Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Network Tweaks

The networking subsystem for Windows 2000 and NT is pretty flexible. Most of the things you can change are exposed through the Network control panel and its various tabs, subdialogs, and property pages. However, there are some things you can change on your own that will smooth your network operations.

Create a Shared Favorites Folder for All Network Users

A standard Windows 2000 or NT installation gives every user her own Favorites folder. Since Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office both use this folder extensively, you might find it useful to build a shared Favorites folder containing IE shortcuts or Office documents you want to make available to all your users.

Building a shared Favorites folder is pretty easy. The first step is to build the folder itself: on one of your file servers, share the directory you want to use as the shared Favorites folder. It can be an existing directory, or you may create a new one. Be sure to set appropriate share and NTFS permissions.

Next, on each machine you want to use the shared folder, you need to change the value of HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Favorites from its existing setting to the path to the new folder. For example, if your shared folder is on a machine named armageddon in a share named favorites, your new Favorites value would read \\armageddon\favorites. You can make this change as part of a group or system policy by adding a new policy template; you may also put it in ...