cluberti

If you want Microsoft solutions, you're looking at WSUS (for small to medium enterprises) or SMS 2003 (for medium to large enterprises that need the additional application deployment and license tracking capabilities). If you want third-party, my personal favorite is Shavlik's patch management suite, but there are many others. The easiest to get up and running is probably WSUS - install IIS, WSUS, and make 5 group policy changes (or 4 registry changes, if not using an AD), and viola - patching solution for most Microsoft products. It lacks any real features beyond patch tracking, but if all you need is patch deployment, it's probably the most painless (and free) option out there that is centrally managed.

I know budgets usually dictate IT actions, but I still need to throw that in there. And yes, it is correct that active/active works if both boxes can handle the load of both servers on one particular node, but there's always the problem of creep over time - more databases, more users, etc, and over time you run into a cluster that can't quite keep up running both node's load on one node. I've seen it hundreds of times, and always having one passive node for one active node solves that problem (yes, it's more expensive, but you are using a cluster to guarantee uptime, ultimately - not improve performance). Not really. Since any active node can fail to any passive node, there's no "this node can only fail to that node" issue. The bigger the job, the more nodes you should have - but always one passive for every one active node (up to 4 active / 4 passive, obviously). Clusters are actually very good for patching scenarios - you fail to a passive node, patch the active, reboot, then fail back and patch the passive. As close to 100% uptime as one can get without not patching every month or so .

It's the Veritas software - it uses the VSP provider as well for open file option, if you have it installed. You can still set the limits by going to the properties of the drive in Windows Explorer, go to the Shadow Copies tab, then click on the drive (or drives) and click the "settings" button. Even without the Volume Shadow Copy service enabled, the provider still reads these values - if you have a hard limit set (which, as you've already found, is NOT the default), all providers using this service should abide by it. Set the maximum to a reasonable number, and within an hour or two you should have your disk space back .

Try the following command from a command prompt, and see what happens: regsvr32 softpub.dll wintrust.dll initpki.dll dssenh.dll rsaenh.dll gpkcsp.dll sccbase.dll slbcsp.dll cryptdlg.dll

If you bought a NAS device from a first-tier vendor such as IBM or Dell, you got a special version of Windows 2000 for storage servers (which shows up as "windows powered" in the boot logos). This is not a canceled version, it was simply only available as a special OS Kit to tier-one OEMs for NAS devices. It morphed into Windows Server 2003 for storage devices, which also has a funky boot logo scheme, but not quite as different as the one for Windows 2000 storage server.

Then it's not really a cluster at that point, it's more of a robust "load balancer". Clustering is supposed to provide failover and uptime, not extra performance . If you're going to do active/active, then you should have two passive nodes to fail to. Just a pet peeve of mine, ignore me, I go away eventually .

That's more than adequate - in fact, that'll likely produce performance similar to real hardware until it's under real heavy load.

Since a paging file is used to store data from RAM, either when no more RAM is available for allocation or when something in RAM hasn't been accessed in a while, it would have little to do with your processor and more to do with the amount of physical RAM in your system. If you want to be able to gather memory dumps if the system crashes, you'll need a paging file that is at least the size of your physical RAM + 50MB, but as to whether or not you should create a large paging file is up to you. It probably won't increase or decrease your system performance any, so I don't think there's a good reason to have a large paging file if you have lots of RAM. Physical RAM + 50MB should suffice for almost all usage scenarios.

You can also enable userenv logging to determine the root cause of the issue as well. Are these users configured to use roaming profiles?

No, you need to run Process Explorer on the machine with the problem, because otherwise how will you see the problem in a working pc? If it doesn't happen in safemode, use msconfig to disable all non-Microsoft services and all startup items and then boot back into a regular Windows session. One of two things will be true at this point: 1) If the issue doesn't return, it's likely one of the non-Microsoft services or one of the startup items causing the issue - start re-enabling them and rebooting, services first then startup items, until you come across the one causing the issue. 2) If the issue returns, it's going to be a driver issue and you'll have to roll back driver changes to before the problem occurred, reinstalling drivers one at a time (similar to step 1 with services and startup items) until the problem recurs. If it happens in safe mode, you likely have corrupt system files and will need to do a repair installation to recover.

Those can be checked in regedit. Where exactly is your i386 that you installed from on this system? Is the CD in your CD/DVD drive at the time of install?

Does the problem occur in safe mode? Also, if you disconnect all network cables (and disable wireless) does the problem occur? Also, try using a utility called "process explorer" (http://www.sysinternals.com) to see if you can make more of a determiniation what is running *inside* of the winlogon.exe process consuming CPU.

Are you starting the installation via winnt.exe from DOS, or booting directly into Windows setup using the CD?

The office installation is replacing Windows files that are likely protected with SFP, and the SFC checking routine is popping in and requiring you to "repair" those files (this is normal for a O2K3 install, btw). You need to make sure that your registry is pointing to the correct location of the installation files, and that the CD or DVD is available if it is looking to one of those drives for the i386 directory. Key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup Value: SourcePath Type: REG_SZ Data: <path to windows source, excluding the i386 directory - for example, C:\> Key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup Value: ServicePackSourcePath Type: REG_SZ Data: <path to windows source, excluding the i386 directory - for example, C:\> Key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion Value: SourcePath Type: REG_SZ Data: <path to windows source, including the i386 directory - for example, C:\i386>

This can be scripted via kix or some other to depend on a network drive, but you can also use a free utility called LockSingleUser2 from http://ccaheaven.com/Downloads.htm. I use it more in Citrix environments, but it works just fine with regular TS environments as well.

You'll find that there's an option to cach a certain number of logons in Group Policy (it's also a registry setting). This should make that error go away: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen.../en-us/579.mspx

Your problem likely has EVERYTHING to do with DNS . Glad to hear you've got a bandaid solution in place now, though.

You'd need proxy software, such as ISA 2004 from Microsoft or squid (or similar) for *nix operating systems. If you want client-side software, I'm sure a simple google search would suffice - however, I'd suggest using proxy software as this removes the possibility that users can override, disable, or otherwise "fool" the proxy software.

In two weeks I'd have thought you'd have at least searched the microsoft.com site: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=166819

True.

- A Volume License Key (VLK) is a Windows (in this case, XP) license key that can be used on multiple PC's, and doesn't require activation. These keys are given to companies who have purchased either an Open, Select, or Enterprise license from Microsoft, and this key can be installed on as many PC's as are specified in the company's license agreement with Microsoft.- Volume License Media (VLM) is a not-for-resale copy of the Windows (again, in this case, XP) installation media that can be used to install on multiple PC's, and will accept a Volume License Key (VLK). It will not accept a retail or OEM key, and thus can only be used legally in conjunction with a company's license agreement from Microsoft. So you can see that both a VLK and VLM go together, with a licensing agreement from Microsoft, and you can't have one without the other. If it's a true Volume License Media set, it is a so-called "corporate" set (meaning it belongs to someone's company and thier licensing agreement) that someone purchased along with a licensing agreement from Microsoft to use said media with a VLK. There are no exceptions. One important thing to noe: if you have a VLM set and you don't have an agreement with Microsoft for a VLK, usage of the VLM CDs or any VLK is illegal in most countries.

Not a problem - always glad to help. And RogueSpear's links are very good places to look for vbs scripts that will help you do what you are looking to do - I've been known to borrow his code from time to time as well .

Thanks - I didn't want to explain poolmon until the perfmon data was analyzed (you can usually see leaks in perfmon, which is easier for most people to read than raw pooltag data), but thanks for pointing out the links anyway . It's always good to have too much data than not enough .

Entries in the HKU\.DEFAULT hive are graphical changes for the initial logon environment only, this is not the "default user" registry hive. All application-level registry changes need to be made to the ntuser.dat file stored in the %systemdrive%\documents and settings\default user\ folder, or import the registry changes during Windows setup. Unless your changes are to the initial logon environment, your registry changes will not be imported into any new user profiles. I'm not sure where the myth of the HKU\.DEFAULT hive being the default user's profile location began, but it's not true.

Ah - that may very well be. However, since these settings are likely stored somewhere on disk or somewhere in the user's registry hive, try running filemon and regmon (both from www.sysinternals.com) when making these changes, one at a time, to see what is being changed in the registry or on the disk. You can likely export any registry changes if the changes are stored there, or see what files you'll need to modify if the changes are stored somewhere on the filesystem. It's pretty low-tech, but it should work without too much trouble.