SQL Server Magazine

In 1996, "Getting Started with NT" began life as "New to NT." Every month since then, I have offered advice about a variety of topics important to Windows NT systems administrators. This month, I summarize my top NT administrative practices for installation, configuration, networking, and troubleshooting. (For more detailed information about these subjects, see "Related Articles in Windows NT Magazine," page 174.) Next month and in subsequent months, I will shift the focus of this column to Windows 2000 (Win2K).

Develop Good NT Installation Habits
The most important recommendation I can make regarding installation is to spend the necessary time to get familiar with the unattended installation process. Then, you can script your installs to save time.

If you use software such as GHOST, you might find that you have problems with different network and video cards. These problems can arise if you have a collection of assorted computers or even nonstandard computers from one vendor. You will definitely experience a problem with SIDs if you simply copy a completed NT installation. A better choice is to use an image of an NT installation at the second reboot, just before NT starts collecting information about your computer. Then, you can complete the installation, make all the appropriate choices, and get a unique SID. At the very least, if you GHOST images of a full OS, use a SID changer software package. Don't leave duplicate SIDs in your system, because they will cause problems when you upgrade to Win2K.

Make a CD-ROM with images of as many network card driver disks as you can. Most of the network cards listed on the original NT 4.0 installation CD-ROM are 3 years old. NT either does not autodetect the newer ones or detects them as invalid cards. Copy the CD-ROM to your hard disk before you begin the NT installation on your GHOST reference computer. Regardless of which card is installed on the target computers, you will already have the drivers on the hard disk. You can always clean up this directory later.

Make an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) during or immediately after the installation. Some companies write the administrator password on this ERD and have a responsible person lock the disk in a safe. If your administrator were to change all the administrator-level passwords and leave the company, could you get back into your NT installation? If you had the original ERD, perhaps you could. You would have to restore the original SAM, thereby losing your current accounts database. But after you were connected, you could restore the SAM from a recent backup.

Simplify Software Installation
Use Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) Installer or a third-party software installer to simplify remote software installation for your users. Life will be much easier at the Help desk if all users have the same software version with the same options installed.

Keep Up After Installation
Be sure to update the ERD for each of your critical servers. At the least, run the Rdisk utility occasionally and update what is in the repair directory on the hard disk, even if you do not build an ERD every time. I recovered a system by restoring the repair directory from tape to another computer—to a separate location, of course—then copying the files onto a disk, which became my ERD.

Use NTFS on all your computers. Back in the early days of NT, many systems administrators made a small FAT partition for the boot files and stored NT files and data on NTFS partitions for security and recoverability. Being able to recover from boot problems with the old familiar DOS-based tools provided a certain comfort level. Now that administrators are more conversant with NT, leaving an unsecured partition on a hard disk does not make sense. This guideline is even more valid now that disk sizes are hitting the 20GB range and FAT is running out of steam.

Build an NT boot disk for your critical computers. If you are consistent about which drive and directory you use for NT, one NT boot disk will suffice for all your computers. For any server on which you have mirrored your NT files, you must have a boot disk that will boot to the mirror disk.

Install a second copy of NT on critical servers. Sean Daily recommends this technique in "Recovering from NT Startup Failures, Part 1," September 1999, and I have found the technique useful on several occasions. All you need is a basic, no-frills installation of NT Workstation or NT Server, preferably on a separate hard disk. If the main installation is damaged, you can boot to the backup copy and perform recovery from there.

Streamline Networking Processes
Reduce the number of protocols running on your network. Some administrators have never removed the old protocols from networks that have evolved from NetBEUI through Nwlink (IPX/SPX) to TCP/IP. Every extra protocol means more system overhead. For processes such as browsing, this overhead is especially heavy. In browsing, every computer with resources to share announces its presence on the network every 12 minutes on every protocol it has loaded. You do not need NetBEUI to run Microsoft products, as many people think. You do need NetBIOS, but that API works over TCP/IP.

Use DHCP to assign your network IP addresses. Screen 1 shows the setup for a DHCP server. Unless you have a very small network, keeping track of IP addresses can become a chore. DHCP automates the process and reduces the potential for error. You can install WINS and DNS on the same NT server to prepare for the transition to Win2K and dynamic DNS (DDNS). You can also use the DHCP service to configure your clients with the WINS and DNS server addresses.

Save Your Feet
You can administer NT remotely from a central location, often an NT workstation. Load the administration tools from the NT Server CD-ROM (\winnt cd\clients\srvtools) to administer the server-based services such as DHCP, WINS, and Domain user accounts. Most Microsoft BackOffice software, including SQL Server and SMS, has an interface that lets you administer it from a location other than the server on which the software resides.

   Prev. page   [1] 2     next page