Configuring Peripheral Devices

Most peripheral devices can be configured with the Control Panel; however, some may require a vendor-specific setup program.

Control Panel

The Control Panel has many applets that control device drivers. Figure 4-11 shows what our Control Panel looks like. As you add programs to your system, your Control Panel may change in appearance because some programs add Control Panel applets. Some of the applets are user-specific and others are computer-specific. User-specific applets allow each user to set NT to operate the way they prefer. The computer-specific applets affect all users and can only be changed by an administrator. The Control Panel accomplishes this by interacting with the registry. The user-specific applets control HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree and the computer-specific applets interact with the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree. We’ll discuss the registry and subtrees in more detail later in this chapter. The following are user-specific applets: Display, Accessibility Options, Internet, Telephony, Console, Regional Settings, Keyboard, Mouse, Printers, Sounds, Dial-up Monitor, and certain parts of the System application.

Changing Display Adapter Settings

The following exercises step you through using these applications. Each exercise starts by assuming you have the Control Panel open on your desktop. The first, Exercise 4-4, teaches you how to change your display adapter, resolution, and color depth.

Exercise 4-4: Changing the Display Adapter

1. In the Control Panel, double-click the Display icon.
2. Choose the Settings tab.
3. Click the Display Type button.
4. Click the Change button.
5. Select the appropriate driver from the list. If the driver you need isn’t listed, you’ll need to click Have Disk and type the path to the vendor-supplied driver.
6. Click OK.
7. When your computer has copied the drivers, you need to restart your system so the change can take affect.
8. Open the Display applet and choose the Settings tab.
9. Set the Desktop Area slider bar to the resolution you want to use. The resolution you can choose depends on your video card and your monitor.
10. Choose the color depth you want to use in the drop-down menu under Color Palette. After choosing your color depth your resolution may change. This occurs because your video card can’t support that number of colors at the resolution you had picked.
11. Click Test.
12. Click OK to the message box telling you that NT is testing your new configuration.
13. If everything goes well you should see a colorful pattern of boxes on your screen. After 5 seconds NT asks you if saw the test bitmap properly. Click Yes if you saw the pattern. If you didn’t see the pattern, go to step 15.
14. Click OK to accept your new configuration and end the exercise.
15. If you didn’t see anything click No. NT resets to your previous display configuration. Repeat steps 9-14.

Removing NT Components

You use the Add/Remove Programs applet to remove NT components. Exercise 4-5 shows you how to remove WordPad from your computer.

Exercise 4-5: Removing a Windows NT application

1. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
2. Select the Windows NT Setup tab.
3. Highlight Accessories.
4. Click Details.
5. Scroll down to WordPad and remove the check mark.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK.

Splitting the Paging File

You can increase the performance of your machine by spreading your page file out across several disks, especially if you have more than one disk controller or a controller that performs concurrent I/O. To spread you page file across multiple disks follow the steps in Exercise 4-6.

Exercise 4-6: Splitting the Paging File across Multiple Physical Disks

1. Double-click the System icon.
2. Choose the Performance tab.



Figure 12: System Performance tab

3. Click the Change button.



Figure 13: Modifying the page file drive

4. Highlight the partition where you want to add a paging file.
6. Enter the Initial Size and the Maximum Size.
7. Click Set.

Adding Tape Backup Drives

NT supports tape back-up drives for disaster recovery purposes. Adding a tape device is simple. Follow Exercise 4-7 to add a tape device.

Exercise 4-7: Adding a Tape Device

1. In Control Panel, double-click the Tape Devices icon
3. Select the Drivers tab.

3. Click the Add button.
5. Select the appropriate driver from the list. If the driver you need isn’t listed, click Have Disk and type the path to the vendor-supplied driver.
6. Click OK.

Adding SCSI Adapters and CD-ROM Drives

The SCSI Adapters Control Panel applet is used to install SCSI adapters, but it is also used to install IDE CD-ROM drivers. This may confuse you when you are adding an IDE CD-ROM device and need to find the proper Control Panel applet to execute. Just remember to use the SCSI Adapters applet for both SCSI and IDE devices.

Exercise 4-8: Adding a SCSI Adapter

1. Open the SCSI Adapters Control Panel applet.
2. Choose the Drivers tab.

3. Click the Add button.
4. Select the appropriate driver from the list. If the driver you need isn’t listed, click Have Disk and type the path to the vendor-supplied driver.
5. Click OK.

Adding Modems

You use the Modems Control Panel applet to add and remove modems. Exercise 4-9 teaches you how to add a modem.

Exercise 4-9: Adding a Modem to Windows NT

1. Open the Modems Control Panel applet.

2. Click Add.
3. Click Next, if you want NT to detect your modem. If you want to choose from the list or add a modem that’s not listed, click the following option: Don’t detect my modem; I will select it from a list check box.
4. After selecting the appropriate modem click Next, or click the Have Disk button if you’re installing a modem that’s not listed
5. Choose the port the modem will use.
6. Click Next.
7. Click Finish.

Adding Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS's)

An UPS is an important part of fault tolerance. If you have an UPS you can use NT’s UPS Control Panel applet to configure it. Before you can configure it you’ll need to connect a serial cable connected to your computer and the UPS. By configuring the UPS you can have NT automatically shut down when power is lost, execute a command, and notify all connected users. Figure 4-18 is the UPS Control Panel applet screen.

The first step in configuring an UPS is to click the check box next to the option: Uninterruptible Power Supply is installed on. Choose the port it’s connected to in the drop-down box. Configuring the rest of the UPS depends on the type of UPS you have and how the manufacturer has designed it. In the UPS Configuration group box , you can choose whether a negative or positive signal is sent during an active state. In other words, the signal you choose is the type that's normally sent; it changes when a power failure occurs. You’ll need to use the Owner’s Manual that comes with your UPS to obtain the correct values.

You can have NT run a command file when a power failure occurs. Just click next to the Execute Command File check box and type the name of the file you want to execute when the power fails. The command file must execute completely within 30 seconds, or NT terminates the command. Therefore, your command file shouldn’t contain any dialog boxes because they require user intervention and would probably take more than 30 seconds to complete. The command file must be placed in your %systemroot%\System32 folder and be an executable file type (.exe, .com, .cmd, .bat).

The UPS Service group box enables you to set the duration of power outage that triggers a message to connected users, as well as the time interval that should pass before subsequent warning messages are issued.

The UPS Characteristics group box enables you to set the battery run time (Expected Battery Life) and the recharge rate (Battery recharge time per minute of run time). If you set the Expected Battery Life too long and your UPS doesn’t support a Low battery signal, your UPS may not shut down in time. Be careful when setting your expected battery life.

NT 4.0 Disk Administrator

If you’re familiar with MS-DOS, you have probably used FDISK.EXE in the past to partition your hard disk. Rather than FDISK.EXE, NT uses a program called Disk Administrator to create and manage partitions. Disk Administrator is considerably easier to use than FDISK.EXE. Exercise 4-10 helps you start Disk Administrator for the first time. After starting Disk Administrator, you can create and delete partitions; you can also manage stripe sets, volume sets, stripes sets with parity, and mirror sets.

Exercise 4-10: Launching Disk Administrator

1. Log on using an account that has administrator privileges.
2. Click Start | Programs | Administrative Tools (Common) | Disk Administrator.
3. You will see the following message:

4. Click Yes to write a 32-bit signature that uniquely identifies the disk written to the primary partition. This is done so that even if you change the disk controller or identification, NT will still recognize the disk.

System and Boot Partitions

NT uses two special partitions called the system and boot partitions for its start-up procedure. The definition of these partitions may sound backwards, but it is correct. The system partition contains the boot files such NTLDR and BOOT.INI. The boot partition contains system files such as the WINNT folder and the SYSTEM32 folder. The system partition can be set to active. When the system partition is set to active your computer will boot from that partition. If you have more than one system partition you can change the active partition—thereby changing which partition you boot from. Exercise 4-11 shows how to change the active partition of your system.

Exercise 4-11: Changing the active partition

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Right-click the partition you want to make active (it must be a primary partition).
3. Select Mark Active.
4. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.

Primary and Extended Partitions

Before you can access your hard disks, they first must be partitioned. You can create either primary partitions or extended partitions. A primary partition can be used as a system partition (set to active). Each hard disk can have up to four primary partitions. If you use an extended partition on a disk, you can only have three primary partitions on that disk The key is you are only allowed to have a total of four partitions (not including logical drives) on a disk. A logical drive is a method of subdividing an extended partition. Unlike a primary partition, an extended partition can be divided into many logical drives. This enables you to have many more than four drive letters per disk.

Figure 4-19 shows a computer configured with two hard disk drives (Disk 0 and Disk 1) and one CD-ROM. Disk 0 has one primary partition (C:) and one extended partition that contains three logical drives (E: to G:). Disk 1 has one primary partition (D:), one extended partition with four logical drives (I: to L:), an Unknown partition (it’s a partition that runs the Linux operating system, a version of UNIX that you don’t need to know for the test), and 502 MB area of free space. You’ll notice that drive C: has an * above it, which means it’s marked as active (the system partition).

Exercises 4-12 through 4-14 show how to manage and configure partitions using Disk Administrator.

Exercise 4-12: Deleting a partition

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. To select the partition you want to delete, right-click it and select delete.
3. Click Yes when asked if you are sure you want to delete the partition.
4. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar. Commit changes now actually makes your changes take place. After step 3 you could have recovered the partition simply by exiting Disk Administrator and not saving the changes when prompted.

Exercise 4-13: Creating an extended partition with logical drives

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Right-click an area of Free Space.
3. Choose Create Extended.
4. Enter the size of the partition.
5. Click OK.
6. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.
7. Right-click the same area of Free Space.
8. Choose Create.
9. Enter the size of the logical drive.
10. Click OK.
11. Repeat steps 6-10 to create more logical drives.
12. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.

Exercise 4-14: Formatting a partition

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Right-click a partition.
3. Choose Format.
4. In the Format dialog box, select a file system.
5. Enter a Volume label if you want to name your partition.
6. Check Quick Format if you don’t want to scan for bad sectors while formatting (this is much quicker).
7. If you chose NTFS as the file system, you can enable compression on the entire drive.
8. Click Start.
9. Click OK when you see the warning message that all data on the disk will be erased.

Volume Sets

Volume sets combine 2 to 32 areas of free space on one or multiple hard disks. Use volume sets to combine different sized areas of free space as a single volume (drive letter) from any type of hard disk (IDE, SCSI, or ESDI). Volume sets don’t provide any fault tolerance or performance gains. They are simply used to combine multiple areas of free space as one logical drive. You can also extend your volume set if you format it using NTFS. If your volume set is formatted with the FAT file system, you’ll need to convert it to NTFS if you want to extend it. Extending a volume set allows you to format more areas of free space into an existing volume set without destroying the data. Although you can increase the size of a volume set, you can never decrease it. Exercise 4-15 teaches you how to create a volume set and Exercise 4-16 shows you how to increase the size of your volume set.

Exercise 4-15: Creating a Volume Set

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Select the areas of free space you want to include. You’ll need to hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple areas of free space.
3. Choose Partition | Create Volume Set from the menu bar.
4. Enter the size of the volume set.
5. Click OK
6. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.
7. Format the volume set.

Exercise 4-16: Extending a volume set

1. Make sure the volume set is formatted with NTFS.
2. Open Disk Administrator.
3. Select the volume set and the area of free space you want to add.
4. Choose Partition | Create Volume Set from the menu bar.
5. Enter the size of the new volume set.
6. Click OK.
7. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.

Stripe Sets Without Parity

Stripe sets without parity are like volume sets except they provide performance gains. They can combine 2 to 32 areas of free space as a single logical drive; however, the free space must be on different hard disks and each hard disk must contain the same amount of free space. If you have two disks—Disk 1 one with 100 MB free and Disk 2 with 200 MB free—you can use 100 MB free space from each disk, and ignore the remaining 100 MB available on Disk 2.

The data is written to a stripe set in 64 KB blocks, going disk by disk. If you use multiple controllers or if your controller supports concurrent I/O, you can see significant speed improvements because you can access your data by reading from more than one drive at a time.However, stripe sets without parity have a disadvantage: when a hard disk fails, all your data is lost. Since each disk contains a portion of the data, you lose all the data if any one disk fails. Exercise 4-17 teaches you how to create a stripe set without parity. This exercise requires you to have at least two hard disks with an equal area of available free space.

Exercise 4-17: Creating a stripe set

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Select at least two areas of free space, each on a different hard disk.
3. Click Partition | Create Stripe Set
4. Enter the size of the stripe set you want to create.
5. Click OK.
6. Choose Partition | Commit changes now from the menu bar.
7. Format the stripe set using the file system of your choice.

Drive Letter Assignment

Assigning drive letters is easy in NT. You use Disk Administrator to assign or change drive letters. Be very careful when changing drive letters on drives that are already in use. Although the drive letter changes, the registry settings for programs that are set up on that drive are not updated and users may lose access to files. Exercise 4-18 shows how to change the drive letter for your CD-ROM drive.

Exercise 4-18 Assigning drive letters

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Right-click the CD-ROM drive partition.
3. Choose Assign Drive Letter.
4. Change the current drive letter to an unused letter (obviously, you can’t assign a letter that is already in use).
5. Answer Yes when asked if you want to continue.
6. Click OK.
7. Close Disk Administrator

Fault Tolerance (RAID)

If you’ve worked with computers for very long, you probably already know that they break. In fact the hard disk is one of the most commonly broken components in a computer. In order to increase your computer's uptime (the amount of time it is online) you should consider using RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). NT Supports software RAID levels 0, l, and 5, in which the operating system controls how the data is written to the physical drive. Hardware redundancy is more expensive, but it provides better performance. Windows NT HCL contains a list of hard disks supported for software RAID. RAID level 0 is a stripe set without parity, which was just discussed. This is the only level of RAID that doesn’t provide fault tolerance, because it doesn't include a parity bit that can be used to reconstruct the data set.

Mirroring

Raid level 1 is disk mirroring, in which two hard disks contain identical information. If one drive fails, the other drive can still be accessed; since it contains identical information, no data is lost. Software RAID 1 can be used on the system and boot partition, whereas software RAID 5 can’t be used on these partitions. Exercise 4-19 shows you how to create a mirror set and Exercise 4-20 shows how to repair a damaged mirror set using Disk Administrator.

Exercise 4-19: Creating a mirror set

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Select an area of free space on each of two separate hard disks.
3. Click Fault Tolerance | Establish Mirror.

Exercise 4-20: Repairing a damaged mirror set

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Select the mirror set that is damaged.
3. Click Fault Tolerance | Break Mirror.
4. Replace or repair the damaged disk.
5. Recreate the mirror set as outlined in Exercise 4-19.

Duplexing

Disk duplexing is exactly like mirroring except that it uses two disk controller cards. This provides redundancy in case one of the controllers fails. Duplexing eliminates the single point of failure that comes with using a single controller card.

Striping with Parity

RAID 5, also called a stripe set with parity, uses 3 to 32 drives with the same size partition. It manages the data just like a stripe set, except it writes a parity bit across all the disks. Table 4-3 shows the order in which data is written to a stripe set with parity. RAID 5 uses this parity bit to reconstruct the data on a disk if that disk fails. If more than one disk fails, there isn’t enough information to reconstruct the missing data; therefore, you shouldn’t rely on RAID 5 alone—you’ll also need to perform regular backups. The more disks you include in a stripe set with parity, the more economical it is. The amount of space lost to parity is 1/n (where n is the number of disks in the set). Unlike mirroring, software RAID 5 can't be used on the system or boot partitions. Exercise 4-21 shows you how to create a stripe set with parity and Exercise 4-22 shows how to repair a stripe set with parity.

Exercise 4-21: Creating a stripe set with parity

1. Open Disk Administrator.
2. Choose at least three areas of free space on separate disk drives (you can’t choose more than 32 areas of free space).
3. Click Fault Tolerance | Create Stripe Set with Parity.
4. Enter the size of the stripe set with parity you want to create.
5. Click OK.

Exercise 4-22: Repairing a damaged stripe set with parity

1. Replace the damaged disk.
2. Open Disk Administrator.
3. Select the stripe set with parity by clicking on it.
4. Select an area of free space on the newly added hard disk (it must have an area of free space as large as the other disks in the stripe set).
5. Click Fault Tolerance | Regenerate.
6. Close Disk Administrator and restart NT.

NT Clients

One reason NT has been so successful is because of its support for many different clients. NT can communicate with MS-DOS with Network Client 3.0, Windows 95, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, NT Workstation, OS/2, LAN Manager, Macintosh, NetWare, and UNIX clients.

Not all clients operate in the same way with NT. Table 4-4 shows the network protocols supported by the clients. Table 4-5 shows the supported TCP/IP protocol-related services.

Using the Network Client Administrator

The Network Client Administrator tool gives administrators the ability to customize the way they install networking clients. You can make a network installation startup disk or an entire installation disk set, copy client-based network administrative tools, and view Remoteboot client information. The Network Client Administrator tool is located in the Administrative Tools program group.

Make Network Installation Startup Disk

This option allows you to create a bootable floppy disk that will connect to an NT Server and download the files necessary for installing the selected operating system. Windows NT Workstation, Windows 95, and Microsoft Network Client 3.0 for MS-DOS are all supported.

Make Network Client Installation Disk Set

This option makes a complete installation disk set for the selected network operating system. You can make installation disks for Microsoft Network Client 3.0 for MS-DOS, LAN Manager 2.2c for MS-DOS Client, LAN Manager 2.2c OS/2 client, and Windows 95.

Copy Client-based Network Administration Tools

This option makes the NT administration tools available via the network. The list of tools you can execute depends on which operating system you are running.

The Windows NT Workstation tools are as follows:

The tools for Windows 95 are as follows:

View Remoteboot Client Information

Allows an administrator to view the remoteboot information provided by an NT Server running the Remoteboot service. Remoteboot service boots MS-DOS and Windows-based computers via the network.

NT Browser Types

NT uses a computer browser service to locate other computers on the network. Each protocol you have installed takes up resources in the computer browser service because each one must have its own browse list. There are four types of browsers: domain master browser, master browser, potential browser, and non-browser.

Domain Master Browser

The domain master browser is responsible for maintaining a list of master browsers on all subnets. It combines each subnet’s master browser’s list into one list for the entire domain. This list is forwarded back to the master browser on each subnet. By default, the PDC serves as the domain master browser.

Master Browser

Each subnet for the domain or each workgroup has a computer, known as the master browser, responsible for maintaining the browse list. Every time a computer starts, it registers itself with the master browser. The master browser records all registered computers in a list and forwards it to the domain master browser.

Backup Browser

The backup browser helps the master browser by giving its browse list to clients who request it. The master browser gives its browse list to a backup browser so the backup browser can give the list to local clients. Whenever a master browser goes offline, a backup browser becomes the master browser.

Potential Browser

A potential browser is a computer that isn’t acting as a browser, but can do so if requested.

Non-browser

No matter what, this computer can’t serve as a browser.

Browser Elections

Browser elections occur whenever a client or backup browser can’t find a master browser. The browser election tries to find the most robust computer to be the master browser. A computer initiates an election by sending an election datagram out to the network. When a browser receives an election datagram, it examines the election criteria set on that datagram. If the browser has better election criteria it sends out its own election datagram. This continues until no more election datagrams are broadcast. When a browser can't send an election datagram because it doesn't have better criteria, it attempts to find the new master browser. Some of the criteria used to determine the master browser are:

You can use the MaintainServerList parameter in the registry to tell your server whether it should always try to become the master browser, never become the master browser, or be a potential browser. Edit the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Service\Browser\Parameters

MaintainServerList (set to Yes, No, or Auto)

Setting the MaintainServerList parameter to Yes forces your server to always try to become the master browser. The value No causes the computer to never become the master browser, and Auto sets it to be a potential browser.

NT System Registry

First, a warning: Editing the registry can severely damage your NT configuration. It’s not like an .INI file where you can go back and correct your mistakes. If you damage your registry by editing the wrong key by mistake, you may have to reload NT. Before editing your registry, you should run the RDISK utility to make sure you have a current Emergency Repair Disk.

The registry contains all your system and program configuration parameters. It is a very powerful database that controls your computer. The registry is a much better way to maintain configuration information about your computer than .INI files were. First of all, .INI files were flat and couldn't contain subcategories within sections, whereas the registry can. Also .INI files couldn't apply security as the registry can. The registry offers a centralized place for configuration information, whereas .INI files were far from centralized—remember WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI? Finally, the registry is very flexible. .INI files could only hold ASCII text, but the registry can hold binary values, hexadecimal values, and even executable code.

However, the registry does have its critics. It’s very hard to navigate and understand. It’s very easy to get lost in the plethora of directories and subdirectories. The registry is also a very deadly tool because one mistake can wipe out your entire system.

You should try to avoid editing the registry with regedt32.exe. You can save yourself a lot of trouble by using the proper tools designed for editing the registry. The Control Panel is a common tool used for editing the registry. When you change values using a Control Panel applet you are usually changing registry values. You can also use the administrative tools that come with NT to edit the registry: User Manager, Event Viewer, and Server Manager. If you must edit the registry, Exercise 4-23 and Exercise 4-24 teach you how to get started.

Exercise 4-23: Editing the Registry

1. Click Start | Run.
2. Type REGEDT32.
3. Click OK.
4. Choose the registry subtree you want to edit by clicking on its title bar (choose HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).
5. Expand the branches of the registry to get to the key you want to edit. Let’s edit the key that configures the browser service. Go to the following key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Service\Browser\Parameters
6. Double-click MaintainServerList in the right-side pane.
7. Change the value listed from Auto to Yes (if it is already set to Yes change it to Auto).
8. Click OK.

Exercise 4-24: Finding occurrences of a word in the registry

1. Start the registry editor.
2. Select the HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree.
3. Click the highest directory (HKEY_CURRENT_USER).
4. Click View | Find Key.
5. Type winlogon in the Find What text box.
6. Click Find Next.

Hardware Profiles

Hardware profiles allow you to boot your computer using different configurations—most commonly laptops and docking stations. If the laptop is docked, it has one type of hardware configuration; when it isn’t docked, it has a different configuration. By using hardware profiles you can specify which configuration to use when your system boots. NT uses the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG to maintain the information about the hardware profile you selected at startup. You can create or edit hardware profiles using the Hardware Profiles tab in the System applet of the Control Panel.

User Profiles

User profiles store configuration information for a specific user. Users can choose many of their own environment settings without changing the environment for other users. Different environment settings for user profiles are stored in different files and locations within NT. The file NTUSER.DAT contains most of the registry information for a user profile; however, much of the information is also stored in folders located in %winnt%\profiles folder. This folder contains information such as recently used files, shortcuts, startup programs, and desktop configuration.

There are two types of user profiles: roaming and local. Roaming profiles allows users to log on to any NT Workstation or Server and have the same user profile. To set a roaming profile you need to set a profile path in User Manager. Roaming profiles can be mandatory. A mandatory profile doesn’t allow the user to change his environment. To create a mandatory profile, you must specify a profile path in User Manager. Then copy a profile to the users profile directory using the Copy To button in the System applet. After the profile is copied, rename the file NTUSER.DAT to NTUSER.MAN. The .MAN extension makes the file read-only so that any changes the user makes to his environment won’t be saved when the user exits.

A local profile resides on the local machine. Any changes made to the profile are updated locally. The first time a user logs on, NT uses the local default user profile to create a profile for the new user, unless the user has a roaming profile. If a user has a roaming profile, it is downloaded to the local machine.

Devices

You can configure the startup value of the devices on your system by using the Devices applet in Control Panel. There are five types of device you can configure:

Registry Hierarchy

The registry is made up of a hierarchy that can be visualized as a tree. At the top of the hierarchy is the subtree. Each subtree appears in its own window when using REGEDT32. There are five subtrees: