A+ Operating Systems Technologies

20. TSR stands for Terminate and Stay Resident. An example of TSR program is a virus detection program such as Norton Anti Virus.

21. If Autoexec.bat tried to access a drive letter that is not valid, the error message "Current drive is no longer valid" appears.

22. VIRUS:

1.      A boot sector virus stays resident by infecting the boot sector of the computer

2.      A Master boot record (MBR) virus infect the first physical sector of all affected disks

3.      File viruses either replace or attach themselves to executable files, and most commonly found virus.

4.      Macro virus attaches itself to documents in the form of macros.

5.      Memory viruses are viruses that execute and stay resident in memory. Trojan Horse is an example of memory virus.

23. TCP/IP

-          TCP/IP is the protocol used when you are Telnetting to a remote host. HTTP is  used for accessing the World Wide Web services.

-          SMTP is used to upload mail to the mail server. POP3 is used for downloading mail from a mail server to a client machine running POP3 client.

-          Both PPP and SLIP can be used for dial up connections. However, SLIP can't be used where the IP address need to be assigned dynamically. The advantage of PPP is multi protocol support, that it can support TCP/IP, IPX, AppleTalk etc. SLIP can support only TCP/IP and IP addresses need to be assigned manually.

-          WINS server resolves the NetBIOS names to IP addresses. A Windows network running TCP/IP need to be configured with WINS (or LMHOSTS file on each computer)  for NetBIOS name resolution.

24. Networking utilities:

1.      NBTSTAT: This utility displays current NetBIOS over TCP/IP connections, and display NetBIOS name cache.

2.      NETSTAT: Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections since the server was last booted.

3.      TRACERT: Used to determine which route a packet takes to reach its destination from source.

4.      IPCONFIG: Used to display  Windows IP configuration information.

5.      NSLOOKUP: This utility enables users to interact with a DNS server and display resource records.

6.      ROUTE: Used to display and edit static routing tables.

25. Some of the important commands useful in trouble shooting TCP/IP networks are:

1.      Ipconfig: Displays TCP/IP configuration values, including IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway.

2.      Ping: This command can be used to verify whether the target ip address or host name is present. You need to specify the target IP address or host name. You can ping the loop back address at 127.0.0.1. A  response ensures that the TCP/IP stack is installed properly on your computer.

3.      Route:  Displays and manipulates route information.

4.      Tracert: Determines the route packets take to reach the specified destination.

26. To see TCP/IP configuration on a Windows 95 / 98 computer, use  WINIPCFG. It will display your IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, hardware MAC address.

To see TCP/IP configuration on an NT machine, use IPCONFIG. It will also display the IP configuration information on an NT machine. To get more details, use IPCONFIG/ALL.

27. DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library. DLL is a special form of application code loaded into memory by request. A DLL is not executable by itself.  More than one application may use the functions offered by a DLL.

28. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML is the language most widely used for writing Web pages.

29. You can't apply file level permissions on a FAT file system. Only NTFS allows file permissions. Remember that the NTFS file permissions are always in effect to all users and processes.

30. PAP and CHAP:

-          PAP uses 2-way handshaking. Passwords are sent in clear text across the link. Therefore, PAP is to be used only when it not possible to use CHAP.

-          CHAP uses 3-way handshaking. CHAP uses Challenge/ Response method, that provides protection against the password capture while authenticating the user. One should use CHAP whenever it is possible.

31. Windows 2000:

-          Hardware requirements:

-          When you install Windows 2000 in the same folder as that of Windows 95/ Windows 98/ Windows NT, the operating system gets upgraded to Windows 2000.

-          TCP/IP protocol stack is installed by default when you install Windows 2000 on a computer.

-          You can use Regional Options to support additional languages on your computer. With the support of additional languages, you will be able to edit documents written in those languages. You can also set locale specific to any region using this Option.

-          The Windows 2000 Performance tool is composed of two parts:

1.      System Monitor, and

2.      Performance Logs and Alerts.

-          With System Monitor, you can collect and view real-time data about memory, disk, processor, network, and other activity in chart (graph), histogram, or report form.

-          Through Performance Logs and Alerts you can configure logs to record performance data and set system alerts to notify you when a specified counter's value is above or below a defined threshold.

-          Event Viewer maintains logs about program, security, and system events. You can use Event Viewer to view and manage the event logs, gather information about hardware and software problems, and monitor Windows 2000 security events.

To open Event Viewer, click 'Start', point to 'Settings', and then click 'Control Panel'. Double-click 'Administrative Tools', and then double-click Event Viewer.

-          Encrypting File System (EFS) keeps your documents safe from intruders who might gain unauthorized physical access to your sensitive stored data by stealing your laptop or Zip disk, or by other means.

You need to ensure the following before the upgrade:

1. The hardware is adequate for upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional

2. Also, check the hardware, software adequacy by running “Winnt32.exe / checkupgradeonly”. Note that the switch “checkupgradeonly” will output a report on the adequacy of hardware and software. It will also warn you if any applications need upgrade packs, which may be obtained from respective application vendors, if available. If the software upgrade pack is not installed for any application, the application may be rendered unusable!

-          If you are creating a Striped volume on a new Windows 2000 machine, it can only be created on dynamic disks. However, if you are upgrading a Windows NT computer to Windows 2000, any existing stripe set will be supported.

-          For creating Stripe set with parity, we need at least 3 disk volumes.

-          Placing the paging file on different physical disks is optimal. This will improve faster access to the Paging file, and also distribute the load.

-          Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer can be used for assigning Share and NTFS permissions on a Windows 2000 computer.

32. File names can be 255 characters long on a FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems.

33. Windows 2000 system monitoring:

Some of the important System Monitor counters are:

1.      Memory>Available Mbytes: measures the amount of physical memory that is available. Typically > 4MB. If less than 4 MB, consider adding more memory.

2.      Memory>Pages/Sec: Shows the number of times that the disk has been accessed, because requested information was not available in memory. If the value of the counter is not below 20, you should add more memory. A value of 4 or 5 is typical.

3.      Paging File>%Usage: Indicates the % of allocated page file utilization. Should be less than 99%.

4.      Processor>%Processor Time: measure the time that the processor is busy. Should be typically less than 80%

5.      Processor>Interrupts/Sec: Indicates the average number of hardware interrupts that the processor receives each second. If more than 3,500, you can suspect a program or faulty hardware.

6.      PhysicalDisk>%Disk Time: Measures the amount of time that the physical disk is busy servicing read or write requests. If more than 90%, you can improve the performance by adding another disk channel.

7.      PhysicalDisk>%Current Disk Queue Length: indicates the number of pending disk requests that need to be processed. The value should be less than 2. The disk problems might arise from less memory, resulting in usage of excessive paging. Ensure that the memory is sufficient before attending to the disk problem.

8.      LogicalDisk > %Free Space counter: Indicates the amount of logical disk’s free disk space. Typical value is 10% or above.

34. To insert a new file extension, you use Windows explorer, and select the application. Then, Tools -> Folder Option -> File Types. Configure the extension appropriately.

35. Windows 2000 disk volumes:

Windows 2000 Operating systems support 5 different volume types:

1. Simple volumes

2. Spanned volumes

3. Striped volumes

4. Mirrored volumes

5. RAID-5 volumes

A simple volume consists of a formatted disk on a single hard disk.

A Spanned volume consists of disk space on more than one hard disk.

A Striped volume has disk space on 2 or more disks. The disk spaces must be same on all disks. Fastest disk access among all volume types. RAID level 0.

A mirrored volume consists of a Simple volume that is mirrored in total, onto a second dynamic disk. Provides highest level of fault tolerance. Mirroring is  RAID level 1

A RAID-5 volume consists of identical sized disk space located on three or more dynamic disks. Here any single disk failures can be recovered.

Note that Windows 2000 Professional doesn’t support Mirrored and RAID-5 volumes, where as other Windows 2000 Operating Systems (2000 Server, Advanced Server) support.

36. Fault tolerance boot disk is a floppy disk that enables you to boot a computer in the event that the first disk in a mirrored volume fails. If you mirror the installation folder in a Windows 2000 Server, you will not be able to boot because boot.ini points to the first volume. Therefore, you need to create a fault tolerance boot disk  that contain an appropriately edited Boot.ini file, that points to the mirrored volume.

37. By default, you can start recovery console (in Windows 2000) using,

1. The Windows 2000 Professional Setup Disks

2. From the CD ROM drive using Windows 2000 Professional CD (if the CD –ROM drive is bootable).

Also, you can have “Recovery Console” as a start up option by typing  \i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons at the command prompt, after switching to the CD ROM drive letter.

38. Windows 2000 provides two versions of Registry Editor

1. Regedt32.exe (32-bit) and

2. Regedit.exe (16-bit).

Regedt32.exe is automatically installed in the systemroot\system32 folder, while Regedit.exe is automatically installed in the systemroot folder. Regedit.exe is primarily used for its search capabilities as it doesn’t support all functions and data types.

39. On a Windows 2000 computer, the default spool folder is located at: Systemroot\System32\spool\printers. For example, if the OS is residing on C drive, the default location will be: “C:\\WINNT\System32\spool\printers”.

You can access this location through:

Start -> Printers -> File -> Server Properties -> Advanced tab. Type in the new spool location over the default location.

40.Up-grade to Windows 2000:

-          You can upgrade Windows 95/98, Windows NT 3.51Work Station, Windows NT 4.0 WS can be upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional.

-          You can’t upgrade Windows 3.1 and Windows for workgroups to Windows 2000 Professional. If you need to install 2000 Prof. On Windows 3.x, you need to upgrade first to Windows 95/98 or NT and then upgrade to 2000 Prof. It is easy to do a clean install of Windows 2000 on Windows 3.x machines.  

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