Building a Local Web Server: NT

I came to NT only after I'd been using Linux for three months, mostly because I only had 8 MB of RAM and couldn't even install the NT 3.5 copy I had. Finally I broke down two weeks ago and bought another 16MB - which seems like enough to tide me over. Miraculously, NT didn't do any damage to my Linux partitions or even to LILO - so I now have a machine that can boot Linux, Windows 3.1/MS-DOS, and Windows NT 3.51. If I could even possibly explain how that worked, I would, since all the Linux books seem to consider it impossible. Unfortunately, however, there's one small problem somewhere in my IDE hard drive/CD-ROM setup and it takes NT about 10 minutes to boot up. (Normally it should take around 2.)

Microsoft would really prefer you to use Windows NT Server to set up these kinds of networks, but NT Workstation works fine for small networks and costs half as much ($300 instead of $600.) It still costs ten to twenty times what Linux costs but it may pay off for you, depending on the kinds of services you want to provide. For my own projects I'm working on a Windows NT Workstation 3.51 system.

This document is not 100% guaranteed to work on your particular system. If you find flaws, please email me. I expect that there will at least be typos. This does not explain how to set up your Windows NT system from start to finish. I have relied heavily on several books to get me through this without losing my mind completely, and recommend that you do the same. Finally, please read this entire document before using it to set up a system. For quick reference, I've set up an outline.

That said, please take a quick look at my notes for setting up Windows NT. Then let's look at how to set up the TCP/IP addresses of my little network.

Back to the outline

Copyright 1995 by Simon St.Laurent. All rights reserved. You may print this document for yourself or others at no charge, but commercial distribution without permission is prohibited.

Hypertype
448 West 25th Street #3
New York, NY 10001
hypertyp@panix.com
SimonStL@aol.com