Introduction

As an administrator, you must be able to perform several tasks, such as system backup and recovery of your file system as well as administering via Remote Desktop. This chapter will outline several of these general tasks which will help you with your day-to-day administration duties. By the end of this chapter, you will know how to successfully recover your files during a disaster and you will know about application tools that will help make your administration job a little easier. We will explore and guide you through tasks such as printer management, how to keep your time and date accurate, and how to save your battery power with power plans.

Windows Vista introduces a new Print Management snap-in that you can use to centrally manage all printers installed in the enterprise and control print queues individually or as a group. In addition to this, we will discuss the Task Scheduler service and learn how to create basic and advanced tasks as well as manage previously scheduled tasks. We will also explore the Services snap-in, which is one of the essential parts of everyday system administration.

Backup and Recovery

The Backup utility in Windows Vista is one of the administrative tools that has changed a lot from its Windows XP version. Do not confuse the Backup and Restore Center, located under the System and Maintenance grouping on the Control Panel, with the Backup Status and Configuration utility. Whereas you use the Backup and Restore Center to configure backup jobs...