The Microsoft Management Console

- As we start discussing some of the tools that will allow you to support and maintain Windows 7, the first place to start is the management console. Pretty much, there's two ways to get there. I want to point out, as a reminder ... you might want to go back and look at some of the introductory videos ... user account control allow us or disallows us, depending on the settings, to get to administrative or power user features. In order to use the management console, although we do it by right clicking on Computer and selecting Manage, or we do the Microsoft management console and select a snap-in, you need to make sure that you're doing this with administrative rights.

I have administrative rights, so as I do demonstrations through this class, you are actually going to not necessarily see me challenged by user account control. What I've done is, I've said, If I'm an administrator doing functions on my local system, to which I'm remotely connected, I don't constantly get challenged by user account control so that I can be more efficient in my demonstrations. So, to manage your computer, you're going to go here by clicking on your start menu and then right, or alt, clicking. I might not do this in every video, but let me talk about the right or alt click.

If you look at the documentation provided by Microsoft, you'll often see it now say "alt dash click." They're not talking about holding down the alt key on your keyboard. Because of our politically correct world, you could be right-handed or left-handed ... right-handed or left-handed. If you're right-handed, that alternate mouse is going to be the right mouse button. If you're left-handed, the alternate mouse is going to be a left mouse button. So the documentation now often refers to an alt click. So we're talking about the alternate click button on the mouse, not the alt click on the keyboard.

I'm going to right or alt click on Computer here, and you'll note it says Manage. In order to be able to use the management console, you need to have elevated permissions and bypass or pass through user account control. I'm going to click Manage here, and this is our typical computer management console. You need to know how to navigate to it and its basic tool set, common to Vista, for the most part common to Windows XP, as well, although some of the tools have been vastly expanded within Windows 7.

Under here, we have our task scheduler. We'll have a specific module to look at that. And a task schedule elements are much, much greater. For instance, if I open Microsoft Windows, I have scheduled templates. They're not all essentially running, but I have scheduled templates for many of the different features and elements of Windows 7. Under Task Scheduler, I have the event viewer, also vastly expanded in Windows 7. We'll touch it, focus upon it specifically, within one of the modules in this set.

We take a look at, here you've got your typical Windows logs, but you also have the ability to receive forwarded events from other computers. Then again, we'll go into more detail of that. You have your shared folders, your ability to manage shares specifically on your box. Here's the shares on my system. Sessions, that might be in service or, essentially, attachments from other users, and any files that might be opened by other users attached to your shared folders. Here's where you can manage local users and local groups and the security associated with them.

Here's one access to looking at performance monitoring tools and data collector sets. This is a subset of a performance monitor that we're going to go to in specific detail. And then, here's our device manager, disk management, and our services and applications, to be able to get to the services manager and/or W on my controls. And we'll talk about each of these a little bit as we go through the support modules of this particular Windows 7 support and maintenance set.

So, I wanted to get you into, hey, when we talk about going in management consoles, there we have it. But Microsoft management console, the other way to get into here is becoming more important with Windows 7. Remember, Windows 7 is the support platform for, essentially, Windows 2008 r2 servers, and if you've moved to 2012 servers, you could use Windows 7 as your support platform for that. Therefore, what we would do here is, click on the start menu, and I'm going to type mmc, for Microsoft management console, not Mickey Mouse Club.

You'll note it appears up here and I could click it, but I'd be in standard user mode and I want to avoid that. So always remember to right or alt click the Microsoft management console when you're on it and click Run as Administrator. In this instance, because I'm launching the snap-in, I am challenged by user account control. I'm going to say yes. And I come up with the Microsoft management console. No functions, no features, no snap-ins, specifically, what they're called present, like I have. I click file, add or remove a snap-in, and you'll note here that I have a number of snap-ins that I can add.

As a matter of fact, this list is much longer than the list that was given to me by simply using computer management. Computer management lets me manage my local computer. The Microsoft management console allows me to add snap-ins that could be used to manage my local computer, but they're also available to manage remote devices. Now, when I say, manage remote devices, that's if you have the layers of service, firewall open, and the permissions or the security ACLs to be able to get to those particular features on that remote box.

You can't just decide you're going to go and attach unless that remote system to which you're attaching has granted you permission. But you can add the snap-ins here and then use that to debug your connectivity. So we have the ability here to manage certificates and certificate templates. I can do computer management. I could add computer management. You'll note here, any time I add a snap-in, it's going to as me whether I want that snap-in to manage the local system, or do I want to attach to another computer. So I click Another Computer in here and click Browse.

If I'm attached to a active directory, I can go look for all of the different systems. Here you'll see the ones that are in our back office, some of the ones in the different systems that are available to me to attach to. Again, I can't attach to them unless I have remote permissions to that particular access. You can also, say, allow the select computer to be changed without launching from ... or, when launching from the command line. This applies if I save the console. What we mean by saving the console is, after I set up a number of snap-ins, so let me go back on this one and just do local and I say finish.

If I go and add a number of tools, just like I had from my system for local computer ... so I'm adding device manager ... let's see, event viewer's part of my console. Let's add that. Again, local computer ... I can load a hyper V manager here, but I don't have hyper view on Windows 7. So I have tools that I ... Performance monitor's one of my tools. I can add it. I can do, let's see, security templates or server managers. I can do lots of specific snap-ins here, but server manager, I'm not a server.

Server manager, I have to go to a remote computer. Just to point out: this is Microsoft management ... the Microsoft management console, and adding additional policies. Let's just IP security policy here. Local computer, that is available. I'm going to say okay. Now what I've got here is an instance of the Microsoft management console with the snap-ins that I have set, in this instance, to manage my local box. I can say file, save or save as, and I can have multiple different consoles.

So I could say, for instance, in this case, local PC dash one, and I now have a console that I have saved. So when I open Microsoft management console, again, in the future, rather than having to constantly customize every launch with different snap-ins, I can have a set of snap-ins for maintenance, a set of snap-ins for security, a set of snap-ins for different features associated with my goal to try to maintain Microsoft Windows 7. Now, it was important to show this to you because some of our maintenance features we're going to be talking for ...

moving forward, are actually only supported through the snap-ins and only if you have permissions through user account control. So rather than revisiting that every time this is an overview of how do you launch and use the Microsoft management console, whether you're managing a local computer or a remote computer, in Windows 7.