Some of the most important and most difficult aspects of systems administration include monitoring and troubleshooting. It is typically a skill learned (or earned) with time and experience. No one book can detail all the problems that might occur or all the situations you might find yourself in as an administrator. The best you can do is explore your resources, learn, and utilize all that you can. Not all ideas will appeal to you, and not all will be applicable to your environment. However, all are worthy of a trial run, a test to see what they can do for you. Have you ever thought of what tools you would want to have with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island? If you ended up with even a nail file, you might consider yourself lucky! There could be times in your career that having some of the basic tools and knowing how to use them will come in almost as handy. Which would you choose? What tools will be in your administrator s tool kit?

Event Viewer is a must-have. It is basic, simple, and easy to use. It can tell you if there are problems such as services that failed to start, or it can inform you that someone has been attempting to break into your network. It can even provide documentation and historical reference for your servers.

What about the System Information tool? It is an updated version of the old Microsoft MSD. It provides read-only...