Have you ever been a situation where you cannot find settings that you know
should be visible? I call this the 'Monday morning disease'. Why
this strange epithet? Well my training courses usually
start on Monday, so every week I get a fresh installation. Each Monday I must
remember to set: SHOW ALL FILES otherwise I have a fright that BOOT.INI is missing or I get egg on my face when I try and demonstrate the Default User folder
under Documents and Settings. So here is a list of other hidden settings:
View all those Settings - Show All
Explorer - Tools, Folder Options, View, SHOW ALL Files
I also like to remove the tick next to 'Hide Protected Operating System
Files'
System Icon - Hardware, Device Manager, View, Show
Hidden Devices.
DNS (Select the Server Object), View, Advanced.
Active Directory Users and Computer - View, Advanced
Features. a) You get an extra tab called 'Object'. This is one of the best ways of discovering which OU a user is a member of. b) What this shows you is the 'Lost and Found' folder for orphaned
users. c) If you have Exchange 2000, this 'Advanced Features' also shows you one more tab
on the user properties: Exchange
Advanced.
Talking of Exchange, I also have a Registry Hack so that
you can add the Security Tab
in the Exchange System Manager.
‡
Tricky Settings to find
Global Catalog: AD Sites, Default-First-N...,
Servers, (Name), NTDS, Properties, Global Catalog.
DHCP Proxy: Routing and RAS, Server, IP Routing,
General, Right Click, New Routing Protocol.
Users connected to a server: Computer Management, System
Tools, Shared Folders, Sessions.
Network Monitor and SMTP Protocol, Add Remove Programs,
Add Remove Windows Components, Management and Monitoring Tools.
In Active Directory Users and Computers, select View (menu) and Add/Remove Columns... Experiment with
different columns such as Display Name.
Guy Recommends: SolarWinds LANSurveyor
LANSurveyor will produce a neat diagram of your network topology. But that's
just the start;
LANSurveyor can
create an inventory of the hardware and software
of your machines and network devices. Other neat features include dynamic
update for when you add new devices to your network. I also love the ability to export
the diagrams
to Microsoft Visio.
Finally, Guy bets that if you take a free trial of LANSurveyor then you will
find a device on your network that you had forgotten about, or someone else
installed without you realizing!
In Active Directory Users and Computers, select View (menu) and Add/Remove Columns... Experiment with
different columns such as Display Name.
