The profusion of resources available on the Internet complicates the issue of where to
start looking for help when you have a problem. Here's a short list of resources to try when you
need more information:
If you haven't permanently bookmarked http://www.microsoft.com/kb Microsoft's Knowledge
Basein your browser, make it a priority. You'll find many problems documented there and
excellent explanations about how things work in Windows NT.
Beverly Hills Software hosts the Windows NT Resource Center (http://www.bhs.com). This site
offers many NT-related resources, as well as links to other NT-related sites. The site also
maintains the mailing list for the International Windows NT User Group. Send mail to list@bhs.com
with this subject: join IWNTUG.
Internet mailing lists are often a good source for quick help on a problem. However, some
mailing lists can generate a huge amount of mail. If you subscribe to a mailing list, find out
whether it sends a one-time digest version, which is a compilation of the day's discussions. If not,
be prepared for a lot of mail. Check out L-Soft's Web site (http://www.lsoft.com/lists.html) for
instructions about joining its NT discussion list.
There's no better way to learn more about NT than by interacting directly with your peers. And
the best way to meet your peers is to join an NT user group. Check out Windows NT Magazine's
site (http://www.winntmag.com/resources/index.html) for a list of NT user groups.
Windows NT Magazine also hosts professional support forums
(http://www.winntmag.com/forums) for NT. You can discuss your problems and share your solutions
online with authors, developers, technical support specialists, and power users.
NT-based Internet newsgroups are numerous. In some newsgroups, sorting the wheat from the
chaff is difficult, but if you have patience, you can find the information you need. Here's a
sampling of newsgroups:
* If you want to use Performance Monitor for capacity planning, read the following documents
from Microsoft. They give succinct information about which counters to watch and what values to look
for to detect bottlenecks in each major subsystem:
Knowledge Base Article Q146005, "Optimizing Windows NT for Performance"
"Optimizing and Tuning of Windows NT"
(http://www.microsoft.com/syspro/technet/boes/bo/winntas/technote/nt301a.htm)
If you're currently rolling out NT Server 4.0 or NT Workstation 4.0 using unattended.txt and
sysdiff, Microsoft offers a 130-page white paper that details the unattended setup process and
supported features. You can find the document at
http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/info/Deployment-guide.htm.
Of course, many more Internet resources for NT information exist than I've listed here. But if
you use these resources as a starting point, you can find additional resources to help you solve any
NT-related problem.
