My IT Blog

I am trying to create a new universal user group. Why can’t I?  Universal groups are allowed only in native-mode Windows Server 2003 environments. Native mode requires that all domain controllers be promoted to Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. What’s the difference between local, global and universal groups?  Domain local groups assign access permissions to global domain groups for local domain resources. Global groups provide access to resources in other trusted domains. Universal groups grant access to resources in all trusted domains. What is LSDOU?  It’s group policy inheritance model, where the policies are applied to L ocal machines,  S ites,  D omains and  O rganizational  U nits. Why doesn’t LSDOU work under Windows NT?  If the  NTConfig.pol  file exist, it has the highest priority among the numerous policies. Where are group policies stored?  %SystemRoot%System32\GroupPolicy What is GPT and GPC?  Group policy template and group policy container. Where is GP

DNS and WINS are really for doing two different (but similar) things. Second, each has been co-opted to assist the other in some cases -- and as a last resort. Literally  Domain Naming System (DNS) servers, resolve Domain Naming System names to IP addresses.  Sounds redundant, but technically it is almost literally true (not quite for you advanced people) that an IP host has NO NAME; it has a DNS name only by virtue of the DNS servers or by convention. Windows Internet Naming Services (WINS) servers resolve NetBIOS names to IP addresses . NetBIOS names ARE a feature of the network node (or host machine). The NetBIOS protocols require that NetBIOS nodes 'defend' their name from other machines attempting to use the same name. Likewise,  a 'host' file resolves DNS names to IP addresses  while  an 'LMHOST' file resolves NetBIOS names to IP addresses. So you can see a 1-1 mapping of DNS server to host file, and WINS server to LMHOSTS file. The order of use of these

Install File and Printer Sharing By default, a Windows Server 2003-based computer is installed with Client for Microsoft Networks, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks, and TCP/IP. NOTE : You can view these services in the properties for the local area connection. You can create a Windows Server 2003 file server and print server manually, or you can use the wizards that are provided in the Configure Your Server Wizard administrative tool. How to Install a File Server on Windows Server 2003 by Using the Configure Your Server Wizard Click  Start , point to  Administrative Tools , and then click  Configure Your Server Wizard . Click  Next . Click  Next . Click  File server  in the  Server role  box, and then click  Next . On the "File Server Disk Quotas" page, configure any quotas you need to control disk-space usage on the server, and then click  Next . On the "File Server Indexing Service" page, click the indexing configuration that is appropriate fo

Introduction Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a core infrastructure service on any network that provides IP addressing and DNS server information to PC clients and any other device. DHCP is used so that you do not have to statically assign IP addresses to every device on your network and manage the issues that static IP addressing can create. More and more, DHCP is being expanded to fit into new network services like the Windows Health Service and Network Access Protection (NAP). However, before you can use it for more advanced services, you need to first install it and configure the basics. Let’s learn how to do that. Installing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Installing Windows Server 2008 DCHP Server is easy. DHCP Server is now a “role” of Windows Server 2008 – not a windows component as it was in the past. To do this, you will need a Windows Server 2008 system already installed and configured with a static IP address. You will need to know your network’s IP add

In Windows Server 2003, the replication process is responsible for keeping each domain controller updated with the latest Active Directory information. The replication process is also responsible for keeping DNS replicas synchronised. As you can see, replication is a very important part of the Windows Server 2003 network operating system. So what do you do when replication fails? For that matter, how do you even know when a failure has occurred? Here are some answers to these questions and how to fix the replication process. How does replication work? Before you can fix the replication process, you need to understand how it works. As I mentioned earlier, replication is used to keep both domain controllers and DFS replicas synchronized. There are a few other tasks that use replication as well. For the purposes of this article, I will focus my discussion on Active Directory replication that occurs between domain controllers. If you have ever worked with Windows NT, then you are probabl

The Trouble with Names For those who missed my past columns ("Name Resolvers: WINS vs. DNS," November 1996; "NetBIOS Names and WINS," January 1997; and "Inside a NetBIOS Name Resolution," March 1997), you can find them on the  Windows NT Magazine  Web site at http://www.winntmag.com. The articles show that NT and TCP/IP have a problem: names. We want servers to have nice, human-friendly names such as, in my network, Aldebaran, Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Elnath. (They are the brightest and second-brightest stars in the Orion and Taurus constellations. The brightest are the primary domain controllers--PDCs, and the second-brightest are the backup domain controllers--BDCs.) Those names are easier to remember than IP addresses such as 198.34.57.44, 198.34.57.11, 198.34.57.90, and 198.34.57.26. To satisfy both us and the computers, networking software converts the human-friendly names into IP addresses. The term for that conversion is  name resolution,  and it ty

What do WINS and DNS do? Windows NT 3.5 offered the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS). Most of us had no idea what it did, but we soon figured out that we pretty much needed it. The rest of the Internet world seemed to be using something similar, but incompatible: the Domain Name System (DNS). What  is  WINS, and, well, why  isn't  it DNS? The short answer is that WINS and DNS have somewhat different jobs. Consider the two following commands, both issued to the same server: ping server01.bigfirm.com and net use * \\server01 \mainshr The ping command refers to the server as server01.big firm.com. The net use command calls the same server server01. The difference is important. Why Two Different Names? The ping command is a platform-independent, TCP/IP/Internet kind of command. It's valid on UNIX, VMS, Macintosh, and MVS--so long as the machine is running a TCP/IP protocol stack. On any of these platforms, you can issue a ping only if you're running TCP/IP. The command