Techies Box

Back in the days of Windows NT, the roaming profile was all the rage. A user could go to the office and work at his own computer, using the network, e-mail, files, and other resources. If, for some reason, that user has to switch to another workstation temporarily, he logs on to a different computer and Windows downloads the settings for his individual profile; just as if he were sitting at his own computer.

You may see blank stares when administrators try to accomplish tasks in the new Windows Server 2008 environment. When a simple MMC snap-in won’t do the trick, try my most frequently used command lines for Windows Server 2008.

ncpa.cpl: The additional clicks to get to the Manage Network Connections configuration are among the bigger learning curves for new installations. Simply running ncpa.cpl will take you right to the interface’s configuration.

Starting with Windows Server 2003, administrators have been able to redirect the server’s console to a remote desktop session. This is referred to as session zero, and it is invoked like this:

mstsc /v:servername /console

Now that we’re accustomed to this connection opportunity, Windows Server 2008 has removed the session zero connection option.

Working with Windows DS Images

If you may recall from previous articles of this series that Windows DS employs two types of Windows images (.wim files) to work its magic:

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Boot images – Used to boot PXE-enabled bare-metal systems in order to install Windows Vista on them.
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Install images – Images of the Windows Vista operating system which you can install onto systems.

On your Windows Vista Enterprise edition DVD, you'll find two plain-vanilla images in the Sources folder:

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