News and Tips :: IntelliAdmin - Remote Administration For Windows

Secure remote backup using remote desktop

Posted by Steve Wiseman on November 5, 2009 with 0 Comments

I have been playing around with a few ideas on how to backup a server I have that is on the other side of town.

One of the problems I have is that the Internet provider blocks VPN traffic, and most other ways I know of getting a secure connection.

The one thing I can do is use remote desktop. After some experimentation, I have been able to schedule remote backups every night using robocopy, and a remote desktop connection.

I will show you what I did to get this to work:

First, start out by properly configuring your remote desktop connection to…

Read the rest at www.networksteve.com

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Network Administrator 3.0 Released

Posted by Joel Sundquist on October 30, 2009 with 1 Comments

We are proud to announce the release of Network Administrator 3.0. Thanks for all of the suggestions, and bug reports. Every one of them helped us.

Give it a spin, and download it from here:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/NetworkAdministrator.exe

(If you purchased a pre-order serial number – use this download and activate it with the serial number you received)

If your plugin has not been implemented, not to worry, we are going to keep pushing them out over the coming months and weeks.

Before that, our next step will be to finish the plugin builder. This will be a web based system that will be free for anyone to use. You will be able to build your own plugins using VBScript, or Batch files. Later, once we get that all smoothed out, we will consider adding other scripting platforms like Kix Script, and Powershell.

So far, we have a settings panel designer almost finished. It still needs the graphics for the different component types, but we will get that done. After that we will implement the logon system and plugin generator. Once that is complete we will start allowing people to beta test the service.

What can you do with Network Administrator? Well, you can pick a list of machines, and apply an action against them. Here are all of the current actions available:

Change network configuration

Want to switch 1000 hosts to DHCP? Have new DNS servers? No problem, with this plugin you can change them in a few clicks

Daylight Saving Time Update
Network Administrator 3 Daylight Saving Time Update
Easily update those older NT 4.1, Windows 2000, and XP machines to the latest DST settings without being forced to purchase a $5000 patch from microsoft.

Disable CDROM Drives
Network Administrator 3 Disable CDROM
Keep users from installing unwanted software. Disable and enable their CDROM / DVD drives with ease.

Set Excel 2007 to save in the older format
Network Administrator 3 Excel Document Set
Having a problem with users sending Excel 2007 documents to people outside your network? Reduce those help desk calls by forcing all of your Excel 2007 users to automatically save in the 2003/XP format.

Disable Floppy Drives
Network Administrator 3 Floppy Disabler
Prevent users from accessing their floppy drives and installing unwanted software.

Folder copy
Network Administrator 3 Folder Copy
Have a set of shortcuts you want to copy to everyone’s desktop? Or a configuration file you need to place on their C Drive? Use the folder copy plugin to copy files and folders to many machines in just a few clicks.

Block IE 7 Automatic Install
Network Administrator 3 IE 7 Blocker
Need to keep IE 6 on your network, and want to prevent those dreaded calls after users install IE 7? Use the IE 7 blocker to prevent the automatic install of IE 7.

Block IE 8 Automatic Install
Network Administrator 3 IE 8 Blocker
Keep IE 7 standard on your network by blocking the automatic install of IE 8

Kill Processes
Network Administrator 3 Kill Processes
This plugin can kill a process by name across your network. Got a piece of spyware that uses a common filename, but keeps randomizing a prefex? Use the wildcard feature to zap them all

Logon Disclaimer
Network Administrator 3 Logon Disclaimer
Have legal statements that need to be declared to users before they logon? Use the logon disclaimer to notify them

Manage Services
Network Administrator 3 Manage Services
Stop, Start, and modify services using the manage services plugin

Disable Offile FIles
Network Administrator 3 Offline File Disabler
Every fresh install of Windows XP has the ‘Offline Files’ feature enabled. This annoying functionality can be disabled with this plugin

Change Power Management Settings
Network Administrator 3 Power Management
Save energy by making changes to the power management settings on computers across your network

Remote Desktop Enabler
Network Administrator 3 Remote Desktop Enabler
Have remote registry access to a remote machine, but remote desktop is disabled? Remote desktop enabler can turn on remote desktop so you can get into that machine asap.

Remote Desktop Port Set
Network Administrator 3 Remote Desktop Port Set
Want to change the port Remote Desktop uses to listen for connections? Use this plugin to change the port that Remote Desktop listens on.

Remote Execute
Network Administrator 3 Remote Execute
Got an MSI file you want to install silently on 100 machines? Network Administrator can do it in a few clicks. Build batch files, or VBS files and easily execute them remotely.

Set Background Wallpaper
Network Administrator 3 Set Background Wallpaper
Have a corporate logo you want to have on everyone’s background? Use the wallpaper plugin to set it across your network. It will even take care of copying it to the remote host for you.

Set Local Administrator Password
Network Administrator 3 Set Local Administrator
Resetting the domain administrator password is easy, but what happens when an employee leaves the company and you have 50 machines with the same local administrator password? Normally, you would walk around to each one and change it. With the ‘Set Local Administrator Password’ feature you can change it across your network without even getting out of your chair.

Set VNC Password
Network Administrator 3 Set VNC Passwords
Use Tight VNC, or Real VNC on your network? Need to change the password on a 100 or 1000 machines? Network Administrator can change them all in one sweep of your network.

Reboot or Shutdown Computers
Network Administrator 3 Shutdown or Reboot
Quickly shutdown, or reboot computers. You can even set a time limit before your action takes place, and tell users why they need a reboot or shutdown.

Disable USB Flash Drives
Network Administrator 3 USB Flash Drive Disabler
Prevent access to USB flash drives, while allowing USB based keyboards, mice, and scanners.

Windows Autologon
Network Administrator 3 Windows Autologon
Set windows to automatically logon as a specific username and password.

Word Default Document Set
Network Administrator 3 Word Default Document Set
Upgrade to Office 2007, but want users to save in 2003/XP format by default? Use the default document set feature to make this change in a flash.

That is the complete list. The list will keep growing as we continue to improve and add them in.

If you have an idea of one you want added, or have an improvement you want made to a current one, then send us an email to plugins@intelliadmin.com

It won’t be too long, and you will be able to build your own!

Purchase today for only $199

Filed Under: Network Administrator

Changes to the Website, and Feeds

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 26, 2009 with 3 Comments

Hello Everyone,

For a while now this blog has had a split personality. We have been thinking about making a change to the blog for quite some time, and finally I think we have come up with a good solution that will make everyone happy.

My blog will now have its own website. It will give me a little more freedom in what I can write about, and will not be as closely tied to what is happening with IntelliAdmin, LLC.

Its new website will be: http://www.networksteve.com

The blog you are reading now will be the place where beta updates, news about new features, and general info about tools, and products developed here at IntelliAdmin, LLC

Both sites will feature an link area that will show the last few articles:

At www.networksteve.com:

And at www.intelliadmin.com:

For now, both sites will host duplicate content. From this point forward, however, each site will have its own posts and comments.

I hope you can bookmark both sites, and thanks for taking the time to read my blabber every day.

Filed Under: Blog

Change Power Save Settings Remotely

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 23, 2009 with 10 Comments

We have been working hard on Network Administrator 3.

It was just released – You can download it from here:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/NetworkAdministrator.exe

Network Administrator allows you to make tweaks and changes to computers across your network, and in version 3 we have an extensive plugin system that allows us to add functionality quite quickly.

One of the requests we keep getting is a plugin to change power management settings. It turns out that this is actually much harder than it seems. There are different ways in each version of windows – and some of them don’t even work all the time.

We worked around the clock to work around all of the quirks and issues, and finally built a plugin that allows you to change these settings on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7.

Power Management Plugin

These settings are not even available with group policy, or any specific registry settings – so this is a huge time saver.

The settings for the plugin are packed with power management options:

Power Management Settings

In a few clicks you can change the power management options for multiple computers across your network.

Best of all, Network Administrator is a free tool to use on up to 3 computers at a time.

Give it a spin and let us know what you think.

Need to use Network Administrator 3.0 on more than 3 computers? Get an unlimited copy for only $199 Click here to purchase

Filed Under: Beta, Network Administrator, Tools, Utility, Windows 2000, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Connect to your VPN from the command line

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 21, 2009 with 2 Comments

I was setting up an offsite backup system for our source code. I wanted to use the VPN client within windows to connect the two machines.

One of the problems with this idea is that I only wanted this connection to be active while the source code was being copied

It turns out that it is very simple to do. Once you have your VPN connection setup, take note of its name.

VPN Network Name

Then, inside of your batch file you can add this command to connect to the VPN

rasphone -d wimberlynet

Notice, that the name of my network connection was wimberlynet. You would replace that with the name of your network.

At the end of your script, you can disconnect by using this line:

rasphone -h wimberlynet

One gotcha is that you need to make sure you go into the properties of the VPN connection, and make sure prompting is disabled:

VPN Connection Options

And finally, make sure you connect to it once and save the password, and you will be able to totally automate your VPN connection.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Hide user accounts in Windows 7

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 14, 2009 with 9 Comments

Many times it is convenient to create a special administrator account that can be used for the task scheduler.

Unfortunately, if your Windows 7 computer is not joined to a domain, any accounts you create are shown at the start-up screen:

It would look better if you could remove this special account from the welcome screen, and only show real user accounts.

How can you remove this from the welcome screen?

Well, it happens that there is a registry key that will allow you to do this. Before I start to tell you what it is – I want to give you a word of warning:

Hide the wrong account, and you could lock yourself out forever. If you hose your system, don’t come crying to me

Ok, now that we got that out of the way, open regedit and drill down to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

Under this key, you will need to create two sub keys. First create a key named “SpecialAccounts”, and under that key create another named “UserList”.

The final registry path will look like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

It is possible those keys already exist, and if they do then, hey, you get to skip a step

Next you need to create a new DWORD value under that key.

The value name is the exact username that you want to hide.

The numerical value is a 0 or a 1. If you set it to 0, then the account will be hidden. Set it to 1, and it will be shown.

You can see here that I have created a value for my SchedAccount:

After closing regedit, and switching back to the welcome screen we can see that the SchedAccount is no longer displayed:

This is a simple and fast way to hide an account, but at the same time please be very careful.

To drive home the point – look at the UAC prompt when I disabled all accounts, except a limited user account:

That YES button looks really clickable doesnt it? Yea right, now were stuck. No way of ever getting admin rights on the system again. Once you are in this state, you will need to restore from backup. So check twice before making those registry changes.

Filed Under: Backups, Registry, Windows 7

Network Administrator – Beta 4 Released

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 8, 2009 with 4 Comments

We are right on track with our beta – Network Administrator Beta 4 has been released.

You can get a copy of the beta from here:

Network Administrator Beta 4

As I wrote last week, we were working on the remote execute engine within Network Administrator. I am pleased to say that it is complete.

As a result of that implementation we were able to add two new plugins. They are:

Change Network Settings

Switch a computer to DHCP, or update the DNS Settings to different servers

Change Network Settings

Remote Execute

This allows you to remotely execute a vbscript, batch file, MSI installer (It automatically makes it quiet for you), or command line program. This is a very powerful addition, since it gives you the ability to create a script, and push it across all the machines on your network. One other point to note about this is that this will be faster than you doing this yourself from the command line using tools like PSExec. This is because Network Administrator will spawn more than one process at a time to accomplish your task.

Remote Execute Plugin

If you missed my post last week, we promised 10 plugins by the time we release on October 30th. In addition to the two I just discussed, here is what we have created so far:

Mass Folder Copy – This plugin allows you to pick a folder on your hard drive, and copy it to many machines across your network. Perfect way to copy a set of shortcuts to everyone’s desktop.

Offline Files Disabler – Disables the annoying offline files setting in Windows XP, and 2003.

Logon Disclaimer – Allows you to set a logon disclaimer that is displayed to a user before they login.

Wallpaper Set – You can set a common background wallpaper image, and set options such as tile, stretch, and center.

One of our next plugins will allow you to change the password of a local admin user account. It is easy to change an Active Directory user account, but when an admin leaves, you still have those local account passwords floating around. This would allow you to change it in a few moments – across your entire network.

Get your suggestion in by mailing us at plugins@intelliadmin.com We cannot answer all of the emails sent, but we do read them all.

Give it a spin, and let us know what you think.

Pre order your upgrade of Network Administrator 3.0 for only $99 (Includes a copy of 2.9)- Don’t wait – It will be $199 when it is released on October 30th. Click here to purchase

Filed Under: Beta, Command Line, Network Administrator

Windows 7 – “Identifying Network” (Resolved)

Posted by Steve Wiseman on October 7, 2009 with 8 Comments

I was at a friends house last weekend. I found a very interesting problem with Windows 7. They had a laptop they just purchased in Taiwan, and no matter how they tried to connect it to their network, it would always say “Identifying Network”:

Now, in the screen shot it is the wireless network, but this was happening with a direct connection to the router as well.

After some digging and poking at the machine I determined that it was not picking up an IP address from DHCP. It turns out that this is actually an issue in Vista too.

Microsoft has a soloution: KB928233. In short the fix is to set a registry key. There are actually two different registry keys.

One of them allows you to try the current method (But broken with older routers), and if it fails it will try the old way:

DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle

The other key allows you to bypass this entirely and totally switch back to the old XP way:

DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag

Both of them are under the GUID of the network card in this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}

Neither of them solved my problem. I tried for quite some time different tricks to get Windows 7 to pickup an IP address from this old router with no success.

The final solution was to give the laptop a static IP address. Not the best, but at least he could get on the net.

The question is, have you ever seen this problem with Windows 7, or Vista? If so, how did you finally get it to work?

Filed Under: Windows 7, Windows Vista

Network Administrator – Beta 3

Posted by Steve Wiseman on September 30, 2009 with 0 Comments

Network Administrator Beta 3 has been released. If you never have used it before, Network Administrator allows you to perform actions on any number of machines across your network. You can reboot 100 computers with the press of a button, disable USB flash drives, or set Microsoft Word to save in 2003 format. These are just a few of things you can do with it.

You can get a copy of the beta from here:

Network Administrator Beta 3

If you purchase 2.9 today, you will get 3.0 free when it is released on October 27th – Best of all, you get it for 50% off as a regular reader of my blog. Just use this special link when ordering:

Purchase Today

In the 3.0 we have built a core system that supports plugins. This allows us to now add new actions quickly. Last time I spoke about the beta I promised 10 new plugins (in addition to the standard list of actions in 2.9) would be added before the final release.

So far we have added 4 of them. Here they are:

Mass Folder Copy – This plugin allows you to pick a folder on your hard drive, and copy it to many machines across your network. Perfect way to copy a set of shortcuts to everyone’s desktop.

Offline Files Disabler – Disables the annoying offline files setting in Windows XP, and 2003.

Logon Disclaimer – Allows you to set a logon disclaimer that is displayed to a user before they login.

Wallpaper Set – You can set a common background wallpaper image, and set options such as tile, stretch, and center.

All of these have been suggested by beta testers. We have had other great ones, like resetting the local admin password, or pushing out MSI files silently. We are still working on the remote execution engine, and once that is complete we will be able to implement some of those ideas. Get your suggestion in by mailing us at plugins@intelliadmin.com We cannot answer all of the emails sent, but we do read them all.

Give it a spin, and let us know what you think.

Filed Under: Network Administrator, Tools, Utility, Windows

Free Tool – Suspend from the command line

Posted by Steve Wiseman on September 22, 2009 with 5 Comments

I have a system task schedule that wakes up my system at night, runs a few backup processes…and then shuts the computer down.

What I really wanted it to do was to suspend, or hibernate. That way I can get back into my computer quick when I come back in the morning.

After searching around, I found that this little VB Script command can be used to suspend a computer:

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "RunDll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState"

Unfortunately this does not work on all versions of Windows. For my task, I wanted something I could use on anything from Windows 2000, to the 64 bit version of Windows 7.

After many fruitless searches on Google, I had the IntelliAdmin team build one for me.

It is called System Suspend, and you can download it from here: SystemSuspend.exe

If you run the program with no options, it will immediately suspend the computer. There are two optional arguments you can use when calling it:

/Hibernate:[TRUE|FALSE] – Defaults to false. If you set Hibernate to true the computer will totally power off and save the state to disk. If Hibernate is set to false, then the system will go into a low power state that will allow you to resume quickly

/Force:[TRUE|FALSE]- Applications are notified of the suspend/hibernate by default. If you set the force option to true, then it will skip this step and perform the action immediately

We have tested it on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7, and 2008 – including 64 bit versions…and it works great on all of them.

Filed Under: BAT Files, Tools, Utility, Windows

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