Reader Challenge - 10 Aug 1999

Flex your intellectual muscle

[Editor's Note: Solve this month's Windows NT problem and get the chance to win $100 or a copy of one of the author's books about NT. Email your solutions (don't use an attachment) to [email protected]. Include your full name, mailing address, and connection to NT (e.g., administrator, user). Because of the number of entries, we can't reply to all respondents. Look for the solution to this month's problem in the December issue.]

Harry Helper says the Windows NT System Policy Editor (SPE) is for lightweights. He scoffs at his colleagues when they use SPE, insisting that they'll never learn as much about NT as he has if they continue to use this shortcut tool. The lightweights challenged Harry Helper to complete the following two tasks without using SPE as quickly as they could complete the tasks with SPE.

Harry amazed the lightweights when he matched their efficiency without referring to any reference books.

Problem
List all the steps you take to complete tasks 1 and 2 without using SPE, and track how much time you spend completing the steps. (Don't forget to include the time you spend referring to any reference books.) Although the time won't count toward winning this month's challenge, I'm curious to know how much time you spend on each step for each task.

June Winners
Congratulations to Jie Gong of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and to Kenneth Zummach of Cocoa, Florida. Jie won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the June Reader Challenge. Kenneth won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).

Over the past few weeks, a couple of my friends have called me with puzzling problems. I'm curious to see whether these problems are as mysterious to you as they first appeared to me. Each problem has only one possible cause, and once you figure out the cause, you can solve the problem.

Problem 1
Bill runs a small network with five workstations. Two of the workstations run Windows NT, and three run Windows 95. Bill moved an external modem from one of the Win95 machines to an NT machine. He attached the modem to COM 2 (a mouse was using COM 1), turned on the modem, and connected the modem to the telephone line. Then, he started the RAS setup, which automatically includes the modem installation. The computer reported that it couldn't find a modem. Bill decided to install the modem directly and worry about the RAS setup later. When he double-clicked the Modems icon in Control Panel, the applet didn't start. Why couldn't the computer find the modem, and why doesn't the Control Panel installation work?

Solution
NT 4.0 has the Plug and Play (PnP) service, and PnP makes automatic modem detection possible. NT can't detect a modem, and a user can't open the Modem applet in Control Panel unless PnP is running. Bill opened the Services applet in Control Panel, selected Plug and Play, and clicked Start. (While he was in the Services dialog box, he also configured the service for automatic startup.)

Problem 2
Alexander owns a business that depends on a large number of databases and files. He hired a consulting firm to install and configure an NT network, and he hired Ron, a systems administrator, to manage the network. Alexander and Ron carefully planned the network's growth to keep pace with the business' rapid growth. Alexander designs and manufactures items that have many different size, color, and material combinations. The database tracks all the combinations. The server also holds large price lists, CAD files, estimating software, customer and vendor databases, and a robust accounting system with shop floor add-ons. Recently, Alexander upgraded the server, investing in a powerful computer with a very large hard disk. Alexander and Ron installed NTFS, and the system worked well until they decided to take advantage of NTFS's folder and file compression utilities. File compression didn't work. Why not?

Solution
NTFS compression doesn't work if the cluster size is larger than 4096 bytes. Large drives have larger clusters if you don't specifically prevent it, so Alexander and Ron had to reformat the drive. This time, they used the correct switches in the format command:

C:/fs:ntfs/a:4096

After installing the OS and software, Alexander and Ron restored the data.