Acknowledgments

For the First Edition (Alistair)

Many people have encouraged me in the writing of this book, principally Vicky Launders, my partner, friend, and fountain of useful information, who has been a pinnacle of understanding during all the late nights and early mornings. Without you my life would not be complete.

My parents Pauline and Peter Norris also have encouraged me at every step of the way; many thanks to you both.

For keeping me sane, my thanks go to my good friend Keith Cooper, a natural polymath, superb scientist, and original skeptic; to Steve Joint, for keeping my enthusiasm for Microsoft in check; to Dave and Sue Peace for "Tuesdays," and the ability to look interested in what I was saying and how the book was going no matter how uninterested they must have felt; and to Mike Felmeri for his interest in this book and his eagerness to read an early draft.

I had a lot of help from my colleagues at Leicester University. To Lee Flight, a true networking guru without peer, many thanks for all the discussions, arguments, suggestions, and solutions. I'll remember forever how one morning very early you took the first draft of my 11-chapter book and spread it all over the floor to produce the 21 chapters that now constitute the book. It's so much better for it. Chris Heaton gave many years of dedicated and enjoyable teamwork; you have my thanks. Brian Kerr, who came onto the fast-moving train at high speed, managed to hold on tight through all the twists and turns along the way, and then finally took over the helm. Thanks to Paul Crow for his remarkable work on the Windows 2000 client rollout and GPOs at Leicester. And thanks to Phil Beesley, Carl Nelson, Paul Youngman, and Peter Burnham for all the discussions and arguments along the way. A special thank you goes to Wendy Ferguson for our chats over the past few years.

To the Cormyr crew: Paul Burke, for his in-depth knowledge across all aspects of technology and databases in particular, who really is without peer, and thanks for being so eager to read the book that you were daft enough to take it on your honeymoon; Simon Williams for discussions on enterprise infrastructure consulting and practices, how you can't get the staff these days, and everything else under the sun that came up; Richard Lang for acting as a sounding board for the most complex parts of replication internals, as I struggled to make sense of what was going on; Jason Norton for his constant ability to cheer me up; Mark Newell for his gadgets and Ian Harcombe for his wit, two of the best analyst programmers that I've ever met; and finally, Paul "Vaguely" Buxton for simply being himself. Many thanks to you all.

To Allan Kelly, another analyst programmer par excellence, for various discussions that he probably doesn't remember but that helped in a number of ways.

At Microsoft: Walter Dickson for his insightful ability to get right to the root of any problem, constant accessibility via email and phone, and his desire to make sure that any job is done to the best of its ability; Bob Wells for his personal enthusiasm and interest in what I was doing; Daniel Turner for his help, enthusiasm, and key role in getting Leicester University involved in the Windows 2000 RDP; Oliver Bell for actually getting Leicester University accepted on the Windows 2000 RDP and taking a chance by allocating free consultancy time to the project; Brad Tipp whose enthusiasm and ability galvanized me into action at the U.K. Professional Developers Conference in 1997; Julius Davies for various discussions but among other things telling me how the auditing and permissions aspects of Active Directory had all changed just after I finished the chapter; Karl Noakes, Steve Douglas, Jonathan Phillips, Stuart Hudman, Stuart Okin, Nick McGrath, and Alan Bennett for various discussions.

To Tony Lees, director of Avantek Computer Ltd., for being attentive, thoughtful, and the best all-round salesman I have ever met, many thanks for taking the time to get Leicester University onto the Windows 2000 RDP.

Thanks to Amit D. Chaudhary and Cricket Liu for reviewing parts of the book.

I also would like to thank everyone at O'Reilly but especially my editor Robert Denn for his encouragement, patience, and keen desire to get this book crafted properly.

For the Second Edition (Robbie)

I would like to thank the people at O'Reilly for giving me the opportunity to work on this book. Special thanks goes to Robert Denn, who was a great editor to work with.

I would like to thank Alistair Lowe-Norris for providing such a solid foundation in the first edition. While there was a lot of new material to include, much of the information in the first edition was still pertinent and useful. He deserves a lot of credit since the first edition was done before Windows 2000 had even been released to the public, and there was virtually no information on Active Directory available.

Thanks to Alistair, Mitch Tulloch, and Paul Turcotte for providing very insightful feedback during the review process. Their comments rounded out the rough edges in the book.

And no acknowledgements section would be complete without recognition to my significant other, Janet. She was supportive during the many late nights and weekends I spent writing. I appreciate everything she does for me.