Reader Challenge

[Editor's Note: Solve this month's Windows NT problem and get the chance to win $100 or a copy of one of the author's books about NT. Email your solutions to challenge@winntmag.com. Include your full name, mailing address, and connection to NT (e.g., administrator, user). Because of the number of entries, we cannot reply to all respondents. Look for the solution to this month's problem in the June issue.]

Secure Your Registries
Your IS department has a weekly meeting to discuss the state of the company's computers. This week's topic is users who know enough to be dangerous. Several employees who fit this description have been accessing remote Registries to tweak them. The IS director stresses the importance of preventing users, but not IS personnel, from accessing Registries remotely.

Problem

1. How do you lock a Registry against remote access by certain users?
2. How does the lockout procedure differ in Windows NT Server and NT Workstation?
3. What are the benefits of using regedt32 rather than regedit?
4. What is the name of the NT feature that controls Registry permissions?

DECEMBER WINNERS
Congratulations to Floyd Esparaz of Pickering, Ontario, and to Ivan Ferrera of West New York, New Jersey. Floyd won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the December Reader Challenge. Ivan won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).

Problem
Although Windows NT copies data to the swap file (pagefile.sys) automatically, swapping does not always run flawlessly. Clients often call me when they receive error messages about the swap file. The following are some common swap file questions. See how many answers you can provide.

Solution
I dislike having to keep a lot of disk space free for the swap file. What are the rules about minimum size?

The absolute minimum size of the swap file is the amount of system RAM plus 1MB. However, a preferable size is the amount of RAM plus 12MB, so that the system has room to write dump files when errors occur. If the swap file is smaller than the amount of RAM, the computer probably won't boot.

I received the following error message at startup: Limited Virtual Memory. Your system is running without a properly sized paging file. Please use the virtual memory option of the System applet in Control Panel to create a paging file or to increase the initial size of your paging file. I followed these directions, but I'm still getting this message at startup. How do I fix this problem?

The swap file is on an NTFS volume, and someone has changed the permissions for pagefile.sys or the root directory. Make sure you have full rights.

I'm dual-booting NT 4.0 with Windows 95. Do I need two swap files, or can I use one swap file for both OSs?

You can use one swap file, but you need to perform some configuration tasks. First, configure the NT swap file. Open the System applet in Control Panel, select the Performance tab, and click Change in the Virtual Memory section. Make the Initial Size (i.e., minimum) and Maximum Size values the same. Then, configure Win95 virtual memory. Open the System applet in Control Panel, select the Performance tab, and click Change in the Virtual Memory section. Use the same Initial Size and Maximum Size settings as you used for the NT swap file. (You need to choose Select your own settings.)

Reboot into Win95, and edit the system.ini file by entering the following in the [386Enh] section:

PagingFile=X:\PAGEFILE.SYS
PagingDrive=X:
MinPagingFileSize=NNNNN
MaxPagingFileSize=NNNNN

where X: is the common drive and NNNNN is the size of pagefile.sys in kilobytes.

Reboot, and delete win386.swp on the Win95 drive. (You can also make these changes for Win98, but the swap file is in the Windows directory rather than the root directory.)

I added a hard disk because my original disk was running out of space. How do I put the system swap file on drive D?

Open the System applet in Control Panel, select the Performance tab, and click Change in the Virtual Memory section. Set the Initial Size and Maximum Size values to 0, and click Set. At the top of the dialog box, select drive D. Set the Initial Size and Maximum Size (use the recommended value under Total Paging File Size for All Drives). Click Set, and click OK. In the System Properties dialog box, click OK again. Restart the computer.

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