Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Chapter 4. Tasks

This chapter covers the basic tasks and procedures relating to Windows 2000 Server and its administration. When looking up a particular administrative task to perform in this chapter, you can use the cross-references at the end of each article to find background information on related topics in this and other chapters in Part II.

Tasks are listed here alphabetically according to “topic.” This means that to find information on how to share a printer, you would first look up the topic printer in this chapter. Within the topic printer you will then find a list of procedures that can be performed on printers, and these procedures are themselves listed in alphabetical order within the topic. For example, for the topic printer the procedures (tasks) you can follow are outlined as follows:

Add a Printer
    Installing a Printer for a Local Print Device
    Installing a Printer for a Network-Interface Print Device
    Making a Connection to a Print
Configure Clients for Printing to a Printer
Configure Permissions for a Printer
Configure Properties of a Printer
    General
    Sharing
    Ports
    Advanced
    Security
    Device Settings
Find a Printer
Manage a Printer Using a Web Browser
Pause a Printer
Redirect a Printer
Share a Printer
Use a Printer Offline

Note that some procedures have subprocedures outlined under them. In this case, the subprocedure Section under the procedure Section is a cross-reference to the procedure Section later in the topic. (Main procedures are identified using headers separate from secondary procedures for easier lookup.)

Procedures are shown as a series of steps separated by arrows ( → ) in what I call “gestalt menus.” Steps are usually described concisely and are understood best when sitting at a Windows 2000 machine to follow along. For example, the procedure for sharing a printer is described as:

Start → Settings → Printers → right-click on printer → Sharing → Shared As → <share_name>

which when working through it at the computer is obviously understood to mean:

Click the Start button, choose Settings, then Printers, which opens the Printers window. Right-click on the printer you want to share in the window and select Sharing from the shortcut menu that appears. This opens the property sheet for the printer, with the focus on the Sharing tab of this property sheet. Select the Shared As option and type in the share name, that is, the name under which you want the printer to be shared on the network. Click OK when you are done, and close the Printers window.

Notice from the previous procedure that certain obvious steps are usually omitted, particularly steps like clicking OK to close a dialog box or clicking Finish to end a wizard. There are a few times, however, when these steps are outlined specifically if they seem confusing because of the number of dialog boxes currently open.) Since most Windows 2000 administrative tasks involve using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), familiarity with this tool is important; see the beginning of Chapter 5, for a quick introduction to the MMC and how to use it effectively. Note that selecting a node in the MMC console tree and clicking the Action button on the toolbar displays a drop-down Action menu that is identical to the shortcut menu that appears when you right-click on the node instead. In other words, the steps for creating a new domain-user account using the Active Directory Users and Computer console can be described as either:

• Select the OU that will contain the account → Action → New → User

• Right-click the OU that will contain the account → New → User

Both of these conventions are used indiscriminately in the chapter, depending on how the fancy took me. Remember also that the Action and shortcut menus are context sensitive, so if the option you need doesn’t appear in them, you probably have the wrong item selected in the console. For example, when working with domain-user account in the Active Directory Users and Computers console:

• To create a new user, select an organizational unit (OU) to create it in. This will cause the New option to appear on the Action and shortcut menus.

• To delete an existing user, select the user account you want to delete. In this case there is no New option on the Action or shortcut menus.

Finally, at various places within a topic and also at the end of the topic, cross-references are used liberally to guide the reader to relevant articles elsewhere in this chapter and in other chapters. The form of these cross-references is to use parentheses to indicate the destination chapter: for example, printer refers to the article entitled printer in Chapter 4.

Alphabetical List of Tasks