Windows Glossary “Windows Dictionary” (G)

game port
An input/output connector to which you attach a joy stick or other game device to your computer. It is typically a 15-pin socket on the back of a PC.

gateway
A device connected to multiple physical TCP/IP networks capable of routing or delivering IP packets between them. A gateway translates between different transport protocols or data formats (for example, IPX and IP) and is generally added to a network primarily for its translation ability.

In the context of interoperating with Novell NetWare networks, a gateway acts as a bridge between the server message block (SMB) protocol used by Windows networks and the NetWare core protocol (NCP) used by NetWare networks. A gateway is also called an IP router.

GDI objects
Objects from the Graphics Device Interface (GDI) library of application programming interfaces (APIs) for graphics output devices. In Task Manager, the number of GDI objects currently used by a process.

Generic Service resource
A Windows service that is supported as a cluster resource by a Resource DLL.

gigabyte (GB)
1,024 megabytes, though often interpreted as approximately one billion bytes.

global account
In an Active Directory network, a normal user account in a user's domain. Most user accounts are global accounts. If there are multiple domains in the network, it is best if each user in the network has only one user account in only one domain, and each user's access to other domains is accomplished through the establishment of domain trust relationships.

global catalog
A domain controller that contains a partial replica of every domain in Active Directory. In other words, a global catalog holds a replica of every object in Active Directory, but with a limited number of each object's attributes. The global catalog stores those attributes most frequently used in search operations (such as a user's first and last names) and those attributes required to locate a full replica of the object.
The Active Directory replication system builds the global catalog automatically. The attributes replicated into the global catalog include a base set defined by Microsoft. Administrators can specify additional properties to meet the needs of their installation.

global group
A security or distribution group that can have users, groups, and computers from its own domain as members. Global security groups can be granted rights and permissions on resources in any domain in the forest. Global groups cannot be created or maintained on computers running Windows XP Professional. However, for Windows XP Professional computers that participate in a domain, domain global groups can be granted rights and permissions at those workstations and can become members of local groups at those workstations.

glue chasing
The follow-up queries or successive lookups that are made to resolve glue records in a zone to other remote DNS servers that are authoritative for a derivative zone. When glue chasing is performed, name server (NS) resource records for delegated DNS servers are chased, or followed, by using successive queries to resolve the servers named in NS records to their host address (A) resource records and to obtain server IP addresses.

glue record
A resource record for out-of-zone information used to provide helpful pointer information for locating DNS servers that have been delegated authority for specific subdomains derived from a zone's domain of origin. These records are used to glue zones together and provide an effective delegation and referral path for other DNS servers to follow when performing a recursive lookup to fully resolve a name.

graphics mode
A display mode in which lines and characters on the screen are drawn pixel by pixel. Graphics mode displays images by grouping individual dots into shapes, such as the arrowhead of a mouse pointer. It can also preview character formatting, such as boldface and italics, as it will appear in print.

group
A collection of users, computers, contacts, and other groups. Groups can be used as security or as e-mail distribution collections. Distribution groups are used only for e-mail. Security groups are used both to grant access to resources and as e-mail distribution lists.

group account
A collection of user accounts. By making a user account a member of a group, you give the related user all the rights and permissions granted to the group.

group memberships
The groups to which a user account belongs. Permissions and rights granted to a group are also provided to its members. In most cases, the actions a user can perform in Windows are determined by the group memberships of the user account to which the user is logged on.

group name
A unique name identifying a local group or a global group to Windows. A group's name cannot be identical to any other group name or user name in its own domain or computer.

Group Policy
The Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that is used to edit Group Policy objects.


Group Policy object
A collection of Group Policy settings. Group Policy objects are essentially the documents created by the Group Policy snap-in, a Windows utility. Group Policy objects are stored at the domain level, and they affect users and computers contained in sites, domains, and organizational units. In addition, each Windows computer has exactly one group of settings stored locally, called the local Group Policy object.

guest account
A built-in account used to log on to a computer running Windows when a user does not have an account on the computer or domain, or in any of the domains trusted by the computer's domain.

GUID partition table (GPT)
A disk-partitioning scheme that is used by the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in Itanium-based computers. GPT offers more advantages than master boot record (MBR) partitioning because it allows up to 128 partitions per disk, provides support for volumes up to 18 exabytes in size, allows primary and backup partition tables for redundancy, and supports unique disk and partition IDs (GUIDs).