Keep track of network activity – Free Tool

Posted by Steve Wiseman on March 19, 2010 with 4 Comments

I was digging through Microsoft’s website for some service pack downloads and I came across a free tool.

It is called Port Reporter. It is a very simple service based application that logs all TCPIP network activity to a text file.

I gave it a spin, and I am amazed how much information it spits out. For example, I ran it on my own computer while firefox was up…it showed me what ports it had open, the user account making the connection (me). Take a look:

Network Activity List

The installation is simple. Download the software from here:

Microsoft Port Reporter Download

Extract the files to a temp location, and run pr-setup.exe. After that it will install the port reporter service.

To start reporting, just start it up from the command line by typing this:

net start PortReporter

You can leave it running as long as you want to collect data. Just keep in mind it may slow things down slightly while it is active.

If you want to stop it, just use this at the command line:

net stop PortReporter

Once you think you have the data you need, simply browse to

C:\windows\System32\LogFiles\PortReporter

There you can see the generated reports and start digging to find what you are looking for:

Port Reporter Logs

Now if you have a computer that seems to have lots of network activity – and you don’t know why….Port Reporter can set you in the right direction.

Filed Under: Microsoft, Tips, Tools, Utility, Windows

Install Windows 7 from a flash drive – Free Tool

Posted by Steve Wiseman on March 12, 2010 with 0 Comments

Last year I wrote an article about how to install Windows 7 from a USB flash drive. This can come in handy when you want to reload a netbook that has no built in CD / DVD Drive

My friend Matt showed me an easier way to do this. If you have your install disk in ISO format, you can use a free tool from Microsoft. It formats, prepares, and copies the install files to your USB drive – It works for Windows 7 and 2008 install disks.

You can download it from here:

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

It will run on XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7 and 2008. Simply download and install.

Pick your install ISO file:

Pick ISO

Set the destination to USB Device

Pick ISO

Find the USB drive you want to write it to:

Pick ISO

And bam…it builds a bootable Windows 7 install disk (Works for 2008 too)

Pick ISO

Much easier than a bunch of commands at the prompt. Four simple steps and you have a bootable install disk.

Serious security flaw in Internet Explorer

Posted by Steve Wiseman on July 29, 2009 with 0 Comments

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that a serious security hole was found in all versions of Internet Explorer. The flaw exploits the ActiveX plugin system in IE.

If you use Internet Explorer, and are running flash – you are vulnerable. If you have any ActiveX control installed in IE you have a good chance of being vulnerable. It only takes one website with a bad flash file for your system to get compromised. A blog at Adobe’s website has more detailed information:

http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2009/07/potential_adobe_reader_and_fla.html

This problem is far and wide. Adobe comes to the top of the list because so many people have the flash player – but Cisco, and Google are working on fixes for their software too.

The fix (MS-09034) can be downloaded and installed to help resolve the issue, but it will not completely close the hole.

This is because the flaw is not in IE itself, but the libraries that third party developers use to build plugins. This means that any plugin ever created for IE has the potential of having this flaw. The only way for a vendor to fix it is to download a patch for the ATL library, recompile their code, and re-release the software.

All I can say is – what a mess.

What can you do to protect your network? The first answer is to run an alternative browser.

Many times this is impossible. The second way is to have tight control over what ActiveX plugins are used, and to verify with the vendor that they have recompiled with the new ATL library.

The big red light here is that any ActiveX plugin is now a potential flaw waiting to be exploited.

More detailed information about the flaw and its fixes can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/973882.mspx

Filed Under: ADOBE, AntiVirus, Flaw, IE, IE 7, IE 8, Microsoft

Monitor Network Traffic

Posted by Steve Wiseman on July 27, 2009 with 0 Comments

Last week I wrote about a free tool from Microsoft for synchronizing files. I asked you if you had any tools that made your life easier – my inbox was filled with suggestions.

One of the free tools that really caught my eye was Microsoft Network Monitor. I have been using Ethereal for a long time. It too is a great tool for monitoring network traffic.

Microsoft network Monitor 3.3 gives it a run for its money. Some quick points that make me like it:

It identifies processes that are generating the traffic:

Process View

It includes a ton of parsers that can pull out common protocols like HTTP, SMB, FTP, etc. These make it much easier to read what you are looking it:

Network Monitor Parsers

Easy selection of network cards to monitor:

Select Network Cards

It has an extensive filtering system to weed out packets you are not interested in:

Network Filters

In addition, it has many command line options to automate it without any interaction.

Check it out at:

Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3

Free file sync tool from Microsoft

Posted by Steve Wiseman on July 22, 2009 with 2 Comments

I had lunch last week with my good friend Brett. We were talking about synchronizing, and backing up files. I went on a long rant about how much I liked robocopy.

After I finished talking about robocopy, he told me about SyncToy from Microsoft. SyncToy? I had never heard of it.

The one drawback with robocopy is that it is command line only. Sometimes it is nice to just point and click. I never seem to be able to find a simple, but free file sync tool that has a nice GUI interface. From his description, it seemed to fit what I was looking for.

Finally, I took it for a spin today. It has the balance I was looking for between simplicity, and functionality. Best of all it is free.

Let me walk you through it.

Start out by downloading it from Microsoft’s website

When you run it for the first time, you are asked to create a new folder pair. A folder pair is the set of folders you want to sync.

SyncToy Main Screen

In my case it is a local folder, and a folder on a company file server. If you plan to do a one way copy keep in mind that the folder on your left is your source, and the one on the right is the destination.

Select Folders

Once you pick your folders, you can decided what to do with them.

SyncToy has these options:

Synchronize – New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.

Echo – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.

Contribute – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.

In my case, I want to have a backup of my code so I use “echo”. It will copy everything from my local drive to the server.

Sync Toy Action Selection

Click next, give it a name, and click finish. Now you have a new sync job waiting to be run:

SyncToy Waiting

Click run, and the synchronization begins.

SyncToy Finished

That is all there is too it! A little simpler than remembering to type all of the command line options into robocopy.

Is there a free utility that makes your life easier? Send me an email at support@intelliadmin.com so I can tell everyone else.

And if you missed it before, here is the download link from microsoft to get your free copy of SyncToy:

Download SyncToy 2.0

Change the default open attachment location in Outlook

Posted by Steve Wiseman on June 24, 2009 with 2 Comments

I recently received a question from a reader:

Hi Steve,

I recently read your article about changing the default save location for MS Outlook 2003 at http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/index.php/2007/09/set-default-folder-for-attachments-in-outlook-2003/

It is very informative; however, it was almost what I was looking for. I would like to change the default OPEN location, so I was wondering if you know how that would be accomplished.

Very good question. It could be useful to have Outlook open to the folder of your choice when clicking on the attachment button – especially if you send lots of them every day.

The default option is that it opens to the documents folder:

Outlook Default Open Folder

The bummer is that after lots of research, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to change this is to change the location of your “My Documents” folder

You can change the folder location by right clicking it on your desktop, and going to properties. Or you can dig into the registry down to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Find the “Personal” value, and change it to your folder of choice. From that point on Outlook will default to that folder when you go to attach a file. The side effect of this is that it changes the location of your “My Documents” folder – so this is a trade off you will need to consider.

That is the only way I know to change it. If anyone else has a better method, please email me (support@intelliadmin.com) or drop a line in the comments.

Write a script to find and delete a file

Posted by Steve Wiseman on June 17, 2009 with 3 Comments

I distributed a test version of Remote Control 4.0 across our network last week, and since it was a special debug version, it created a large number of files named debuglog.dat.

I wanted an easy way to find and delete these using a batch file. I researched and was able to take parts of other scripts to build what I needed.

The first step was to identify all of the local drives on the system. I know that this is available in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDrives

Using the reg command, I can get this by calling:

reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

And using the find command I can pull out only the devices with dos drive letters:

reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”

Still, this is not enough for our task. Here is what we get when calling the script:

Find and Delete

Lots of binary data we do not need

We can take this output, and feed it through the “for” command, and call a function for each drive letter:

for /f “tokens=1″ %%x in (‘reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”‘) do echo %%x

Now, we get a list of the drives, minus the binary data. We can use that to call a function that will parse out the \DosDevices\

for /f %34tokens=1%34 %%x in (‘reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^%7cfind /i %34\DosDevices\%34′) do call :D eleteFileSub %%x
goto endScript :D eleteFileSub
set LocalDrive=%1
set LocalDrive=%LocalDrive:~-2%
echo %Drive%
goto endScript
:endScript

With that script, we get a complete list of local drives. Hmm…starting to look good:

Local Drive Letters

Now. What next? Well, we want to search each local drive for our file, and then delete it. For safety reasons, I am only going to echo the file names – I want you to think real hard before doing this..since the wrong move and you could wipe out important files.

Again, the ‘for’ command is a great way to do this:

for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (‘dir “LocalDrive%\SomeFile.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”

Replace SomeFile.txt with the file you want to remove.

This will pull out the filename in a full directory search of the specified drive and echo it. If you want to actually delete the file you will need to remove the “echo”:

for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (‘dir “LocalDrive%\SomeFile.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”

Now, putting the whole thing together:

@echo off
for /f “tokens=1″ %%x in (‘reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”‘) do call :deleteSub %%x
goto endSub
:deleteSUb
set LocalDrive=%1
set LocalDrive=%LocalDrive:~-2%
for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (‘dir “%Drive%\Some File.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”
goto endSub
:endSub

Text version here if you have copy-paste issues

Make sure you do lots of testing before you pull the trigger and remove the “echo” statement. I wouldn’t want you to blow away the wrong files :)

Free Terminal Services E-Book

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 28, 2009 with 4 Comments

Note (07/16/2009): This was a limited offer…the eBook is no longer free. You can purchase a copy from here

Microsoft has announced they are giving away the Windows 2008 Terminal Services book in PDF format.

Windows 2008 Terminal Services

I downloaded it yesterday, and it is packed with information.

A must-have if you are considering implementing, or have implemented terminal services on your network. A few top points from the book:

-Using roaming profiles with Terminal Services

-Locking down the terminal server

-Publishing applications

-Monitoring user sessions

-Multi Server Deployments

Install PowerShell on Windows 2008 Server

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 25, 2009 with 1 Comments

I was trying to install Microsoft Exchange 2007 on a new 2008 server.

During the install plan I got to this step:

Windows PowerShell 2008

If you click on that link it leads you to a download page. Everywhere you look you see downloads for 2003, and XP. Nothing about Windows Server 2008.

I decided to try one of the 2003 downloads to see if that was acceptable – nope.

OK, Looking around the net I read everywhere that PowerShell is cooked into Windows 2008 server.

Hmm….That means it should be a ‘feature’ under server manager.

Sure enough, in server manager I found it, and was able to install it.

To do this click on the start menu, then administrative tools, and finally server manager.

The server manager will pop up, then click on the features icon:

PowerShell 2008 Sever Manager

Then, click on the “add features” button to the right. A list of features available to you will be displayed. Pick Windows PowerShell:

Exchange 2007 PowerShell

(Notice that I already had installed in the shot above)

After that I learned you can’t install Exchange 2007 on 2008 server. Doh!

I am sure it is possible, but Microsoft currently does not support it.

Back to the drawing board.

Extend battery life with Windows 7

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 21, 2009 with 0 Comments

I have been using the Release Candidate of Windows 7 since it came out. Every day I try to poke around and find out what is new.

I found an interesting tool for finding programs and settings that eat away at your laptop battery life.

It is available as a new command line option of the powercfg.exe program – Which has been part of windows since XP.

You call it from the command line like this:

powercfg -energy

(Make sure your command prompt is elevated as administrator)

When you run it, the program will do testing for 60 seconds:

Windows 7 Powercfg

Once it is finished, it will create a report in html format. It will show the programs and devices that are contributing to shorter battery life:

Windows 7 Power Configuration

Once you have the report, you can go through and try to correct the issues. Obviously there are going to be things that you can’t do anything about – Like a laptop motherboard that does not support the latest in power management.

Still, you will be able to fix some of them – and that will help you get just a little bit more out of your laptop battery in Windows 7.

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