Windows NT Administration Notes

Why is the background red? Because I'm burning in hell for assisting people to use Windows.

How To Map Drives From The Command Line

	NET USE Z: \\YOURSERVER\VOLUMENAME /PERSISTENT:YES
	        -- ----------------------- ---------------
		|       |
		|       UNC path of file server to map drive letter to.
		Local drive letter to map the UNC path to.

How To Bring Up the 'Services' Panel as Adminsitrator

You can use 'runas /user:administrator cmd' to get a DOS shell that is running as the Adminsitrator, then from that shell, invoke 'services.msc' to bring up the services panel as Administrator so that you can make changes the currently logged in user can't.

How To Add New Users From The Command Line

    net user fred MyPassword /add

..which will add the new user 'fred' with the password 'MyPassword'. See 'net user /?' for more info.

To add a user to a particular group, see 'net group /?'.

How To Identify Remote Machines Accessing Your Shared Drive

    C:\>net session

    Computer               User name            Client Type       Opens Idle time
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \\ONTARIO              FRED                 Unix                  1 00:03:02
    \\TAHOE                JACKIE               Unix                  2 00:08:19

..which shows remote hosts 'ontario' and 'tahoe' are accessing the local drive(s) being shared.

Tweaking DNS nameservers on clients via the commandline

The following commands change the primary and secondary nameservers to new values under winnt:

    reg update HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer="192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2"
    reg update HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer="192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2"

Of interest; you can easily change *remote machines* by specifying the remote hostname at the end of the above command line, in this case the remote host 'popeye' is modified:

    reg update HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer="192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2" \\popeye
    reg update HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer="192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2" \\popeye

Hiding the last logged in username

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE 

	 \Microsoft
	      \Windows NT
		   \CurrentVersion
			\Winlogon

    DontDisplayLastUserName    REG_SZ

Click Start\ProgramsResource Kit 4.0 2. Click Configuration\C2 Comnfiguration 3. Double click the line that reads "Last Username Display" 4. Place a check in Hide the last username to login. 5. Click Secure then OK.

Info on the local machine

winmsd - NT Version, Build and Service Pack info, Current logged in user (and priveleges), Hardware Info (Display Adapter and Driver, Disk Drives, Memory (and swap), Services, Environment)

Commonly Needed Packages

WinNT Resource Kit - Needed to do much of the command line admin
Web Server - On the WinNT Server "Options" disk. Also known as Personal Web Server (PWS)
WRSHD from www.DeniComp.com (RSH service/daemon)
Perl from ActiveState.com

Command Line Administration

NET is a cool command, letting you:
- Start Services - NET START
- Stop Services - NET STOP
- Error Code Translations - NET HELPMSG 5 (returns "Access is denied", eg. when a program prints "Error code #5", you can translate it to the system error message)
- Manage Printing - NET PRINT ..
- Send Messages to everyone -
```
NET SEND * ### The network server going down for maintenance at 9pm! ###
```
REG lets you tweak the registry from the command line.
IPCONFIG lets you release/renew DHCP assignments..
```
IPCONFIG /RELEASE, IPCONFIG /RENEW
```

Useful Registry Locations

Microsoft warns you about changing the registry. Big fuggin deal. By all rights, they should warn you about installing ANY software too; you're just as bound to blow up the machine just by installing the latest version of the Microsoft Compiler.

And besides, if you fuck things up, what do you loose really? You just have to reinstall WinNT. Surely you're used to that by now.

Work In Progress

DNS Settings The DNS nameserver information is saved in:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer

System Environment Variables The system environment variables are saved in:
```
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Environment
  
```
To tweak these variables, you can use REG (see notes below), eg:
```
  REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Environment\FOO=bar" REG_SZ
  
```
..and to see if it got set:
```
  REG QUERY "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Environment\FOO"
  
```
To apply changes to a remote machine, just append \\HOSTNAME to the above, eg:
```
  REG QUERY "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\What\Ever=text" REG_SZ \\MYSERVER
  
```
NOTE: Unfortunately, for such changes to actually affect a new MSDOS window, you must first either:
- Go into Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Environment and then hit OK, or..
- Log out the window manager, and then back in again.
I don't know if there's a way to make the changes work right away from the command line. Send me email if you know the way.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
How to get the fucking 2010 build "Output" window to show the damn compiler line (compiler flags) and link line (linker flags):
- 1) Go into Tool > Options > Projects / Solutions > Build And Run > General > MSBuild Project build output verbosity
- 2) Change the setting from "Quiet" to "Detailed"
I spent an hour or so trying to find that fucking flag, damnit. What a waste of hours of my life. The MS IDE gets more and more insane with all those dialogs and options, its just fucking ridiculous. Learn from Apple, Microsoft! They grow and grow, but still keep it simple!