We have a fax server here that drops all of its incoming faxes to a shared folder. Unfortunately, because of the way it was designed it cannot be joined to our local domain.

This means it has its own local account, and every time I reboot a username and password has to be entered to access it.

I wanted to find a way to allow me to access the drive without having to enter a username and password.

After some searching, I found a command line tool built into Windows that will do this:

cmdkey

This will allow you to store multiple username and password combinations for different network resources, while keeping them encrypted in the registry.

So, in my case I have a fax server on 10.10.27.231, and its username is fax, the password is fax.

To add it to Windows simply type this at the command line:

cmdkey /add:10.10.27.231 /user:fax /pass:fax


If you wanted to remove it from the cache, you would call it like this:

cmdkey /delete:10.10.27.231


Also, you can get a list of the currently remembered ones like this:

cmdkey /list


A simple command line tool, but saves you the aggravation of typing that in every time you reboot – Nice.

I got a question from Thomas this week:

Our office has a licensed copy of Network Administrator 3.0 which allows
me to disable CD/DVD access. Is there an action that will allow me just
disable the CD/DVD burn capability but still allow users to view files
on CD/DVD?

Burn..keep it from burning?

Oops not that kind of burn – Yes excellent question. After a quick search I discovered this is an easy registry change.

If you drill down to this key:

Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a DWORD value of NoCDBurning, and set it to 1. Reboot, and the built in burn functionality of Windows is gone.

This works on XP through Windows 7. Now one Gotcha with this is that it does *not* prevent third party apps from burning. You would need to handle this with a separate policy.

If you don’t want to plunk around the registry, we updated Network Administrator to make the change for you:

It is a free download from here and it can push this change to computers remotely.

If you are using Windows 7, then you must have run into the “Auto Maximize” feature. Microsoft calls it “Smart Window Arrangement”

Here is a short youtube clip that shows you what I am talking about:

Essentially if you move your window around and touch the corner, it will automatically maximize the window. After a while it can get quite annoying.

So how do you turn it off?

It is one registry key change.

Drill down to

HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop

Look for the value named “WindowArrangementActive” and set it to 0.

You will need to log off, and log on to make it active. After that, windows will no longer automatically maximize.

If you don’t like plunking around in the registry, we have added it as a plugin to Network Administrator:

It is a free download if you want to use it on 3 computers or less.

You can download it from here:

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

I was digging around to find a way to get an email when someone logged on to our source control server. It is a pretty important server, so I want to make sure people are only logging into it when they are supposed to.

When I first started working on this idea I was going to write a custom application, and use that along with blat. Blat is an email sending program that can be used from the command line.

I was surprised that I could get exactly what I wanted, without any third party application. This works for 2008, Vista, and Windows 7 – if you are still running Windows 2003 you will need to cobble together a collection of apps that will accomplish this (Sorry)

Start out by opening the event viewer. Right click on the security log on the left hand side. Click on the menu item that says “Attach a task to this log”, and a task wizard will be displayed.

Type in a description for your task:

This page is annoying. I have not had time to test on other systems. But on mine all the fields are disabled. It would be nice if I could enter the info I wanted here. Instead we will need to go into the advanced settings of the task – more on that in a little bit. Just click next.

See. There is our option. Send an email. You could launch a program too, or have a message pop up for a specific user

Fill out your email settings. I pointed it at our internal exchange server:

Very important Don’t miss this one. Make sure you check the option to open advanced properties. Otherwise you will get an email message for every entry in the security log:

Click finish, and the advanced properties are displayed. Set the task to always run. Otherwise it would only run while you are logged on – and that would be silly

Go to the “Actions” tab, and double click on the only action listed

Set your source as “Microsoft Windows security auditing.” And your event ID number as 4624 (You can use 4634 for logoff)

Click OK and you are done. When someone logs on to your system, you will receive an email notification with all of the event info.

The best part about this tip is that you don’t need any third party apps – it is all built into Windows.

We have gotten your emails, and fixed a few bugs with our Profile Generator beta. All of them were special side cases that prevented a generated profile from being used by outlook.

What is profile generator?

It is a command line application that you can drop into a logon script. Once it is there, users can launch Outlook and get right into their email. No more setup wizards, and no more support calls for those users that roam from location to location.

Here is how it works. You visit this web page:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/outlookprofilegeneratordownload

And pick your options – Make sure you at least fill out the exchange server host name…it won’t complain yet if you don’t (I did say it was beta right? )

If you are a current customer, don’t forget to put in your serial number at the bottom.

Click download, and you have a custom build of profile generator that is designed for your network.

Simply add it to a users logon script, and the next time they login they can launch Outlook without hassles.

If you purchase Profile Generator now, you will get an upgrade for free. All current customers will also get a free upgrade. If you purchased before November 2005, or do not have your serial number handy…send us an email at support@intelliadmin.com and we will take care of you right away.

Please send your bug reports to support@intelliadmin.com. If you see a feature you want added, let us know…we will try to get it in before the final release.

I found a free tool from Microsoft that lets you search for event log entries across your network. It was released quite some time ago, but still works with the newest versions of Windows.

It is part of a download package called Security Guide Scripts Download.

You can get it from here:

Security Guide Scripts Download Link

Unpack the files to a temporary folder, and you will find the tool under SecurityOps\EventComb.

Launch it from the main application icon:

It gives you a huge number of options…almost overwhelming at first. The first thing you will want to do is select the computers you want to search. Right click the computer listing box in the top left of the window:

Pick your method for loading in the list of computers. Once you have the computers you want to search, then select your criteria…are you looking for a specific event id, or looking for a string of text in the event?

Notice it will event allow you to pick how far back to go…it defaults to searching the entire log.

Next, pick the event logs that you want to search:

Click search, and let it rip

When it is finished, it will save its output to c:\temp…for each computer that has a match, you will get a text file with all of the event log entries:

When you open the text file, it will have every log entry that matches your search.

This little utility can be a real time saver. Best of all it is totally free – it beats going from computer to computer to look through your event logs.

I have a group of log files that I need to upload every day to an archival server. For a long time I have been doing this by hand.

I wanted a way to do this without using any extra software – just the default tools available in windows.

I found a clean solution that uses a batch file, and the scripting capabilities of FTP.

First, lets start with the criteria.

I have a group of files, all named XXX.log that I want to FTP to my server

So what is our first step?

Lets start with a batch file that will list all of the files ending with .log in the current directory. We can do this with the for .. in command:

for %%f in (*.log) do @echo %%f

Simple enough. Execute it in the folder with our files, and we see our output:

Now, we can use that information to build our FTP script. Let me show you a simple FTP script that can upload one file:

open hostname
administrator
Password2000
bin
put SomeFile.log
quit


If you save the above as a text file (Lets call it script_file.txt), and then feed it to the FTP program like this:

ftp -s:script_file.txt

The FTP program will run through the commands and upload the file.

So now we have both parts that we need. Lets write a batch file that will build a temp script file, process it with FTP, and then remove the temp file:


@rem ===============================
@rem = FTP Script Made by =
@rem = http://www.intelliadmin.com =
@rem ===============================

@REM = Delete our temp script file and we are done
@del %SCRIPT_NAME% /q


It will generate our script file, fill it with the files that match our criteria (*.log), and then execute FTP with it. When it is finished, the temp file is removed.

Note that if you want to use it, change the [username], [password], and [host] to your own values. You can even change the file criteria (*.log) to any type you need to upload – or even all of them if you use *.*

Now, you can easily add it to task scheduler, or even add it as a batch command when your backups are complete.

Next week I will show you how to email yourself the results each time it is run.

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

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:

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:

Easy selection of network cards to monitor:

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

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

Check it out at:

Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3

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.

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.

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.

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

Click run, and the synchronization begins.

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