Windows XP and 2000 Tips & Tricks UPDATE, October 28, 2002

Windows XP and 2000 Tips & Tricks UPDATE—brought to you by the Windows & .NET Magazine Network and the Windows 2000 FAQ site
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October 28, 2002—In this issue:

1. COMMENTARY

2. FAQS

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS

4. CONTACT US

1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by John Savill, FAQ Editor, [email protected])

This week, I explain how to stop Windows 2000 from using an encrypted format after you copy encrypted files to a server, how to upgrade an IEEE 1394 (FireWire)-connected disk to a dynamic disk in Windows XP, and how to view and clear DNS cache content. I also tell you how to configure the amount of time the DNS cache stores responses, what DNS round robin and subnet prioritization are, and how to enable and disable subnet prioritization. I describe how to ensure that DNS resolver uses only results from queried DNS servers and how to stop XP from displaying the time in the notification area on the desktop.

Around the industry this week, Microsoft has released MSN Messenger 5.0, which you can download at http://messenger.msn.com . The company has also announced that Win2K Service Pack 4 (SP4) will soon be going to beta. Microsoft will also release Office 11 beta 1 in the near future, and several leaked versions of Longhorn (the next version of Windows) have been floating around the Internet with some early screen shots that look interesting.

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2. FAQS

A. By default, when you copy locally encrypted files to a server, Win2K retains the encryption format. However, you might not want server-based files to be encrypted. For example, a laptop user might want to encrypt files locally for security reasons but want the server-based files to be unencrypted so that other users can view the files.

To stop Win2K from copying files to a server in an encrypted format, perform the following steps on the destination server:

After you make this change, you'll no longer be able to encrypt files on the server and Win2K will decrypt any encrypted files that users copy to the server.

A. By default, XP doesn't let you convert a FireWire-connected disk to a dynamic disk. However, you can make a simple registry change to accomplish such an upgrade. To convert a FireWire-connected disk to a dynamic disk, perform the following steps:

A. When a Windows XP or Windows 2000 machine queries a DNS server, the response is either positive (a match was found) or negative (no match was found). The OS stores these results in a local DNS cache so that local clients don't repeatedly query the DNS server for the same address. These DNS cache entries are known as DNS Resource Records (RR), and the DNS resolver always checks the local cache before it queries the DNS server.

To view the current DNS resolver cache content and the entries preloaded from the Hosts file, go to the command prompt and type

C:> ipconfig /displaydns

Each entry shows the remaining Time to Live (TTL) in seconds. To clear the cache, go to the command prompt and type

C:> ipconfig /flushdns

Flushing the DNS cache clears all entries and reloads the entries from the Hosts file.

A. By default, Windows stores positive responses in the DNS cache for 86,400 seconds (i.e., 24 hours) and stores negative responses for 300 seconds (i.e., 5 minutes). To modify these values, perform the following steps:

A. The most common type of DNS record is a Resource Record (RR) type A, which is a record that provides the IP address for a specified host name. In certain instances, a host name might resolve to multiple IP addresses, each with its own A record. For example, if three servers host the http://www.savilltech.com Web site, the DNS server might contain the following three address records:

www.savilltech.com.IN    A200.200.10.1www.savilltech.com.IN    A200.200.11.1www.savilltech.com.IN    A200.200.12.1

When a client queries a DNS server for this host, the server returns all three address records. To avoid sending every client to the first address record (and, hence, the first host) every time, the DNS server uses a round-robin algorithm, which Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 1794 describes. With each request, the algorithm rotates the order in which the DNS server returns the address records to more evenly distribute the load across all hosts. For example, the first time a client queries the DNS server, the server might return

200.200.10.1   200.200.11.1   200.200.12.1

to the client. The second time, the DNS server would return

200.200.11.1   200.200.12.1   200.200.10.1

The third time, the DNS server would return

200.200.12.1   200.200.10.1   200.200.11.1

and so on.

If the client making the request connects directly to a subnet that contains one of the returned host addresses, having the client communicate directly with the host that corresponds to that address would reduce response time and network traffic. Subnet prioritization is a feature that recognizes when a host is on the same subnet as the client and returns the local host's address first. (Microsoft introduced subnet prioritization in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4—SP4—and later.) When a client uses subnet prioritization, the client resolver receives address record results and sorts them according to the order of direct subnet connectivity.

So, for example, if a client has address 200.200.11.5 (which is part of subnet 200.200.11) and the DNS server would typically return address record results of

200.200.10.1   200.200.11.1   200.200.12.1

the local DNS resolver will use subnet prioritization to re-sort the results according to the local subnet priority and return results of

200.200.11.1   200.200.10.1   200.200.12.1

to the client. Consequently, the local DNS resolver's subnet prioritization takes priority over the DNS server round robin when a resolved address is on the local subnet. Although this approach reduces network traffic, it doesn't balance the load across hosts.

A. In the FAQ titled "What's DNS round robin and subnet prioritization?," I explained how subnet prioritization cuts down on network traffic but defeats the load-balancing effect of the DNS server round robin. If balancing the load across the hosts is more important than traffic management, you might want to disable subnet prioritization. To do so, perform the following steps:

To reenable subnet prioritization, either delete the PrioritizeRecordData registry value or set this value to 1.

A. The DNS server can check the IP address of a client that's requesting name resolution and sort the results the DNS server returns to the client according to the proximity of the host address to the querying IP address. To enable or disable this functionality, perform the following steps on the DNS server:

Under Windows 2000 and later, you can also use the DNS Management Console to set this functionality. To use this tool to change the setting, go to Start, Programs, Administrative Tools, then click DNS Management Console; right-click the server and select Properties; select the Advanced tab; then clear or select the "Enable Netmask Ordering" check box. You can also control the round-robin functionality by opening the DNS Management Console Advanced tab and clearing or selecting "Enable round robin". The following list describes the expected functionality, depending on the values you set:

A. By default, if a client requests name resolution, the client will accept any response with the correct query ID, regardless of where the response is from. This behavior could lead to security problems if a rogue process that deliberately returns incorrect information exists on a system. To force the DNS resolver to match the source IP address of the response with the DNS servers that the DNS resolver queried, perform the following steps:

A. To stop XP from displaying the time on the desktop in the notification area, perform the following steps:

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS
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4. CONTACT US
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