Glossary

Compact Disk Read Only Memory are disks that are removable. However, they can only be written once. They are now being superseded by DVDs.

This is a physical spinning device that stores data. For some reason, this term general does not refer to CDs or DVDs even though they spin and store data too.

Digital Video Disks are mis-named as they are not used exclusively for storing video data. As if 20-Aug-2000 we have a single DVD player on ANGEL.

DVDs store much more data than CDs.

This is Microsoft's web page server. It is an example of a service that runs in its own special account.

This is basically a partition.

Mapping a drive is an operating done to enhance the convenience of accessing remote shares. It generally not necessary (exception: accessing remote resources from the command line of the console).

See "Mapping Foreign Drives" for more windows specific information.

Unix/Linux folks would be more inclined to use a different term such as mounting a share (I think).

Operating System

OS vendors recognized the need to have multiple operating systems on a single disk. Someone established a standard whereby different OS vendors could simulate multiple disks (called logical disk drives or partitions) on a single physical drive. The OS vendor then displays partitions as if they were separate drives and no one (neither the user or the application software) is the wiser.

1. Active

   For Windows to boot, a partition must have an attribute of active.

2. Logical or Primary

   This is a normal partition.

3. Extended

   The original specification for partitions only allowed four primary partitions. To have additional partitions we must further sub-divide a primary partition in to extended partitions. I don't believe we can boot Microsoft products from extended partitions as they cannot be made to be active.

These are programs that are special.

1. They typically start automatically when you boot or log in
2. The often run in their own accounts
3. The still run even when no one is logged in
4. They are nearly always network programs to accommodate remote clients. My favorite example would be IIS that runs continually in case a browser wants to read a page on the local computer.
5. Services have no user interface. Instead, you must go to start | settings | services to start, stop, pause and continue services.

A share is name and a set of protections that refers to a network resource. A network resource is anything that can be made visible on the network for other computers to use. Typically this is constrained to, Printers, Disk Directories, entire Disk drives, CDROM and DVD drives.

While the local computer continues to refers to a resource it uses its own local name. However, a remote computer must use the share name to access the same resource. It is nice when the share name can be the same as the local name, but Microsoft makes this difficult or impossible. 

To make things extra confusing, shares are mapped. For example, a common share name is "C$" and this is rarely unique. It nearly always is the share name for the local disk drive C. Each remote computer that wants to access the the local disk drive must specify a share name (there may be other share names besides C$ that refer to this local drive) when he maps the drive. He cannot map the drive, however, unless someone has already created a share on the remote computer.

On Win2000 and NT there are two kinds of shares.

1. Administrative Shares
   1. It is not necessary (or possible) to create these shares. 
   2. They do not appear when you are browsing the network (for security reasons) and require the remote computer user to know the local administrator's account password to map the share.
   3. Only disk drives tend to show up as administrative shares such as "C$" and "D$". CDROMs and DVDs just show up as "D" (for example).
2. Non-Administrative Shares

   These must be created manually. To reduce confusion, the share name can be the same as the device or directory name.

This has two meanings.

1. Desktop shortcuts

   Typically a file is uniquely identified with a single device, directory path, file name and extension. However, with the shortcut feature single file can effectively have multiple file names (and paths). A desktop shortcut is like having an additional alias to an existing file.

   Since the desktop is implemented as a directory it is possible to have a file physically in the desktop. It is also possible to just create a shortcut to an existing file in a different directory. You can tell the difference by the little arrow in the lower-right corner of the icon.

2. Keyboard shortcuts

   These are a series keystrokes that begin with the ALT key.

This is a special feature of Linux and NT. 

The most confusing feature of the task bar is the auto-hide feature (which, I nearly always have turned on). Basically the task bar automatically retracts to allow you to use more of your screen. It automatically appears when the mouse suddenly moves an invisible task (or office tool) bar. If you move the mouse slowly, it will not appear and you can use the mouse normally.

1. In the case of NT/Win2000 task bars contain
   1. A start button for popping up a list programs
   2. A set of buttons for commonly run programs

      This is the most important feature. It allows you to switch between many programs and see what is running.

   3. A set of buttons for currently running programs
   4. I special set of icons for specially applications such as
      1. Databases,
      2. Multi-media
      3. Services
2. Right mouse clicking on the task bar allows you to 
   1. Invoke the task manager
   2. Change the properties such as auto-hide
3. Common problems with the task bar include
   1. It is resizable. This means you can resize it to be a thin grey line. It still pops up, but you cannot see much. 

      Solution: drag the border of the task bar to expand it.

Most importantly this program allows you to kill errant programs. Just click on the process you want to terminate and click on the "end process" button. This is not a desirable approach since it may leave large large chunks of unrecoverable memory lying around until the next reboot.