Microsoft Windows scripting support has taken off recently, and Thomas Eck has done a lot of useful work at the cutting edge of this technology. In Windows NT/2000 ADSI Scripting for System Administration, he documents the Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) as they apply to systems administrators interested in using Component Object Model (COM) objects written in Visual Basic to automate administrative tasks. Because this book is backed by such a considerable development effort, administrators of large Windows NT and Windows 2000 networks will be able to put its ADSI solutions to profitable use immediately. Though he does provide a conceptual introduction to ADSI and the services implemented in Active Directory, Eck"s book is all about code. Code listings appear in quantity. It"s one recipe after another, collectively covering hundreds of administration tasks, with minimal commentary on each solution. After all, this is a book for system administrators, and the idea is that they"re not so much reading to become programmers as to see the assortment of tools they can use to solve problems. Though more explanation of the code wouldn"t hurt, administrators will be very pleased with the work Eck has done on their behalf. Typical solutions include scripts that add a user to a group, retrieve a computer"s processor type, enumerate the groups a user belongs to, and reset all locked-out user accounts in a domain, plus a pair that start and stop an Internet Information Services (IIS) site. Many more scripts populate the pages of this book and its supporting Web site. --David Wall Topics covered: Active Directory and the Active Directory Service Interfaces version 2.5 (ADSI 2.5), with emphasis on programs that manipulate users, groups, computers, services, and various resources automatically. Other programs perform administrative work on the Internet Information Services (IIS) metabase, Internet sites, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) services. ADSI and VBScript references appear as appendices.