The Windows NT and Windows 2000 Answer Book: A Complete Resource from the Desktop to the Enterprise (Paperback)

by John Savill (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The Windows NT and Windows 2000 Answer Book provides hundreds of FAQ-style questions and answers to common (and obscure) administration problems in the Windows family of operating systems. As a guide to real-world troubleshooting, this book will be a nearly indispensable resource for Windows administrators.

The most appealing feature of this book is that it contains material that the enterprise Windows administrator needs on a daily basis. Besides expert tips, the book refuses to ignore obvious questions about installing, configuring, and optimizing Windows NT/2000. In these pages, you will find dozens of tips on setting up Windows (including networking options), with full coverage of procedures for adding users, groups, and domains. Sections on service packs give invaluable advice on which ones are available and how to apply them correctly.

Besides the basics, the book also shows off today's back-end tools required for the corporate intranet (including material on Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol [DHCP], Domain Name System [DNS], and Remote Access Service [RAS]). The section on using and administering redundant array of independent disks (RAID) disk arrays is also a standout here, as are the numerous tips on customizing (and often disabling) Windows 2000 desktop features for complete control of the desktops on your enterprise.

Though this information is in a FAQ format, many questions get comprehensive treatment (and several pages of text) along with screenshots at certain points to help you through some of the more important administrative tasks. With its mix of breadth and depth for the real-world Windows administrator, The Windows NT and Windows 2000 Answer Book can prove to be a real time-saving resource for installing and troubleshooting Windows on the enterprise. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows 2000 administration, configuration, installation, troubleshooting, networking, backups, utilities, IP, DHCP, DNS, RAS, RAID, and IIS.

Review
"Buy this book before the Microsoft tech support people buy them all up!" -- Mark Minasi, author of the best-selling Mastering Windows NT Server 4

"I haven't seen anything like it and the material is excellent. There's so much in this book that it appeals to many different groups and has value as a reference for even the most seasoned administrator. Given the enormous breadth of topics, I find it remarkable that the author seems to be able to give authoritative answers everywhere you look." -- Erik Olson, Axiom Technologies

"Read this book and you probably will become the local 'Answer Man' with regards to Windows NT." -- Robert Coleridge, Microsoft, MSDN Content Development Group

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Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education; 1 edition (July 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201606364
• ISBN-13: 978-0201606362
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,213,703 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Windows NT Resource for Experts, February 16, 2000

By A Customer

My first impression of this book was that it is an excellent resource for those who want to know more about Windows NT and 2000. I've used many operating systems over the years, Windows 3.1/95/98 in particular, but I've only recently started using Windows 2000. I expected this book to help me greatly with the problems and questions I've had, but so far the book has not lived up to the expectations I had after reading the rave reviews here. There are many flaws with the presentation of Windows 2000, including information that is incomplete, inconsistent, and outdated. In addition, I've had several problems that are typical of newcomers to Windows NT but that are not covered by this book. This book may be great for people who are already comfortable with Windows NT and who aren't using Windows 2000, but others might find this book a disappointment.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but out of date, June 10, 2001

By	T. doran "tldoran" (atlanta, ga United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Note the dates of the rave reviews. I'd agree that it is an valuable resource for running an NT 4.0 network, but times change. The material on Win2K falls way short. He must have worked from early betas of Win2K. Many things changed before the final release from the names to the location of various functions.

The treatment of central issues in Win2K like DNS, GPO's and OU's is thin to non-existent. Many features in Win2K parallel those in NT 4.0, but the "Win2K way" of doing things is ignored. For some reason our good buddies at Microsoft seem to have moved or re-named about half the functions of NT.

Hopefully there will be an updated version of the book, soon. I need to upgrade my certification by the end of the year.

The format is a lot more useful than most books I've seen and you can't fault the author too much for his mistakes. Most reference material on Win2K I've seen has similar shortcomings. Even Microsoft's own course material and the online help in Win2K has errors in naming and locating functions.

If you're working with NT 4.0 the book is very useful. If it's Win2k the book is disappointing.

Tom Doran, MCSE

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference material, September 20, 2000

By	Sailesh Kyanam (Keasbey, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

John Savill has done an excellent job with this book. I bought this book after constantly going to ntfaq.com looking for help and finding the site very useful. However, what good is a website when your only NT machine is down? This book is probably not meant for novices and is not a "Learn NT by night" type. Intermediate and even advanced administrators will find it useful (who will remember all those registry paths and nuances of NT?) as a help and reference guide. The 2000 part is not as comprehensive probaly because 2000 was still in Beta at time of publication. I wish there was a way to get regular updates on paper or disk for some kind of subscription fee. I suggest John go in for a second updated edition (with a GOOD rebate for buyers of the first edition), now that the first service pack of 2000 is already out for sometime and lot of new things have happened since.