and BAK files from a drive is to launch a command line NT session and type: del \*.bak \*.tmp /s /q /f nul 2&1 You can add your own file types to the beginning of the statement as well. The command switches also force the deletion of all hidden files. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Confront Peer Pressure Category: Windows NT All NT Server lets you prevent NT Workstation users from activating peer-to-peer networking. Start NT Server's User Rights Policy Editor in the User Manager for Domains Utility, check "Show advanced user rights" and select "Create permanent shared objects." Finally, remove any groups from the Grant To box and click on OK. Consistent Settings Category: Windows NT All When re-installing NT on a system, you can run Setup with the previous installation's settings by typing WINNT32 /U. You won't be prompted for any more information. Control Panel Patch Category: Windows NT All If you upgrade to Service Pack 3 and find that the Control Panel/Devices icon has disappeared or you receive an error, try replacing the CFGMGR32.DLL and SETUPAPI.DLL files from the original NT installation CD. Controller Freak Category: Windows NT All Here's another, more pleasant surprise for SP4 users: You can use multiple domain controller entries in the LMHOSTS file. Follow this format: IP_Address #PRE #DOM: Here's an example: 192.168.1.10 WIN001 #PRE #DOM:WIN 192.168.1.20 WIN002 #PRE #DOM:WIN Here, a client would try to log on to WIN001 first and, if that fails, WIN002. Sort the entries in the order you want to attempt log-ons. Copy's Command Performance Category: Windows NT All You can use NT's cut and paste functions at the Command Prompt, with the help of Notepad or other word processors. First, you have to make sure you're in QuickEdit mode. Right-click on the Command Prompt icon, select Properties/Options and check the QuickEdit Mode box. Click on OK and close the dialog box. Now open the Command Prompt windows. Type Dir and press Enter. With your mouse, select part of the information the Dir command returned and right-click on the Command Prompt window. This saves the selected text to Clipboard. Now open Notepad or Word. Press Ctrl+V and Clipboard will paste the saved copy to your word processor. This is a two-way process. Type text in your word processor, select it and choose Edit/Copy. Now go back to the Command Prompt and right-click the window. Clipboard now pastes the text into the Command Prompt window. Cover Your Tracks Category: Windows NT All Worried about probing eyes? If so, then erase the Start menu's Documents list. To do that, right-click on an empty portion of the taskbar, select Properties, click on the Start Menu Programs tab, select Clear and finally click on OK. CPU Checks Category: Windows NT All If you hide Task Manager, you can check your CPU usage by moving the mouse pointer over the Task Manager icon. Crazy Caption Buttons Category: Windows NT All If the minimize, maximize and close-window "caption" buttons at the top of all your windows go haywire-turning into other icons for example-try this simple fix: Reinstall the MARLETT.TTF font (which can be found on your system disks in a compressed format or on another Windows PC). This font holds the shapes for the caption buttons and might be corrupted if you've recently deleted unneeded fonts. Create a New Folder by Keyboard Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Open a folder in which you want to place a new folder and press Alt+F,Enter,Enter. Create Custom Send-To Objects Category: Windows NT All You may have noticed the Send To item on the context menu of the Desktop that allows you to perform file operations and invoke applications on selected files with ease. You can add your own custom objects to this menu by opening the Profiles\Default User\SendTo folder on your system root drive and creating a shortcut to the program of your choice. For example, add a shortcut to Note Pad (or any other text editor), and you can quickly open non-associated files such as READ.ME for quick viewing. While you’re at it, make a shortcut to System32\Viewers\QUIKVIEW.EXE on your system root drive and send any file to the system viewer utility on the fly. Cut Down on Cache Flow Category: Windows NT All Windows NT maintains a cache for the meta information (timestamps, short name and so on) on files to ensure that long and short filenames are retained when 16-bit applications make changes to files. The default cache life is 15 seconds, but if you don't use 16-bit apps, you can adjust this time by editing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control \FileSystem. Add a Value name of MaximumTunnelEntryAgeInSeconds as a type REG_DWORD. Set it to the desired number of seconds, from 1 to 30. If you add a Value name of MaximumTunnelEntries as a type REG_DWORD and set it to 0, you will disable tunneling (useful if you don't use 16-bit apps at all or very rarely). Note: Some installer programs are 16-bit, so you may want to create a REG file with the original values for these keys whenever you want to run an installation program. Cut the FAT Category: Windows NT All If you're installing NT on a large hard drive, stick with NTFS. It runs more efficiently than the FAT file system on disk volumes above 400MB. Dare to Dual Boot Category: Windows NT All If you've already installed NT and also want to install Win95 or Win98-and you want the two to remain separated-bear in mind that NT can see up to four primary partitions per drive, and Win95/98 can't. To take advantage of this, use NT to create a new FAT partition and Win95 or Win98 to create a bootable floppy disk (for safety's sake). Copy the Win95/98 install files to the new partition. Boot the flop py disk, log on to the new FAT partition and install Win95/98. This will automatically mark the FAT partition as "startable." When you want to change back to NT, run FDISK and mark the original partition as "startable." When you want to change from NT to Win95/98 again, use Disk Administrator to mark the FAT partition as "startable." Note: This technique will allow only one alternately bootable FAT partition per system. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Decompress Drivers Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation Windows 95 print drivers must be decompressed before NT 4.0 recognizes them. Check PRINTER.WRI in the WINNT directory on your NT system for details on how to decompress the drivers. Default Accounts Are Easy Targets Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation Many hackers or curious users target administrator or default service accounts on NT. Either rename these accounts or create another log-on account for these services. Designated Driver Category: Windows NT All Adding and deleting drives from an NT system can mix up your drive letters. To change the current letter of a CD-ROM drive, open the Disk Administrator (WINDISK.EXE) and right-click on the drive you want to change. Next, choose Assign Drive Letter and make the appropriate changes. Did PIF Editor Go 'Poof' Category: Windows NT All If you've upgraded to NT 4.0, you might be wondering where your PIF Editor went: It's now in the program's property sheet. Right-click on the application's icon in Windows Explorer and select Properties from the Context menu. You'll find a dialog with Program, Memory and Misc. tabs that let you set everything as you would with the old PIF Editor. If you want more than one set of properties for an application, create a shortcut. It will inherit t he properties of the original icon by default, but you can separately edit the shortcut's properties. Different Strokes Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 supports multiple keyboard layouts. You can set these from the Input Locales tab found in Control Panel/Regional Settings. Directions to Your Desktop Category: Windows NT All To make an Explorer folder that shows all the icons on your Desktop, create a new shortcut named Desktop and enter c:\winnt\explorer.exe /root , on the command line (don't forget the comma). Use c:\winnt\explorer.exe/e,/root , for a two-pane view. Place the resulting shortcut on your Start menu, and you'll have easy access to your Desktop files and applications. Distribute Drive Activity Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance Keep write-intensive and read-intensive environments on separate physical devices. For instance, keep swap space on a drive of its own if possible, the operating system on another, applications on a third and data on a fourth. Ditch the Desktop Category: Windows NT All You can get rid of the NT 4.0 Desktop without shutting down NT. This may be especially helpful if your machine is short on memory. Right-click in the taskbar and bring up Task Manager. Select the Processes tab, highlight EXPLORER.EXE and click on the End Process button. Ignore the subsequent warning message and click on Yes. NT Explorer will shut down, taking with it all Desktop icons, the Start menu and taskbar. Task Manager (and any other open application) will continue to run, however. If you click on the Performance t ab, you'll find that you've gained 1MB to 3MB of RAM. You can now start programs from the Applications tab's New Task button. To get your Desktop back, click on New Task and type in EXPLORER.EXE. Divided Memory Category: Windows NT All The Start/Run command line has a check box for running 16-bit applications in a separate memory space. If you use this optio n often, create shortcuts to your protected applications and place them on your Desktop. First, find the application in question using NT Explorer. Next, right-click on the application and hold down the mouse button; drag the app to the Desktop and select Create Shortcut. Finally, right-click on the shortcut and select Properties to find the "Run in separate memory space" option. DNS Fix for Service Pack 4 Category: Windows NT All After applying SP4, NT servers that use DNS might return a system error 13. This only happens, however, if there are invalid HINFO records in the DNS zone file. To fix this, make sure all the HINFO records for DNS have two strings. For example: Test IN HINFO "WWW Server" "Customer Sites" rather than just one, like this: Test IN HINFO "WWW Server." The DNS error should go away once you correct all the strings. DNS Not Responding Category: Windows NT All In Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4, Microsoft added support for Ranking Data for determining how new DNS entry information should be interpreted, as defined in RFC 2181 section 5.4.1. Unfortunately, this can cause DNS to stop responding. To fix the problem, first upgrade to Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5. Next, open the Registry and look at the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet \Services\DNS\Parameters Edit or Add the Value name NoCacheRanking as a type REG_DWORD and set the data value to 1. Doctor NT Category: Windows NT All When you installed NT Server 4.0, you were prompted to create Emergency Repair Disks. If you didn't do so, it's not too late. Go to Start/Run and type RDISK . Doesn't Add Up Category: Windows NT All When installing a new SCSI adapter using the SCSI Adapters/Drivers/Add function from the Control Panel, we've found that Add sometimes fails to identify that there's anything to add. This is usually the result of a missing or corrupt %SYSTEMROOT%\INF\SCSI.INF file. To fix the problem, launch a command prompt and type: del/f/q%SystemRoot%\Inf\Scsi. inf Expand \i386\SCSI. in_ %SystemRoot%\Inf\Scsi.inf where is the drive where your Windows NT 4.0 CD-ROM is mounted. Note that you can install third-party SCSI drivers using the Have Disk option, if you have the drivers on a diskette, CD-ROM or a networked drive. Don't Get GIDdy Category: Windows NT All Do you have a bunch of GID files chewing up your disk space? If so, you can delete them; they're simply index files that the Help engine creates and recreates whenever you access the Find feature. Don't Go Down With the Ship Category: Windows NT All Pesky legacy DOS or 16-bit Windows apps running under NT can still cause problems, but NT has a way of protecting itself from crashing along with the troublesome program. Go to the program's Properties dialog (click on its icon and press Alt+Enter, or right-click and select Properties). At the bottom of the Properties dialog, click on "Run application in own memory space." If the program crashes now, it affects only its own virtual machine, not the Windows kernel. Don't Hang Up Category: Windows NT All If you have a 16-bit app that hangs while NTVDM consumes 100% of the CPU, it simply means your PATH= statement is too long. Terminate NTVDM using Task Manager/ Processes and shorten the PATH= statement by cutting everything except SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%. The PATH= variable is in My Computer/Properties/Environment. Don't Quote the Directory Category: Windows NT All If you add a directory to your path that requires quotation marks (because there are spaces between words) and use a Set Path= statement, executable programs within the path will not find their associated DLL files. Microsoft has confirmed this as a bug but can't offer a solution to this problem yet. One workaround is to move your applications to a directory that doesn't need to be called out with quotes, or to use a short name (eight characters) for the directory. Easy Access to Object Properties Category: Windows NT All Certain Desktop objects allow super-fast access to the Properties menu of those objects. Some of them may not be immediately obvious. For example, the Properties menu of the Network Neighborhood object brings up the Network Properties menu from Control Panel/Network. Select Properties on My Computer to invoke the Control Panel/System object. Easy Searches Category: Windows NT All To find a misplaced file, click anywhere on the NT 4.0 Desktop and press F3. EIDE and SCSI May Not Mix Category: Windows NT All Keeping virtual files and cache on a SCSI drive improves the performance of disk operations by at least four times over EIDE drives. SCSI drives must always be at SCSI address 0 to permit them to boot, but they still might not be able to boot to the NT kernel if your NT server has a mixture of EIDE and SCSI drives. SCSI boards may require that they're the only drive in the system to allow the SCSI drive to boot as drive C:, a holdover from older BIOS days. If this is the case and you want to us e the SCSI drive, you'll have to disable the EIDE drive. Enable Proxy Agent Category: Windows NT All NT 3.5x had a check box under TCP/IP settings that let you enable the WINS Proxy Agent so a non-WINS enabled client could use WINS for NetBios name resolution. That check box isn't available in NT 4.0, but you can enable the Proxy Agent by editing the Registry. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services /Netbt/Parameters and change the value for EnableProxy to 0x1. End of Preview Category: Windows NT All Before you install Service Pack 3 for NT 4.0, you must remove the preview edition of Internet Explorer 4.0 (if installed). Go to Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and click on Add/Remove. Select Remove All and reboot. Escape from NT Mousetraps Category: Windows NT All If you switch from a PS/2-port mouse to a conventional serial mouse (to free up or adjust IRQs, for instance), you may find that NT refuses to recognize a mouse on COM1; NT usually thinks COM1 is attached to a modem. To remedy that, simply switch the mouse to COM2. Expand/Collapse the Explorer Tree Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Select a branch in Explorer and press * (on the numeric keypad). If you select Desktop, all directories expand; if you select the C: drive, all folders on the C: drive expand. Exterminate the Mouse Category: Windows NT All If your servers reside in a rack-mounted system that lacks sufficient space for a mouse, navigate NT 4.0 with your keyboard. Press Ctrl+Esc to open the Start menu; the ar row keys let you navigate the various menus, and the Esc key closes the Start menu. Faster NTFS Folders Category: Windows NT All If you've got a large number of directories on an NTFS partition, you can speed up Explorer by hacking the Registry. Launch REGEDIT and drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control \FileSystem and add a new Dword value: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate. Set the value of that subkey to 1. This keeps Explorer from updating the time a file was last accessed. Note: Don't use this trick if you need to consistently audit or keep track of when files were last accessed. Faster Starts Category: Windows NT All Is your Start menu a little sluggish? Speed up the Start menu sub-menu display by using RegEd it to modify the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Modify the MenuShowDelay parameter to contain a value between 20 and 4,000 with the lower number making the Start menu display fastest. If the MenuShowDelay entry is missing, add it as a string value and set the parameter as described above. You can also set this parameter using the Tweak UI program. Faster Time to Shutdown Category: Windows NT All You can tell NT how long to wait for a service to complete a system shutdown request. Edit the Registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control \WaitToKillServiceTimeout (add the value as a REG_SZ type if it doesn't exist). The default time is 20,000 milliseconds (20 seconds). It's probably safest to set 10 seconds as your minimum. Finally, Toys For NT! Category: Windows NT All At last, selected portions of PowerToys, the popular family of utilities for Win95, are now available for NT. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/info/powertoys.htm and select NT-compatible PowerToys for download. Find Your Key Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation If you lose your CD key and need it (to reinstall NT, for example), you can find it in the NT Registry. Use a Registry editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. Find Productid, and digits 6 through 15 make up the CD key. Find Your Key Category: Windows NT All If you lose your CD key and need it (to reinstall NT, for example), you can find it in the NT Registry. Use a Registry editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. Find Productid, and digits 6 through 15 make up the CD key. Fix Batch File Overflow Category: Windows NT All Sometimes a DOS application will come with a BAT file that runs the app recursively, meaning it calls itself over and over again, and causes a stack overflow error. The same thing can also happen if you run a whole slew of DOS applications from a batch file. If this happens, try renaming the *.BAT file to *.CMD and make sure it's run from the NT console CMD.EXE program instead of from COMMAND.COM. Also make sure that DOSONLY isn't specified in the CONFIG.NT configur ation file, and that NTCMDPROMPT is specified. That should cause the DOS subsystem to exit and reload between each and every execution of the EXE you run, and clear the stacks problem. Fix Small Business Server Category: Windows NT All Small Business Server’s three setup diskettes don’t offer the option to repair your installation. You can create new disks by typing \i386\winnt32 /ox or \i386\winnt /ox from the CD-ROM. Type ren a:\Winnt.sif a:\Winnt.bak to rename WINNT.SIF on the second diskette. When you boot the diskettes, you will be offered the Repair option. Floppy Freeze Category: Windows NT All If dragging and dropping a file to a floppy diskette freezes your NT system, it indicates a problem related to a high-performance video card and your system's BIOS. You might be able to resolve the problem by editing the Registry. Launch RegEdit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\GraphicsDrivers. Add a key named DisableUSWC and leave the Class empty. Forcing a Sequence of Programs Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Troubleshooting If you require your users to run a sequence of programs to complete a task, create a batch file that uses the start command: @echo off start /wait /b FIRST.EXE start /wait /b SECOND.EXE start /wait /b THIRD.EXE Create a shortcut to this batch file and place it on the Start menu or desktop. Set it to run minimized. When the user double-clicks the shortcut, FIRST.EXE runs. When FIRST.EXE terminates, SECOND.EXE runs. When the user ends SECOND.EXE, THIRD.EXE runs. When THIRD.EXE exits, the batch job terminates. The /wait option forces each program to wait until the last one finishes executing before continuing. Forcing a Sequence of Programs Category: Windows NT All If you require your users to run a sequence of programs to complete a task, create a batch file that uses the start command: @echo off start /wait /b start /wait /b start /wait /b Create a shortcut to this batch file and place it on the Start menu or desktop. Set it to run minimized. When the user double-clicks the shortcut, runs. When terminates, runs. When the user ends , runs. When exits, the batch job terminates. The /wait option forces each program to wait until the last one finishes executing before continuing. Forget the Salute Category: Windows NT All Instead of pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to launch Windows NT Task Manager, righ t-click on NT 4.0's taskbar and click on Task Manager in the resulting menu. Four Reasons For Tears Category: Windows NT All If you've been trying to get a 16-bit Windows application to run under NT and get nothing but crashes, check the following: 1. The NT PATH variable has an entry pointing to the WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM directories of a Windows 3.x or Windows 95 installation. 2. The COMMAND.COM used by Windows NT is not missing, damaged or replaced by another version. 3. The VER.DLL file in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM or WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directories is not corrupted or replaced by an invalid version. (You can always extract a fresh copy of VER.DLL or COMMAND.COM from the NT CD-ROM or from your latest Service Pack.) 4. SHARE.EXE is being loaded by your AUTOEXEC.NT or substitute file. Four-Finger Salute? Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Troubleshooting Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 offers an option for an immediate system reboot. If you press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Delete, the system will stop all running applications and reboot your computer without saving any in-process data. To activate this option, run RegEdit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. Add the Value name EnableQuickReboot as a type REG_SZ entry and set the text string to 1 (true). You must restart your computer for the option to become available. Four-Finger Salute? Category: Windows NT All Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 offers an option for an immediate system reboot. If you press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Delete, the system will stop all running applications and reboot your computer without saving any in-process data. To activate this option, run RegEdit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft \WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. Add the Value name EnableQuickReboot as a type REG_SZ entry and set the text string to 1 (true). You must restart your computer for the option to become available. Get a Settings Report Category: Windows NT All A printout of your system configurations can save the day when you have a problem. To print the system configuration summary, go into Windows NT Diagnostics and select the print button on any tab. Under Scope, click on the All tabs radio button, select the detail level (summary or complete) and make Default Printer your destination. Click on OK to print the report. Get Active Today Category: Windows NT All If you want to enjoy NT 5.0's Active Desktop features today, install Internet Explorer 4.0 for NT 4.0. It combines the Internet with NT's user interface. Get Enough RAM Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation Microsoft says Windows NT Workstation will run on a machine equipped with 16MB of RAM. A more reasonable minimum is 32MB for typical business apps, and or preferably 64MB for extensive multitasking. Get Rid of Excess Baggage Category: Windows NT All To speed performance, especially if you don't have as much RAM as you'd like, you can disable active services you don't need. Open Control Panel/Services to do so. If you're not on a network, the first thing you should disable is the Computer Browser and Network services. Next, consider turning off the Messenger and Server services. You can also disable RAS services and AutoDial Manager if you're not connecting to an ISP or RAS. Get Some Support Category: Windows NT All NT Workstation includes client software for linking to Novell NetWare/IntranetWare servers, but if you want full support for Novell Directory Services (NDS), use Novell's 32-bit IntranetWare client for Windows NT (available at http://support.novell.com/home/ client/winnt/whatsnew.htm ) Get to Know Your Neighbors Category: Windows NT All If you're on a LAN with other NT systems and want to know their IP addresses, get a quick report by typing NBTSTAT -c at the command prompt. Give Your Games a Boost Category: Windows NT All Windows NT isn't generally considered a game-playing platform, but 32-bit games can be given a performance boost through the Task Manager. Right-click on the application in the Processes window, then select Set Priority/High. Real-time priority isn't recommended, because it can cause your PC to lock up if a game crashes. Go Bananas Category: Windows NT All Like some previous versions of Windows, NT Workstation 4.0 includes a QBASIC game called Gorilla. To play it, select Run, then type qbasic and press Enter. After the program loads, press Escape. Now select File\Open. Clear the command line and type drive:\winnt\system32\gorilla.bas where drive is your hard drive. Hit Shift+F5 and enjoy. Go for an EIDE Drive Category: Windows NT All You might have trouble getting NT 4.0 to recognize a second EIDE driver. NT 4.0 Setup sometimes mistakes an EIDE controller for a generic ATAPI controller and automatically loads the ATAPI.SYS driver. The ATAPI.SYS driver doesn't know how to deal with the second drive. To correct the problem, disable ATAPI.SYS (using Control Panel/Devices) and load the appropriate EIDE driver. Hardware Hassles Category: Windows NT All Since NT lacks native Plug-and-Play support, hardware upgrades must be installed manually or via setup software provided by the manufacturer. To save time, determine your new hardw are's IRQ and I/O base addresses prior to installation. Help for Tweakaholics Category: Windows NT All If you're constantly tweaking NT Server, create a new directory on your hard drive called NTupdates. Next, copy the CAB files from the NT CD-ROM to your new directory. This will let you fetch drivers and utilities from your hard drive rather than from the NT CD-ROM. Hidden Drive Category: Windows NT All If you don't want anyone to mess around with a certain drive on a local PC or network, edit the Registry to hide the drive from Explorer and My Computer. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right-click in the right pane and choose New/DWORD Value. Name the new key NoDrives and press Enter twice; this opens the Edit DWORD Value dialog box. Select the Decimal radio button. You'll need to enter a number for the drive you want to hide. Drive A: is 1, B: is 2, C: is 4, D: is 8, E: is 16 and so on. For example, enter 4 to hide drive C:. If you want to hide drives C: and A:, type 5. You can hide as many drives as you want. Then exit the Registry. The drives you selected will be hidden the next time the PC boots up, but keep in mind that the drives can still be accessed from Start/Run. Hide Task Manager Category: Windows NT All You can also hide Task Manager but keep it active at the same time. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager and select Options/Hide When Minimized. Task Manager will remain active, but it won't show up on the taskbar. You can bring it back anytime by double-clicking on its icon, a small bar graph to the right of the taskbar. How Much Virtual Memory Is Enough? Category: Windows NT All Check to see if your page files are the right size. Go into Control Panel/System and click on the Performance tab. Select Change under Virtual Memory to open the Virtual Memory dialog box. Make a note of how much initial memory is assigned in your system. Click on OK and OK again. When you're finished working for the day, go into NT Explorer and click on Pagefile.SYS to see its size. If the file size is usually larger than the initial memory over the course of a few days, you should change the initial size to increase system efficiency. IE 4.0 and FTP Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface Internet Explorer 4.0 intercepts FTP commands typed into the Start/Run command line. You can prevent this with a Registry edit. To do so, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\URL\Prefixes and delete ftp and ftp.values. IE Install Error? Category: Windows NT All If you get this error when installing IE, "Error calling DllRegisterServer in %SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\OLEAUT32.DLL," you can patch the problem by copying the following to a REG file and merging it into the Registry: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{00020424-0000-0000-C000- 000000000046}\InprocServer32] @="oleaut32.dll" "ThreadingModel"="Both" IE Safety Precautions Category: Windows NT All The IE 4.0 Desktop Update makes critical changes to the System and Software Registry hives. If you try to use a repair or restore disk made before you performed the update, you'll be greeted with a blank Desktop the next time you log on. Run RDISK /S immediately after applying the Desktop Update. IE Service Pack Needs a Fix Category: Windows NT All When you upgrade from IE 4.01 to IE 4.01 Service Pack (SP) 1 on a computer running NT 4.0 SP4-and you have the Windows NT Server Option Pack installed-you might receive this error: Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 Setup-Some services could not be started. Setup needs to reboot your system in order to start the services. When Internet Explorer is installed, the Protected Storage (Pstore) service has to be turned off; any service that also depends on Pstore won't start. After you install Internet Explorer, turn Pstore on. Use Control Panel/Services to ensure that the Pstore start-up is automatic, then reboot the system. Improve TCP Performance Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 Service Pack 2 has an undocumented feature in the TCP/IP stack that lets you enable the special Van Jacobson retransmit and recovery algorithm, which can improve a connection's speed (especially over dial-ups). To turn it on, edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/TCPIP/Parameters and add the Value name TcpMaxDupAcks (REG_DWORD). Set the value to the number of ACKs (acknowledgements) you want. The range is 1 to 3, and the default is 2 (recommended). Improve Your Image Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 comes with a new Imaging accessory developed by Wang Laboratories. With this tool, you can view, edit and annotate a wide variety of common image-file formats. Install the NT Imaging accessory through Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs. Select the Windows NT Setup tab, double-click Accessories and check the Imaging item from the list. Then click on OK and follow the on-screen instructions. In Case of Emergency Category: Windows NT All When installing NT 4.0, you should create an Emergency Repair Disk. This disk will let you restore damaged boot sectors. To create one, type rdisk/s at the Run command, press Enter and follow the prompts. The repair disk records your primary Partition Boot Sector's settings and boot parameters. If you change those areas, you must recreate the repair disk. Install Your Own Fonts Category: Windows NT All Here's how to install a font through a batch file or a shortcut. Installing a font doesn't just copy the font file to the %SYSTEMROOT%\FONTS directory; it also adds a font name to your Registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\W indows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts as a type REG_SZ. The data string contains the font file name. So if you want to install the MS Gothic font, for example, in a batch file, follow this example (where X is your hard drive): copy X:\Folder\MSGOTHIC.TTF %SystemRoot%\fonts\*.* regedit /y X:\Folder\MsGothic.reg exit Then create MSGOTHIC.REG and add the following: [REGEDIT4] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts] "Ms Gothic (TrueType)"="MSGOTHIC.TTF" Run the batch file and reboot. Instant Task Manager Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface There are two ways to get a Task Manager window on your Desktop fast. You can move your mouse pointer over the taskbar area next to the Start menu, right-click in a blank area and choose Task Manager from the Context menu. Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager. Insufficient Inoculation Category: Windows NT All Many antivirus utilities work only with FAT. If you're using NTFS, make sure your antivirus solution is compatible with it. Iomega Zip Drive Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation If you remove an Iomega Zip drive from your PC, you will receive an error message at start-up. To avoid this message, open Devices from the Control Panel and select the PPA3NT driver. Change the driver Startup setting from Boot to Disabled while the Zip drive is disconnected. ISDN Is In Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 has g reatly improved support for ISDN modems; they're now treated as regular modems rather than as a special class of network cards. However, different ISPs may require different settings, depending on what line negotiation protocols they use. Customize this for your system by double-clicking on the Modems icon in Control Panel. Select your modem from the Modem Properties dialog; and choose Properties, then Connection/Advanced. In the Extra Settings field, you can type in a command string that will be sent to the modem before dialing. For instance, on a Motorola TA210 modem, the string &C1&D2E0V1%A2=95 sets up the modem to use the PPPC line-negotiation protocol, while the string &C1&D2E0V1%A2=2 sets up the older V.120 protocol. Other modems may use different command strings, so it's a good idea check with the manufacturer. It's Not Always Nice to Share Category: Windows NT All You can restrict the sharing of drives and folders to certain individuals or groups. Right-click on the drive or folder to want to share, select Sharing, click on Permissions from the Shared As section, remove the Everyone entry, click on the Add button and add the individuals or groups you want to share with. Then click on OK. It's Only Natural Category: Windows NT All Using NT 4.0 and the Microsoft Natural Keyboard, press WIN+R to display the Run dialog box, WIN+M to minimize all windows currently open and WIN+E to start Windows NT Explorer. Just the Fax Category: Windows NT All Send and receive faxes from your NT Desktop using Personal Fax for Windows (available at http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/faxdownload.htm ). Once installed, launch the Fax Send Utility (click on Start/Programs/Fax) Keep CHKDSK in Check Category: Windows NT All Prevent CHKDSK from running at boot time by editing the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\S ession Manager key in the Registry and changing your current BootExecute's value to autocheck autochk * . If CHKDSK is scheduled for multiple volumes, there will be an autocheck entry for each volume. You can also use Service Pack 2's new CHKNTFS command-line utility to prevent CHKDSK from running during reboots if the dirty bit is set. Keep Your Cool Category: Windows NT All If you experience random NT lock-ups and rebooting, check for an overheated CPU. If that's the problem, consider buying a ball-bearing-equipped CPU fan for your system. Keep Zipping Along Category: Windows NT All If you remove a Zip drive (even temporarily) from your PC, you will receive an error message at start-up. To avoid this message, open Control Panel/Devices and select the PPA3NT driver. This driver is normally set to Boot under the StartUp option. Change this setting to Disabled while the Zip drive is disconnected. Kill IE Customization Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Networking Windows NT Troubleshooting The Internet Explorer Administration Kit lets your ISP or administrator customize the animated IE logo (the swirling globe). But if you find this annoying, you can always ditch it. Launch RegEdit, drill down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar. Locate the BrandBitmap and SmBrandBitmap value names in the right-hand pane and delete them. Reboot. Kill IE Customization Category: Windows NT All The Internet Explorer Administration Kit lets your ISP or administrator customize the animated IE logo (the swirling globe). But if you find this annoying, you can always ditch it. Launch RegEdit, drill down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar. Locate the BrandBitmap and SmBrandBitmap value names in the right-hand pane and delete them. Reboot. Launch Explorer Windows Faster Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Did you know you can open any folder icon as a two-paned window with a navigation tree? Just right-click on the folder and choose Explore. You can launch any folder as an Explorer window by holding down the Shift key and double-clicking on the folder. If you really just prefer the two-paned Explorer windows, you can make that type of window open by default: Open any folder and choose View/Options (or Folder Options under IE4/IE5/Win98/NT). Choose the File Types tab. Select Folder and click on Edit. Under Actions, highlight Explore. Click on Set Default. The Explore entry becomes bold, making it the default operation for a double-click. If you want to reverse the setting, follow the same steps, but highlight Open instead of Explore. Leader of the Pack Category: Windows NT All For a sneak peek at Windows NT 5.0, download NT Server 4.0 Service Pack 3 from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/nt40/ . It includes full support for DirectX 3.0, ODBC 3.0, CryptoAPI 2.0, password filtering capabilities and bug fixes for NT 4.0. Lock 'Em Out Category: Windows NT All You can limit the total number of users who log onto your Windows NT Server with one quick Registry hack. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Services\LanmanServer\Parameters, set Users (DWORD) to the maximum number of users you want to allow to connect simultaneo usly. You'll need to reboot for this to take effect. Logon Wallpaper Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface Make this Registry change to add a company logo or legal notice to the bitmap displayed on the default Desktop when the log-on prompt is displayed. Find the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop tree and locate the Wallpaper key. Double-click the entry and change the current value to the bitmap file you wish to use. To eliminate the opening bitmap, change the "(Default)" entry to a blank line and save your change. Make a Local FTP Drive Category: Windows NT All Some FTP sites that use NetBT connection protocols can be made into a logical drive on your local machine. Most machines that use IIS for FTP services can do this. 1. In Control Panel/Network/ Protocols, double-click on TCP/IP Protocol. Open the WINS Address tab and select Enable LMHOSTS Lookup. 2. In the %systemroot%SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC directory, create (or edit) a file called LMHOSTS and add the string w.x.y.z ftp #PRE, where w.x.y.z is the IP address of the ftp server you're mounting as a logical drive. Do not use a domain name. 3. From the command prompt, type nbtstat -R. You should get the message, "Successful purge and preload of the NBT Remote Cache Name Table." 4. Type the command nbtstat -c. You should see a table listing the name and the host address of the FTP site, plus anything else you've entered into the LMHOSTS file. 5. Type the command net use X: \\ftp\ to connect the ftp site to your local X: drive. Perform this command last; it can be placed in a batch file that executes all of these changes after you've already connected to your ISP. If you want to connect more drives to subdirectories of the FTP directory, enter the command net use driveletter: \\ft p\subdirectory, where driveletter is the letter to use and subdirectory is the target FTP subdirectory. Experiment with this technique to see if your ISP's FTP services support it. If you want to connect more drives to subdirectories of the FTP directory, enter the command net use driveletter: \\ft p\subdirectory, where driveletter is the letter to use and subdirectory is the target FTP subdirectory. Experiment with this technique to see if your ISP's FTP services support it. Make NT See a Second CPU Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation When you add a second processor to your server, NT might not use it automatically. The NT 4.0 Resource Kit includes a utility called UPTOMP.EXE that makes NT recognize additional processors. Make Room for the Registry Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance Right-click on My Computer and select Properties/Performance. Check the setting for the maximum Registry Size. Complex systems with a lot of apps installed can quickly outpace the default maximum size. Keep an eye on this setting and maintain at least 1MB of growing room. Make Tasks Automatic Category: Windows NT All Use the NT Scheduler service and AT command scheduler to automate backups and other operations. To do so, you create a system account called "Scheduler" and grant the account appropriate system privileges for the tasks you want to automate. Make the account a member of the Backup Operators group for a backup command. Then create a batch file that performs the required operations. After testing the script, use the AT command to schedule its operation at any interval you want. Make Win95 Boot First Category: Windows NT All If you have Windows NT and Windows 95 in a dual-boot setup, NT will want to be the operating system that boots, so it comes up first on the list of OSes from which you can choose. To change the default OS to Windows 95, boot up NT and select Control Panel/System. Go to the Startup/Shutdown tab. From there, you can select the default startup operating system from a drop-down box. Manage NT from Win9x Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Maintenance You can manage NT Server from Win95/98 using various tools on the NT Server CD-ROM. Install the tools by going to Control Panel and selecting Add/Remove Programs. Select the Windows Setup tab and click on Have Disk. Insert the NT 4.0 Server disk and type the drive letter, then \Clients\SrvTools\Win95. Manual Labor Category: Windows NT All Microsoft won't offer an automated upgrade path from Windows 95 to NT until mid-1998. Until then, follow this procedure: First, make sure NT supports all your Win95 devices and applications. Next, install NT in a separate directory and reinstall of all your apps to the new directory. Finally, delete Win95. Manual Multiprocessing, Part I Category: Windows NT All If you've just upgraded from a single-processor machine to a multi-processor box, you may not have to reinstall NT from scratch. The simplest way to avoid this is to use the UPTOMP utility from the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit, but you can also do it by hand if you don't have the Resource Kit. Install a minimal copy of Windows NT to a separate folder, drive or partition. Then boot your new installation and rename the following files in your original NT system's %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32 folder (you can rename them by simply adding an underscore at the beginning of the filenames, making it easy to remember the original names): NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL (or HALSP.DLL on some Compaq computers), KERNEL32.DLL, NTDLL.DLL, WINSRV.DLL, WIN32K.SYS. Manual Multiprocessing, Part II Category: Windows NT All Next, check which multiprocessor HAL your computer requires (your system may also have an NT-specific HAL provided with its hardware). Here are some of the most common: - AST Manhattan SMP: HALAST.DLL - Compaq SystemPro multiprocessor or 100-percent compatible: HALSP.DLL - Corollary C-bus architecture: HALCBUS.DLL - IBM PS/2 or other Micro Channel-based PC: HALMCA.DLL - Micro Channel multiprocessor PC: HALMPSM.DLL - MPS uniprocessor PC: HALAPIC.DLL - MPS multiprocessor PC: HALMPS.DLL - NCR System 3000, model 3360/3450/3550: HALNCR.DLL - Olivetti LSX5030/40: HALOLI.DLL - Standard PC (single processor HAL): HAL.DLL - Standard PC with C-Step i486: HAL486C.DLL - Wyse Series 7000I, model 740MP/760MP: HALWYSE7.DLL Manual Multiprocessing, Part III Category: Windows NT All Copy NTKRNLMP.EXE, NTDLL.DLL and the appropriate HAL (which is usually named just HAL) from the NT CD-ROM to the %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32 folder of your original NT installation. Rename NTKRNLMP.EXE to NTOSKRNL.EXE and the HAL to H AL.DLL. Then run the following commands from the folder for your system's binaries from the NT CD-ROM (for example, i386 for Intel systems), where OriginalSystemRoot is the drive and path of your original NT installation: expand kernel32.dl_ %OriginalSystem-Root%\ system32\kernel32.dll expand winsrv.dl_ %OriginalSystem-Root%\ system32\winsrv.dll expand Win32k.sy_ %OriginalSystem-Root%\ system32\Win32k.sys Manual Multiprocessing, Part IV Category: Windows NT All Finally, edit the SETUP.LOG file in your %ORIGINALSYSTEMROOT%\REPAIR\ folder, and change the HAL.DLL and NTOSKRNL.EXE lines to reflect the changes you just made. For instance, if you copied the HALAST.DLL HAL, change the line that refers to HAL.DLL to: \WINNT\system32\hal.dll = "HALAST.dll","d023" Reboot your system, using your original NT installation, and reapply your hot fixes. Map Maker Category: Windows NT All NT doesn't let you map a drive le tter to a share's subdirectory, but here's a workaround: Use the SUBST command, which lets you use Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) paths and environment variables in the command line. Add SUBST h: \\logonserver\users\%username% to your log-on script. This tells NT to map the H: drive to the directory under the user's share that matches the name of the user logging on. Master the Master File Table Category: Windows NT All Every file in an NTFS volume has an entry in NT's Master File Table (MFT). NTFS reserves a block of space for the MFT in an effort to keep it contiguous as it grows (so it won't be fragmented). Defraggers can't conventionally move the MFT, which means that fragmentation within the MFT itself isn't fixed. If you want to gain more control over the amount of space reserved for the MFT on a new volume (this doesn't affect existing volumes), edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet \Control\FileSystem in the Registry. Add NtfsMftZoneReservation as the Value name with REG_DWORD as the type, and set the data value to 1 (to use the minimum percentage, which is undocumented and changing in SP4) or to 4 (to use the maximum percentage). (Note: The ratio between those values is also undocumented and will change when SP4 is rolled out.) Memory Tune-Up Category: Windows NT All If your apps are approaching NT Server's 2GB RAM limit, consider upgrading to NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition. It can reserve 3GB of RAM for applications. Minimize Boot Delay Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance Launch NT faster by adjusting the boot delay to 5 seconds or less. Select Control Panel/System and click on the Startup/Shutdown tab. In the Show List For control, change the setting for boot delay value. Monitor Performance Category: Windows NT All Windows NT 4.0 has a Performance Monitor that tracks disk performance and activity. To activate it, go to the Start menu, select Programs and launch the Command prompt. Type diskperf-y. When you re boot, Performance Monitor will be enabled. More Monitoring Category: Windows NT All NT Workstation 4.0's Personal Web Server extends the NT Performance Monitor's capabilities. Go to Start/ Programs/Administrative Tools/Performance Monitor, choose Edit/Add to Chart and pick FTP, Gopher and HTTP from the Objects pick list to monitor these items. Multi-Homing Internet Addresses Category: Windows NT All Each network card in an NT 4.0 server can hold up to five TCP/IP addresses for routing and domain control purposes. Right-click on Network Neighborhood, choose the Protocols tab, and edit the properties of the TCP/IP protocol. Choose Advanced, and add up to five total TCP/IP addresses. Multiple Domains in a Single Server Category: Windows NT All You can use all five TCP/IP addresses on a network card for a different Internet Domain Server through the Internet Domain Name Service (DNS). After you've configured the extra TCP/IP address names, choose Start/Programs/Microsoft Common/Internet Services Manager, then double-click on the WWW server. Enter the TCP/IP address of the Virtual Server to associate the IP address with the Domain Name and the domain's root directory. Remember to set the default home page name. Multiple Personalities Category: Windows NT All You can customize your NT laptop to support different hardware profiles (video resolution, network cards and so on), but only when docked. Simply create new hardware profiles by right-clicking on the My Computer icon, selecting Properties and clicking on the Hardware Profiles button. Navigator Nuance Category: Windows NT All Do you have problems running upgraded versions of Netscape Navigator with NT? Netscape browsers can cause problems over previously installed versions, so delete all versions before upgrading. Just remember to save your addresses and bookmarks. NetWare Frame Types Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Networking Windows NT Troubleshooting If your NetWare servers are running with different Ethernet frame types, you might not always see all of them in Network Neighborhood. NT Servers can be configured to recognize multiple frame types, but NT Workstations require a Registry hack to achieve this. Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NWLinkIpx\NetConfig\network_card_driver, where network_card_driver is the name of the network card used in the system. Double-click on the PKType value name (a REG_MULTI_SZ type entry) and remove any Auto Detect (hexadecimal ff) entries. Add two or more frame type values, one per line, from the following list and restart your workstation. Be sure to add only as many frame types as you think are needed to be recognized. Ethernet 802.3 and 802.2 are the most common varieties. Value Frame Type 0 Ethernet II 1 Ethernet 802.3 2 Ethernet 802.2 3 Ethernet SNAP 4 Arcnet ff Auto Detect NetWhere? Category: Windows NT All If your NetWare servers are running with different Ethernet frame types, you might not always see all of them in Network Neighborhood. NT Servers can be configured to recognize multiple frame types, but NT Workstations require a Registry hack to achieve this. Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NWLinkIpx\NetConfig\network_card_driver, where network_card_driver is the name of the network card used in the system. Double-click on the PKType value name (a REG_MULTI_SZ type entry) and remove any Auto Detect (hexadecimal ff) entries. Add two or more frame type values, one per line, from the following list and restart your workstation. Be sure to add only as many frame types as you think are needed to be recognized. Ethernet 802.3 and 802.2 are the most common varieties. Value Frame Type 0 Ethernet II 1 Ethernet 802.3 2 Ethernet 802.2 3 Ethernet SNAP 4 Arcnet ff Auto Detect New Network Support Category: Windows NT All Service Pack 4 has replaced NT 4.0's weak Full Duplex network support with a new feature that deserializes communications between NDIS and your NIC's miniport driver. If your NIC is capable of running in deserialized mode on an Symmetric MultiProcessor (SMP) computer, you will achieve significant performance improvements. There are two qualifications, however. First, old-style Full Duplex is still supported for NICs that do not support full deserialized operations. Second, Full Duplex refers to the ability of your NIC's miniport driver to simultaneously send and receive to Windows NT on an SMP computer-and to the MAC layer allowing simultaneous reception and transmission of data by your NIC. If you have an up-to-date NIC on an SMP computer running Windows NT 4.0 with SP4 (or greater), both functions are now supported. No Backup? Use Last Known Good Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry If you crashed without a backup, you might be able to recover by using the Last Known Good option. Press the spacebar as NT is booting at the blue screen, and press L to boot with the last known good registry. No Dual Boot Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation No dual-boot system can be considered safe. The presence of Win9x or DOS creates a security hole on any NT system. No Exchange Category: Windows NT All One of NT Workstation's most-hated features, especially among Outlook fans, is the way the Exchange client i nstalls with the rest of the OS. To prevent the Exchange client from installing during NT installation, follow these steps: Copy the i386 folder from the installation CD to an NT system's hard drive. Navigate to the folder from a command line and then type: expand Syssetup.in_ Syssetup.inf and rename Syssetup.in_ to Syssetup.old . Next, edit Syssetup.inf and replace MSMAIL.INF with ;MSMAIL.INF (don't forget the semicolon) in the [BaseWinOptionsInfs] section. Install NT from the new folder, and the Exchange client will not be installed. No More Double-Click Category: Windows NT All Make the middle button of your 3-button mouse a double-click. Instructions and a simple utility are at http://www.windows-nt.com/tipsandinfo . Nothing New on Your Desktop Category: Windows NT All Missing the "New" Context menu when you right-click on the desktop? If so, you may be missing a Registry key at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex \ContextMenuHandlers\New. You should have a value of type REG_SZ with the following data: {D969A300-E7FF-11d0-A93B-00A0C90F2719} NT 4.0 Plus Pack? Category: Windows NT All If you're a Win95-NT 4.0 dual-booter, you can use Plus Pack desktop themes with NT. Copy THEMES.CPL and THEMES.EXE from your Win95 SYSTEM folder to your NT SYSTEM32 folder. The next time you start NT, you'll find a Desktop Themes icon in Control Panel. NT Never Forgets Category: Windows NT All If you're afraid you'll forget your passwords, you can store them in NT's User Manager for Domains. Set the Account Policy (Policies/Account) to Remember n Passwords. Windows NT will store two images of your password-a case sensitive password and a case insensitive password-for use on down-level clients that support case sensitivity (such as Windows for Workgroups, Win95, DOS and some editions of NetWare). When you implement Password Uniqueness (which forces you to change your password every so often) and change your password, Windows NT uses the case insensitive password to check for uniqueness. Thus, if your password was "PassWord" and you change it to "PASSWORD," it won't pass the uniqueness test, even if you never used "PASSWORD" before. NT Power Toys Category: Windows NT All Some Power Toys previously mentioned in WinTips are now supporting Windows NT 4.0. These include Find X 1.2, Send To X 1.4, Shortcut Target Menu 1.2, Tweak UI 1.1 and Explore From Here as well as Command Prompt Here 1.1. NTFS Won't Compress? Category: Windows NT All If you have very large NTFS-formatted volumes, you may get error messages when trying to enable file compression. Thats because any NT drive formatted with a cluster size greater than 4,096 bytes can't be compressed. To check the allocation unit size, run CHKDSK or NTFSinfo , where is the target drive letter. If its greater than 4,096 bytes per unit, than you need to move the data and reformat the volume with a smaller cluster size before you can compress data. To format the drive with 4KB clusters, use: Format /FS:NTFS /A:4096 [/V:Label] NumLock On-And Leave It On Category: Windows NT All By default, every time you log on to Windows NT, it sets the NumLock key to off. You can change this by editing the Registry. Open REGEDIT and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard and in the right-hand pane, double-click on the InitialKeyboardIndicators string and change its value from 0 to 2. The next time you log on to your system, NT will note your preference and automatically turn on the NumLock key. Odd FAT Time Stamp Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface When you use FAT on an NT system, the time stamps on files in the FAT partition are rounded to the nearest 2 seconds. That means the time stamp is always an even number, even when you copy a file with an odd time stamp to a FAT partition. Offline Recovery Category: Windows NT All If the NT Registry is damaged, you can attempt to edit it offline. Install a backup copy of NT into another directory (or boot another one if you have it already online) and then run the Registry Editor to hack the other Registry. Highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and choose Load Hive from the Registry menu. To modify something in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM, for example, navigate to the \SYSTEM32\CONFIG directory in the original NT installation and open the SYSTEM file. When prompted for a name, use anything (old system, for example). The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE window will list these hives: HARDWARE, oldsystem, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM. Double-click on oldsystem and note the number associated with Default: (REG_DWORD) in the Select key. This corresponds to the Control Set that you will be editing. Don't edit anything under CurrentControlSet; you'll be hacking your live NT installation! Go to ControlSet00x (where x is from the Select key Default:) and edit whatever's under that key. Changes are instantly written to disk. Highlight oldsystem and select Unload Hive from the Registry menu. Note: When locating the Software Hive with the Registry Editor, look for the file with the Windows icon, not the Notepad icon. Old Drivers Hit Dead End Category: Windows NT All Microsoft drastically changed the video architecture in NT 4.0, which means NT 3.x video drivers aren't compatible with 4.0. You'll have no problems if you use one of the standard video drivers from the NT 4.0 installation CD; you'll get a new driver automatically when you upgrade. However, if you use a third-party video, SCSI or printer driver, you'll have to check with your vendor for NT 4.0 driver compatibility. Out-of-Sight Swap File Category: Windows NT All In addition to putting your NT swap file on another drive, you can also use third-party utilities to make it invisible. Create an extended partition and logical drive for the swap file (which can be NTFS), and use the My Computer tab in Microsoft's Tweak UI ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ contents/PowerToys/W95TweakUI ) to prevent the drive from showing up. - Allen E. Holecek Overflow Errors? Category: Windows NT All If your system log is filling up with STATUS_BUFFER_OVERFLOW errors, it might not be a big problem. This kind of error is generated when NT deals with named pipes to a client that has a read buffer too small to handle the data returned to it. You often see this on non-NT clients, so check which client is choking and fix the problem there. Paging All Applications Category: Windows NT All Paging makes your system run faster by moving parts of applications from RAM to the hard disk when they're not in use. This frees the RAM for active apps. If you have more than one hard disk, you can relocate your system's paging file to your fastest drive. Open Control Panel/System and select the Performance tab. Under Virtual Memory , click on the Change button. Reduce the size of the page file on the NT root directory drive to 2MB minimum and 2MB maximum. Next, select your fastest drive and set the virtual memory parameters to a minimum value equal to the amount of installed RAM and a maximum value of twice the installed RAM. Paging Security Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Networking Windows NT Troubleshooting As your page files hold sensitive data, and NT swaps memory pages to disk when an app needs physical memory, these files can be security risks on a network. To prevent access to your page file from another PC or OS on your PC, you can tweak a Registry key that tells the Memory Manager to clear the page file at shutdown. Open your Registry editor; go to HK_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\ClearPageFileAtShutdown; the value should be 1. Paging Security Category: Windows NT All As your page files hold sensitive data, and NT swaps memory pages to disk when an app needs physical memory, these files can be security risks on a network. To prevent access to your page file from another PC or OS on your PC, you can tweak a Registry key that tells the Memory Manager to clear the page file at shutdown. Open your Registry editor; go to HK_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control \SessionManager\MemoryManagement \ClearPageFileAtShutdown; the value should be 1. Paging the Kernel Category: Windows NT All The Disab lePagingExecutive DWORD entry in the Registry's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management branch lets you control whether the NT kernel gets paged to disk. Set this to 1 if you want to allow kernel paging, 0 if you don't. This is a useful adjustment if you have fairly limited system memory. Partition Shuffle Category: Windows NT All A spate of new utilities, including Quarterdeck's Partition-It or PowerQuest's PartitionMagic, lets you do nifty things with disk partitions that NT's Disk Administrator can't. These programs let you safely move and resize NTFS and FAT partitions. But be warned that reordering an NT system partition can render NT unbootable. If you've changed the order of your NT system partition, check the BOOT.INI file in the root directory of your system and look at the following line: default=multi(0)disk (0)rdisk(0)partition (x)\WINNT X is the number of the NT boot partition. If you've moved things around to make it the third partition on the disk, for instance, then x should be 3. Patch It Up Category: Windows NT All If you're wondering in which order to install Service Pack 3 and the various hot fixes that have come since then, here's a quick thumbnail guide: - Service Pack 3 - DNS fix (only on PCs running MS DNS) - IIS fix (only on PCs running IIS) - LSA fix - ASP fix (only on PCs running IIS) - LM fix (only to disable LanManager password hashes being sent) - GetAdmin fix - SimpTCP fix - WINS fix (only on PCs running WINS Service) - SCSI fix (see http://premium.microsoft.com/support/ kb/articles/q171/2/95.asp before adding this; it isn't for all users) - Zip fix (only on PCs with ATAPI Zip drives) Peak Performance Category: Windows NT All In NT Server's Task Manager, double-click anywhere on the Performance screen to enlarge the CPU graph. Performance Anxiety Category: Windows NT All Many systems with factory-installed NT come with SCSI drives. These drives will give very slow uncached performance ratings on many low-level tests because their on-board write buffering is turned off by default. You don't need to turn on write caching to have excellent real-world application performance, though, because cached performance doesn't suffer from the default settings. If you still insist on turning the buffering on, you can do so using a SCSI utility from your SCSI adapter's manufacturer. But be aware that if you do, you'll have less data security, because write completion will be signaled before the data is committed to the disk surface. Perls of NT Wisdom Category: Windows NT All When you run Perl scripts in Windows NT, you're required to call the script like this: /[directory]/perl.exe?[scriptname].pl . Both the script a nd the Perl executable (usually PERL.EXE) must be in the same directory. But you shouldn't run Perl this way, because you'll be vulnerable to security problems by letting users execute Perl commands from their browsers. Create a batch file that runs Perl, using a command like this: c:perl.exe c:/pathname/scriptname.pl . Permission Granted Category: Windows NT All If you've damaged the permissions settings on your system files, download this fix to reset the default permissions: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt40/i386/fixacl1.exe . Permission to Copy Category: Windows NT All If you want to copy a block of files from one place to another and keep their original permissions intact, use the SCOPY command, which is available in the NT Resource Kit. This command-line utility is ideal for making backup copies of sensitive folders when you don't have easy access to a tape drive. Pick a Pentium Category: Windows NT All If you can't decide between Pentium Pro and Pentium II servers, consider Intel's take on the situation: The chip giant says the Pentium II is best for single- or dual-processor departmental NT servers, while the Pentium Pro is best suited for quad-processor systems and above. Piece It Together Category: Windows NT All Many disk defragmenters won't work properly if the administrator doesn't have the proper permissions to modify all objects on a given drive or partition. Pining for Program Manager? Category: Windows NT All If you miss Program Manager and File Manager in NT 4.0, here's a way to make your Desktop look and feel more like earlier versions: Right-click on the Start button and select Explore from the resulting Context menu. An Explorer window will open, with the Programs folder in the right-hand pane. Right-click on the window and select Create Shortcut from the resulting menu. There will now be a Shortcut to Programs folder in the right-hand pan e of Explorer. Click on it, drag it to the Desktop, rename it "Program Manager" and double-click to open it. By default, it will open in large icon view, and the folders within it will correspond exactly to NT 3.x Program Manager groups. One of the icons will be Windows NT Explorer. Right-click on it, create a shortcut, drag the shortcut to the Desktop and rename it "File Manager." It will open in the dual-pane Explorer view and default to the root of your system disk. Now move the standard NT icons out of the way and set the Taskbar to Auto Hide. Plan to Expand Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation If you create multiple partitions on NT servers to separate NT from application files, remember to leave 80MB or so free on your NT partition for future service packs. Play Favorites with Programs Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 Maintenance Windows NT All Windows NT Maintenance Do you have a few programs that you use far more than any others? If so, you can make those programs more quickly accessible. The improved Disk Defragmenter in Windows 98 can gather the program files you use most often and move them to the faster parts of your hard disk. To run Disk Defragmenter, click Start and select Programs/Accessories/System Tools and then select Disk Defragmenter. Click on the Settings button and make sure that the option labeled "Rearrange program files so my programs start faster" is selected. Click OK twice to begin defragmentation. Playing with Adapter Cards Category: Windows NT All Most Network Interface Cards (NICs) support Plug and Play these days. Unfortunately Windows NT 4.0 doesn't. That's why most NICs include software that disables PnP an enables manual I/O address assignments. To set up a NIC, dig out your old DOS setup disk and boot to DOS (if you don't have a DOS partition) in order to reconfigure your NIC as required. Plug and Play Category: Windows NT All NT 4.0 doesn't support Plug and Play, but a special software driver lets you detect and install selected PnP devices on NT. On your NT 4.0 CD, right-click on the PNPISA.INF file in the DRVLIB\PNPISA folder. Click on the resulting Install menu and restart your computer. Plug-and-Play ISA NICs Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation NT 4.0 lacks Plug-and-Play support for network cards, so those cards must be reset to non-Plug-and-Play mode. You can check NETWORK.WRI in your WINNT directory for more information. Poor Execution? Category: Windows NT All One of the drawbacks of the AUTOEXEC.NT file (used to automatically execute programs when you start a CMD.EXE session) is that if you include a Win32 binary command in AUTOEXEC.NT, it won't run. (SUBST and the NET commands are examples of Win32 binaries.) AUTOEXEC.NT runs only 16-bit binary commands, so if you must run a Win32 binary, use a batch file or log-on script. Print at Your Own RISC Category: Windows NT All If you have a RISC-based NT server, you can take advantage of multiplatform network printing, which lets NT clients print over the network without loading the required printer drivers locally. To add the Intel and RISC-based printer drivers, log on to one of the Intel workstations as Administrator. Start Print Manager, select Printer/Server Viewer, select the RISC-based server on which you want to install the Intel drivers and select Print/Properties. From the Printer Properties dialog, select Other in the Driver field. In the Install Driver dialog box, enter the path of the Intel printer drivers' location (either a CD-ROM drive or a network repository where you've stored the NT system files), then click on OK and select the appropriate printer. Print It RAW Category: Windows NT All You can speed printing by using the RAW datatype to improve spooling performance. When you use the RAW datatype, NT won't go through the time-consuming and CPU-intensive process of creating enhanced metafiles when printing. Go to Start/Set tings/Printers, right-click on a printer, select Properties and the General tab. Click on the Print Processor button and select "Always spool RAW datatype." Printer Switch Settings Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation Some printers from Canon, Digital, Fujitsu, Mannesmann-Talley, Olivetti and Seikosha require specific DIP switch settings to work with NT 4.0. Check PRINTER.WRI in the WINNT directory for details. Previous 10 tips Next 10 tips Printing Voids Category: Windows NT All If Win95 print jobs are vanishing when you send them to an NT machine, the NT print processor might be set to NT EMF 1.003. You need to use the RAW data type to ensure compatibility with Win95. Open Start/Settings/Printers, right-click on the printer in question, then click on Properties. Open the General tab, select the Print Processor button and click on RAW. Prioritize Your Tasks Category: Windows NT All One of the most powerful NT features is the ability to run programs at different levels of priority. If you're always starting a program and later modifying its priority through the Task Manager, you can preset the priority by using the command-line START command in a batch file. Use START /LOW to start a program in the lowest possible priority; /NORMAL and /HIGH can be used to set default priority or high priority. If you set /REALTIME priority, the program will use as much of the available CPU as possible, but this can choke your system-and you must be logged in as Administrator to use it. Put an End to STOP Messages Category: Windows NT All Windows NT STOP messages are some of the worst problems that can confront NT users. Two common STOPs, 0x00000077 and 0x0000007A, often occur when NT can't load a page file record into RAM. There are many possible causes for this. The value of the second hexadecimal parameter in the STOP message can offer a clue: - 0xC000009A: STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES Caused by exhausting the non-paged pool resources; make sure your paging file is present and valid. - 0xC000009C: STATUS_DEVICE_DATA_ERROR Generally due to a bad block on the drive; run CHKDSK with error checking turned on. - 0xC000009D: STATUS_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED Caused by bad or loose cabling, termination, or a controller not seeing the drive; make sure everything is plugged in and powered on. - 0xC000016A: STATUS_DISK_OPERATION_FAILED Also caused by bad block on the drive. - 0xC0000185: STATUS_IO_DEVICE_ERROR Caused by improper termination or bad cabling on SCSI devices; make sure your cables aren't defective or loose, and that they don't have broken pins. Put Page File on a Speedy Drive Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance If you have more than one hard disk, you should put your page file either at the start or end of the fastest disk-preferably in its own partition. Quick Access to Explorer Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Want a quick and painless way to access the Windows NT Explorer on a stock NT Server Desktop? Simply right-click your mouse on top of the Start button and select Explore. If you have a Windows keyboard, you can press WinKey+E to do the same thing. Quick and Dirty Messaging Category: Windows NT All A great way to get the attention of people in your workgroup or domain is to use the NET SEND * message command to send a message to everyone in you r local network. You can also substitute a machine name for the asterisk to get a message to a particular person. (Note: The Messenger Service must be running on all NT machines for this to work.) Quick Command Prompt Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Create a shortcut for fast access to a command prompt by modifying the Command Prompt icon on the Start menu. Open WINNT\USERNAME\START MENU\PROGRAMS and select the Command Prompt icon. Under Properties, place your cursor in the Shortcut key box and press Ctrl+Shift+D to have Windows NT make the entries for you. Click on OK. Quick Directory Changes Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface You can change directories faster at an NT command prompt by using wild cards within the names typed on the command line. For example, type CD\prog* to move quickly to the old standby Program Files folder. Quick Printer Access Category: Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Gain faster access to your installed printers by placing Printers on the Start menu. In Explorer, browse to the %SYSTEMROOT%\PROFILES\ALL USERS\START MENU folder. Create a new folder here by typing Printers. {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}. RAS Nasties Category: Windows NT All If you're failing to establish any type of communication while using Remote Access Service (RAS) to connect to the Internet, there may be a conflict in NT networking caused by the presence of both a network card and a loopback adapter driver. To correct this, open Control Panel/Network/Adapters from the Start menu. If you see a network card and the loopback adapter, remove the loopback adapter and reboot your system. Rebuild Directories Category: Windows NT All Large directory trees-especially those more than three levels deep-on an NTFS drive can slow down file transfers. Defragging doesn't solve the problem completely; you need to rebuild the trees from scratch. Copy the directory tree to a new directory (which puts the whole directory structure together in one block), delete the original, rename the copy to match the original and then defrag NT. Rebuild Icons Category: Windows NT All To rebuild all your Desktop icons in a few seconds, find the ShellIconCache file in your main Windows NT directory, then delete it. Log off and log back on again, and your icons should be rebuilt from scratch. The ShellIconCache file holds copies of all the Desktop object's icons for speedy redraws and can occasionally get corrupted. Reconcilable Differences Category: Windows NT All Because NT and Windows 95 have several architectural differences, some Win95 hardware and software doesn't work with NT. For a complete list of NT-compatible products, visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/thirdparty/winlogo/default.htm . Refreshing New Look Category: Windows NT All If your NT video driver doesn't support the Refresh Frequency drop-down list in the Display Properties/Settings window, you can still change the refresh rate through the Re gistry. In KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ HardwareProfiles\Current\System\CurrentControlSet\Services look for the device name of your video driver (an S3 brand video system, for instance, would have the subkey S3). Expand that key, and in the Device0 subkey, add the string DefaultSettings.Vrefresh . For the value, use the default refresh rating you want to set, such as 60 for 60Hz. Be sure to use a value that your monitor can support at the given resolution. Registry Damage Control Category: Windows NT All NT has an escape hatch for botched Registry edits. Anytime you make a change to your Registry that doesn't work, reboot NT and use the "Last known good configuration" selection that appears during startup. This reverses the changes. Relocate the Log Category: Windows NT All If you've got your swap file located on a different drive or partition than your main directory, you can get an additional performa nce boost by moving NT's log files to the swap file's drive or partition. Run the Registry Editor (regedit) and change the following keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet Services\EventLog\Application HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet Services\EventLog\Security HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet Services\EventLog\System Edit the "File" STRING value in each key to reflect where you want to put the new logs. Reboot for the changes to take effect. Remember the Last Time Category: Windows NT All Find out the last time NT Workstation 4.0 was started on a computer. At the Command Prompt type net statistics workstation and press Enter. The first line tells you when the system was last started. If the statistics run so long that you can't see the first line, type net statistics workstation |more to make the output pause at the end of the first page. (Note: This tip also works with NT Server. Just replace workstation with server.) Remote Control Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Maintenance You can manage a remote server from any NT system. Launch Server Manager from the Administrative Tools group and select View/Servers for a list of servers. Resolving Hardware Conflicts Category: Windows NT All The Windows NT Diagnostic tool helps resolve IRQ address conflicts between hardware devices. Simply launch the tool and interrogate the server. Next, use the Resources tab to see if another device is using the same IRQ. Resolving RAS Riddles Category: Windows NT All If you use Remote Access Services (RAS) on Windows NT and receive the error RAS error-TCPIP CP Error 2 ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND, you might have an invalid adapter entry in the Registry. This can also happen if you try to display or remove the adapter in the Network Control Panel; the adapter will be unavailable, and have no description or a number description, such as "(10)." Remove the invalid adapter by deleting the following Registry keys, where adapter is the name of the adapter: - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT \CurrentVersion\NetworkCards\number - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet \Enum\Root\Legacy_adapter - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Services\adapter - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\adapter To find out if the adapter you need to delete is under a number key (as in the first example), simply expand the key; the adapter's name should be listed as a subkey. Reboot. In some cases, you might have to uninstall and reinstall RAS, other adapters or other protocols. Restore the Inbox Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface If you want to restore a deleted Inbox, edit: KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace. Go to Edit/New/Key and enter a Key Name of {00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}, leaving Class blank. Select this key and Add Value, leaving Value Name blank. Set the REG_SZ string to Inbox. Rollout Tools Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation If you need to deploy NT on several desktops, use the Windows NT Setup Manager from the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit. This tool saves time by performing unattended NT installations. Room to Grow Category: Windows NT All Short of adding more RAM, creating more Virtual Disk space is the easiest way to improve NT's performance. You can adjust your Virtual Disk space simply by clicking on Control Panel/System/Performance/Change. Saftey Tip Category: Windows NT All To create a backup copy of NT Server's Registry, go to Start/Run, type regedt32 and press Enter. Highlight the name of the first HKEY folder and select Registry/Export Registry File. This will export the file to a folder of your choice. Repeat this process for each file you want to export. Save Early, Save Often Category: Windows NT All Save your Desktop arrangement often by pressing F5 when your cursor is on the Desktop. NT doesn't autosave the Desktop orientation the way Windows 95 does, so an abnormal shutdown can cause you to lose your icon placement. Save Your Config First Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Maintenance Windows NT Utilities Before making any changes using the Disk Administrator tool (WINDISK.EXE), save the current configuration. Insert a blank formatted floppy, and select Configuration/Save from the Partition menu. If anything goes wrong, you can easily restore your original settings by choosing Partition/Configuration/Restore. Save Your Desktop Settings Category: Windows NT All If you've ever crashed Explorer and lost some recent Desktop modifications, you've already discovered that the Desktop settings are only saved automatically when you exit Windows NT in a normal fashion. You can save the current Desktop settings at any time by selecting an object on the Desktop and pressing the F5 key. Save Your Searches Category: Windows NT All Searches done through NT's Find utility (invoked from the Start button and Explorer) can be saved and reused later. The next time you conduct a search, click on Save Search in the File menu to create a Desktop icon. Double-clicking on the icon runs the same search again whenever you need it. Screen-Saver Security Category: Windows NT All To activate a password-protected screen saver, right-click on NT Server's Desktop, select Properties, click on the S creen Saver tab and select a screen saver. Next, check Password Protected and click on Change to enter a password. Screensaver Shortcuts Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface If you want to fire up a screensaver from a shortcut icon, try this. Edit HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows; select the Programs value and then choose String from the Edit menu. Add the SCR extension to the string, so the string looks something like this: "exe com bat pif cmd scr." Close RegEdit, log off, log back on and make shortcuts to your favorite screensavers. Make sure the command line for the screensavers uses the /S switch. See It Like An Expert Category: Windows NT All NT veterans may find some of Windows NT Explorer's default settings annoying in version 4.0. To set up an "expert's view," start Explorer (from Star t/Programs) and select View/Options. Click on the Show All Files radio button to avoid hiding system files, check the boxes for "Display the full path in the title bar," "Display compressed file and folders with alternate color" and "Include description bar for right and left panes." Then click on OK. Top it off by selecting View/Details. What you'll see is close to the NT 3.51 File Manager-a great improvement over the defaults for experienced users. SendTo Secrets, NT Edition Category: Windows NT All You can use any of the SendTo tips in this month's Win9x WinTips section in NT as well. Just reference this directory when looking for your SendTo folder: \WINNT\PROFILES\\SENDTO, where is your log-on name. Server Exploration Category: Windows NT All Right-click on My Computer and choose Explore to launch Windows NT Explorer. Set Services Start-Up Order Category: Windows NT All You can configure a service to start up based on the completion of one or more other services. To do this, start RegEdit and edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services key. Scroll to the first service that you want to control and highlight it. In the right-hand pane you'll find a DependOnService entry. Double-click on it and add a service. If DependOnService is not present, add the value DependOnService in the right-hand pane and type REG_MULTI_SZ. Type the exact name of the service as found elsewhere in the Service tree, followed by two nulls (00 in hex). If you wish to add multiple values, each one should be in a separate DependOnService entry. For an example of service dependencies, if you have RemoteAccess installed, double-click on its DependOnService entry. You'll see that it depends on LanmanServer, RasMan, NetBios and NetBT. Take a look at NetBT, and you'll see that it depends on Tcpip. If you look at Tcpip, you'll see that it has no services that it depends on. Share Across The Web Category: Windows NT All If you have Microsoft Internet Information Server 2.0 or greater installed, the Properties sheet for all folders will contain a WWW tab that lets you share a specific folder across the Web. Keep in mind that unless you have directory browsing enabled in IIS, folders that don't have HTML files or a properly named index file will report they have nothing in them. Share SCSI on a Budget Category: Windows NT All Here's a sneaky way to share a single SCSI device between two NT machines. Connect the device to the primary PC and then boot the system. After the boot finishes, turn off the SCSI device, unplug it and the n plug it into the secondary PC and boot that system. Whenever you need the SCSI device on either PC, shut it off, switch it over to the system you want and turn it back on. Note that this isn't advisable for a device that forms the middle of a SCSI chain, and any removable-media drives using this trick should be properly ejected first. Short Circuit Power Down Message Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry Windows NT User Interface Sick of that "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message? Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, and change PowerDownAfterShutdown (REG_SZ) to 1. This only works if your Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) supports it (most Service Pack 3 HALs will). Shut Down Pesky Apps Category: Windows NT All Some applications take forever to shut down. If you want to kill applications faster-including balky 16-bit apps-edit HKEY_USER\YourUserId\Control Panel\Desktop and add the value AutoEndTasks (REG_SZ). Set it to 1; all tasks that don't immediately respond to a shutdown notice will be killed. Another value in the same key, WaitToKillAppTimeout (REG_SZ), specifies how long NT waits before killing an app. The default is 20,000 milliseconds (20 seconds), but you can reduce this to five seconds (5,000 milliseconds). Shut Down Security Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry You could set your NT sytem to allow shutdown without anybody being logged on. Just set the string value HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\ShutDownWithoutLogon. If you set the value to 1 then the Ctrl+Alt+Del menu shows a Shut Down button even when nobody is logged on. If you set the value to 0 then the button is grayed out. Shut Off Shut Down Button Category: Windows NT All You can disable the Shut Down button to prevent unauthorized users from shutting off an NT workstation. Open the Registry Editor to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE, select Edit/Find and search Values for ShutdownW. When the ShutdownWithoutLogon value appears highlighted, press, and change the Value data to 0 and press Enter again. To see if Shut Down is disabled, press Ctrl+Alt+Del, click on Logoff and OK. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del again to display the Log on Information dialog box. The Shut Down button should be disabled. Silence the Speaker Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Need silence from your PC? Click on the little yellow speaker on your taskbar and check the Mute box. Sizing Up Page File Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance For best performance, set the initial page file size to 12MB more than the physical RAM in your system. Set the maximum page file size to double the installed RAM. To set the page file size, right-click on My Computer and select Properties/Performance. Click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Adjust Initial and Maximum sizes, click on Set. SP4 Power Trip Category: Windows NT All SP4 might cause third-party power-management programs on NT Workstation to function incorrectly. Under SP4, NT writes a time stamp to the hard drive every 5 minutes; this helps the system approximate the last time it shut down. To disable the time stamp, launch RegEdit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion. Add a Reliability key (unless it's present) with a REG_DWORD class. Select the Reliability subkey, add a value name of TimeStampInterval as a type REG_DWORD, set the data value to 0 and reboot. Space Saver Category: Windows NT All NTFS lets you compress and decompress individual files. Launch Windows NT Explorer, and right-click on any file or folder. Next, select Properties and choose Compress. You can also compress folders this way. You must enable compression on the partition you're compressing. To do this, launch the Disk Adminis trator, right-click on the applicable NTFS partition and select Properties. Check Compress in the resulting dialog box. Start It Up Category: Windows NT All If you can't see a device driver or service through Control Panel, you can still edit its start-up state. Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services for the service in question, and select the Start (REG_DWORD) value for it: 0 (Boot): Components of the driver stack for the boot (start-up) volume must be loaded by the kernel loader. 1 (System): Lo aded by I/O subsystem. The driver is loaded at kernel initialization. 2 (Automatic): Loaded by Service Control Manager. The service is loaded or started automatically. 3 (Manual): The service does not start until the user manually starts it. 4 (Disabled): The service won't be started, but it won't be deleted from the system. Start Stopped Services Category: Windows NT All Multiple installations of the same software sometimes leave multiple Registry entries. This can cause services that normally stop and start automatically to just stop and not restart. The best cure is editing the Registry to delete the multiple entries, but the functions of many entries (or even which installation they cover) aren't particularly clear. REGCLEAN.EXE, a utility on the Microsoft Web site, removes duplicate entries. You can often restart an application quickly by choosing Start/Control Panel/Services to restart the service. Stay Alert! Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Utilities Automate alerts by launching Alerter in Control Panel/Service and setting it to Automatic. Next, launch the Server Manager from the Administrative Tools group. Select the server you wish to send alerts to, and Computer/Properties from the title bar. Click on the Alerts button and type the user name or computer name in the "New computer or username" box, then click on Add. Stealth Logons Category: Windows NT All By default, Windows NT displays the last user name entered in the Logon Information dialog box. To hide that name, open the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and change the REG_SZ value DontDisplayLastUserName to 0. Still Offline Category: Windows NT All If you're an MSN user mulling a move from Win95 to NT Workstation, wait! MSN still isn't available for NT 4.0, and it's unclear whether MSN support will arrive in NT 5.0. Stop Copying! Category: Windows NT All If you copy files over a slow network link and get the message "Cannot complete input operation," your session probably timed out. You can increase the amount of time NetBIOS allows before timing out by editing the Registry at HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameter. Double-click on SESSTIMEOUT and set the REG_DWORD value to a number between 10 and 65,535 (the default value is 45 seconds). Stop STOP Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation A STOP error during boot is an unsettling sight. Fortunately, some of STOP errors have easy fixes. STOP c0000135 (Unable To Locate DLL) is seen when a critical system DLL gets trashed, whether through a virus or because of a malicious or clumsy user. If the file is missing from WINNT\SYSTEM32, you can copy it back from the original CD-ROM or another NT system. Stopped at the Starting Gate Category: Windows NT All If you receive a STOP error during boot-up, try this fix. The error "STOP c0000135 (Unable To Locate DLL)" occurs when a critical system DLL file gets trashed. The file may be missing from %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32, in which case it can be copied back from the original CD-ROM or another NT installation. If that doesn't work, the Software Hive of your Registry may be corrupt (see the next tip for more on repairing your Registry). Stretch that DOS Box Category: Windows NT All You can increase your MS-DOS window size with the MODE command-line utility. From an MS-DOS prompt, enter mode con lines=x to increase the vertical size of the window, where x is the number of lines to display (25, 43 or 50). To increase the horizontal size of the window, specify mode con cols=x , where x is the number of columns to display (40 or 80) Stubborn Server: Error 1058 Category: Windows NT All Error 1058 appears when your Windows NT server won't start, whether you try running Services from Control Panel or enter the command net start server from a command prompt. You may also find that your Hardware Profile (Control Panel/System) is unavailable. To fix the problem, open the Registry and delete the following keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Enum\ Root\LEGACY_BROWSER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Enum\Root\LEGACY_LANMANSERVER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Enum\Root\LEGACY_MESSENGER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Enum\Root\LEGACY_SRV. Superior Management Category: Windows NT All If you link NT workstations to Novell IntranetWare servers, check out Novell's IntranetWare client for NT Workstation ( http://www.novell.com/intranetware/roducts/clients/clientwinnt/ ). It includes a utility that lets you manage NT and IntranetWare user accounts from Novell Directory Services. Surgery on System Services Category: Windows NT All You can manually delete a system service, or delete an entry to a service that no longer exists, by opening the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services key in the Registry and looking for the service you want to delete. Before you delete it, o pen the key and check the actual name of the service to make sure you're deleting the right one. Swap Your Swap File Settings Category: Windows NT All The best place for a swap file is at the front of a hard drive, on an NTFS partition. If you're only usi ng Windows NT on a given machine, create a small partition at the front of the hard drive to hold the boot and swap files. Many partition-editing programs, such as PartitionMagic, will let you create and rearrange partitions to suit your needs. However, you may need to edit your NT BOOT.INI file to reflect where your system files are after making such partition changes. The partition(x) portion of every line in the BOOT.INI file indicates which partition of the indicated hard disk contains the needed files; if you change your NT partition from the first partition on the hard disk to the second, you'd change partition(1) to partition(2) Sweet Sounds Category: Windows NT All Using a Sound Blaster card with Plug-and-Play support under Windows NT requires a special driver that disables PnP and manually sets the card's configuration. Download the latest Sound Blaster driver from http://www.creaf.com . Swift Apps Switcher Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface Although the taskbar has a great design, Task Switcher, available in all Windows versions, is still the fastest way to switch among running programs or open windows. Just hold down the Alt key and press Tab repeatedly to cycle through running programs. The selector box shows an icon for each program or window; a square outline around an icon makes it active when you release the Alt key. Synchronize with One Line Category: Windows NT All If you make changes to your NT Domain's Security Accounts Manager, those changes only affect backup domain controllers until there's an automatic replication event. If you want to force synchronization, fire up a command line on the primary domain controller machine and type net accounts /sync . Take Command Of NT Help Category: Windows NT All You can type help from a command line to display a list of commands and type command/? to get specific command help, but NT also has a command help file. The file SYSTEM32\NTCMDS.HLP provides a handy reference in a help window. You can create a shortcut and place it on your Desktop or Start menu. Take Command of Tasks Category: Windows NT All Use the NT Scheduler service and the AT command scheduler to automate backups and other operations. Create a system account called Scheduler and grant this account appropriate system privileges for the tasks you want to automate. For a backup command, make this account a member of the Backup Operators group. Next, create a batch file that performs the required operations. After fully testing your script, use the AT command to schedule its operation at any desired interval. Take Root Category: Windows NT All Tired of folder views in My Computer? Start an Explorer window rooted in the folder of your choice by creating a shortcut with the following command line %windir%\Explorer /e , /root , drive\path . For example, to start Explorer rooted in the folder Program Files on drive D:, type Explorer /e , /root , " d:\program files ". Take the Right Router Category: Windows NT All Instead of buying expensive router hardware, consider using Microsoft's new Routing and Remote Access Service for NT. It requires NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 3 and is available free at Microsoft's Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/info/ Routing%26RASdown.htm . Taskbar Positioning Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface By default, the taskbar runs along the bottom of your screen. To move it to another edge, click on a blank area of the taskbar and drag it toward the edge you have in mind. When the mouse pointer gets close enough, the taskbar will automatically move into its new spot. Teamwork Category: Windows NT All You can share documents with workgroup members by placing a shortcut on your Desktop to their Desktop folders. In NT, you'll find the Desktop folder at \profiles\UserName\Desktop. Thaw Out Your Mouse Category: Windows NT All If you frequently get a frozen mouse or keyboard, or spurious key clicks, you might need to adjust the following Registry entries, based on the type of mouse you have (all values are type REG_DWORD). If you're using a Bus Mouse, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Services\Busmouse\Parameter and look for the MouseDataQueueSize. The default size is 100; double it until your problem is fixed. With a PS/2 mouse, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services \i8042prt\Parameters. The defaults KeyboardDataQueueSize and MouseDataQueueSize are 100; double them until your mouse starts behaving. If your mouse clicks without touching the mouse, increase the MouseSynchIn100ns value-the default is 20,000,000. If your keyboard keeps freezing, increase the PollStatusIterations value. The default is 1. The Deal with PC Cards Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Installation NT 4.0 includes PC Card (PCMCIA) support, but drivers for those devices only load at boot time. If you power down the system, it will lose track of the device. You can avoid reboots by disabling Power Management features on NT systems with PC Cards installed. The Ultimate NT Hack, Part I Category: Windows NT All Every so often, we get mail from a user whose NT Administrator account has been locked out due to a lost password. There is a way to recover the Administrator account, but it's tricky (we've dedicated the next four tips to it, in fact) and requires physical access to the server. First, you must have the following: -- A regular user account that can log on locally to your NT machine. (If you already have an alternate installation of NT on the system to be recovered, skip ahead to the command prompt instruction in Part II.) -- The NT CD and s etup disks. Use the winnt /ox command to create the setup disks from the CD. -- Enough room to install a temporary copy of NT (Workstation will suffice, even on a Primary Domain Controller). -- The latest Service Pack ( http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/PNP281.asp ). The Ultimate NT Hack, Part II Category: Windows NT All First, boot up from the setup floppies you created and install a copy of NT in the \TEMPNT directory on any drive. Add the latest Service Pack. Make sure the Scheduler service is running and boot the alternate installation. At a command prompt, type AT HH:MM /INTERACTIVE CMD /K where HH:MM is 10 minutes from the current time, in 24-hour format. This opens a user- interactive command prompt that will allow you to log on. Setting it for 10 minutes should give you enough time to do the recovery operation. The Ultimate NT Hack, Part III Category: Windows NT All Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Services\Schedule key in the Registry. Double-click on Schedule and select the subkey under Schedule. Double-click on the Schedule value name in the right-hand pane and copy the REG_BINARY string to the Clipboard. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and Load Hive from the Registry menu. When prompted for a hive file, go to your original installation's SYSTEM32\CONFIG folder and select the System hive. When you're prompted for a Key Name to mount the hive under, type ORIGSYS. When ORIGSYS appears under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, open the Select key. Write down the value for the Current entry (usually 0). The Ultimate NT Hack, Part IV Category: Windows NT All Browse to ORIGSYS\ControlSet00n\Services\Schedule and make sure the value for Start is 0x2. Add a new subkey named 001 under Schedule and add to it the type REG_SZ with the value CMD /K; add the type REG_BINARY with the Current value you recorded from the previous step. Select ORIGSYS and Unload Hive from the Registry menu. Under Control Panel/System/Startup/Shutdown, select the Startup option that boots your original NT installation. The order in which the items are listed in the drop-down menu is the same as it appeared in BOOT.INI, so the original boot will probably be the first entry. Shut down and restart, booting your original installation. The Ultimate NT Hack, Part V Category: Windows NT All Finally, log on as your user account and wait for the scheduled event (as detailed in Part II) to take place. When the command prompt opens, it will be under the context of the Schedule user (the user who set the schedule), as either the System account or an administrative account. If this machine is not a Primary Domain Controller, type MUSRMGR.EXE. If it is, type USRMGR.EXE. (If you get an error, click Yes and type your domain name.) Set the Administrator password and log off. Log back on as Administrator. You can delete your temporary NT installation. Themes Like Old Times Category: Windows NT All If you have both NT and Windows 95 with the Plus Pack loaded on your C: drive, you can use your Desktop Themes under NT 4.0. Find THEMES.CPL and THEMES.EXE in Win95's C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and copy them to C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32. Reboot your system. A Desktop Themes icon will appear in Control Panel. Throw C aution To the Wind Category: Windows NT All You can log on automatically to Windows NT 4.0, if you don't care about security. Download Microsoft's PowerToy Tweak UI for NT ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/powertoy.htm ) and go to the Network tab, where you can specify the UserID and password. But be aware that this will mean your system is no longer secure. Trouble with PPTP? Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Troubleshooting If you have Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) installed on your computer, you might receive errors saying "The NetBIOS name of the computer to which you are attempting to connect is not resolved," or "System error 53 has occurred. The network path was not found." This often happens when your IP traffic goes through a dial-up connection with a path that contains routers and firewalls blocking User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports 137/138 or TCP port 139 (required for NetBIOS traffic). A few solutions: Use the NetBEUI protocol for your PPTP tunnel in addition to, or instead of, TCP/IP. Add a second IP address to the NIC in the PPTP server (Advanced TCP/IP Properties) and have the clients use that IP address. Add a second NIC to the PPTP server and have all your clients use that IP address. Trouble with PPTP? Category: Windows NT All If you have Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) installed on your computer, you might receive errors saying "The NetBIOS name of the computer to which you are attempting to connect is not resolved," or "System error 53 has occurred. The network path was not found." This often happens when your IP traffic goes through a dial-up connection with a path that contains routers and firewalls blocking User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports 137/138 or TCP port 139 (required for NetBIOS traffic). A few solutions: - Use the NetBEUI protocol for your PPTP tunnel in addition to, or instead of, TCP/IP. - Add a second IP address to the NIC in the PPTP server (Advanced TCP/IP Properties) and have the clients use that IP address. - Add a second NIC to the PPTP server and have all your clients use that IP address. Turn Off Animations Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Registry You can turn off animation that shows windows popping to and from the taskbar by adding a string value named MinAnimate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics key. Set the string value to 0 to turn off animations. Two-NIC Nightmare Category: Windows NT All If your workstation service fails to start when two NICs are installed, you may have the NetBEUI protocol bound to both NICs. This causes both cards to attempt to register the same NetBIOS name with WINS. To avoid this problem, disable NetBEUI on one of the adapters. Launch Control Panel's Network applet and select the Bindings tab. Click on Adapters in the Show Bindings For box. Click on the plus sign (+) next to the second NIC, then click on NetBEUI Protocol and disable; shut down and restart. Undocumented IF ELSE Category: Windows NT All Windows NT supports the IF (TrueCommand) ELSE (FalseCommand) syntax, so you can use it when writing command-line batch files. Here's an example: if not exist C:\BOOT.INI (@echo don't reboot) else (shutdown.exe) Update Your Index Category: Windows NT All NT Server 4.0 ships with Index Server 1.0. You can download version 1.1 from http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/info/indexsamples.htm . Use Safe Drivers Category: Windows NT All New drivers that make SCSI drives go faster are constantly appearing, even on the same hardware foundation. A SCSI interface's vendor is always the best source for SCSI drivers, but be careful before applying the drivers. Unlike IDE and EIDE drivers, SCSI drivers might not be interchangeable. It's possible to inadvertently d estroy disk data without realizing it's happening. Check with the SCSI interface maker before applying any drivers. Use SCSI, not IDE Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance Go with SCSI interfaces for disk drives on NT. SCSI has a greater effect on an NT system than on a Win9x system, and usually taxes the CPU less than even the super-fast Ultra DMA controllers. Use Smart RAID Category: Windows NT All Windows NT Performance If possible, use multichannel hardware-accelerated disk controllers for RAID, or devices that use Intelligent I/O or I2O technology. This offloads I/O processing to dedicated CPUs on the controllers themselves. Vanishing Shares Category: Windows NT All Sometimes printer shares get "lost," especially after a reboot, but there's a way to make them reappear. Open the Printers Control Panel, right-click on the printer in question, click on Sharing and select Not Shared to turn it off. Click on Shared to re-enable it. You can also try sharing again with a slightly different name to help restore the option, but it means any clients connected to that printer need to reconnect under a new name. Try that variant only if the problem is exceptionally stubborn. Web Server Warning Category: Windows NT All If you're an NT Web server user, beware of a potential security loophole involving allegedly "secure" files with long names. Some server programs can be commanded to deliver such files by referring to the DOS 8.3-compatible version of the filename instead of the long filename. To get around this, rename the file to an 8.3-compatible name (with security explicitly enforced on that filename). Internet Information Server (IIS) and Apache do not suffer from this problem. What a Bargain! Category: Windows NT All Before you buy an HTML editor, pop NT Server 4.0 into your CD-ROM drive and search for Microsoft FrontPage. That's right-it comes free with NT Server 4.0. What's On the Menu? Category: Windows NT All If you have Windows NT and Win95 installed on your computer, the Windows 95 selection on the boot menu might read Microsoft Windows instead of Windows 95. If this disturbs or confuses you, change it. Find the Boot.ini file on your root directory and remove its read-only attributes by typing attrib c:\boot.ini-r-s at the command prompt. Then go into a text editor, open Boot.ini and change the "Microsoft Windows" line to "Microsoft Windows 95" or whatever you want to call it. Just make sure to put the new menu entry in quotes. Then save the file, go to the Command Prompt and type attrib c:\boot.ini +r +s. When NTDETECT Fails Category: Windows NT All If you change the size of your boot partition to less than 32MB, either with Disk Administrator or a third-party product like Partition-It or PartitionMagic, you may get an NTDETECT Failed error if the partition is FAT. Since NTDETECT uses a different standard to examine the number of sectors on smaller disk partitions, it's best to keep the boot partition above 32MB. When SCSI Drops a Letter Category: Windows NT All When you install SCSI drives under NT, they often lose their drive letter after a reboot. This usually happens if your boot device is IDE, the drive in question (usually removable) does not contain Windows NT, and the device driver for your SCSI adapter is set to start up in boot mode. To fix this, set the SCSI adapter driver to start up in system mode. Warning: Don't use this tip if your system boots from a SCSI device-it will prevent proper booting. Whodunit Category: Windows NT All NT has a couple of nifty Easter eggs. Start NT 4.0's 3D Text (OpenGL) screen saver module by select-ing Properties from the Desktop's Context menu and clicking on the Screen Saver tab. Select 3D Text (OpenGL) from the list and click on the Settings button. Type I love NT, select OK and click on the Preview button, and the screen -saver text will say, "good?" Click on Settings again, type not evil, select OK and then click on the Preview button. A 3D screen saver will display the names of Windows NT 4.0 programmers. If you type volcano, select OK and click on the Preview button, you'll see the names of volcanoes in 3D. Win Key Clues Category: Windows NT All If you have a keyboard with a Windows function key, press Win+M to minimize all active windows; Win+Shift+M undoes the minimize. You can also use Win+Break to launch the System Properties p anel. Win16 Protection Category: Windows NT All To run a Win16 app in its own address space, start Windows NT Explorer, find the program you wish to run and create a shortcut to that program on your Desktop. Right-click on the program shortcut and select Properties. O n the Shortcut tab, activate the check box labeled "Run in separate memory space" and click on OK. Windows Desktop/Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface TASK SHORTCUT View an item's properties Alt+Enter or Alt+double-click Delete an item without placing it in Recycle Bin Shift+Delete Rename an item F2 Select all items Ctrl+A Copy a file Ctrl while dragging a file Create a shortcut Ctrl+Shift while dragging a file Refresh a window's contents F5 Bypass AutoPlay when inserting a CD Shift while inserting the CD Open Find: All Files F3 Windows Key Display Find: All Files Windows Key+F Display Find: Computer Ctrl+Windows Key+F Display Help Windows Key+F1 Display the Run command Windows Key+R Display the Start menu Windows Key Display the System Properties dialog box Windows Key+Pause Display Windows Explorer Windows Key+E Minimize or restore all windows Windows Key+D Minimize all open windows Windows Key+M Undo minimize all windows Shift+Windows Key+M Cycle through buttons on the taskbar Windows Key+Tab Open an item's Context menu Application Key Windows Explorer Folder Keyboard Shortcuts Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface TASK SHORTCUT Close the selected folder and all parent folders Shift while clicking on the Close button (My Computer only) Move backward to a previous view Alt+Left Arrow Move forward to a previous view Alt+Right Arrow View the folder one level up Backspace Collapse the current selection if it's expanded Left Arrow Select the parent folder Left Arrow Collapse the selected folder Num Lock+- (minus sign) Expand the current selection if it's collapsed Right Arrow Select the first subfolder Right Arrow Expand all folders below the current selection Num Lock+* (asterisk) Expand the selected folder Num Lock++ (plus sign) Switch among left and right panes and menu bars F6 Windows General Keyboard Shortcuts Category: Windows 95 All Windows 95 User Interface Windows 98 All Windows 98 User Interface Windows NT All Windows NT User Interface TASK SHORTCUT Activate the menu bar in programs F10 Close the current window in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs Ctrl+F4 Close the active window or program Alt+F4 Display the current window's system menu Alt+Spacebar Minimize active window Alt+Spacebar+N Maximize active window Alt+Spacebar+X Restore active window Alt+Spacebar+R Close active window Alt+Spacebar+C Display the Context menu for a selected item Shift+F10 Display the Start menu Ctrl+Esc Display the system menu for MDI programs Alt+ -(hyphen) Display the Properties dialog box for a selected item Alt+Enter Minimize all windows Alt+M (when taskbar is selected) Select a menu item or dialog option containing underlined letter Alt+[underlined letter] Cycle through taskbar programs or windows Alt+Esc Use Task Switcher to cycle through open programs or windows Alt+Tab Reverse direction of cycle through Task Switcher Alt+Shift+Tab Open a selected folder or program Ctrl+Enter Open a selected folder as a two-paned Explorer window Ctrl+Shift+Enter Display Close Program dialog box Ctrl+Alt+Del Dialog Box Display Help on a selected dialog box item F1 Cancel the current task Esc Click on a highlighted button Spacebar or Enter Select or clear a highlighted check box Spacebar Click on a highlighted option Spacebar Move forward through options Tab Move backward through options Shift+Tab Move forward through tabs Ctrl+Tab Move backward through tabs Ctrl+Shift+Tab In a "Save as or open" dialog box, open a selected folder one level up Backspace In a "Save as or open" dialog box, open Save In or Look In F4 Refresh the "Save as or open" dialog box F5 Windows Key Killer Category: Windows NT All To add yet another security lock to your system, you can disable the WinKey that comes with most keyboards. Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\Keyboard Layout in the Registry. Add Scancode Map as a type REG_BINARY and use this as the value: 00000000000000000300000000005BE000005CE000000000 (that's 17 zeroes, 10 zeroes, five zeroes and nine zeroes). Reboot your PC. Windows NT Diagnostics Category: Windows NT All Track down system conflicts or find unused I/O interrupts in a hurry by using the Windows NT Diagnostics program. Click on Run and type WINMSD on the command line. Under the Resources tab, all system peripheral devices are sorted using various parameters, such as IRQ channel, I/O p ort or DMA channel. Click on an option to view your detected system devices. If you double-click on a device you'll be presented with the individual properties as currently defined. Windows NT: Rated R (Restricted) Category: Windows NT All Prevent user tampering by restricting the use of system features. Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Policies and add a System subkey. In it, you can add REG_DWORD values for each to change sy stem policies. A DWORD of 0 (default) means disabled; 1, enabled: - DisableTaskMgr: Prevents TASKMGR.EXE from running (NT 4.0 with Service Pack 2 or greater only) - NoDispAppearancePage: Prevents users from changing system colors or color schemes - NoDispBackgroundPage: Prevents users from changing the Desktop wallpaper and backgrounds - NoDispCPL: Disables the Display option in Control Panel - NoDispScrSavPage: Removes the Screen Saver tab from Display Properties - NoDispSettingsPage: Removes the Settings and Plus tabs from Display Properties Work with a Safety Net Category: Windows NT All It's a good idea to always save your original configuration before doing anything with Disk Administrator. And it's easy to do. Go to Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/Disk Administrator, and choose Partition/Configuration/Save. Place a formatted floppy into your disk drive and click on OK. If anything goes wrong while using Disk Administrator, you can restore your original configuration by choosing Partition/Configuration/Restore and clicking on Yes. Your New Secret Identity Category: Windows NT All One of the best ways to keep intruders out of an NT system is to change the name of the Administrator account. Launch User Manager, highlight the Administrator account and select User/Rename to change it. (Don't choose an easily recognized word or name, and never choose the name of a registered user. A mix of letters and numbers is your best bet.) ZAK Can Leave You Helpless Category: Windows NT All You can disable online help on a particular workstation, but you need the Windows NT Zero Administration Kit (ZAK) to do it. From the ZAK, copy ZAK.HLP to %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\WINDOWS.HLP. When you try to run Help on that particular workstation, you'll receive this message: "The standard Windows NT 4.0 online Help has been disabled by your administrator."