<<Before I posted my original message, I tried changing the IP
address on my desktop WinNT 4.0 box using the control panel. The new setting
took effect as soon as I pressed the "OK" button to end the dialog. Existing
connections retained their old addresses, but new connections used the new
address.

        So apparently, NT4.0 allows some live reconfiguration without
shutting down running services. NT3.51 definitely did not.>>


Yes, NT is definitely (finally!) getting "smarter" with respect to hardware
and configuration issues. I guess NT6 (or 5.5) will have to be as capable as
Win98, since MS says there won't be a follow-on to Win98.

It's also worth mentioning that the default reboot that the machine suggests
is not always needed. An example is installing APC's PowerChute
UPS-monitoring software. The setup program makes the apparently-mandatory
claim that you have to reboot the machine to have the software come up. In
fact, all that is necessary is to go into Control Panel.Services and
re-start the UPS service. The APC setup program stopped the default NT UPS
service if it was running, and modified the registry so that the UPS service
entry points to the APC program instead of the default. A click on the
"Start" button in the Services applet is all that is required to have the
APC monitor come up.

Steve