iTechtalk

gopalakrishna

ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS

Windows XP Professional comes with lots of administrative tools
and built-in utilities, but only a few of these utilities are available in
Windows XP Home. That’s because XP Professional is the edition used by
small businesses and large corporations who need the added functionality.

The administrative options in Windows XP Professional give administrators
more control over the operating system, allow them to create and control
users and groups, and let them monitor who logs on and when. These
options also allow administrators to log security events and other
activities, and limit what happens if a user types in the wrong password a
predetermined number of times. Because home users don’t generally need
this functionality, Windows XP Home does not include all of it.

If multiple users access your computer, if your computer is in a public
place, if your computer is not secure at night (perhaps a cleaning crew comes
in), or if you have family members or guests you don’t want accessing your
computer, you may want to consider upgrading so that you can have these
added features.

In this final chapter, I’ll discuss some of the tools and built-in utilities,
some available in both XP Home and XP Professional, and others only
available in XP Professional, including those that enable you to create groups
of users, assign permissions and manage shares, take advantage of security
auditing and make sense of the logs, configure password requirements and
create their security rules, and acquire in-depth system information.

MANAGING USERS AND GROUPS

If multiple users access a single computer, which might occur in a business
or a large household, you may want to assign your users to a group and
manage the group as one unit, instead of managing each user separately.
Managing a group of ten users is far more efficient than managing those ten
users independently. With a group, you have to assign permissions, rights, and
rules only once, not ten times. It’s also easier to add a member to the group,
as any member in the group is assigned the same permissions and rights as all
the other members automatically. It’s a one-stop-administrating experience.

Create a Group

Administering a group of users is easier and more efficient than
administering each user independently.

To create a group, you first need to have a few users. Users can
be created in User Accounts, accessed through Control Panel. Once you
have created multiple users, you can add them to a group for easy
administration.

There are several built-in groups you can choose from, or you can create
your own. Each of the built-in groups already has specific permissions
applied to it. For example, members of the Power Users group can create
user accounts, create local groups, and add or remove users from groups.
Members of the Guests group cannot do any of these things. There are also
built-in groups for administrators, backup operators, and general users. In
this section, though, you’ll create an entirely new group.

To create a new group and add users:

1. Right-click My Computer and click Manage.

2. In the Computer Management console, expand Local Users And
Groups. Click Users to see all of the users created on the computer.
You may see users you didn’t create, and that’s normal. The Help
Assistant is considered a user, as are others. Ignore extraneous user
accounts that you did not create.

3. Click Groups to see the built-in groups already created,You can add
users to any of these groups or create your
own. Built-in groups have specific permissions and rights already
assigned to them.

4. To create a new group, right-click Group in the left pane and click
New Group.

5. In the New Group dialog box, create a group name and description.

6. Click Add.

7. In the Select Users dialog box, enter
the user account names for the
members to add. Separate members
by semicolons.

8. Click Check Names. The names will
be automatically formatted using
the syntax necessary. Click OK.

9. Click OK.

When you add users to a built-in group, that group takes on the
permissions already assigned to that group, as mentioned before. But what
about groups you create? That’s a little different. Permissions for groups
you’ve created are detailed in the next section.