MCSE STUDY
I'm a systems administrator with extensive UNIX experience. My employer is migrating to Windows NT, so I'm studying to be an MCSE. I have some advice for others seeking certification.
First, set aside extra time for your studies. You have a lot of information to absorb, and you'll need all the time you can get. I'm lucky that my employer gives me 5 hours per week (out of a 37-hour work week) to study. However, I can't concentrate very well at work, so I work from home 1 day per week. I also set aside some of my free time to study.
Second, you can't rely on the MCSE training manuals or interactive programs to learn all the information necessary for certification. You must initiate some practical studies of your own, perhaps on your work network or on a home-based network. As a systems administrator, I use my knowledge as I assess the 3000 network PCs at work. However, I experiment on a test network rather than on my employer's production systems. I have a dedicated test PC at work, and I have a small network at home (four PCs). I suggest you get at least one test machine if you can. You can purchase a used 486 at a reasonable cost. If you can afford two machines, I recommend that you set up a small network. All you need is two 10Mbps network cards and cables to connect two PCs. Removable hard disks are inexpensive and let you easily shift between environments. Finally, take advantage of trial software.
—Bent Mathiesen
bm-itafd@aalbkom.dk
USER UNABLE TO CONNECT TO RESOURCES
My company has a client workstation with Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and Novell's intraNetWare client installed. The workstation needs to connect to NetWare resources and NT domain resources.
I added the workstation to the NT domain. Then I added the user ID, which had the same name as the workstation, to the domain. (The company's security department requires that usernames match computer names. In addition, a user can't have multiple IDs.) Having a user ID and a computer ID with the same name in one domain caused problems.
I needed to change the workstation name so that I could distinguish between the user and the workstation when using the NET SEND command. After I changed the name of the workstation (i.e., the computer name), the user couldn't log on to the workstation. The computer responded to a ping, so I knew the machine name had changed on the network. However, the logon dialog box that intraNetWare presented for NT showed the old name.
I rebooted and tried to use the Last Known Good configuration, which didn't work. No one could log on to the workstation anymore, so I had to change the Registry settings from a different machine. I ran regedit and opened the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control Registry key. I performed a search for ComputerName to find the entries to change, and I changed the computer name back to the original name. After I renamed the domain user ID, I removed the computer from the domain, renamed the computer with a nonstandard name (which included the user's name), added the computer back to the domain, and renamed the user ID to its original name. The user's name for all servers was then the same, and the user was able to log on to the workstation.
—Deborah Hughes
hughed2@tdbank.ca