[Editor's Note: Solve this month's Windows NT problem and get the chance to win $100 or a copy of one of the author's books about NT. Email your solutions (don't use an attachment) to challenge@winntmag.com. Include your full name, mailing address, and connection to NT (e.g., administrator, user). Because of the number of entries, we can't reply to all respondents. Look for the solution to this month's problem in the March issue.]
The IT staff at BigBiz like to play Scrabble when they have a break between users' Help desk calls. Because the staff consists of computer nerds, they changed the rules to allow technical acronyms.
After George won a particularly close game, he announced, "All the words I used are part of a theme, and I'll give the peanut butter sandwich I brought for lunch to anyone who can deduce that theme." Alice, who is the IT department's Windows 2000 (Win2K) expert, told George, "I don't want your soggy sandwich, but I know the answer."
Problem
The words George used include STACK, TRANSPORT, ARP, DATALINK, IHL, DATAGRAM, DDNS, and PORT. Explain what these terms have in common, and define any acronyms. We promise not to send you George's sandwich if you win.
SEPTEMBER WINNERS
Congratulations to A. Dallas Eschenauer of Arizona, who won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the September Reader Challenge, and to Robert Leopold of Atlanta, Georgia, who won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).
I enjoyed reading all the answers, and I was especially pleased to hear that many of you solved the problem quickly because of the knowledge you gained from one of my books or from Windows NT Magazine. Knowing we're providing valuable information makes all our jobs worthwhile.
Problem
Harry Helper says the NT System Policy Editor (SPE) is for lightweights. He scoffs at his colleagues when they use SPE, insisting that they'll never learn as much about NT as he has if they continue to use this shortcut tool. The lightweights challenged Harry Helper to complete the following two tasks without using SPE as quickly as they could complete the tasks with SPE.
- Display Glad you made it to work to users when they log on, and add the title Howdy to the message window.
- Disable Shut Down in the Logon Information dialog box for NT workstations.
Harry amazed the lightweights when he matched their efficiency without referring to any reference books.
List all the steps you take to complete tasks 1 and 2 without using SPE, and track how much time you spend completing the steps. (Don't forget to include the time you spend referring to any reference books.)
Solution
For both tasks, open a Registry editor and go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon Registry entry. For the first task, open the LegalNoticeCaption data item and enter
Howdy
as the new value data. Then, open the LegalNoticeText data item and enter
Glad you made it to work
For the second task, open the ShutdownWithoutLogon data item (or create the data item if it doesn't exist) and change the value to 0.
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