Tech Tips

NET TIME \\computername /SET /YES

The clock on your computer will be set the same as the one on .

CD /D changes the current directory and current drive at the same time. As an example, assume that my current drive is D: and my current directory on C: is the root directory. If I type CD /D c:\downloads, my current drive will become C: and the current directory on C: will become C:\downloads.

MD can now create multiple levels of directory in a single command. Assume I have no directory called C:\jim. If I type MD C:\jim\fred, NT will create a directory called \jim and then create another directory in \jim called fred.

RD /S does a complete tree delete. RD /S \jim will remove directory \jim, even if there are sub-directories or files in \jim.

DEL /S can delete in sub-directories. For example, DEL /S *.TXT will delete all text files in either the current directory or any sub-directory of the current directory.

FOR /D - Makes wildcards match directory names instead of filenames.

FOR /R - Walks the directory rooted at , executing the FOR command in each directory of the tree.

FOR /L - Equivalent to a BASIC FOR/NEXT loop.

In addition, access to FOR variable references has been enhanced. If you write batch files, run HELP FOR from the command line to see all the new features of this command.

To see the complete list of commands that have been enhanced in NT 4.0, enter CMD /? on a command line.

ASSOC [.ext[=[filetype]]]

.ext specifies the file extension the file should be associated with. filetype specifies the filetype to associate with the extenstion.

ASSOC with no parameters displays a list of file associations. ASSOC with just an extension displays the current association of the extension. ASSOC with an extension and equals but no filetype deletes the association.

See HELP ASSOC for more details.

Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell have a great web site and a lot of handy utilities. One of my favorites is NTFSDOS.

1. Open the User Manager for Domains.
2. Add a new user by selecting User/New User from the menu bar.
3. Label this user as a template for the user level, such as Template--Worker or Template--Secretary.
4. Set the proper configuration option for Groups, Profile, and Dial-in.
5. The next time you need to add a user, simply select the template account and select User/Copy from the menu bar. NT makes a duplicate of the template user, so to complete the new user account setup, all you need to do is change the name and password.

1. Launch the Performance Monitor from the Start button's Programs/Administrative Tools menu.
2. Select Edit/Add to Chart.
3. Select ftp, Gopher, http, and/or IIS from the Object pick list.

For example, you can install Windows NT Workstation and Windows NT Server throughout your organization - complete with the applications your end users need, organization- specific help files, and per-computer settings such as computername and user name. Unattended setup lets a handful of technicians deploy the new operating systems, without disrupting your end users' work day.

The sysdiff utility is used to prepare "snapshots" of the operating system before and after applications are installed. When the final snapshot (the "difference" file) is applied during or after Windows NT Setup, all the changes you made to the master system by installing applications (registry settings, binary files - everything) are copied to the new installation. Or you can use sysdiff to create an INF from the difference file, and use the INF to install the applications during or after Windows NT Setup. This lets you include in your customized installation applications that do not have a scripted setup.

You can also use sysdiff with unattended setup to create "spare" hard disks with the operating system and the applications pre-installed, ready to replace crashed disks in mission-critical computers.

Unattended setup and sysdiff are described in Part 1, "Windows NT Workstation Deployment," of the Windows NT Workstation Resource Guide. A printed version of the Resource Guide is included with the Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit, and the Windows NT Server Resource Kit includes an online version of the Windows NT Workstation Resource Guide.

** NOTE ** See the NT*Pro web site (http://www.ntpro.org) to download a self-extracting Word file entitled the "Automating Microsoft Windows NT Setup Deployment Guide."

OEMs can use unattended setup and sysdiff to pre-install Windows NT Workstation or Windows NT Server, complete with applications. You can ship computers that will display the GUI-mode Setup - with your own logo, banner, and background the first time the computer is started. See the OEM Preinstallation Kit for Microsoft Windows NT Operating Systems for details.

1. Right-click on the Recycle Bin icon and then click on PROPERTIES.
2. You will then see tabs for each accessible drive, plus a global tab. You will also see a check box to disable the Recycle Bin, causing files being deleted to actually be deleted.
3. Choose the drive you want, or the global setting, and choose the option to delete instead of sending files to the Recycle Bin.

NOTE - There is a sliding control which allows you to set the percentage of your disk which is used for the Recycle Bin, if you choose to leave the Recycle Bin enabled.

NOTE2 - You can also just hold down the shift key while deleting files to bypass the Recycle Bin and permanently delete files.

Description of WINS Proxy Agent: A Windows NT machine with the WINS Proxy Agent enables answers to broadcast queries from other TCP/IP machines on your local network that are not WINS enabled. It is recommended that only two Windows NT machines per network be enabled for WINS Proxy Agent.

Fortunately, you can disable the boot loader's timer so that the menu of operating system choices remains on the screen until you make a choice. To do so, you have to edit the BOOT.INI file and change the timeout value. However, before you can do so, you have to turn off BOOT.INI's Read-Only attribute.

Once you do, open the BOOT.INI file in Notepad and change the timeout value from timeout=30 to timeout=-1

Then, save the file and reboot your system. It's important to note that you can't make this change in the Control Panel's System dialog box because only values from 0 to 999 are valid in the Show List For text box.

NOTE - Remember to turn BOOT.INI's Read-Only attribute back on!

For NT 4 users the complete address book file is located in "%SystemRoot%\username.wab." You can move this file to wherever you want to keep it (say a partition that never gets deleted, or back it up on floppy). Then, edit the following key of the registry to point to the correct location: HKCU/Software/Microsoft/WAB/Wab File Name

1. Launch the Registry editor.
2. Select the hkey_local_machine key.
3. Locate the subkey \Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon.
4. Select the ReportBootOK item.
5. Select Edit | New | String Value from the menu bar.
6. Type DontDisplayLastUserName for the string's name.
7. Double-click the new string to edit its value.
8. Change the value to 1.
9. Click OK.
10. Close the Registry editor.

1. Set the age limit for passwords. This forces users to change passwords after a preselected number of days.
2. Set the minimum length of passwords to eight or more characters.
3. Keep a password history to prevent users from recycling old passwords.
4. Enable account lockouts that deactivate an account after a specified number of failed login attempts. I usually set this to 4.

1. Right-click the drive or folder to be shared.
2. Select Sharing from the menu.
3. From the Shared As section of the Sharing tab, click Permissions.
4. Remove the Everyone entry.
5. Click the Add button to add individuals and/or groups to the access list.
6. Click OK in all the windows to close and exit.

1. From the Start button's Programs/Administrative Tools menu item, open the User Manager for Domains.
2. Select Policies/Audit from the menu bar.
3. Select the events you wish to track.
4. Click OK to start logging.
5. View the resulting audit logs with the Event Viewer. Select the view you wish to see (System, Security, or Application) from the Log menu.

Microsoft wants everyone to see the EULA and agree to it, whether they read it or not. If you turn the agreement off, you are essentially violating Microsoft's intent unless you print out the EULA and distribute it to the users. Be sure to do this!

To turn it off during unattended installations, you need to add the following statement in the Unattended section (UNATTEND.TXT by default) of your answer file: OEMSkipEULA=yes.

1. The main gate to all of your NT services is the "right to log on from the network". Highly recommend restricting this right severely. By default, "everyone" is allowed this right. Depending on how many admins there are, you should either create a new "administrators" group, or simply remove administrators from the listing, and add back in the individual users. Now you have a much shorter list of users who are allowed to log in from the network, and "administrator" isn't one of them. This is very important. "Administrator" can't be locked out from bad login attempts, and is ripe for brute force attacks. Also, if you can't log on from the network, you can't get into the registry, the event logs, enumerate shares - you name it.
2. Make sure that you have enabled account lockouts after a reasonable number of bad login attempts. This makes it a lot more tedious for someone to brute force the users who are allowed to log in from the network. Secondly, make sure that a reasonable password length is required and no one is using lame passwords.
3. Turn off the messenger and alerter services. This keeps the name of the console user from being broadcast in the NetBIOS name table. If this is done, the only information they can get is the machine name (which might have been had from a DNS lookup), and the domain or workgroup.
4. Disable the guest account! This is very important.
5. Explicitly set the ACL for all shares. Do not ever leave it as "All access - Everyone". If MS wanted to make this a lot better, they would cause shares to be created with default permissions that mirror the permissions on the directory which is being shared. Seems a bit silly to have a share where the directory is admin only, and the share is open to everyone. It would seem that they could fix this easily. Anyway...
6. Avoid running services under the localsystem account. Make separate, bare-minimum permission accounts for each (well, most) services. That way if a service gets compromised (either broken into or the software goes crazy) you: (a). limit the scope of damage and (b). have a log of exactly which service did what.
7. Set the permissions on your registry at a tighter level than default. The resource kit has some good suggestions for this.

ANSWER #1:
1. The best and most simple tool by far is to use DOS and the DELPART.EXE tool that came with the NT 3.1 Resource Kit. You can find partitions of all OS types, including NTFS, HPFS and Unix and delete or examine them. If you then run the DOS2NTFS redirector utility, you can XCOPY from the NTFS partition to another FAT partition. Obviously, you do this before destroying the partition.

ANSWERS #2, #3, & #4
2. Using 6.22 or 95 setup disks, run the setup to that drive. Setup will re-partition the disk.
3. Attach the drive to NT machine, run disk manager, and remove the partition.
4. Use fdisk (6.x or 95), and delete the NON DOS partition.

ANSWER #1
10BASE-T uses a star topology. This means a hub or concentrator is in the center of a star, and each workstation or server is connected to this hub.

For test purposes, you can directly connect two workstations or a workstation and a server without using a hub. This setup requires a special cable incorporating the crossover function.

Function  Pin#        Pin#     Function
 -----------------------------------------------------------
  TX+         1 <-------->3        RX+
  TX-          2 <-------->6        RX-
  RX+         3 <-------->1       TX+
  RX-          6 <-------->2       TX-

ANSWER #2
If you're using standard Cat5 cable in the normal color order (orange/white-orange, green/white-blue, blue/white-green, brown/white-brown) then simply switch the oranges and the greens on one end of the cable. (Like: gw/g, ow/bl, bw/or, brw/br)

ANSWER:
"=" characters are the result of mail programs/systems that cannot handle "quoted printable" mail messages trying to display quoted-printable text. It seems that in a quoted-printable (or 7-bit) encoded message the "=" character signifies that what follows is the hex code for the character that is to be encoded. For example "=20" represents the space character, which is why this can often be seen on the end of every line of some mails.

The alternative to quoted printable/7-bit encoding is 8-bit encoding. A typical header of mail displaying the "=" is:

X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1155
MIME-Version: 1.0
*Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit*

You may want to try to change your preferences so that you send messages using 8-bit encoding instead of 7-bit quoted printable. There is a fix for this. Go into your Internet mail properties under TOOLS/SERVICES/INTERNET MAIL and change the Message Format/Character Set from ISO 8859-1 to US ASCII. (This applies to MS Exchange/Outlook.)

2. This is handy if you need to repeatedly access the same Control Panel item. Each resides in the \WinNT\system32 folder, uses the .CPL extension, and is associated with CONTROL.EXE by default. To create a Shortcut to System Properties, for example, launch the Shortcut Wizard by right-clicking on the desktop, then type SYSDM.CPL in the command line; Windows NT does the rest. Similarly, to create a Shortcut to the Control Panel's Network applet, type NCPA.CPL in the wizard's Shortcut command line.

2. If you get the boot-up message "BOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR. Insert another disk," the NTLDR file is either missing or corrupt. To fix it, copy the NTLDR file from the distribution media to the \root folder and reboot.

3. If you get the message "NTOSKRNL.EXE is missing, or corrupt," the culprit is usually the BOOT.INI file: Either it's missing, or its internal pointer to the NT system files is incorrect. If you've opened BOOT.INI in a text editor and verified that all is well, try copying NTOSKRNL.EXE from the distribution media to the \Winnt\system32 folder.

You can move all the Windows NT files to the new hard disk
using a 3rd party disk copy utility like Ghost from Ghost Software.
You will need to install the second, larger drive, then you can 
use the Ghost utility to copy the Windows NT system files from 
the original hard drive to the new hard drive. The unique thing 
about the Ghost software is that it allows copying to the same or 
bigger hard drive.

A 30 day copy of the Ghost software is available from the 
following web site:http://www.ghostsoft.com

The Ghost Utility Description 
(quoted from the Ghost Software Web site)

"Ghost is designed to duplicate or clone disks for 
IBM compatible PCs. It works by copying all partitions
from the source to the target disk. The source and 
target disk may be on the same computer, or the target 
disk may be on a different computer providing the two 
computers are connected via a network. Ghost is 
particularly useful for cloning Win 95 systems. There 
is no need to FDISK or FORMAT the target disk - 
this is done automatically."

"The source and target disks may also be different sizes - 
Ghost will adjust the position and size of the target 
partitions automatically."

"Ghost can also be used to save the entire contents of a 
disk to a single disk image file. This file can be used 
for BACKUP, or for cloning copies of the original disk."

"GHOST (General Hardware Orientated Software Transfer)"
Binary Research Limited, 42 Wanganui Ave , Ponsonby,
Auckland, New Zealand
Phone (64)(4) 560 2492 or (64)(21) 663 861 
Fax (64)(9) 378 7332 
http://www.ghost.co.nz 
Email : sales@ghost.co.nz 

Hidden away on your Windows NT 4.0 CD-ROM is a cool setup diagnostic 
utility called NTHQ.  You can find this utility  in the \SUPPORT\HQTOOL 
directory. You can use the NTHQ utility to detect PC system components 
prior to installing NT Server 4.0 or NT Workstation 4.0. 

Normally this utility is used by Microsoft product support personnel 
to identify the installed PC hardware, and for determining the resource 
settings when diagnosing a system.

Note: This tool is NOT designed to run under Windows NT or Windows 95.

Your system should meet these minimum hardware requirements to use NTHQ:
* 80486 processor
* 12 MB of RAM
* VGA adapter. 
* One formatted 3.5" 1.44MB floppy to create a NTHQ utility disk 

To create a NTHQ bootable disk:
1. Insert your original NT 4.0 CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive.
2. Change your directory to "\SUPPORT\HQTOOL"
3. Insert a formatted 3.5" 1.44-MB disk into Drive A: 
4. Change to that Drive A:
5. MAKEDISK A:

To test out your "new" NTHQ bootable disk:
1. Place the NTHQ disk in Drive A:
2. Reboot the computer system.

The NTHQ utility will create a 4-MB RAM drive, detect the RAM drive 
letter, copy the ZIPFILE.EXE file to the RAM rive, self-extract the 
ZIPFILE.EXE file, start the NTHQ.EXE utility, log hardware and resource 
settings into a log file named NTHQ.TXT

The NTHQ utility will then display the detected hardware devices in 
the following four categories:  System, Motherboard, Video, and Others. 
(The Others category is used for device types the tool cannot positively 
identify.)

See the README.TXT file on your NTHQ bootable floppy for further info.

• 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
• 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
• 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

Author: Mark Minasi - Noted DC-area author and trainer

Browse to C:\%systemroot%\system32\regedit32.exe. Select and say OK.

Add your desired messages to to the following entries:
LegalNoticeCaption (this value will show in the window title)
LegalNoticeText (this value will show in the body of the window)

The next time you reboot you must say OK to this message before logging on.

Use the Registry Editor (REGEDT32.EXE) to add your logon information, as follows: