Acknowledgments

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Overview

Wanting to do something fundamentally different than it’s been done before turned out to be much harder than I ever thought and completely rewarding for you the reader, I hope. You see, there were plenty of books for Windows administrators and plenty of books for people who wanted to script Windows; but no one had really sat down before and written an entire book on Windows administration from the command line that was really focused on administration and not the commands themselves. So I hope the result of all the hard work is that the book you hold in your hands is something unique. This isn’t the kind of command-line book that says “here’s the Edit command; you use this command to do this and this; and here are its parameters.” Sure there’s some of that—as there is any book for administrators—but rather than that being the focus this is a book that uses the command line in the context of everyday administration. It teaches you how to perform the daily administrative procedures and details how those procedures are implemented from the command line. So whether you want to learn how to use the command line to manage daily operations, track Windows performance, view the event logs, partition disks, configure TCP/IP, or perform hundreds of other tasks, this book has the answers.

As I’ve stated in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant and in Microsoft IIS 6.0 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, the team at Microsoft Press is top-notch. Valerie Woolley was instrumental throughout the writing process. She helped me stay on track and coordinated the materials after I submitted chapters. Martin DelRe was the acquisitions editor for the project. He believed in the book and my unique approach and was really great to work with. Completing and publishing the book wouldn’t have been possible without their help! Susan McClung headed up the editorial process for nSight, Inc. As the project manager for this and many other pocket consultants I’ve written, she wears many hats and always helps out in many ways. Thank you!

Unfortunately for the writer (but fortunately for readers), writing is only one part of the publishing process. Next came editing and author review. I must say, Microsoft Press has the most thorough editorial and technical review process I’ve seen anywhere—and I’ve written a lot of books for many different publishers. Jim Johnson was the technical editor for the book. I believe this was the first time we worked together and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. He was very thorough and helped with testing to ensure things worked as expected on both Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. I’d also like to thank Peter Tietjen for his careful copy editing of this book.

As ever I would also like to thank Michael Bolinger, Anne Hamilton, and Juliana Aldous Atkinson. They’ve helped out at many points of my writing career and been there when I needed them the most. Thank you also for shepherding my many projects through the publishing process!

Thanks also to Studio B literary agency and my agents, David Rogelberg and Neil Salkind. David and Neil are great to work with.

Hopefully, I haven’t forgotten anyone but if I have, it was an oversight. Honest.;-)

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