Desktop Administration

BIOS

Basic input/output system. The program a computer's microprocessor uses to start the computer system after it is powered on. It also manages data flow between the computer's operating system (OS) and attached physical devices, such as the hard disk, video adapter, keyboard, mouse and printer. Hardware components implement a basic interface, and the BIOS is programmed to use that. It's basic interface prevents it from taking advantage of the hardware's full capabilities; that is left to software to implement via drivers which can access the hardware directly. The BIOS uses a standard API or a set of programming functions to be compatible with a wide range of hardware. The API allows BIOS to do basic things like initialize a device or input and output data. The API of the BIOS allows the system to detect hardware and in the case of boot-critical devices, access devices at a basic level until a software driver that knows how to access them fully can be loaded. API also allows BIOS to access the display hardware via VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) firmware implemented by the video adapter. This is what enables the pre-boot display (e.g. HP and Windows symbols before OS loads).

32-bit processor

A type of processor that can access 2^32 memory addresses — i.e. 4GB of RAM or physical memory — from a CPU register. Can use 32-bit operating systems, and 16-bit legacy programs. If a computer has more than 4GB of RAM with a 32-bit processor, any memory amount beyond 4GB will be inaccessible by the CPU.

Domain Controller

A Windows server that has Active Directory installed and is responsible authentication and management of user accounts. Non-DC servers in an Active Directory

.MSC

A snap-in combined with MMC is called a management saved console, which is a file with a . msc extension e.g. certmgr.msc (certificates), devmgmt.msc (Device Manager), rsop.msc (resultant set of policies), gpedit.msc (group policy editor) secpol.msc (local security policy), etc.

Domain User Account

A user account created in Active Directory corresponding to an organization member that must authenticate with a DC server. It provides a single logon for users to access all resources in the domain for which they have been authorized.

Internet Information Services (IIS)

An IIS web server accepts requests from remote client computers and returns the appropriate response. This basic functionality allows web servers to share and deliver information across local area networks (LAN), such as corporate intranets, and wide area networks (WAN), such as the internet. Web servers are often used as portals for sophisticated, highly interactive, web-based applications that tie enterprise middleware and back-end applications together to create enterprise-class systems. (Intranet Company Portal)

x86

Intel CPU architecture; uses CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing). Although x86 was originally a 16-bit architecture, the version in use today is the 32-bit extension. x64 is actually more correctly "x86-64"--the 64-bit extension of x86.

CPU (Central Processing Unit)

It is an integrated circuit or chip serving as the "brain" of the computer which contains all the circuitry needed to process input, store data, and output results. Follows instructions of computer programs that tell it which data to process and how to process it. Without a CPU, we could not run programs on a computer. The CPU register stores memory addresses, which is how the processor accesses data from RAM. CPU type is classed by the number of addresses it can store in its register: 32-bit or 64-bit. This classification determines the number of calculations per second CPUs can perform, which affects the speed at which they can complete tasks. Multiple cores (in 64-bit processors only) allow for an increased number of calculations per second that can be performed, which can increase the processing power and help make a computer run faster. First is the execution core, which comprises math and logic units that actually do the processing. Having more of these for specialized operations like floating-point or machine learning can greatly increase the speed and numbers of tasks done at once. Branch predictor and decode/dispatch units ensure these execution capabilities have things to do. Cache memory is used to store data needed by the processor without having to reach out to slower RAM. Larger caches sizes allow more data to be stored close to the CPU, speeding up its execution and allowing it to swap in and out of tasks more efficiently.

Member Server

Member server is a server role defined by Microsoft Active Directory (AD), a service that runs on the Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. A member server belongs to a domain but is not the domain controller.

MMC

Microsoft Management Console: enabled managements of Windows network using snap-ins

Arm

Newer CPU architecture that is RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) based. Arm introduced its ARMv8 64-bit architecture in 2011. Rather than extend its 32-bit instruction set, Arm offers a clean 64-bit implementation. To accomplish this, the ARMv8 architecture uses two execution states, AArch32 and AArch64. As the names imply, one is for running 32-bit code and one for 64-bit. The beauty of the ARM design is the processor can seamlessly swap from one mode to the other during its normal execution. This means that the decoder for the 64-bit instructions is a new design that doesn't need to maintain compatibility with the 32-bit era, yet the processor as a whole remains backwardly compatible.

Snap-in

Snap-ins are the basic components of Microsoft's Management Console (MMC). The MMC snap-ins are the actual management tools; the console - sometimes referred to as a "tools host" - is simply a framework into which the snap-ins are added. Within the MMC environment - which is similar to Windows explorer - the user selects from a list of all installed snap-ins; these might include, for example, DNS manager or device manager.