Java Glossary : Windows 2000

Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy Green ©1996-2004 Canadian Mind Products

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Windows 2000

Microsoft's GUI the successor to Windows NT. It is large, complex and expensive. It not quite as stable as NT. Don't even think about installing it on a machine that was built in the previous century. Windows 2000 has dropped official support for ISA devices, though there are still some ISA drivers provided. It is primarily for business use. For games, use Windows ME. Its DOS emulation box is hopeless. I gave up on it entirely and use only 4NT. If you mix W98 and W2K on a LAN, W2K can see the W98 shared drives, but not vice versa. You must set up accounts on the W2K machines identical to the login id/passwords of all the users who are permitted to share. You define what they are allowed to do on the W2K machine.

	Inside Microsoft Windows 2000
	0-7356-1021-5
	David A. Solomon, Mark Russinovich
Those are the SysInternals.com guys who really know their stuff.

Where To Find

In W2K, many features have been moved from their familiar positions. Here is where to look:

Where Windows 2000 Hides Interesting Information
Function	Where To Look	Notes
accessing a shared disk	My Network Places | Computers Near Me | the desired computer | (wait, wait wait) | right click the desired disk | then either open or map the network drive	Look at somebody else's hard drive. Optionally, set up a drive letter so their drive forever after looks to be part of your machine.
device manager	Right Click My Computer | Manage | Device Manager alternatively Start | Settings Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Device Manager	What devices are connected? Are there IRQ conflicts? Where do I install new device drivers?
dial the Internet	Start | Settings Network and Dial Up Connections | Make a new Connection	You can set up a connection to a new ISP or find all the existing ones.
dialing rules	Start | Settings Control Panel | Phone and Modem Options	Which exchanges are long distance require 1+? When do you need to dial the area code for local calls? Where are you dialling from? See my student project proposal to clean this mess up.
default dialer	Start | Settings Control Panel | Internet Options | Connections | select dialer | set default	Which dial up ISP do you want to use to access the Internet?
dial or LAN	Start | Settings Control Panel | Internet Options | Connections | setup	Do you want to use dialup or a LAN (and high speed cable or ISDN) access the Internet?
disable a dialer	Start | Settings Control Panel | Internet Options | Connections | select dialer | properties | do not allow Internet programs to use this connection	You must disable all your diallers when you use the LAN, your you may find programs wanting to use them in preference to the LAN.
drive letters	Right Click My Computer | Manage | Device Manager Storage | Disk Management alternatively Start | Settings Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Storage | Disk Management	Making your CD-reader always R:, writer always W: and DVD reader/writer always V:. Be careful reassigning disk drives. Registry references will not automatically be adjusted. You may find all programs on that drive stop working. You can't reletter the system partition or the partition CMOS booted from. This makes it vary hard to clone a system without help from a PowerQuest tools. Your clone has to have different drive letters. E.g. copy of the operating system seems to have its own set of drive letter mappings. However, they are fragile. If you add a drive, swap primary and secondary drives, or change the drive CMOS boots from first, it suddenly forgets its letters and reverts to a default set, and very likely will become unbootable. You can use subst X: Y:\ to define alias drive letters for existing drives, or subst X: Y:\somedir to create shortcuts to commonly used directories. However, Windows forgets your settings after every reboot. You can also use Tools | Map Network Drive on the directory tool bar to map a drive letter to shareable directory on a local or remote drive. To map your entire E: drive so you can also access it as J:, first click My Computer | right click E: properties | sharing | share this folder | ok. Then click My Computer | right click E: | open | tools | map network drive. Choose J: as the drive and type in the name //roedy/E$ as the share name where roedy is your computer's name. Infuriatingly, you can't simply browse to the E:\ directory.
environment variables	Start | Settings Control Panel | System | Advanced | Environment Variables Alternatively, to view without possibility of editing, Right Click My Computer | Manage | System Tools | System Information | Environment Variables	Where you do you SET XX=YYYY controls for BAT files. W2K is improved. It is now hard to inadvertently lose your changes. If in doubt, put your variables in the system section. This way they won't get lost if the system decides to rename your user directory, which it will do if you change your computer workgroup/name.
LAN IP configuration	Start | Settings Network and Dial Up Connections | Local Area Connection | Properties	Configure static or dynamic (DHCP) IP/DNS assignment. This menu item will not exist until your Ethernet card is functioning properly. Check with the device manager if you don't see the Local Area Connection option.
LAN IP display	in a DOS box, type IPCONFIG.	What IP addresses in this machine using? What has DHCP given me for a DNS server? The full name is c:\WINNT\system32\ipconfig.exe. Also shows dial up IPs as well.
machine name	Start | Settings Control Panel | System | Network Identification	Computer name and Workgroup for this machine. Only machines in the same workgroup see each other.
sharing your disks	Start | Settings Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | System Tools | Shared Folders | Shares | Action | New | File Share	Share your folder or disk with others on the LAN.
sharing printers	Start | Settings Printers | Right click the printer you want to share | sharing	Share your printer with others on the LAN.
configuring colours and fonts	Start | Settings Control Panel | Display | Appearance also Start | Settings Control Panel | Start | Settings Advanced | General. If you find some great wallpaper, save a copy separately so you can reinstall it later. This is also true for fonts.	Configure colours and fonts used on various window widgets.

Perhaps some W2K wiz could write a tiny program that takes you to each of these places in a single click. You could implement the program for all the various operating systems. That way you would not have to remember where info is hidden differently under different OSes. MS won't let you use the ordinary shortcut mechanism to jump directly once you have found these power points once.

Where Windows 2000 Squirrels Information

Most of Windows information is in the registry. You can search for it with regedit. boot.ini handles finding alternate systems to boot from. For details see boot manager. Most configuration information is in the Documents and Settings directory, either in All Users or under a specific user.

If you reinstall Windows, it sometimes creates new Documents and Settings user directories, with slightly different names, e.g. Roedy Green.ROEDY instead of Roedy Green To get your familiar names, delete the old ones before reinstall, and manually restore data to them later.

The SomeUser/Application Data directory is a safer alternative to using the registry. It can be backed up.

Your colour schemes are stored in Documents and Settings/User/NTUSER.DAT. Unfortunately Microsoft has gone to extreme lengths to prevent you from copying that file to another computer to transfer the set of colour schemes. If you attempt it you will be blocked three ways: sharing violation to copy it, sharing violation to copy it in, and finally a transplant rejection if you manage to bypass the first two impediments.

The deskop is in Documents and Settings/User/Desktop. The start menu is in Documents and Settings/User/Start Menu.

I have not figured out where it stores the icons on the task bar.

The drive letter assignments are hidden in the boot sector. This means the assignments are global across various copies of Win2K, which rather defeats the point of having multiple isolated copies.

If you have many userids on the same machine and several boot images, it can get confusing which one is in control. The easiest way is to give them all unique wallpaper. Type SET in the DOS box, and look for USERPROFILE=D:\Documents and Settings\Roedy Green.ROEDY to find out which user is active, and look for the SystemDrive=D: to find out which is the system drive, not necessarily the drive CMOS booted from.

Windows Won't Boot

Windows is a like a house of cards. One day you will install some trivial piece of software and it will no longer boot. Before you resort to reinstalling Windows 2000 and then all your apps, try these emergency measures:

• F8 safe boot
• F8 safe boot to last good configuration
• Boot from Installation CD and use the Repair option.
• Boot from the installation CD and use the Console option. Use FIXBOOT C: and FIXBPB C: then exit. Restore boot.ini from backup.

4NT ¤ annoyances.org

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