More in Windows Server 2003

A. Yes. You need to use a Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 machine to create the group policy rules, but once the Group Policy Object is created, it can be hosted on DCs running Server 2008 R2, Server 2008, and Server 2003....More

A. You are probably using the Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista or later Windows Preinstallation Environment with the bootsect.exe command. This will deploy the Windows 2008/Vista NTFS boot sector. To deploy the Windows 2003 NTFS boot sector, use the /nt52 switch: bootsect.exe /nt52 c:...More

Follow these steps to determine key lengths of your current certificates and find out about infrastructure concerns when upgrading from certificates with 1,024-bit key lengths to 2,048-bit key lengths....More

Last month, Microsoft finally announced its plans for the next version of Small Business Server (SBS). Instead of offering a single line of traditional on-premise products, the company is splitting SBS in two. There will be an on-premise follow-up to SBS 2008, currently called SBS 7, that will look and work much like previous SBS versions. This product isn't particularly interesting to me personally, but I suspect it'll be popular with a certain segment of Microsoft's customers and services partners. What I'm far more interested in is the new SBS product that's code-named Aurora....More

A senior system engineer needed to provide Active Directory (AD) authentication services to a research facility on top of a glacier. It had no phone lines and no Internet or network connectivity of any type. Here's the creative solution he came up with....More

A: The event ID numbering scheme changed for Windows 7, Server 2008, and Windows Vista. You might need to figure out the corresponding IDs so that you can use them with your monitoring software. To find the Server 2008 event ID that corresponds to a given Server 2003 event ID, use the following simple rule: Server 2003 event ID + 4096 = Windows Server 2008 Event ID. Exceptions to this rule are the Windows logon events:...More

Use these two Encrypting File System tools to help centrally manage EFS on desktop and notebook computers and migrate to V2 certificates....More

Use these 10 performance counters to track core performance factors on Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2003 systems....More

Learn how to identify Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) provider DLLs, and use the DLL information to find out what vendor the DLL binary belongs and whether updates are available to fix the problem....More

A. Windows Server 2008 introduced the new Server Manager management interface, which focuses management around each role and feature. Server Manager in Server 2008 isn't remotable, however, so you can't use it to remotely manage any platform. The Remote Server Administration Tools don't install on Server 2003, so you can't use Server Manager to manage Server 2003....More

A: On a Server 2003 machine, the event log files are, by default, located in the %WinDir%\System32\Config folder. On a Server 2008 machine, they default to the folder %WinDir%\System32\Winevt\Logs....More

Use this brand-new free tool to save you much time and hassle the next time you run into a high-CPU problem....More