Tools and tips to tweak YOUR desktop system
The most recent version of Microsoft's flagship OS has been on the market for almost a year. Unless you've been living in a cave, you've no doubt heard all the promotion and praise of Windows 2000 Professional. You might have even taken the plunge and upgraded your system. If you're considering upgrading to Win2K Pro or you've already installed it on your system, you'll benefit from knowing what to expect from such a radically new OS and how to get the most out of this OS once it's up and running.
Reliability
In Win2K Pro, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to improve the OS's reliability. Whether you're an administrator who manages users' desktops or a power user, you'll appreciate Microsoft's efforts in this area.
To test Win2K Pro's reliability, Microsoft enlisted the aid of National Software Testing Laboratories (NSTL), an independent organization that evaluates hardware and software. Rather than rely solely on lab machines, NSTL tested Win2K Pro systems at customers' sites by installing on each system a small tool that recorded the uptime for each desktop. From the tool's data, NSTL determined that the average uptime between failures for a Win2K Pro system was 3 times the average uptime between failures for a Windows NT Workstation system and 13 times the average uptime between failures for a Windows 98 system. Win2K Pro's average time between failures was more than 72 weeks (counted in 40-hour workweeks). To achieve this level of reliability in Win2K Pro, Microsoft included in the OS several improvements, such as driver signing, Windows Installer service, and Windows File Protection (WFP).
Delivery from Driver Dilemmas
According to Microsoft's research, third-party drivers that run in NT's kernel are responsible for a significant number of the OS's blue screens. The kernel is the most sensitive part of the OS because it communicates directly with the hardware. Researchers concluded that improved driver handling would provide increased reliability. Thus, Win2K Pro includes two new capabilities: driver signing and the Driver Verifier utility. (Table 1 describes several helpful Win2K Pro tools.)
Driver signing is a new type of Microsoft certification program. In this program, the Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) puts a driver through a series of rigorous tests to verify its reliability. If a driver passes the tests, Microsoft digitally signs it—giving the driver Microsoft's stamp of approval. Given how important hardware drivers are to the reliability and stability of a system, this program makes a lot of sense.
Although Microsoft has digitally signed all the drivers on the Win2K Pro CD-ROM, you can run the File Signature Verification utility to double-check your system's drivers. To do so, from a command prompt, launch sigverif.exe.
If you try to install a driver that Microsoft hasn't digitally signed, Win2K Pro warns you that the driver isn't certified before the system installs the driver. In most cases, this warning isn't cause for alarm. Just remember that you installed a noncertified driver in case you run into problems later.
However, if you want to keep an eye on a suspicious driver, or on any driver, you can use the Driver Verifier tool. To launch Driver Verifier, you run verifier
.exe at a command prompt. In the Driver Verifier Manager window, which Figure 1 shows, you specify which drivers you want the tool to watch. After you reboot the system, Driver Verifier watches the selected drivers, and if any of the specified drivers misbehaves, the tool presents you with a blue-screen bug-check error that exposes the offending driver. If this error appears, ask your hardware manufacturer for an upgraded driver. If the verifier watches a driver and doesn't present you with a blue-screen error after a few weeks of typical use, the driver is probably OK.
Liberation from DLL Conflicts
Applications represent another challenge to Windows' stability. In some cases, problems result from application vendors' poor programming practices. More often, however, conflicting DLLs are the cause. DLL conflicts often occur when an older version of a DLL overwrites a newer version that has the same name and is already installed on your system.
For example, suppose you install application A on your system, and application A calls subroutines from progstuff.dll. During the application installation, the setup program installs progstuff.dll 2.5 into your computer's system32 directory.
A few months later, you successfully install application B on your system. Application B relies on subroutines in progstuff.dll, and the application's programmers bundled progstuff.dll 1.8 with the application's installation routine. Thus, application B's setup program overwrites progstuff.dll 2.5 with progstuff.dll 1.8.
A few weeks later, when you try to run application A, the application works fine until it needs functionality that only progstuff.dll 2.5 offers. The result is a cryptic error message, and enough time has passed that you don't connect the failure of application A with the installation of application B.
To address this problem, Microsoft included Windows Installer in Win2K Pro. Vendors must use this installation method to obtain the "Certified for Windows 2000 Professional" logo for their applications. Applications that use Windows Installer minimize file conflicts, provide self-repairing capabilities, and support the Add/Remove Programs function.
Protection from File Corruption
File conflict and corruption problems aren't limited to third-party applications—Windows is susceptible to these difficulties. To avoid internal conflicts, Win2K Pro includes WFP, which contains two primary components: a monitoring service that watches for changes in your key system files and a manually initiated checking routine.
The monitoring service watches all your system's key files (i.e., .sys, .dll, .exe, .ttf, .fon, and .ocx files) for changes or deletion. If someone modifies one of these files, Win2K Pro checks the file's digital signature to ensure that the file is a Microsoft-approved version. If the file fails this check, Win2K Pro retrieves a copy of the original file from the cache and overwrites the new file with the old file. The OS then writes an event to the System log and informs the user that WFP has repaired the damaged file.
I attempted to delete a file from my system to see what Win2K Pro would do. I chose a command-line utility (cacls.exe), verified that it was in my system's \%systemroot%\system32\dllcache directory, then deleted it. The file reappeared, and my System log contained a new event, which Figure 2 shows.
This service works great for catching obvious problems, but what about the invisible problems, such as when some sort of data error corrupts a file? The System File Checker command-line utility (sfc.exe) lets you trigger a scan of all your system's protected files to ensure the files are intact and digitally signed. If any files appear in questionable condition, System File Checker replaces the file with a cached copy from either the \%systemroot%\system32\dllcache directory or the Win2K Pro CD-ROM. To launch System File Checker, run sfc.exe at a command prompt.
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