The best moment to install the SNMP service is immediately after or as part of the installation of the operating system because there are some applications that check for the availability of the SNMP service to install their own SNMP files.

There are some applications (i.e. IIS and MS SQL Server), that will not install SNMP support if the service is not installed (and in some cases, running)!

To install the SNMP on Windows 2000/XP, perform the following (note the process is very similar on Windows NT 4):

• Click on Start | Settings | Control Panel.
• Double-click on Add/Remove Programs.
• Click on Add/Remove Windows Components.
• Click on Management and Monitoring Tools and click on Details.
• Check Simple Network Management Protocol and click OK.
• Click on Next and let the install process complete.
• Double-click on Administrative Tools (inside Control Panel).
• Double-click on Computer Management.
• Expand the Services and Applications tree on the left frame.
• Click on Services on the left frame.
• Locate SNMP Service on right frame and double-click on it.
• On the General tab, select Automatic for Startup Type.
• On the Security tab you can leave the default community name "public" or choose your own (which is more secure). To choose your own , click on Add... for accepted community names, leave Community Rights as Read-Only and pick a secure Community Name. Click on OK. Remove the "public" entry
• On the security tab in the lower half you can choose which IP addresses are allowed to access the SNMP service. You must at least choose the IP address of the machine running PRTG!
• On the Agent tab fill out all edit fields and enable all check boxes to make all SNMP values available.
• For added flexibility we recommend to install the freeware SNMP Helper which comes with your PRTG installation

The following documents might also be helpful with the SNMP setup on Windows:
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q315154&
www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/tcpip/part3/tcpch10.asp
support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q295/5/87.ASP
support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q237/2/95.ASP