My company standardized its mobile users on IBM ThinkPad T20 notebooks. Occasionally, these Windows 2000 systems lock up in Standby mode. The problem requires a hard reset of the unit. Is this problem related to Win2K's Standby mode support, or is it a hardware glitch?
Your problem is most likely the result of bugs in the BIOS version you're using on the ThinkPad. When running under Win2K, early ThinkPad T20 BIOS versions exhibit the Standby mode problem you describe. To fix the problem, download and install the latest BIOS version from IBM (http://www.pc.ibm.com/support).
Under Windows NT 4.0, I configured my administrative workstation for basic network management by installing Server Tools from the NT 4.0 CD-ROM. However, I'm not sure how to install similar tools under Windows 2000. Do I have to piece together the management tools I need (e.g., as Microsoft Management Console—MMC—snap-ins)?
The Win2K equivalents of NT 4.0's Server Tools reside in a Windows Installer package called adminpak.msi, which you'll find in the \i386 folder on the Win2K Server, Win2K Advanced Server, and Win2K Datacenter Server installation CD-ROMs. To start the installation, double-click the adminpak.msi file. Doing so launches the Windows 2000 Administration Tools Setup Wizard. The Administration Tools package includes many useful management snap-ins:
- Active Directory Users and Computers
- Active Directory Domains and Trusts
- Active Directory Sites and Services
- Connection Manager Administration
- Cluster Administration
- Certification Authority Administration
- DHCP Administration
- DNS Administration
- DFS Administration
- Internet Services Manager
- Internet Authentication Service
- Remote Storage Service Administration
- Routing and Remote Access Administration
- Terminal Services and Terminal Services Licensing Administration
- WINS Administration
When I run the Windows 2000 RRAS Configuration Wizard, several of RRAS's default configurations set a large number of available VPN connections for incoming clients—as many as 128 in some cases. With Windows NT, I had many problems with RAS and RRAS exhausting my DHCP scopes. Is my DHCP server doomed when I use Win2K RRAS?
Fortunately, regarding interaction with DHCP and the allocation of client IP addresses, Win2K RRAS servers behave much differently—and more intelligently—than NT 4.0 servers. When a DHCP server is available, a Win2K RRAS server uses it to lease IP addresses in batches of 10, then stores the addresses in the registry for later allocation to RRAS clients. If the address pool on the RRAS server is exhausted, the server leases additional addresses from the DHCP server, also in blocks of 10.
In the registry, you can alter the IP address batch size (i.e., the number of addresses that RAS leases at one time). Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteAccess\Parameters\IP\InitialAddress
PoolSize registry subkey, of data type REG_DWORD. The default value is 10.
Win2K's DHCP-leasing behavior is different from that of NT 4.0, which leases enough IP addresses for all RAS devices (e.g., modems, ISDN, PPTP) configured on the RAS server, plus one address for the RAS server interface. Therefore, if you have 20 modems configured on your RAS server in NT 4.0, the RAS server leases 21 IP addresses when the RAS service starts. Win2K's lease-as-you-go method is much more efficient than NT's lease-everything method.
Windows NT 4.0's Performance Monitor contains the Logical Disk object, which lets my company's network administrators check the relative and absolute free space of all disks on all NT machines on the network without mapping every disk. Now that we've migrated to Windows 2000, we can't find the Logical Disk object. How can we regain this functionality?
Not only is Logical Disk still available under Win2K, but Win2K's Performance Monitor provides more disk-related information than its NT predecessor does. By default, NT 4.0 turns off all of Performance Monitor's disk-related counters. To get disk-related object and counter data in NT's Performance Monitor, you must enter the command Diskperf —Y (or —YE for fault-tolerant volumes) at a command prompt or from Start, Run—then reboot the system.
Win2K turns on the Physical Disk object by default but turns off the Logical Disk object. By default, Win2K operates as if you entered the Diskperf -YD command, which obtains only physical-drive data. To obtain performance-counter data for logical disks or storage volumes, you must enter the command Diskperf -YV at the command prompt. (Like NT, Win2K requires a reboot to enable this change.) Entering this command on a Win2K system forces the counters system to begin collecting disk performance data for logical drives and storage volumes in addition to physical drives. Figure 1 shows a Diskperf session and the utility's syntax.
I've modified a value under the Server service's registry subkey on my Windows NT Server system. As Microsoft warned, the modification disabled autotuning. Microsoft doesn't, however, provide information about how to reset the feature, except for reinstalling the OS. How can I restore the autotuning functionality to the Server service?
If you enter any custom values under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters subkey, the system disables autotuning of Server service performance by default. (The system will also disable autotuning if you use the Net Config command with the /hidden, /srvcomment, or /autodisconnect switches because using them exposes all the possible subkey values.) Disabling autotuning creates a problem when you want to add or remove memory. If you add or remove memory while autotuning is disabled, NT can't dynamically adjust the subkey's values to reflect the new amount of memory.
To restore server autotuning, you need to delete some values under the Parameters subkey. Delete all values except EnableSharedNetDrives, Lmannounce, NullSessionPipes, NullSessionShares, and Size. (If some of these values don't exist, you don't need to add them.)
Before you make any modifications to this subkey, I highly recommend that you perform a full system backup that includes the registry. Simply open the regedit registry editor and select Registry, Export Registry File while the Parameters subkey is selected. Then, save the subkey's data to a .reg file so that you can easily restore the subkey by double-clicking it and answering Yes to enter it in the registry.
After you restore the subkey to these values and perform a reboot, the system will restore the Server service's autotuning functionality. Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the LanmanServer registry subkey before and after modification, respectively. For more information about the Server service, see the Microsoft article "Server Service Configuration and Tuning" (http://support.microsoft.com/support/ kb/articles/q128/1/67.asp).
A side effect of the Net Config Server /hidden:yes/no command (which hides or exposes a server in the network browse list) is that it exposes static values for the autotuned LanmanServer subkey values. You can manually hide a server by setting the hidden value (of type REG_DWORD) to 1.