Friday, July 9

Day 5 - so much information, so little time! Once again, I am borrowing from Rocky, because much of the time, he recorded while I drove. His words and listings of steps are in red.

Check DNS settings on server to ensure workstations have network access.

• Go to ‘Control Panel’
• Select ‘Administrative Tools’
• Select ‘DHCP’
• Open ‘IPv4’
• Open ‘Server Options’
• Right click on ‘DNS Servers’
• Select ‘Properties’
• Make sure to check off ‘DNS’
• Enter the numbers directed towards the DNS IP’s (i.e. 142.66.33.100; 142.66.33.101)

Sidenote on activation keys:

• KMS - Key Management Software - limited time to perform activation ritual. After that point, software shuts down.
• MAK - Multiple Activation Key - automatically activates via internet. Allows for multiple but limited numbers of activated software. (I think Lyle said he had to enter the numbers centrally; this would give me a headache - the print out was very tiny.)

Other notes:

• Make sure "Enable Remote Desktop" is checked, to allow centralized access to other computers.
• Initial Configuration Tasks window is always accessible through Run -> oobe. (Secret geek language)
• Firewalls must be disabled to see shared folders. Firewalling is done at the gateway from our network to outside (well, not exactly the gateway, but at the physical point)

1. The first thing that Lyle wanted us to do was to check that we had the proper ‘loopback address’ of 127.0.0.1 . We didn’t do this as we were scrambling to keep up. I hope to remember and check this out on Monday. Everything was working fine and as it should but it be nice to actually check this out.
2. In the DNS Services:
1. Control Panel
2. Administrative Tools
3. DNS

• In the section that lists the servers, Lyle indicated that we should have at least two. It’s even better to have more – basically as many as you can enter. This way, should one server be down, our workstations would have alternate routes to take to be able to access the internet.
• The first server should be OUR server (192.168.24.50)
• The second one, in our situation, was to access Lyle’s server (192.168.181.50)
• We then continued by listing the other servers within our class (i.e. 192.168.15.50, 192.168.10.50)
• To check which servers our network are going to access to get out to the internet – I believe that Lyle said we could telnet in and type “ list all servers “ and this would provide a listing of servers.

We had an issue with our Server Name which had to be modified within the DHCP service. The suffix ‘.local’ wasn’t being attached to our name Server2008. Turns out that where the Server2008 name is typed in, we had to select ‘More’. It was at the next window that we typed in ‘local’ for the suffix. (This was a problem that I mentioned in my previous post.)

Installing Windows 7

This was very similar to installing any other piece of software. We found documentation, but really didn't have to consult it today. It's good to have on file, however, for troubleshooting purposes.

1. Boot from DVD drive (F12 on startup).
2. Follow the prompts in the wizard, using "Custom Install."
3. Perform chipset and Windows updates.
4. Note to self: Perform updates several times. We kept getting new ones listed after a reboot.
5. Note to self deux: I only speak two of the extra languages. The language updates are not necessary (that's why they are not listed in the Critical Updates section - go figure) and very time consuming to download.