Start taking your destiny into your own hands by changing the wallpaper (er, the desktop background). If you bought a new computer with Windows 7 installed, your background text probably says Dell or Vaio or Billy Joe Bob's Computer Emporium / Dial 555-3765 for a good time.
At some point, you may decide to remove a role that you no longer need. Removing a role in the past was error prone because you couldn't be sure you had removed all the component parts. Windows Server 2008 improves on this process through the Remove Roles Wizard.
You still have access to the Add or Remove Programs applet, as you did in the past, in Windows Server 2008. However, Microsoft has changed the name of this feature to Programs and Features. It's still possible to add or remove roles using this approach. Server Manager provides another option that you might want to try, however: Adding and removing roles can now rely on a wizard that helps you create a complete role rather than install a particular piece of software and find that you didn't install enough.
The Initial Configuration Tasks window doesn't appear as an option on the Start menu or within the Control Panel (not even as part of the Administrative Tools folder).
A domain controller is a single computer set up for client server operation rather than for the workgroup operation that smaller networks use. The domain controller can appear as a single server in a smaller network or as part of a forest on a larger network.
An Active Directory forest is a group of domain controllers that are working together to service user needs. All the members of the forest share data and update each other so that the loss of a single domain controller doesn't cause a complete failure of Active Directory or result in lost settings.
Users of the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 also have a documented and Microsoft-approved method of bypassing the signing requirement. (This technique will never work on the 64-bit version of the product.)
An undocumented method of disabling the signed driver requirement for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 is to use the BCDEdit utility to make a change to the boot configuration. Because this feature isn't documented, Microsoft could remove it at any time. This procedure isn't something that a novice administrator should attempt to do, but it's doable.
Active Directory is a special kind of hierarchical database that stores system settings, computer information, user information, application configuration, and a wealth of other information and statistics about your network.
You can open MMC consoles by selecting them from the Administrative Tools folder in the Start menu or by double-clicking their icons in Explorer. You also can start consoles using a command prompt.