Recent Operating System Class notes 10 Administrative Tools (Part three) April 21, 2004

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1 Recent Operating System Class notes 10 Administrative Tools (Part three) April 21, 2004 System Applet There are many ways to open the system applet. The easiest method to opening the system applet is by right-clicking My Computer and selected properties. The system properties contain seven tabs: General Advanced Hardware Computer Name Remote Automatic Updates System Restore General Tab The General tab lists the processor type, processor speed, Physical RAM installed, Registration information, and Operating system type. If you are running with less than 128 MB or RAM or with a processor running at less than 300 MHz, then you system performance will be very slow when using Windows XP. Note also that if your motherboard includes on board video, then your effective memory is reduced by as much as 10 MB or more because your system s memory is shared with the video card. Advanced Tab The advanced tab has five sections: Performance User Profile Startup and Recovery Environmental Variable Error Reporting If you click on the settings button in the Performance area you will get Visual Effects menu as shown in figure one. You can adjust your computer visual effects which will have a direct bearing on the system performance. For example, if you select Adjust for Best Performance, all the animations and effects will be turned off. If you select Let Windows Choose What s Best for My Computer, then Windows XP will determine which effects to enable based on your computer s hardware (i.e. CPU and Memory). In the advanced tab of the Performance sheet, you can adjust the following: Processor Scheduling: Adjusts the balance of processor time between programs and background processes. Memory Usage: Adjusts the balance of memory usage between programs and system cache. Virtual Memory: Adjust the size and location of the paging file, which uses the hard disk to active applications and data that can t currently fit into memory. 1

2 Figure 1: Windows XP Professional's Visual Effects menu Windows XP uses a hard disk called pagefile.sys to simulate RAM. Windows XP Virtual Memory Manager (VMM) constantly monitors the amount of free RAM available and when the amount is exhausted, the VMM begins swapping out 4 KB chunks of data and instruction code to pagefile.sys. When portions of the data or code are required, they are swapped back into RAM where they are used by the CPU. This activity of swapping data and code into and out of RAM is called paging. The advantage is more applications can be loaded and run simultaneously. The disadvantage is that the system performance decreases due to the swapping activity. To change the pagefile, follow these steps: 1. In the advance tab, click the change button in the Virtual memory area. The Virtual memory dialog box will appear as shown in figure two. 2. Select the Custom size radio button and enter the initial and maximum size of the page file. 3. Click the set button to enable the changes. Click OK to return to the previous screen. 2

3 Figure 2: Virtual Memory adjustment area Another option in the advance section is that you can set the processor s schedule to either programs or background services. If the programs radio button is selected, this ensures that the foreground application gets more CPU time slices than programs running in the background. The last option is selecting the memory usage for either programs or system cache. The system cache is the memory used for disk caching and handling background operations. The system cache is typically selected in cases where you want to improve performance for shared resources over the network. Another option worth mentioning in the advance section is the startup and recovery option. In the advanced tab, if you press the settings button under Startup and Recovery a dialog box will appear as shown in figure three. At boot time, you can control the time that the list of operating systems selections are displayed. You can also edit the startup file manually. The startup file will appear as shown in figure four. Note in figure four the three operating systems that are available and the boot file location. The boot file location is on the active partition. Remember, the BIOS can only see one active partition otherwise the computer will not boot-up. 3

4 Figure 3: Startup and Recovery selections [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\windows [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\windows="microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\winnt="microsoft Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetect C:\="Microsoft Windows" Figure 4: Operating system selection boot file Hardware Tab The hardware tab contains three major areas: Add Hardware Wizard: Launches the add hardware wizard to assist you in installing hardware. Device Manager: Includes the driver signing (Windows detects software that has not passed Windows XP compatibility tests) and device manager list Hardware Profile: Allows the user to setup and store different hardware configurations. For example, when traveling you might want to enable the 4

5 modem and when you re at the office you might want to enable the LAN card to have access to the network. Computer Name Tab The computer name tab is the same interface as is accessed through the network identification command of the Network Connections applet s Advanced menu and is shown in figure five. We can change the computer name and manage domain and workgroup membership. The Network ID button launches a wizard that guides you through configuring the computer for standalone use, workgroup membership, or domain membership. The Change button opens the Computer Name Changes dialog box. In this dialog box you can select a computer name along with domain or workgroup membership. Figure 5: Compute Name options 5

6 Remote Tab The remote tab controls whether Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop are enabled. Remote assistance allows you to grant dual control over your desktop with another computer over a network or the Internet. When enabled, the other client can see your desktop, conduct real time chat, and even use their mouse and keyboard to make changes and operate your system. Remote desktop allow you to access your current desktop or logon environment from a remote system. This allows you to have full access to the remote system s files and applications. Remote Assistance The remote assistance works through the exchange of time sensitive invitation scripts via . To initiate an invitation: 1. Click the start menu, All Programs, then Remote Assistance. 2. The Remote Assistance help page opens as shown in figure six. 3. Click invite someone to help you. The invitation page opens 4. If you have MSN Messenger installed and a contact list defined, you can select an invitee from Messenger. You can also provide an address to send an invitation. 5. Type in an address to send a Remote assistance invitation via Outlook Express and then click invite this person. The invitation page opens. 6. Provide a From name and a message to include in the invitation. Then click continue. 7. Define the invitation expiration period in minutes, hours, or days. 8. Select whether to require a password to connect, and then provide the password. Click send invitation 9. A warning prompt appears, stating that another application is attempting to send an message on your behalf, click send. The invitation appears in the invitee s inbox, they only need to execute the attachment. When it s executing, the invitee will be prompted for a password (if required) and whether to initiate a Remote Assistance connection. Once the invitee clicks Yes, the connection attempt commences. If a connection is started, the inviter is prompted whether to allow the connection to continue. After clicking Yes, the Remote Assistance floating tool window appears on the original system and the Remote Assistance remote desktop utility appears on the invited system. From the remote system, you can request full control of the original desktop and control it with the remote system s mouse and keyboard. Remote assistance should only be used on a high bandwidth link (DSL, cable modem. Or 10+MB LAN) Remote Desktop Remote desktop enables a remote system to connect to the session as a host client. The host client is the system where user sessions are paused for remote connection. Remote system establish connections via an IIS subcomponent (Remote Desktop Web Connection) which must be installed on the IIS server in the same network as the host client. 6

7 Configuring a network to support remote desktop is challenging. However, using the remote desktop is quite simple. You must leave an active logon session running to which remote desktop will connect from your remote system. To set up remote desktop: 1. Log on to the host system. 2. Use the start, Log Off command, and then click switch user. 3. Log on to the remote system 4. Launch Internet Explorer. 5. Open the URL where<servername> is the name or IP address of the IIS server on the network. 6. If you are prompted for logon, provide them in the form <domainname>\<username> or <systemname>\<username> 7. After logon, you are presented with the remote desktop web connection screen where you must provide the computer name or IP address of the host client and what sized screen to open. Click connect. There are better remote control products available, such as PCAnywhere, Carbon Copy, and Timbuktu. Automatic Updates Tab The automatic updates tab allows you to control the notification settings. You can select to automatically download updates, notify user before downloading any updates, or turn off the notification area. System Restore Tab System restore allows you to roll back your system to a previously saved state. Therefore, you can restore your computer back to the way it was working before your cat jumped on your keyboard or before you installed a program or device driver that lunched your system. System restore does not affect personal files, such as documents, Internet favorites, or s. It simply reverses system configuration changes and removes installed files to return the system to a stored state. System Restore, when enabled, automatically monitors your system for changes. Periodically restoration points are created. You can also create your own restoration points manually. To launch system restore select the Start menu, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then System Restore. This will launch a wizard which will walk you through the process of restoring the system to a previously saved state or to manually create a restore point. 7