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Disable the Save This Password Check Box in the RAS Logon Dialog Box
Recovering A Lost Mailbox
Working with Existing DNS
Are Dial-up Connections Practical?
Allow Only Logged-on Users to Shut Down

Disable the Save This Password Check Box in the RAS Logon Dialog Box

By Troy Thompson, MCSE
Published in NCC Technology Publishing's Windows NT Help Desk Report

When the Save This Password check box is enabled and your notebook is lost or stolen, an intruder can automatically log on to company resources. To banish the save-password facility for RAS connections, search the registry for

Hkey_Local_Machine \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \RasMan \Parameters

Then, set the DisableSavePassword key value to 1.

Recovering A Lost Mailbox

By Brien Posey
Published in NCC Technology Publishing's Windows NT Administrator Report

Every network administrator has had to deal with users who accidentally delete everything they own. Suppose for a minute that a high-profile user at your company accidentally deletes the entire contents of his or her mailbox. If you've set Exchange to deliver all messages to personal folders, you could simply restore that user's folder from last night's backup. But suppose you haven't yet configured Exchange to do this. You don't want to restore last night's databases, because doing so will revert everyone to yesterday's data—and, unfortunately, most backup software won't let you restore a single mailbox. What to do?

Fortunately, through a round-about method, you can recover a single mailbox. To do so, you'll need a spare Windows NT Server that's running Exchange. You must install Exchange in such a way that it belongs to a different organization than the rest of your Exchange servers, thus isolating it from the production site. Now, restore the information store from backup to the spare server and perform a DS/IS Consistency Adjustment (as explained in the accompanying article) to create the mailboxes on your spare server. Doing so is safe, because the spare server belongs to a separate organization from your other servers.

At this point, you need to manually link the mailbox you're trying to restore to the Administrator account. To do so, double click the mailbox to open the mailbox's properties sheet and click Primary Windows NT Account. Next, tell Exchange to select an existing Windows NT account. When Exchange asks which account to use, select the Administrator's account—it will be listed as the primary owner of the mailbox.

Now, load an Exchange client on the spare computer and log in as Administrator to access the lost mailbox. Create a personal folder and copy the contents of the mailbox to it. Then, copy the newly created personal folder to the USERS directory belonging to the person who lost his or her mailbox.

Finally, go to the computer belonging to the person with the lost mailbox and attach the new personal folder. You can leave the messages in the personal folder, drag the messages back into their mailbox, or move them into another personal folder.

Working with Existing DNS

By John Sheesley
Published in NCC Technology Publishing's Windows NT Administrator Report

If your organization already uses DNS, you might not have the flexibility to create your own DNS domains and subdomains. Don't panic—you don't have to perform a major redesign to integrate 5.0 into existing environments. If your client domains don't fit neatly with Windows NT domains, you can make them work using standard DNS zone transfers.

All you have to do is create new DNS zones in the organization to contain the DNS data for the new Windows NT 5.0 domains. The domain name of a client or server and the DNS domain name of the directory service don't have to match—they must simply share the same name space.

These new domains are called delegated subdomains. Delegated subdomains create less impact on your organization's existing DNS services. You don't have to worry about the impact of NT 5.0's DNS services in an environment where DNS already seems to be functioning well.

Delegated subdomains do have a few drawbacks. Domain names wind up being longer, which makes them more difficult to use. You also may have some problems integrating the NT 5.0 DNS servers with your existing third-party DNS servers. Now is the time to test everything to be sure it works.

Are Dial-up Connections Practical?

By Brien M. Posey, MCSE
Published in NCC Technology Publishing's Windows NT Administrator Report

Dial-up connections provide a cost-effective way for small businesses to allow all their employees Internet access. You can also use a dial-up connection as an emergency backup if your primary link goes down.

In spite of this, you may be wondering how practical dial-up connections really are. After all, Internet access for even a single computer via a modem can be quite slow. You may think that dividing this slow link among several clients would be unbearable. However, this isn't necessarily the case. Let's take a look at why caching makes an otherwise slow connection practical and how you can put your entire office on the Internet using one dial-up connection.

Caching In

As you may recall, when you installed Proxy Server, you had to provide it with a cache directory. Proxy Server uses this directory to cache each Web page that anyone accesses. For example, suppose you go to www.xpressions.com. Proxy server will check the cache to see if you or any of your co-workers had been to that site recently. If no one has accessed the site within a certain length of time, Proxy Server will get the page from the Internet and copy the page to the cache directory as it sends it to your browser. The next time someone accesses this site, Proxy Server won't have to use the Internet link, because the page will already be in the cache.

Caching raises an interesting question. How often does the server flush a cache entry so that it can download the most recent copy of the page? The Web Proxy Service has a setting you can use to control how often the cache is updated. If you want more precise control, you can click Advanced to access parameters that allow you to precisely configure the number of minutes the cache waits before updating itself.

Automating Dial-up Connections

Until now, the biggest disadvantage of dial-up Internet connections was that someone had to manually go to the server and connect it to the Internet. However, you can make Proxy Server automatically connect to the Internet as needed. By enabling the auto-dial option, no one has to manually establish an Internet connection—a client can simply open Internet Explorer and go to a Web page. If the page isn't in the cache, Proxy Server will automatically connect to the Internet and download the page.

To configure the auto-dial option, open Microsoft Management Console and click the Security tab of the Web Proxy Properties dialog box. Now, click Auto Dial. When you do, the Microsoft Proxy Auto Dial dialog box will open. Here, you can control the times when automatic dialing is allowed. The Credentials tab allows you to select which Phone Book entry to use and to enter the associated logon credentials.

Allow Only Logged-on Users to Shut Down

By Troy Thompson, MCSE
Published in NCC Technology Publishing's Windows NT Help Desk Report

The default installation of Windows NT Workstation permits a user to shut down or restart the system without first logging on. You should disable this feature. To do this, search the registry for

Hkey_Local_Machine \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon

Then, set the ShutdownWithoutLogon value to 1.

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