Using a graphical user interface

1. From the Control Panel, open the System applet.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Under the System Startup heading, you can modify the default operating system and the amount of time the system waits before loading the default OS.
5. To change additional startup options on Windows Server 2003, you can click the Edit button to modify the boot.ini file.
6. Click OK until all of the windows are closed.

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If you maintain more than three or four servers, it can be difficult to distinguish them when you are logged onto the console or logged on with Terminal Services. And if you support multiple vendor models that have different hardware, it can be even more difficult to remember what is installed on each computer. Fortunately, there is a simple, yet elegant solution. Why not just put system information on the desktop background so that as soon as you log in, you can see how much memory is installed, view the disk configuration, find out how many CPUs are installed, etc.? The guys at Sysinternals have come through for us yet again by providing the BGInfo utility that can do exactly this. It is a highly customizable tool that lets you put just about anything you could think of on the desktop background.

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It is a common practice to move the default page file stored on the system root drive (typically C:) to a different disk to improve performance. The page files and system drive are frequently accessed by the operating system and separating them on different disks can improve performance. You may also want to increase the size of the page file or spread your page file across multiple volumes based on the needs of your system.

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Environment variables are very similar in concept to the variables you’d find in a programming language: there is a variable identifier and an associated value. This is extremely handy because it means that you don’t always have to know the exact path or name of certain settings on the system.

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The following command tests the secure channel for a computer:

> nltest /server:<ComputerName> /sc_query:<DomainName>

The following command resets the secure channel for a computer:

> nltest /server:<ComputerName> /sc_reset:<DomainName>

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