Chapter 1. Introduction

The Windows operating system (OS) has come a long way in the last 10 years. In the early days of Windows NT, system crashes were common annoyances that users and administrators had to learn to deal with. There were few tools to manage the OS, and the ones that were available, mainly of the graphical variety, were limited in functionality and didn't scale well. Also at that time, Microsoft was not yet serious about providing intuitive scripting interfaces or mechanisms to deploy configuration changes, which would allow administrators to automate repetitive tasks. The result was that administrators were forced to do a lot with little.

The tides changed dramatically with the release of Windows 2000, which turned out to be much more scalable and manageable. Microsoft began to improve in the management areas it had previously lacked by adding more tools and introducing several new scripting interfaces that were robust and easy to use.