Congratulations to Justin Swanhart of Glen Lyon, Pennsylvania, and to Matthew Bell of Seattle, Washington. Justin won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the October Reader Challenge. Matthew won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).
PROBLEM
Family Funn Manufacturing installed a Windows NT network with 280 workstations and 8 servers. Two hundred workstations run NT 4.0, 70 workstations run Windows 95, and 4 workstations run Win98. The personnel and marketing departments run only Win95 and Win98. Six word processing workstations run Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11.
The company's president tells the IS directors, Lisa and Jack, to name the network's computers and shared resources in a casual, friendly manner. Lisa and Jack divide the work in half. The company has shared applications on servers, shared documents on NT workstations, and shared print servers. Lisa goes to each computer to create shares and configure permissions. Jack uses Server Manager to perform his duties at the PDC.
Several days later, Lisa and Jack discuss the project's status in Jack's office, where the PDC and Jack's NT 4.0 workstation are located. See how many statements you can explain.
SOLUTION
Lisa: I named the expense report folder after the expense voucher department head: MargieWithRedHair.
Jack: But share names can't have more than 12 characters.
You can create share names for Windows 9x and NT that have 80 characters. Share names for the Windows 3.x workstations are limited to 8.3 names. Server Manager limits you to 12 characters when you create shares for remote computers. If you are running Windows 95/98, you can't see long folder names in Network Neighborhood. To see long folder names, use Explorer and expand the drive.
Lisa opened Network Neighborhood on Jack's workstation and showed Jack the shared folder named MargieWithRedHair, located on the computer named Shirley.
You can't create long folder names from Server Manager, but you can see them when you open Network Neighborhood in NT. (If you're working at the target computer, you can create long folder names in Explorer or My Computer.)
Jack: This project is taking too long. I have to check Network Neighborhood repeatedly to get the folder names.
Server Manager doesn't show long folder names. Server Manager doesn't have a Browse option to let you search for shares on a connected computer.
Lisa: Bob from personnel is having trouble finding folders. I need to check the permissions I set up. Maybe I need to create some groups to make finding folders easier.
Bob's problem isn't related to the permissions Lisa set up. The personnel department uses Windows 9x machines, which don't show shares with long names in Network Neighborhood.
Jack: Bob needs to open a DOS command prompt and enter
net use f: \\shirley\margiewithredhair
Then he needs to open Explorer and find the F drive.
This solution works even on a Windows 9x machine. Network Neighborhood has a problem with long folder names, but the command line accepts them.
Jack: By the way, I'll use Server Manager to create a share for the vacation folder on Frank's computer in personnel so everyone can access the vacation schedules.
You can't use Server Manager to perform remote administrative chores on a Windows 9x machine unless you've configured the target computer for remote administration (which you must do from the Windows 9x computer).
