[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@win2000mag.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 June issue.]
Andrew works at the Help desk for a company with dedicated employees who frequently work in the office on weekends. Andrew needed someone to cover for him over the weekend and appointed Charlie, a new Help desk staff member. When Andrew returned to the Help desk on Monday morning, he found the following three notes Charlie had stuck on his door.
Andrew—Per your instructions, I installed Network Monitor. However, when I tried to use the Netmon program to perform the tasks you requested, I got an error message that said I needed administrative rights to use the program. I have administrative rights, so what's going on?
Andrew—I tried to install the new printer on the server, but when I clicked the Printer folder, it didn't open. I got an error message that said I didn't have enough storage to complete the operation. There's plenty of disk space, and I have administrative rights, so what's going on?
Andrew—Every user who has a roaming or mandatory profile got an error message that said the profile couldn't load. What's going on? I sent everyone home (including myself).
Problem
After reading Charlie's notes, Andrew left Charlie a message that said, "All complaints are related to the same problem, which I fixed in less than a minute." What easy-to-resolve problem causes all three difficulties?
DECEMBER WINNERS
Congratulations to Jeri Machino of East Alton, Illinois, and Paul McDonald of Toronto, Ontario. Jeri won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the December Reader Challenge. Paul won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).
Problem
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."
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.
Solution
All the words (i.e., STACK, TRANSPORT, ARP—Address Resolution Protocol, DATALINK, IHL—Internet Header Length, DATAGRAM, DDNS—dynamic DNS, and PORT) describe functions in TCP/IP communications. Alice knew the answer because Win2K and TCP/IP go together. If you plan to migrate to Win2K, you need to learn everything you can about TCP/IP. If you're wondering about George's sandwich, don't worry. We're not sending it to the winners.
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