STARTING OVER

Which of these two commands should you use--and when? RESTART SERVER or RESET SERVER?

RESTART SERVER is available in older versions of NetWare (such as 4.11), and RESET SERVER exists in later versions (such as 5 and up).

Let's look at the functionality of each.

RESTART SERVER

This will immediately down the server and restart it. But after certain OS patches or support packs have been installed, it isn't the command to use. Instead, you'll want to down and restart NetWare by manually loading SERVER.EXE, as some patches will update this file.

Additional parameters are available with this command, which are -NS, -NA, and -D. Using these parameters means that you don't have to use STARTUP.NCF (-NS) or AUTOEXEC.NCF (-NA), or you don't have to break
into the internal debugger (-D).

RESET SERVER

This will immediately down the server and perform a warm reboot of the machine it's running on. If you're using this command remotely on a production server, be sure the PC will boot to NetWare. (Ensure there are no floppy disks in the drives, bootable CD-ROMs in the CD-ROM drive, etc.)