Now you are ready to logon to your server for the first time. The logon screen is shown in Figure 1-11 Log in as "Administrator" and use the password you chose in Step 7.

Figure 1-11

When you log in, you will probably see a window pop up about "Windows Server Post-Setup Security Updates." Don't worry about it for right now. We want to update our server, but we need to configure a few more things first. What we need to do now is click on the "Start" menu, then right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Manage" from the context window that comes up. That should bring you to the "Computer Management" window shown in Figure 1-12.

Figure 1-12

Expand the "Storage" tree in the left pane of the window, if it isn't expanded already, by clicking the "plus" sign next to it. Click on "Disk Management" marked by the numeral one in Figure 1-12. The right hand pane should display your disks in the top and the partition information below. Right-click on the unformatted D: drive in the bottom-right pane and choose "Format" as illustrated by the numeral two in Figure 1-12.

A dialog window will pop up to allow you to format the D: drive. Name the Volume something descriptive like Data or whatever you want. Choose "Perform a quick format" and hit OK. Say OK to the warning here about erasing all Data on D:. After formatting, it will say Data (D:), the size of your partition underneath that, and "NTFS Healthy". Now close that management window

Please note: You may skip Step 14 if you were able to create a 15GB C: drive in Step 2. If you have a 6GB C: drive, then continue with Step 14.

Now we need to change the paging file arrangement on the server. The paging file is a file on the disk that acts like extra RAM for the system. When the server runs a program, that program takes up some system RAM for it to use. When that program is not doing anything, the server can "swap" the real RAM the program is using for virtual ram in the page file. This clears up real RAM for other programs that need to run. When a server doesn't have enough RAM, the server will have a problem called "excessive swapping" where the server spends most of it's time reading from and writing to the paging file. We want to move the paging file to the D: drive so drive C: isn't so cramped.

Now click on the "Start" menu, then right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties." A window will pop up called "System Properties." Click on the "Advanced" tab shown in Figure 1-13.

Figure 1-13

From the Advanced tab, click on the "Settings" button in the "Performance" box. A new window will appear labeled "Performance Options." From here, click on the "Advanced" tab, and then choose "Change" from the "Virtual Memory" box shown in Figure 1-14.

Figure 1-14

The next window will be labeled "Virtual Memory." Our goal here is to move the paging file from the C: drive to the D: drive. To do this, we need to click on the C: drive in the upper portion of the window, click the "No paging file" radio button, and click "Set." A warning will likely pop up about not having a paging file. Just click "Ok" on that warning. Now click on D:, choose "Custom Size". Enter in a range for your paging file. The normal guidelines are your memory times 1.5 up to your memory times 3. Now click "Set." Now your paging file resides on the D: drive and you have free d up space on drive C:. Your window should look similar to Figure 1-15 except the sizes will probably differ. Now you can click OK to close all 3 windows, and reboot the server.

Figure 1-15

Now you have a stand-alone server ready to be made into a Domain Controller or whatever you want. Part 2 of this series will focus on configuring Active Directory and setting up network services on your newly installed server.