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My notes on getting started with Windows 2000 on desktop

The official documentation for Windows 2000 in CERN is pretty good.  These notes are just a few additions that came up in my own experience.  Doing this after using Win2000 on laptop for a few months (see below).   Most of those notes should still apply.  

 

A useful page from ATLAS.

Installation Day (now over)

Technician will come to upgrade my office PC from NT.  Must backup all files on the hard disk as they will be wiped out.  Some items to remember: 

 

Logon/Logoff takes an awfully long time ... 

Very common problem due to your complete roaming profile being copied back and forth from the profile server every time you logon or logoff.  The profile includes

It's also a good idea to really logoff, especially when you think your profile is in a good state.  If you are logged on in several places the last PC to logoff will determine the roaming profile.  It's a good idea to stay logged on in your private office PC if you are likely to use another PC somewhere.  

I have a separate account for my laptop and disabled the roaming profile for that.

Some things they don't tell you:

Notes on getting started with Windows 2000 on a portable PC

At first, I had to have to have a separate account for Win2000 and WinNT to avoid interfering profiles on the network.  Actually this turned out to be a good idea even when both desktop and laptop were running Windows 2000 since I don't really want them to behave the same way.  The laptop account has roaming profile switched off, greatly speeding up logon/logoff.   I had to set up permissions such that each account could read the other's files (not saying any more about that here in front of all you people). 

 

Made my account an administrator: log in as administrator on local domain, Control Panel,  Users, … add myself to administrator group.  This was necessary in order to install software.   Also followed instructions on http://winservices.web.cern.ch/WinServices/ about making myself responsible for this PC.  This documentation is already pretty good.

 

12 April, 2001:  Found that if I start up the session with a CD in the drive, the Symantec anti-virus program can run out of hand, taking up all the CPU and making my laptop overheat so the fan runs all the time.   So remove any CD before shutdown or start-up.

Remote access

ACB is now pretty obsolete (using VPN with my ISP is much better) but:  Installation of CERN ACB connection at home was easy following the WinServices instructions.

Synchronisation is not automatic through ACB – just as well since it is very slow for large files.  Best to choose just those files that it may be important to synchronise before returning to CERN.

Access through my ISP from home is faster even with same modem.  Installed my ISP’s roaming access for when I cannot use ACB (local access, not too expensive, from any phone line in most countries in the world).

Email

Switched to Outlook, use Outlook Express for newsgroups.  Works well.

Outlook was slow checking for mail at first: cure is to unsubscribe most of my IMAP folders on the CERN mail server.  Via Tools/IMAP Folders/Query/… Only really need to subscribe to Inbox.

New mmm mail service bit improvement: better Web access and much reduced Spam.

Where to put files

The Windows 2000 file synchronization of My Documents is great but .. . the CERN quotas on the servers are miserable (50MB by default, 100MB if you beg).  So I somehow have to save this space for really active/important files.

  

Each user has a local My Documents folder (inside C:\Documents and Settings. 

So I made a link to that in the Desktop My Documents folder.  The contents will not synch with the server.  Limited use.

 

Linking to my office PC

How do I get to all the files on my office PC hard disk?  Simple.  Under Windows NT on the office PC, right-click a folder on the hard disk, go to Properties/Sharing/  modify to something like:

 

 

Then in the Permissions dialogue, remove the Everyone access and Add the usernames you want to have access.  Careful about the type of access!

 

 

Now I can directly work with files on the hard disk of my office PC.  To find them, go to My Network Places, search Entire Network for the name of the office PC.  Then drag it to My Network Places to make a convenient shortcut.  Open it to find the folders that have been shared.   I also made a shortcut called Office PC on the desktop of the laptop.   And I can do similar things on the Office PC, like making a shortcut to my laptop on the Desktop’s desktop. 

 

And of course the analogous thing can be done in the opposite direction, the Windows 2000 dialogues are slightly different.

 

Even better, the folders within a shared network folder can be synchronized automatically, just like the NICE2000 My Documents folder. This makes life a lot easier!

 

3/5/2001 Realised that it is worth arranging things so paths to files are the same on office PC and laptop.  To do this:

  1. Changed drive letter of laptop CD ROM to E: (like my office PC in fact).
  2. Created a new share of the D: partition of my office PC hard drive
  3. Mapped it as drive D; on laptop.

Now it appears that both PCs have the same drive D:.  Select the main document folders on that drive to be available offline on laptop.    So I removed some of the folder shares previously defined.

(I found this is also useful when I want to run system commands like the MAD program from Mathematica.  Seems that this does not work with file paths of the UNC form, \\PCSLAP25\…. So it is better to have all relevant file paths starting with D:\…).

Useful programs

Installed some NICE software from the Control Panel.  Easy.

Wondering where some important applications are (Mathematica,  …. ) , need to keep my desktop PC on Windows NT until they become available …

 

Installed KEDIT from diskettes, copied USER folder for my setup and macros, all in C:\Program Files

 

Installed Acrobat from Control Panel, works better than on NT,  becomes default method for opening postscript files, properly integrated in IE.

Using Unix from Windows 2000

Access to AFS files

The WinServices documentation is out of date..  Here are my additional notes.

Before they banned ftp, access to lxplus, this was possible without even using the AFS client: go to My Network Places, add a new connection with an address like

 

ftp://username@lxplus.cern.ch/

 

Rename it as My AFS or something like that.  This gives useful access to the home directory.   A password is asked for but can be saved for future use. 

Access to programs

Installed Exceed 7 locally, via Control Panel my recipe at

 

http://jowett.home.cern.ch/jowett/ComputingNotes/XterminalOnPC.html

 

still seems to work fine for logging into lxplus.  Have to install CERN Settings separately.   Gives a pile of items for connecting to various CERN systems either by telnet or X-terminal.

 

It’s actually more convenient to have xterm and such windows under control of Windows 2000 – then you don’t have to put up with the great grey sea. Do this as follows:

 

From the Hummingbirg Exceed Xstart application:  fill in the following options:

 

 

and do File/Save As … with a name like “xterm on lxplus”.  The Start Method is important: CERN Unix systems don’t allow REXEC or RSH apparemtly.  When you execute this file, it creates a single window xterm.  You can start other X clients from it, e.g., type

 

nedit&

 

to open another X-window.  Here is a typical screen-shot, showing the peaceful co-existence of windows from Unix and Windows:

 

(The above does not work properly with Exceed 6 on NT).

Editing Web Pages

Word 2000 works very well and is really easy to use.  Similarly Excel, PPT 2000.  I have also started migrating my Web sites to the central servers where editing them with FrontPage is really convenient.

Special Programs

LHC Web stuff

The LHC Web pages need some special browser plug-ins but there does not seem to be anything that explains how to install them under NICE2000. 

To install the Whip4 for viewing mechanical drawings and such, run 

\\cern.ch\dfs\Users\h\hprin\Public\whip4.exe 

To install the HPGL viewer, it might work from the Control Panel.  For some of us, it did not but it's supposed to be OK (according to HelpDesk) to browse to the installation files and double click them: 

\\cern.ch\dfs\Applications\CERN\HPGL\View\5.21\hpgl.msi

The same applies to the Postscript viewer Ghostview.  Best to install this BEFORE Acrobat.

\\cern.ch\dfs\Applications\Ghostgum\GSview 3.4\wininst\gsview34gs601.msi

MAD

 See my notes on MAD8 for Windows.

Code Warrior

Installed the Java Development Kit from Code Warrior Tools CD (there seem to be two versions – having first installed 1.1.8, I uninstalled it and then installed 1.2), modified the System PATH variable in Control Panel to include C:\Program Files\jdk1.2.1\bin\.

 

Fortran

I  installed Compaq Visual Fortran following the WinServices documentation and it works well.  I was able to create a new version of MAD8 for Windows.

 

John Jowett

Last modified: 13-May-03