16. What are sites? What are they used for?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) Sites in Active Directory represent the physical structure, or topology, of your network. Active Directory uses topology information, stored as site and site link objects in the directory, to build the most efficient replication topology. You use Active Directory Sites and Services to define sites and site links. A site is a...

15. What is LDP? What is REPLMON? What is ADSIEDIT? What is NETDOM? What is REPADMIN?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP is an application protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP.[1] A directory is a set of objects with attributes organized in a logical and hierarchical manner. The most common example is the telephone directory, which consists of a series of...

14. What are the Support Tools? Why do I need them?

The Windows 2003 support tools are a collection of resources with the aim of assisting administrators to simplify management tasks. These include: troubleshooting operating systems, configuring networking and security features, managing Active Directory, and automating application deployment. With the use of these tools, the user is able to pin-point problematic issues with the...

13. Trying to look at the Schema, how can I do that?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) Active Directory Schema Tools and Settings When existing class and attribute definitions in the Active Directory schema do not meet the needs of your organization, you can use schema-based administrative tools to modify or add schema objects. You can modify an existing attribute or add a new class or attribute to the schema to...

12. Why not make all DCs in a large forest as GCs?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) Unless you have some really bad connections that may not be able to handle the extra traffic, you should make every DC a GC. In ANY single domain forest, it is recommended and beneficial to make all DCs GCs since it has no replication impact and serves to better distribute query load. ...

11. How do you view all the GCs in the forest?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) DSQUERY server can be used to locate global catalogs To search the entire forest dsquery server -forest -isgc To locate global catalogs in your current (logon) domain dsquery server –isgc. To locate global catalogs in a specific domain dsquery server -domain tech.cpandl.com -isgc Here, you search for global catalog servers in...

10. What is the Global Catalog?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) The global catalog is a distributed data repository that contains a searchable, partial representation of every object in every domain in a multidomain Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) forest. The global catalog is stored on domain controllers that have been designated as global catalog servers and is distributed through...

9. How do you view replication properties for AD partitions and DCs?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) Install Replication Monitor from Support tools, run from command line with "replmon" command, and add DC and it will show you all partitions that DC holds and all replication partners for each partiti...

8. How do you create a new application partition

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) You can create an application directory partition by using the create nc option in the domain management (partition management in windows 2008) menu of Ntdsutil. When creating an application directory partition using LDP or ADSI, provide a description in the description attribute of the domain DNS object that indicates the specific...

7. What are application partitions? When do I use them

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) An application directory partition is a directory partition that is replicated only to specific domain controllers. A domain controller that participates in the replication of a particular application directory partition hosts a replica of that partition. Only domain controllers running Windows Server 2003 can host a replica of...

6. Name the AD NCs and replication issues for each NC

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) There are three predefined Naming Contexts (NC) 1. Domain Naming Context - One per domain. The domain naming context stores users, computers, groups, and other objects for that domain. All domain controllers that are joined to the domain share a full writeable copy of the domain directory partition. Additionally, all domain controllers...

5.What is the SYSVOL folder?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) System Volume (SYSVOL) is a shared directory that stores the server copy of the domain public files (Policies and scripts) that must be shared for common access and replication throughout a domain. It must be located in NTFS volume (because junctions are used within the SYSVOL folder structure) ...

4.Where is the AD database held? What other folders are related to AD?

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) The Active Directory Database is Stored in %SYSTEM ROOT%\NDTS folder. Main database file for active directory is ntds.dit. Along with this file there are other files also present in this folder. These files are created when you run dcpromo. These are the main files controlling the AD structure  ntds.dit: This is the main database...

3. Can you connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services? Name a few options.

Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista) Active Directory is a LDAP compatible directory service and supported by various third party applications like Novell DirXML, and Atlassian Crowd. Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is one of the options you can use to act as an intermediary between two directories (including directories used by SAP, Domino, etc). MIIS...

2 Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

2. What is LDAP? LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, is an Internet protocol that email and other programs use to look up information from a server. Every email program has a personal address book, but how do you look up an address for someone who's never sent you email? How can an organization keep one centralized up-to-date phone book that everybody has access to? That...

1 Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

1. What is Active Directory? An active directory is a directory structure used on Microsoft Windows based computers and servers to store information and data about networks and domains. A central component of the Windows platform, Active Directory directory service provides the means to manage the identities and relationships that make up network environments. Windows Server...

Backing Up the Registry

There are many backup programs for the registry but if the computer goes down and you can't fire off Win95 because of the registry problem. Backup to a directory the following files: SYSTEM.DATA SYSTEM.DA0 (Yes seem to be the same size) USER.DAT USER.DA0 (Same size likely) WIN.INI CONTROL.INI SYSTEM.INI These files can be copied to the windows directory from Win95 or DOS to help...

Keyboard Shortcuts

When speed counts, the keyboard is still king. Almost all the actions and commands you can perform with a mouse you can perform faster using combinations of keys on your keyboard. These simple keyboard shortcuts can get you where you want to go faster than several clicks...

Remove shortcut arrow from desktop icons

Here's how you can remove those shortcut arrows from your desktop icons in Windows XP. 1. Start regedit. 2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTlnkfile 3. Delete the IsShortcut registry value.You may need to restart Windows X...

My Computer Won't Shut Down Itself After Installing XP

There are a number of users who are noticing that their PC will no longer automatically power down/shut off without pressing the power off button on the computers unlike in Windows Me/95/2000. There could be a number of reasons for this - but the main one seems to be that...

How To Enable Hibernation

Under Windows 98, Me, or 2000 there was an option in the shutdown dialog box to enter the computer into hibernation (where all the content of the RAM is copied to the hard disk). The shutdown dialog box of Windows XP doesn't offer any longer the hibernation button. Some users...

Microsoft Office 2007 filename extensions

Word 2007 File Type Extension • docx - Word 2007 XML Document • docm - Word 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Document • dotx - Word 2007 XML Template • dotm - Word 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Template Excel 2007 File Type Extensio...

Restricting Logon Access

If you work in a multiuser computing environment, and you have full (administrator level) access to your computer, you might want to restrict unauthorized access to your "sensitive" files under Windows 95/98. One way is to disable the Cancel button in the Logon ...

Search For Hidden Or System Files In Windows XP

The Search companion in Windows XP searches for hidden and system files differently than in earlier versions of Windows. This guide describes how to search for hidden or system files in Windows XP. Search for Hidden or System Files By...

Add Open With to all files

You can add "Open With..." to the Right click context menu of all files.This is great for when you have several programs you want to open the same file types with. I use three different text editors so I added it to the ".txt" key. 1. Open RegEdit 2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\Shell 3. Add a new Key named "OpenWith" by right clicking the "Shell" Key and selecting new 4. Set the...

Turn off Welcome screen

Open User Accounts in Control Panel. Click Change the way users log on or ...

XP Computer management console

To quickly access the computer management console, where you can see event logs (to see what's causing a problem, for example), right-click My Computer and choose Manage. Then, select the Event viewer and double-click highlighted events in the Applications or System areas to view detailed explanations of what went wro...