This article provides information on what Computer Management is and how you would use it on your Dell PC with Windows 7.
Computer Management is a Microsoft Windows utility that enables you to access the system tools and lets you into more direct management of your computer.
In windows 7 the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) gathers and shows the administrative tools for your PC.
These tools are called snap-ins and they are used for managing the hardware, software, and network components of the Operating System (OS). Several of the tools in the Administrative Tools folder such as Computer Management are MMC snap-ins.
Click on the Start button and choose Control Panel from the start menu.
Click on the System and Security link.
In the System and Security window, click on the Administrative Tools icon located near the bottom of the window.
Double-click on the Computer Management icon in the Administrative Tools window.
When Computer Management opens, click In the console tree, expand System Tools, Storage, or Services and Applications to view the tools and services in each of these containers.
Click on the item you want - for example Disk Management, to use the tool and then view the information that is associated with it.
Disk Management should appear on the right side of the Computer Management window after just a few seconds of loading.
Some MMC snap-ins require administrator rights to function properly.
To open MMC with admin rights just follow these steps :
Click the Start button and go to All Programs
Open Accessories and right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator from the menu
In the Command Prompt type mmc.exe
When MMC opens click on File, then click Add/Remove Snap-in and select from the list of available snap-ins
Open Control Panel from the start menu and click on Programs
In Installed Programs, select Turn on or off Windows features
If the User Account Control dialog box appears then confirm that the action it displays is what you want and click Continue
Select the checkboxes for the features you want to install and clear the checkboxes for features you want to remove and click OK
Additional MMC snap-ins may be available once you have installed certain additional features, such as Removable Storage and Network File System. You can install additional features using Control Panel.
The specific additional MMC snap-ins that are available as part of Windows Features may vary depending on the edition of this version of Windows that you are using.
The Task Scheduler helps you schedule automated tasks that perform actions at a specific time or when a certain event occurs. It maintains a library of all the scheduled tasks and provides an organized view of the tasks and a single point of access for managing them. From within the library you can run, disable, modify or delete tasks. The Task Scheduler user interface (UI) is an MMC snap-in that replaces the Scheduled Tasks Explorer extension in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000.
Event Viewer is a tool that enables you to browse and manage the event logs. It is really good tool for monitoring the health of systems and troubleshooting issues when they arise.
You can use the Shared Folders tool to centrally manage file shares on a computer. Shared Folders enables you to create file shares and set permissions, as well as view and manage open files and users connected to file shares on the computer.
Use Local Users and Groups to create and manage users and groups that are stored locally on a computer.
you can use the Performance tool to configure performance logs and alerts to monitor and collect data about your computers performance.
Device Manager gives you a graphical tree view of the hardware that is installed on your computer. Every device communicates with the OS through a piece of software called a device driver. You can use Device Manager to install and update these drivers for your hardware devices. You can modify hardware settings for those devices and troubleshoot any problems.
You will normally use Device Manager to check the status of your hardware and update device drivers on your computer.
If you're more experienced you might also use Device Manager's diagnostic features to resolve device conflicts and change resource settings.
This is a system utility for managing the Hard disks and the volumes or partitions that the Hard disks contain. With Disk Management you can initialize disks, create volumes and format volumes with the File Allocation Table (FAT), File Allocation Table 32bit (FAT32), or New Technology File System (NTFS) file systems. Disk Management enables you to perform most disk-related tasks without restarting the system or interrupting users. Many of the configuration changes will take effect immediately.
In Windows 7 Disk Management provides the same features from earlier versions, but it also adds some new features:
When you right-click a volume, you can choose whether to create a basic, spanned, or striped partition directly from the menu
When you add more than four partitions to a basic disk, you are prompted to convert the disk to dynamic or to the GUID partition table (GPT) partition style
You can extend and shrink partitions directly from the Windows interface
Its a very useful tool.
You can use the Services tool to manage services that are running on local or remote computers for example, to stop or start a service. You can also manage services using the sc config command.
The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Control is a tool that enables you to configure WMI settings on a remote or local computer.
You can configure the WMI Control to back up your WMI repository on a regular schedule or you can back up the repository manually at any time. The repository is the database of objects you can access through WMI. You can also restore a previous version of the repository
You can change the default namespace that is targeted in WMI scripts
You can authorise a user or group to access WMI. For each user or group you authorise, you can set their permission level for specific namespaces