Speeding Up Shutdown
When I needed to restart Windows NT Server, it took a very long time to shut down, and most of
this time, the hard disk seemed to be doing nothing. This
situation got worse after I installed Exchange Server on the machine. I noticed that if I used
Control Panel, Services to manually stop most of the services, the shutdown process was
substantially faster. Instead of taking up to 20 minutes, a shutdown now takes about 2 minutes.
I then wrote the .bat file in Listing 1, page 34, to automate the process. I hope this process saves
you as much time and frustration as it has saved me. (You'll find the names in the .bat file under
Control Panel, Services. Note that the particular services you'll want to stop will vary from system
to system.)
To write this .bat file:
1. Go to the command line, and execute
net start > AllDown.BAT
2. Edit the lines, and add net stop
and a quotation mark at the beginning of each line and a quotation mark at the end of each line.
3. Manually shut down the services one by one, making sure the service does not return any
errors. As you're shutting them down, edit AllDown.BAT so that the lines follow the same sequence.
(You can use the sequence in Listing 1 as a base.)
4. Remove the services from AllDown.BAT that did not let you shut them down.
5. Remove several key services that you do not want to shut down manually (e.g., Workstation,
Server, Computer Browser, Event Log, and Alerter).
—Paul Garrett
paul@sasso.co.cr
Custom Explorer Views
Administrators familiar with Windows NT 4.0's Explorer shell may know that you can click Start
and then Run and type in an ordinary or universal naming convention (UNC) path to open Explorer with
that path displayed. For example, type
\\myserver\apps
to open up a view of the Apps share on server MyServer.
Not as common, but certainly as useful, is the ability to enter just system, system32,
or favorites to open an Explorer view of %systemroot%\system, %systemroot%\system32,
or %systemroot%\
favorites, respectively. This tip works for any directory in or for any
subdirectory of a directory in your NT system's path. I find this tip pretty useful during
day-to-day administration tasks.
—Rick Cogley
rcogley@ptstrain.co.jp
Unattended NT 3.51 Installations
Christa Anderson's March article, "Designing Unattended NT Installations," was a good
introduction to automated installation with Windows NT 4.0. She explained how NT 4.0 uniqueness
database files let you customize an installation for a particular user. Though this approach is
great for NT 4.0 users, some of us are still installing NT 3.51 on enough machines to make the
unattended install worthwhile. Listing 2 is a simple batch file I made to change one line of an
answer file on the fly.
You can install NT 3.51 (or NT 4.0) over the network by running setup.bat from the
\winnt40\workstn\i386 directory on the machine SERVER. From the command line, you enter the computer
name for the machine you want to install. The files 1.txt and 2.txt are the sections of the answer
file before and after the line ComputerName = xxxx. This method should work equally well in
NT 3.51, or for any other line in the answer file that you want to change from the command line.
A couple of hints: Make sure your Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server is up and
running while you're not watching an install that uses it, or you'll get stuck when NT tries to
start the network and asks whether you want to see further error messages about DHCP. Also, specify
the directory \winnt instead of choosing the default, or NT can end up in something like \winnt.0 if
you have a previous boot.ini hanging around.
—Timothy M. Gales
timothy.m.gales@loram.com
LISTING 1: .BAT file for Automating Manual Shutdown
@echo off
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Directory Synchronization"
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Connector"
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent"
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Information Store"
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Directory"
net stop "Microsoft Exchange System Attendant"
net stop "FTP Publishing Service"
net stop "Gopher Publishing Service"
net stop "World Wide Web Publishing Service"
net stop "License Logging Service"
net stop "Microsoft DHCP Server"
net stop "Microsoft DNS Server"
net stop "NT LM Security Support Provider"
net stop "Plug and Play"
net stop "Remote Access Autodial Manager"
net stop "Remote Access Server"
net stop "Remote Access Connection Manager"
net stop "Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator"
net stop "Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service"
net stop "SAP Agent"
net stop "Schedule"
net stop "Spooler"
net stop "Telephony Service"
net stop "Windows Internet Name Service"
net stop "NT LM Security Support Provider"
LISTING 2: Batch File for NT 3.51 Unattended Installation
@echo off
IF "%1"
"/?
" GOTO HELP
IF NOT
"%1
"==
"" GOTO START
GOTO HELP
:START
IF EXIST UNATTEND.TXT DEL UNATTEND.TXT
TYPE 1.txt unattend.txt
ECHO ComputerName = %1 unattend.txt
TYPE 2.txt unattend.txt
winnt /s:\\server\winnt40\workstn\i386 /b /u:unattend.txt
GOTO END
:HELP
ECHO.
ECHO USAGE:
ECHO.
ECHO SETUP (WORKSTATION NAME)
:END