The Microsoft Mangement Console in Windows 2000 – Step-By-Step

Microsoft^® Windows 2000 Knowledge Center

UsingThe Microsoft Management Console

Step-By-Step

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Creating Console Taskpads

If you are a system administrator who is able to delegate administrative tasks, and you have a need to create various console files for use by others on your team, it is sometimes useful simplify the console view with only a few tasks. In addition, there may be times that, while you may want to delegate administrative tasks such as housekeeping chores or event monitoring, you may also need to ensure network security or integrity or both. Console taskpads will allow you to do this.

Let’s begin with the same Management Console we created in the first two parts of this segment, in our case comp_mgmt.msc.

1. Start the Management Console we created earlier. You will see the two windows we created earlier, the one for Services and the one for Event Viewer. Close each of these windows by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner. Don’t worry, we’re not going to destroy the original console. At the end of this procedure you will be saving another new console file.
2. Next, open or stretch the Console Windows itself to give yourself some room to work. Now, click the Window menu at the top and select New Window.
3. In the left pane, click the + to the left of the Computer Management folder to expand it. Now click the + to the left of the System Tools folder to expand it. Now click the + to the left of the Event Viewer folder to expand that. Now click once on System in the Event Viewer tree to highlight it, and then right-click System, and select New Taskpad View. This will open the New Taskpad View Wizard. See Figure 1.

   Figure 1 – New Taskpad View Wizard

4. By clicking Next you will be able to tailor the view to your specific needs, such how the information is listed in the details pane, vertically, horizontally or no list at all. You can select the type of descriptions you see for your tasks, such as plain text, of the familiar Windows Info-Tip. Go ahead and click through the wizard accepting all of the default settings. See Figure 2.

   Figure 2 – Taskpad Display Choices

   Verify the checkbox on the last page, Start New Task wizard, is checked so that the Task Creation wizard can start automatically. See Figure 3.

   Figure 3 – Start New Task wizard

5. Choose the defaults in the Task Creation wizard until you come to the page shown below in Figure 4, then choose a list view task (List in details pane) and then select Properties:

   Figure 4 – Shortcut Menu Command

6. Click Next and accept the defaults for the rest of the screens. After you click Finish on the last screen, your console should look like Figure 5 below.

   Figure 5 – New Console Showing System Event Log

   By clicking on an Event to select it and then clicking the Properties icon, you can see the property page for that Event.

7. Now click the Show/Hide console tree toolbar button to close the tree view.
8. Now click the View menu, and then click Customize. Now select each of the options except for the Description bar to hide each type of toolbar. As you now see, you can limit the amount of information available in this Taskpad. Your finished console should look like that shown in Figure 6.

   Figure 6 – Finished Console With System Event Log

In the next section of this segment we will discuss the methods by which you can lock down the console file to limit the view seen by the user.

Setting The Console File Options

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