Questions and Answers

Here you can find some questions asked to some groups and the answers I replied. Murat Yildirimoglu

1) Domain Membership Refreshment

Question: I have a W2K box (sp2) which is a stand alone server in a NT 4 domain. The server has ISA server installed on it to provide Internet access for our office. As of Tuesday last the box has lost it's trust relationship with the NT domain which is really weird as I haven't touched the server for well over a week. I always associated the term 'trust relationsip' with inter-connecting domains but when I am on the server and trying to apply permissions for users from the NT domain I get a message saying "Error 0x800706fd The trust relationship between this workstation and the domain failed". I also can't fire up User Manager for domains from the box as it can't find the domain yet can browse the network with no problems. Fortunately we still have Internet access as anonymous access is allowed and this is actually one of things I was trying to change when I noticed the problem. It appears that as of Tuesday evening the event log on the server begun to log Event ID 5719: No domain controller is available for our domain. We have 3 fully functional domain controllers which can all  ping the server (by name and IP) and vice-versa. I should mention that the server in question runs IIS 5 and was hit by the Nimda virus, although it seems clean and operated fine for a week after I am wondering if this could have done something?

Answer: You can remove the Win2K machine from the NT 4.0 domain, delete the  machine  account in the Server manager, and then add it again to the domain.

Question: Thanks for the advice, I was aware that re-creating the machine account was a measure I could take but I was curious to find out why it happened and if indeed it could happen again.

Answer: In the domains there is a trust between the ordinary NT and Win2K machines and the domain controllers. This trust relationship is refreshred once a week. If it can not refreshed the trust relationship fails and it must be recreated. I think this is the case for you.

2) Dual Booting

Question: have a client that bought a new server with Windows 2000 preloaded, HOWEVER, their accounting software will not work on Windows 2000, they have to run Windows NT, until they update their Accounting Software. I'd like to setup a Dual Boot, however, Windows 2000 is already installed. Can I install Windows NT and Dual Boot, or do I have to install Windows NT BEFORE Windows 2000?

Answer: You can install NT after Win2K but after the installation NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM of Win2K are replaced by the NT equivalents and these files do not work with Win2K. So after the NT installation you must replace these files with Win2K versions.

3) Personal Folder Fıle

Question: When configuring outlook on a laptop, our help desk mistakenly set a users mailbox delivery location to a personal folder.  He then went back and deleted the personal folder from the exchange properties in outlook.  This wiped out all her Inbox and they are not in the deleted items folder.  Is there a way to get it back, if we don't have the previous day back up?

Answer: It is very easy to bring the personal folder back. Just search for a .pst file in the user's hard disk and add this file as apersonal folder again. Then you can move the mails in it to the mailbox and set the mailbox as the delivery location, not the personal folder.

4) Password Changes

Question: Well, I usually replicate NTDS connections when I reset a password simply  becasue whoever needed a password reset does not need waiting for the  replication to occur automatically which will take probably like 1.5 hours  if you're talking about 'sites'.

Answer: For the password reset you do not need to replicate the NTDS connnections. The person can log on with his new password even if the AD replication didn't happan yet. PDC emulator has all the password changes and every DC can and does ask the PDC if there is a password change.

5) Reporting Software for IIS

Question: Looking for a low-budget software for basic reporting of visitors to a web  site. Any ideas?

Answer: What about using Site Server Express 2.0, coming with Option Pack for Windows NT. It's a low budget product. So low that it is free and provides information about your Web site in detail.

6) Synchronzing Time with Other OSs

Question:Can anybody help me sync my NT4 box with a Unix machine? I've heard there's some "net time \\ipaddress" type format but I can't find it documented anywhere. As far as I know only in W2k ...

Answer: I don't think net time \\hal /set /yes works in here. You should use net time /setsntp command to sychronize with a machine with OSs other than MS OSs.