Recently, I came up with an easy way to quickly administer a single server from a click away on my desktop.

When you need to check a share resource, share permissions or share settings, or just check services on a particular stand alone server or BDC, you launch Server Manager for domains. If your domain is quite large, sometimes you need to wait for Server Manager to bring up the entire Server list. The more servers and workstations you have, the longer Server Manager will take to bring up the list.

Sometimes, you may need to look at or modify a particular server over the LAN or WAN using “Server Manager”. If you just launch server manager, the tool will bring all servers and workstations in the domain.

I found a better way of doing this. First, you will need to install Server Manager for Domains if you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation as well as the latest and greatest Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit Supplement 4.

Next, create a Program Group to manage your servers, right click on the Start menu click on “Open All Users.” This will give you the default profile window with all common groups. Click on the file menu and create a new folder, name it anything you want.

Once you create the folder, click on “File” menu and create a new shortcut pointing to a NT server using the following command: “srvmgr.exe \servername”.

When you click on a particular shortcut, it will take you straight to the server without bringing all the Server List from the network. This procedure saves me time and makes my everyday administration a lot simpler. Enjoy it.