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After my company migrated from Novell 3.12 to Windows NT 4.0, my boss asked me to make sure users couldn't log on to more than two computers
simultaneously. If you've used Novell, you know how easy it is for an
administrator to open SYSCON and select the number of simultaneous workstations an employee can access. The NT process is more complicated.
NT administrators can restrict user access to specific workstations.
However, users aren't restricted to only one or two logons--they can log on to as many as eight workstations at once. As a workaround solution, I created a simple batch file (Listing 1) to let administrators control the number of simultaneous logons for a user. I used logon scripts to incorporate the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit's logout.exe program.
To use this batch file, you must ensure that users have a shared home
directory on which their share names are the same as their usernames. After you create the home directory, you must restrict the number of connections to the directory. Then, you can implement a logon batch file such as the one that Listing 1, page 24, shows.
If a user's home directory share is accepting connections, NT maps a drive (e.g., p:), and the user can log on. If the home directory share is not accepting connections, NT disconnects the user. Administrators can set the number of connections that each user's home directory permits and thus set different restrictions for each employee.
—Stephen Scharf
Sscharf1@aol.com
MORE ABOUT UPGRADING TO NT SERVER OVER SP3
In Reader to Reader, "Upgrading to NT Server over SP3" (June
1998), Tamara Dudley wrote about installing Windows NT Server over NT
Workstation 4.0 Service Pack 3 (SP3). She received the blue screen of death and had to copy the entire system32\drivers directory.
This problem commonly occurs when you install NT 4.0 over an existing NT 4.0 installation with SP3 and Remote Access Service (RAS), or when you install RAS for the first time. The NT 4.0 CD-ROM does not replace the SP3 tcpip.sys driver with the original tcpip.sys file during the reinstallation or upgrade. The Stop message that appears during the crash lists this filename.
The obvious solution is to replace the tcpip.sys file from the original NT 4.0 CD-ROM and then reapply SP3. I had some problems because I had installed NT Server on an NTFS partition. I tried upgrading the installation by installing a fresh copy in the same directory--to no avail. I also tried using the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) to repair my NT installation, and I selected the Verify Windows NT system files and Inspect startup environment options. The repair process detected that the rasphone.hlp file was corrupt and offered to replace it. I let the system replace this file, but it didn't try to replace the tcpip.sys file. When the machine rebooted, I again saw the blue screen of death. The tcpip.sys file in my NT installation was a newer version (SP3) than the one installed, but it wasn't corrupt. Thus, the repair process failed to replace the file. I had to install a fresh copy of NT and copy the tcpip.sys file into the original installation to resolve the problem.
If your NT installation is on a FAT partition, you can copy the tcpip.sys file from another computer running NT 4.0 without Service Pack 2 (SP2) or SP3 (using DOS or Windows 95). Alternatively, you can use the Expand command (which requires Win95) to copy the file directly from the NT 4.0 CD-ROM. For more information about this problem, see the Microsoft article "'Stop 0x1E' Message Reinstalling Windows NT with SP3 and RAS" at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q162/2/05.asp?fr=0.
—Shailendra Shenoy
shailendra.shenoy@tatainfotech.com
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