MICROSOFT MANAGEMENT CONSOLES

Next let's look at another way of making routine maintenance more convenient to perform in Windows XP. You can create a MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and add various system tools to it, and then open the console for quick access to all the tools you need at once.

One of the side benefits of using an MMC rather than individual applications is that you can create MMCs that run utilities on other computers on your network, not just your own. That way if you're in charge of the maintenance for a whole workgroup, you can run all the maintenance tasks on all the other computers from your own computer. This lesson does not cover that, but you can set it up easily enough; when setting up a maintenance task, there's a prompt that asks you to select whether this task should apply to your own computer or a remote one on your network.

You create a new MMC, and then you add utilities to it in the form of snap-ins. A snap-in is a version of a utility that can work within the MMC.

Follow these steps to create a new MMC and run it as a snap-in:

  1. Select Start > Run. Type MMC and then click OK. A blank Microsoft Management Console window opens, as shown in Figure 6-5.
Figure 6-5: A blank Console window.
Figure 6-5: A blank Console window.

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  1. Select File > Add/Remove Snap-in.
  2. Click the Add button. A list of available utilities appears.
  3. For this example, select Disk Defragmenter, and then click Add. The dialog box stays open.
  4. For this example, select Disk Management, and then click Add. A dialog box appears asking whether you want to run it for your own or some other computer.
  5. Leave This computer selected, and then click Finish.
  6. Click Close to close the list of applications, and then click OK. Now you have two snap-ins in the console.
  7. Double-click Disk Defragmenter. The Disk Defragmenter utility appears in the right pane, as shown in Figure 6-6. You can run it from here just as you would from a standalone window.
Figure 6-6: The console now has two utilities, and Disk Defragmenter is currently in use.
Figure 6-6: The console now has two utilities, and Disk Defragmenter is currently in use.

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  1. Save your console to the desktop. (Select File > Save, click the Desktop shortcut at the left, enter a name such as TestConsole, and then click Save.)
  2. Close the console window, and then reopen it from the desktop shortcut.