Windows Manage

Originally, there was Windows 3.1, Windows 9x and Windows NT. The 3.1 version was pretty much dead when Windows 95 came out. Windows 95/98/ME were okay but did not have the robustness of Windows NT.

If you wanted to use a home computer you'd go for Windows 9x but for a work environment they liked Windows NT. Windows NT 4.0 came before Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is REALLY Windows NT 5.0. If you look in the registry (regedit.exe) you will see evidence of NT 5.0. Windows XP Professional is Windows NT 6.0. Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP Professional are on par. One is server class and the other is workstation class.

Since Windows 2000, all of these (including Windows Vista) have an extra menu option when you right click on "My Computer". It is the Manage option. When you select Manage it opens up the Microsoft Management Console (mmc). You can even find this on Windows XP Home.

MMC is a framework that you can open other programs inside. If you go to the Control Panel, you will find things like Services, Disk Management, Event Viewer, etc. When you open up Manage, it opens the MMC with *ALL* these administrative tools in it. You can edit users/groups, manage disk drives, view events, create performance logs, etc.

Any place you can see "My Computer" you can right click on it and select Manage. This is a great shortcut to these administrative tools. You should give this area a peek and see what is available in there. Be careful though; this is an area where you can lock yourself out of the system or disable the bootable hard drive if you are not careful.