Power tools for IT pros

The versatile Microsoft Management Console

By itself, the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is hopelessly boring and literally good for only one task, which is adding one or more snap-ins that provide in-depth management capabilities for a specific function or feature. You can save these as Microsoft Common Console Document files, which you can identify by the .msc extension.

MMC is the foundation for many preconfigured management tools that are available as .msc files in Windows 10. Perhaps the best known and richest is the Computer Management console, shown in Figure 1-10, which combines multiple snap-ins for easy access to a wide range of system settings.

FIGURE 1-10 Computer Management is a built-in console that combines multiple snap-ins for one-stop access to common system management tools.

The MMC layout is consistent (if a bit old-fashioned looking) across all of its tools. MMC-based hardware configuration tools include Device Manager, which you can open in stand-alone mode or access from Computer Management, and Disk Management (which gets the spotlight in Chapter 6).

If you like the way Computer Management works—with a preconfigured collection of snap-ins—you can build your own custom console by running the MMC command and then adding snap-ins to the new, empty console window. Figure 1-11 shows the Add Or Remove Snap-Ins dialog box, which you can open on the File menu. From the list on the left, select a snap-in, and then click Add to include it in your custom console. Finally, save the result as an .msc file.

FIGURE 1-11 You can build a custom MMC console by using this list of snap-ins.

Table 1-1 lists all the snap-ins included with Windows 10 Pro. A description of each one is available at the bottom of the Add Or Remove Snap-Ins dialog box when you select it from the list on the left.

Table 1-1: Snap-ins available with Windows 10 Pro

One other feature common to every MMC-based console is the ability to open an item to view additional details about it as well as configuration options. In the Services snap-in, for example, you can double-click any entry in the list of available local services to set its startup type and start, stop, pause, or resume that service, as shown in Figure 1-12.

FIGURE 1-12 You can use the details pane in the center of an MMC snap-in to see details about an item, such as the configuration options for this service.