Archive for the ‘MCDST’ category

ACPI enables a computer to manage power efficiently. It supports two important power modes: Standby and Hibernate. In Standby mode, the computer does not shut down completely. Instead, the monitor and the disk drives turn off. As a result, the computer consumes less power. When a user moves a computer’s mouse or presses any key on the keyboard, the operating system brings back all the offline devices online. On the other hand, in Hibernate mode, the operating system stores the current contents of the primary memory to the hard disk and shuts down the computer completely. A user will need to power on the computer from the CPU to restore the previous settings.

Note: In the Standby and Hibernate modes, the current settings are retained by the operating system. Any of the applications that were opened before putting the computer in Standby or Hibernate mode will remain open unless the user manually closes them.

Power Schemes is one of the power management options that are available in the Windows XP operating system. A user can access this option in the Power Options Properties dialog box by using the Power Options tool in Control Panel. Selecting a power scheme on a computer allows a user to automatically activate pre-defined power-related settings for the computer. By using Power Schemes, a user can control the power consumption behavior of the monitor and the hard disk. A user can also create a new power scheme and edit it as per his personal preferences.

Shares that do not show up in the network browse list are called hidden shares. A user can create his own hidden shares by appending a dollar sign ($) to any shared folder name. Some shares are created by Windows XP by default and are accessible only to the members of the Administrators group. These are called hidden administrative shares.

The NET SHARE command is used to manage shared resources. This command can be used on a stand-alone computer as well as on a networked computer. When it is used without any parameter, it displays information about all the resources that are shared on the local computer. This command can be used in different ways to accomplish different tasks. A user can also view a particular shared folder on the computer by using this command.

Dynamic disks facilitate users in moving dynamic volumes from one computer to another computer.

The following are the limitations in moving dynamic disks to another computer:

1. Dynamic disks cannot be moved onto computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, or Windows XP Home Edition.
2. If a spanned or a striped volume is moved to another computer partially, none of the data on the entire volume will be accessible. Therefore, all disks associated with a spanned or striped volume must be moved together.

A hard disk can be divided into multiple partitions for the purpose of organizing storage of files or supporting multiple operating systems on a single computer. A primary partition is created on a basic disk and can be configured as active or bootable. A user can create up to four primary partitions on a computer running the Windows operating system. When a user configures a multi-boot computer, he must create a primary partition for each operating system and then install each operating system on a separate partition.

Security Logging is used to provide details about Internet connections and other firewall activities. It is not enabled by default when a user enables the ICF on a Windows XP computer. It consists of three basic tasks, namely enabling logging, accessing the log, and reading log entries. Security Logging must be enabled to view the ICF log file information. By default, the security log file is located in WindowsPfirewall.log.