How 2 Use Administrative Tools In Windows XP

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Click START/CONTROL PANEL.

You will see that the ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS are in the list shown below.

Once you double click Administrative Tools you will be shown the shortcuts to activate different modules.

We will start with the COMPONENT SERVICES icon.

This icon is used by system administrators to deploy and administer COM+ programs from a graphical

user interface, or to automate administrative tasks using a scripting or programming language.

Software developers can use Component Services to visually configure routine component and program

behavior, such as security and participation in transactions, and to integrate components into COM+ programs.

I will not cover this any further since the average user will never touch this option.

We will move to the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT module.

This module does have some interesting features that you might find useful.

Once activated you will see a list of options.

Under the SYSTEM TOOLS we will start with the EVENT VIEWER.

Once I open EVENT VIEWER I am presented three options.

APPLICATION, SECURITY, SYSTEM.

We will start with APPLICATION.

You can see in the image below that I have some info in the right hand pane.

INFORMATION, WARNING, and ERROR.

If you are having an issue with one of your applications then this is a good starting point to resolve the issue.

The INFORMATION types are just that, they are for information.

The WARNING types can be a clue to something that has an issue but did not really crash the application.

The ERROR types are the issues you will be looking for.

I will double click the ERROR in my list and see if I can find the issue.

I have important information held here about what happened.

I can see right away that the SOURCE was NTBackup so I know this is the application with the issue.

I have another important item the EVENT ID: 8019 which could help on the web to find the issue

by doing a search for this using your favorite search engine.

Then of course I have the DESCRIPTION field which explains what happened.

You will see Microsoft has added a link that if clicked will ask you if you want to send the error to Microsoft.

Select OK when you are done.

The next item is the SECURITY icon.

You will see the image is blank in the right hand pane.

This sometimes will have data in it but in most cases you will not need to access this area.

The SYSTEM icon contains useful information when you are trying to find an issue.

I show here I had a W32Time issued as an Error and a W32Time issued as a Warning.

I can double click either on of these and see what has caused the issue.

You can see the next folder is the SHARED FOLDERS.

This contains your SHARES if you have any and your SESSIONS open and any OPEN FILES you might have.

You can explore these all you want just to see what they have in them.

You will see LOCAL USERS AND GROUPS.

This is a place of interest since you may need to add a user to your computer or you might want to bring up the rights a user has.

I have clicked on USERS which will show me in the right pane showing users on my computer.

You can right click on USERS and select NEW USER to create someone new on your system.

In the right pane you can right click on a user and click SET PASSWORD to change the user’s password.

You can also RENAME the account or DELETE the account.

You can also select PROPERTIES for more options on that user.

I will right click on the user ADMINISTRATOR and select PROPERTIES.

I now see the Properties for the user Administrator.

I can see I have three tabs to modify along with five options just on the GENERAL tab.

Starting with the GENERAL tab you will see the FULL NAME.

You can type a DESCRIPTION of the user.

You can set the settings so this particular USER CANNOT CHANGE PASSWORD.

You can make it so that their PASSWORD NEVER EXPIRES.

You can also disable the account with ACCOUNT IS DISABLED.

Select OK when done.

The MEMBER OF tab just shows what organizations this user is a member of.

If you do not want your children to have much power on your computer then give them a user ID to use

and make sure you check that they are not in the Administrators group like the user below is.

You would want them to be a member of the Users group only.

You can see you have the ability to ADD or REMOVE at the bottom.

Select OK when done.

The PROFILE tab is the final tab and this would not be used on a home machine.

In most cases this is used on a network so I will not cover this in detail.

You can see my next option is GROUPS.

Once clicked your pane in the right will populate with the groups.

You can right click GROUPS and select NEW GROUP if you would like to make a new one but in most cases this is not necessary.

The most used groups are the ADMINISTRATORS, POWER USERS, and USERS.

You will usually place the experienced users in the Administrators group and the inexperienced in the Users group.

Windows comes with the appropriate groups already built in.

You can double click any of the groups in the right pane to see who has membership to get a quick understanding of

who has more authority on your machine.

If they are in the ADMINISTRATORS group then they are all powerful on your machine.

If they are in the USERS group then they can run most programs but they cannot install programs or make major changes to the system.

We now come to a very useful tool called PERFORMANCE LOGS AND ALERTS.

You may find this handy if you are working with a slow machine and would like to see what hardware

component can be upgraded to give you better performance.

In the left hand pane I will click the + and break the highlighted area down.

I now can see what is in the COUNTER LOGS in the right hand pane.

You will see SYSTEM OVERVIEW with a red stack of disks.

Since it is red this means that it is not running.

I will right click on the icon and start the process running.

You can see now that my stack of disks become green which means the service is running.

I am going to right click the SYSTEM OVERVIEW and select PROPERTIES from the list.

You can see that I now have a new window.

This window shows the CURRENT LOG FILE NAME and its location.

This is the default location on all machines.

You should never need to change this.

You will see I also show the COUNTERS.

The counters are setup to monitor my MEMORY, PHYSICALDISK, and the PROCESSOR.

I also have three buttons called ADD OBJECTS, ADD COUNTERS, REMOVE.

The REMOVE is obvious but I will explain the other two.

The ADD OBJECTS button once clicked will give you many objects to choose from.

You can see a list of PERFORMANCE OBJECTS to choose from.

You can highlight any of the objects in the list and click EXPLAIN to see what the details are.

Once you have made your selection hit ADD and CLOSE and the item will populate the COUNTERS area.

The ADD COUNTERS page will have the USE LOCAL COMPUTER COUNTERS selected.

On a network the SELECT COUNTERS FROM COMPUTER option might be the choice since you

could monitor other computers from here.

You can click the ADD button to pick other options.

Click on the EXPLAIN button to get an explanation of the highlighted option.

Back to the main Properties page.

Two other tabs to choose from are LOG FILES and the SCHEDULE tab.

I would recommend not changing any of these settings on the LOG FILES tab.

It would be best to leave them set the way they are.

The SCHEDULE screen allows you to schedule the log and is self explanatory

so I will not go into detail since you may never use this.

I will not cover the DEVICE MANAGER since you will find this in another document on our site.

We will jump to the STORAGE section.

I will not cover the REMOVABLE STORAGE or the DISK DEFRAGMENTER since you will find these in another document on our site.

The DISK MANAGEMENT area is another great importance area to check on every so often.

You can see that it shows in the top box my drives I have.

The 1^st Partition is an EISA Configuration area that has been created by the manufacturer of the computer

and should never be deleted.

The (C:) Partition is the 2^nd drive which holds my (SYSTEM) or the OS.

This is a very important drive since if it becomes damaged I may not be able to boot my computer.

The 3^rd option is the DATA (D:) Partition which I created myself when I built the machine.

You may only have one Partition or you may have ten Partitions. It is according to how the machine was built.

The one thing to look for here is the STATUS area next to the drives. Mine shows HEALTHY on all three.

This is what you want to see.

If you have anything other than Healthy then you better be saving your data off to an external

source before you lose the drive just to be safe.

You will see I have DISK 0 and the drive letters that are in place on that disk.

This is shown this way because I have partitioned my only drive into two sections as shown with a (C:) and (D:).

This can be a benefit because if you have an issue with the OS on the C drive then you can very carefully

reload the machines OS onto the C drive without tampering with the D drive so all the data on the D drive will stay intact.

This is a very delicate procedure since you would not want to lose any data on the D drive if that is where you keep valuable info.

If you have a DISK 1 or DISK 2 or any other number below the DISK 0 box this would mean you have two

or maybe three hard drives in the machine.

This tactic for a home machine is even better so you can designate your DISK 0 drive to the OS

and programs but keep all your data on the DISK 1 or DISK 2 area.

If this were the case then you could lose DISK0 and place in a new replacement drive and restore

the OS to the DISK 0 and then be able to access all your data on the DISK 1 and DISK 2 drives.

We are now moving to the final area of this task.

SERVICES AND APPLICATIONS.

You only need to click on the word SERVICES to bring up the right hand side of information.

I cannot at this time get into this area other than give a brief explanation since this is a very large area of info

that will take much time to compile.

This is an area that basically controls the running of components of applications.

You can START, STOP, PAUSE, RESUME, and RESTART applications or components of applications by right clicking items

In the right pane and making your selection.

You will find the full details in our HOW 2 CONFIGURE SERVICES.

You have the WMI CONTROL icon.

This icon is basically useless to the average user so we will not cover this icon.

You can right click the icon and select PROPERTIES to view the different options

available but I would recommend leaving this alone.

Our final icon is the INDEXING SERVICE. I will not explain this area either.

This area is one of those that you will never access as a home user or

even on a network that is managed by an IT staff.

Ok now we are going to switch back to the main screen of the ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS

and start with the DATA SOURCES (ODBC) area.

I will explain this area but again you will probably never need this for home or work

unless directed by a computer savvy person.

Double click the DATA SOURCES (ODBC) icon.

Once you enter the ODBC icon you are presented with seven tabs.

I will explain what this entire area does without going into each tab.

ODBC is a programming interface that enables applications to access data in database management systems

that use structured query language (SQL) as a data access standard.

Now if you got all that then feel free to open this and make use of it but

in the real world for home users you will never touch this.

I have already covered the EVENT VIEWER up higher in this article.

This is the same thing only found in a different location.

So reference the top of the article to understand what it does.

LOCAL SECURITY POLICY is a cool area if you are a network administrator.

I am not sure that it would ever be used for a home machine.

I broke down every level in this area just to show what is contained here.

I have selected the PASSWORD POLICY under ACCOUNT POLICIES.

You can see I now have options in the right hand pane.

You can double click the 1^st option ENFORCE PASSWORD HISTORY and raise or lower the number.

All these settings self explain the function It is very unlikely you will ever need to access this area.

Be careful what you set here and understand the changes that will occur before you tamper or you might cause issues.

The next area has already been covered in HOW 2 SET PERFORMANCE.

This is just another way of accessing the area.

The SERVICES icon is last but you will find this article covered in the HOW 2 SERVICES.

This completes the area of ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS.

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