Oh, didn't know that about Windows, thanks! So, if we could get Windows to run multiple GUI's at the same time, would that be a good solution. We could create partitions on the server for each user and then let each user have thier own central hard drive. I think windows is stuck on having one partition or hard drive contain much of the files that make the system work. If we could change that to have multiplte "central" hard drives or partitions and have multiple GUI's, would that be a viable solution?
Sincerely, Christopher ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Warren" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 4:12 AM Subject: Re: VNC is Powerful, could it become like Citrix > Windows 95/98/ME boot into real mode, load a slightly modified version of > DOS, then load the Win32 environment on top. Win9x is still (potentially) > reliant on realmode 16bit drivers. > > Windows NT (2000 and XP are included) was a ground up rewrite (Started as a > combined effort, IBM and Microsoft together, eventually creating OS/2 And > Windows NT) and does not use DOS or anything similar. It loads into > protected mode as soon as possible, before loading any drivers or anything > more then is needed to read from the hard drive and display errors to the > video card. Once in protected mode, it discards all elements of the > realmode boot and switches over to it's own drivers. > > Unfortunately, (For a true multiuser environment) the WinNT kernel is > integrated with the GUI. It's designed around having a GUI present, and > doesn't behave nicely without one. > > All versions of NT (4.0 and up, anyway -- I've basically forgotten about > 3.51 and earlier) have the ability to run multiple users which maintain > unique memory spaces and basically cannot interfere with each other They > can see all processes of course, but cannot interact with them (Assuming > proper ACLs are in place). > > The problem is, these users only have one GUI to interact with, and there is > no easy way to redirect/capture calls to the GUI and determine which video > driver should receive the messages. Citrix and terminal server are an > attempt around this, but you still run into challenges with programmers that > did not follow best practices, and store configuration and/or state > information on the hard drive in the application directory, or some other > location central to the system, rather then a session specific location. > > I have to admit, I've done this on a few occasions, but only on applications > where I needed to ensure that only one instance ran at a time on a given > machine (Servers, weblog->database import runs, etc), and I took appropriate > precautions to ensure that a second instance would refuse to run. I still > count myself as a lazy programmer though, since I didn't do things > "properly" --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------
