Oreilly Free ebook : Windows NT Workstation Configuration and Maintenance.pdf

The aim of this book is to describe a selection of tools and techniques that can be used to script automatic maintenance and configuration tasks. Starting with simple activities and moving to the more complex, we demonstrate how a tiny script running automatically on each workstation can load more substantial scripts from a network server, which in turn can be used to carry out virtually any administration task that you can think of. There are literally thousands of administration tasks that could be automated by scripting. Although we try to give useful examples of some of them, the emphasis of this book is not so much to suggest maintenance and configuration tasks that can be automated; to a large extent, we leave that up to you. Instead, we concentrate on describing tools and techniques that can be put to use in writing scripts that perform any kind of automatic maintenance and configuration tasks that you care to throw at them.

Most of the more advanced scripts we describe involve writing, modifying, and deleting registry keys. Whenever we introduce a key, we try not to simply present it as is, but rather explain what it is, why it lives where it does, and why it is of any importance. Possibly more importantly, we tell you about the tools, techniques, and documentation that we used to find out about some of the more arcane configuration parameters that can be configured usefully with scripts. Our mission is not to mystify by hiding our sources, but rather to equip you to discover for yourself, so you can apply the techniques described here to any workstationbased administrative task that you care to dream up.

This book is about automated maintenance and configuration of NT workstations. Through a series of examples that become more sophisticated and build on one another as the book progresses, it demonstrates the value of scripting for system administrators in countless NT environments. Our emphasis is on technique: we never simply present our scripts "as is"; rather, we walk through the processes and tools involved in devising, testing, and deploying automated solutions to maintenance and configuration tasks. We hope that by the time you have finished reading the book, you will realize that scripting is an extremely powerful concept that can save enormous amounts of time and greatly reduce the potential for human error in all sorts of situations. Further, we hope that you will feel confident enough to extend some of our examples and develop your own scripts to fulfill the needs of your NT network.