Letters to the Editor

Editor's Note: Windows & .NET Magazine welcomes feedback from readers about the magazine. Please include your full name, email address, and daytime phone number with your letter. We edit all letters and replies for style, length, and clarity.

Windows & .NET Magazine

I can't believe it! You got burned by calling your magazine Windows NT Magazine, then you got burned by calling it Windows 2000 Magazine. Now you're putting .NET in the title. That name probably won't last as long as the other names did. What are you thinking?

—David Rochford
david@zesco.com

During the past year, readers have suggested titles that would keep our magazine from having to change its name every time Microsoft adopts a new designation for the OS. So why did we end up with another title*Windows & .NET Magazine*that seems to be at the mercy of Microsoft's whims?

The magazine has always covered not only the OS but also all the Microsoft server products (originally the BackOffice servers, now the .NET Enterprise Servers). And we've always kept you up-to-date about strategic direction and new initiatives from Microsoft and third-party vendors. We'll certainly continue this approach, and we'll keep covering Win2K and NT even as we move into the era of Windows XP and Windows .NET Server. But, we also want our title to clearly convey that we help you implement, manage, and maintain your Web infrastructure and an increasingly diverse set of clients as well as the server side of your networks. We want readers to look at the name and immediately know what the magazine covers.

At a recent focus group, a reader said, "I don't care if you call it Dux Magazine, as long as you keep the content useful and practical." That's exactly our mission: to provide technical, how-to content that helps you do your job *and helps you make decisions about new technology. As always, Windows & .NET Magazine's goal is to make you effective today so that you can plan for and implement an IT infrastructure that will solve problems and provide a secure foundation for the future.

No matter what the name of this magazine might be in the future, it will always help you do your job in the present. And it will provide what you need when that job involves figuring out what to do with new initiatives or transitioning to new infrastructures. Please continue to keep us aware of your needs. We're here to serve you.

—Karen Forster
Editor in Chief

AD Backup Bug
I came across Sean Daily's News Analysis: "The AD Backup Bug— Microsoft Comes Clean" (September 2001) while I was trying to find a resolution to an Active Directory (AD) backup problem. The Microsoft article "Windows 2000 Domain Controllers Restored with System State Backups Made Prior to SP2 May Not Boot" (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q295/9/32.asp) that the author mentions fails to explain what to do if you experience the bug. Is AD totally hosed, or is there some way to get the machine running again (e.g., demote it to a member server, then delete and reinstall AD)?

In my client's situation, Ntbackup made backups of AD to the System partition under C:\winnt\ntds each night. After 5 months, the backups had filled the 2GB partition. Attempts to reboot the server for other reasons failed (of course) with only 14MB of disk space left. I booted into AD Restore mode and deleted all the backups except the most recent log file and rebooted, only to be presented with an error. I don't have a clue about what to do.

—Chris Kuebler
chrisk@erie.net

Your client's situation is different from the AD backup bug I reported. That problem occurs in specific circumstances under Win2K Ser-vice Pack 1 (SP1) when multiple backups occur simultaneously on the network. I think your answer will lie in performing AD-recovery steps. To that end, check out resources such as AD and Win2K disaster-recovery articles on the Windows & .NET Magazine Web site (http://www.winnetmag.com/magazine) or NetPro's "The Definitive Guide to Active Directory Troubleshooting" (http://www.netpro.com/ebook).