Service Installation
I was greatly interested in Service Explorer’s Win2K and NT service installation functionality. My experience using scripts and command-line utilities to remotely install NT services has left me wanting an application that will accomplish a remote service installation to multiple systems. Ideally, this application would be both easy to use and provide logging functionality.
Service Explorer lived up to my idealistic expectations for integrated service installation functionality. The simple but useful installation dialog box, which Figure 2 shows, lets you enter options such as the path to the source service executable file, service name information, and service-account settings. I performed a test installation of floplock.exe, a Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit utility that disables the 3.5" drive for users who aren’t members of the local system’s Power Users group. After providing this information, I simply clicked Install to successfully push the service to my configured test systems. The only shortcoming I could find with the service installation function was the inability to save the installation settings for reuse later.
Although the installation function performed flawlessly to remotely install a fairly simple service application, you should carefully analyze the impact of installing complex services that might require service dependencies or additional registry settings before installing the service remotely.
Last Impression
My impression of Service Explorer is that the software is a powerful but easy-to-use application. However, although the lack of online Help didn’t detract from the overall functionality of the product, the availability of this feature would have further simplified working with the product. The application’s usability combined with its low cost should make Service Explorer a commonly used application on networks that host large numbers of Win2K and NT systems that have many services to manage.
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