Remote Administration: The Issues

Before you use the remote administration features, you should understand the following aspects of your networking and administrative needs.

To take advantage of the remote administration capabilities of Windows 95, you should do the following:

• Enable remote administration and user-level security on every computer that you will administer remotely. If you want to administer a remote computer using Registry Editor, System Monitor, or System Policy Editor, then the Microsoft Remote Registry service must be installed on your computer and the remote computer. Notice, however, that although the remote computer requires user-level security, it does not also require File and Printer Sharing services.

  Optionally, the SNMP agent or the Microsoft Network Monitor agent should be installed if required for your administrative tools. For information, see "Setting Up for Remote Administration" later in this chapter.

• Run a common network protocol, such as the Microsoft versions of the IPX/SPX-compatible protocol, TCP/IP, or NetBEUI.
• Train help desk personnel on System Monitor if they will use it. They should understand what each measurement provided by System Monitor means and what course of action is required in response to these measurements. For information, see Chapter 17, "Performance Tuning."
• Train help desk personnel on what problems can be identified and repaired by using System Policy Editor or Registry Editor.

Both Registry Editor and System Policy Editor allow you to access a remote computer's Registry. However, System Policy Editor allows you to access only a subset of keys, while Registry Editor allows you to access the entire Registry. As a result, Registry Editor requires significantly more training. Also, it's important to remember that some changes made to the Registry on a remote computer require the user to shut down and restart the computer, while other changes take effect immediately. As a rule, if you must restart the computer when changing a setting by using Control Panel or other tools, then you must restart it when changing that setting in the Registry directly.

You can enable remote administration capabilities on a computer as part of the process for installing Windows 95 from custom scripts. For more information, see Appendix D, "MSBATCH.INF Parameters."