When you shut down or restart a Windows server, a signal is sent to all devices, services, and programs running on the system. This signal announces that the system is preparing to shut down so everything needs to close gracefully, if possible. A normal shutdown will wait for a response from all devices and processes to make sure they have saved any files and can close before proceeding with the shutdown. If you’ve ever had Notepad or Word open with an unsaved file, you’ve seen the message asking if you want to save the file before the application closes.

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You want to disable the Shutdown Tracker from running at system startup on lab or test systems because it is annoying. Shutdown Tracker is a new feature of Windows Server 2003 that prompts you to provide a description of the reason why a server is being shut down or restarted. If the server unexpectedly restarted, you are prompted during logon for this information.

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When you log into a Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 system for the first time, the Configure Your Server or Manage Your Server screens, respectively, are displayed. These screens are intended to make managing a server easier by providing links to install services and obtain help information. These screens are displayed for every user that logs on until the user checks the box on the screen to stop the screen from running at logon.

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In the early days of Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0, it wasn’t uncommon for servers to reboot or need to be rebooted on a regular basis. Applications were not as well behaved as they are today and the operating system wasn’t as stable. This changed with Windows 2000, when unexpected failures became much less common. But there were still a lot of hotfixes and patches to install on a regular basis, most of which required reboots. Hopefully Windows Server 2003 will continue the upward trend in availability and further reduce the number of reboots that are required.

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Microsoft operating systems have had a reputation for frequent crashes, which can cause the system to freeze and become unusable until it is rebooted. A crash is sometimes referred to as a system failure, bug check, stop error, or blue screen of death (for the blue screen that is displayed after the crash). System failures were especially common in the days of Windows 3.51 and Windows 9x. Fortunately, Microsoft has steadily improved in this area and now Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 are two of the most stable operating systems available. Nevertheless, Microsoft hasn’t been able to completely rid itself of occasional crashes due to bugs in the OS or bad third-party drivers.

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