In response to monitor your file sharing, Michael sent me a tip about a program that allows you to watch folders for changes:

Thought this little freeware tool might be useful for your readers. I use it for monitoring changes on a shared documentation drive used for software installs. Now if someone modifies the documentation, I can find out straight away & confirm the changes are correct.

It is called DirectoryMonitor.

Once installed, you can easily add folders you want to watch:

You can determine what changes you want to watch for…such as a new file, delete, edit, or rename.

Once you register a folder for changes, the change is immediately logged in the main application window:

You can even setup an application to execute when a change occurs:

Some feature do require a donation of $10 or more to be activated…such as silent execution of apps when an action is triggered.

Otherwise it is free for personal or commercial use.

You can download it from here:

Directory Monitor Download Page

I received an email from Jennifer this week:

“Howdy Steve. I want to thank you for all the tips and ideas. I ran across this small utility that I think your readers might like. It is called Share Watch. It lets you keep track of what files and folders are being accessed by remote users”

She is right. This little utility is great.

Yes, Windows has a built in share monitoring service:

But, it is kind of clunky and limited. It really has not changed much since Windows 2000.

What is nice about Share Monitor is that it puts all of the information in one spot:

Plus, unlike the windows share monitor…you can watch a bunch of computers at the same time:

It has easy access to information about the computers connecting to a share:

And the files that are currently open across a share:

Plus, like a lot of our utilities – No install is required. It is one small exe.

Best of all, it is free for personal or commercial use.

Get it from the Share Watch website:

http://stevemiller.net/ShareWatch/

PS: If you run it under Vista, or Windows 7…make sure you right click and run it as administrator or you will get access denied.

Got a question from Enrico,

“Good morning Steve, and Happy New Year!…I would like that when the user has a wired NIC up and running, the wireless NIC is automatically disabled, and as soon as the wired NIC disconnects, the wireless NIC activates.

This prevents the user to have both NICs up and running at the same time and above all prevents wireless access points to collapse for too many unneeded simultaneous connections.”

Awesome question Enrico.

There are other reasons for wanting this too. If you have both connections running, things like file transfers, or anything that needs the extra speed of Ethernet…might end up going through the wireless instead.

For this question, I have created a VB Script that will receive the names of the two network cards in its command line parameters.

For example, if you look at your network connections:

See the descriptions for them? That is what you will use to identify them.

If you wanted to watch the “Local Area Connection” adapter…and then switch the “Wireless Connection” Adapter, you would call the script like this:

The program will not display anything, but run in the background looking for the change. It will continue to run until the user logs out.

If the Local Area Connection is no longer connected, it will automatically enable the Wireless connection.

The reverse is true…if Local Area Connection becomes available, it will automatically disable the wireless connection.

The best place to run the script would be from a group policy computer configuration logon script (Not a user configuration) because it will run as local system and have the proper permission to enable and disable network cards.

You can get the script from here:

For 2003, Vista, Windows 7, and 2008:
NetSwitch.dat

For Windows XP:

NetSwitchXP.dat

Just rename to NetSwitch.vbs after downloading.

This week we have a question from Melissa:

“Hi Steve. Got a really quick question. Previously you had an article that showed how to burn an ISO from the command line. My question is, what about a folder? I want to simply burn a folders contents to a DVD once a week. Any simple way to do this?”

Good question Melissa. I too have been looking for something like this.

Most of the DVD/CD burning software is not free.

That is not a big problem…but I would think that the simple process of copying a folder to a DVD or CD shouldn’t cost me $49!

So what to do? Have the IntelliAdmin team make one for you!

This first version we wanted to be as simple as possible, so it only does one thing: Burn a folder to a disk.

-You specify a drive, and a folder.

-It burns it and closes the session on the drive

-If it fails, the program will return 1

-If it succeeds the program will return 0

This means you can create conditional statements in a batch file too.

How do you use it?

Once you grab it from our downloads page you can call it like this from the command line:

BurnDisk.exe E: C:\Backup

Where ‘E:’ is the DVD/CD drive letter, and C:\Backup is the folder you want to back up.

It will automatically set the volume name to the current date. It will then zip through your specified folder and burn the contents to the CD or DVD:

You can use the ERRORLEVEL value for conditional statements in your batch file (Like send you an email if it fails)

Here is an example bat file that checks the result of the BurnDisk.exe output:

@ECHO OFF

:COMPLETE


This is version 1.0 so it is quite simple – but for many situations I think it will work perfect.

Let us know what “Must Have” features you want to see in 1.1

It has been tested on Windows Vista, 2008, and 7. It should work on 2003 and XP (With the latest patches) but we have not had a chance to try it on those platforms yet.

Get it from our downloads page

I got a question from Lewis this week:

“I hope this email finds you well. I have a plotter here at my company, and the driver is really temperamental. At least twice a week the driver crashes, and then all of the jobs get stuck in the spooler. To fix it I need to stop the spooler service, delete all the jobs and start the service again. Is there any easy way to do this remotely with a script? Have a Merry Christmas Steve, and thanks for all the tips”

Good question. A script in this case won’t always work. This is because with Vista, Windows 7, and 2008 the print spooler folder is restricted. Only the system account can access it.

A way around this is to use our Network Administrator tool. It will remotely execute the script in the system account context.

This is how the script would look if we wanted to stop the print spooler, delete the files, and start it again:

net stop spooler
del %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\*.shd /q
del %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\*.spl /q
net start spooler


.shd, and .spl files are print job files. If you delete them, it will wipe away any pending jobs.

You could put this into a bat file, and simply use the remote execute option of Network Administrator. To make it a smoother experience, we created a plugin that will handle everything for you:

You can also tell it if you want to delete all the pending jobs:

This can be quite helpful if you have a huge backlog of print jobs:

Using Network Administrator to do this is quicker than manually deleting the jobs since it does not have to talk back and forth with the printer driver to do it.

Get your free copy from our download page:

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

The free version is free for commercial and personal use. No spyware or adware – only software goodness.

I got a question from John this week:

“A few of my clients are using a broadband connection with DHCP addresses for the public interface. Do you know of a script or program that can be used to monitor the IP address and send a email if the IP address changes?”

Good question. It is possible to get IP address lists from VB Script, but we happen to have a utility we have used internally for quite some time. It is called “MyIP.exe”

MyIP.exe has two options. You can get a current list of IP addresses like this:

MyIP.exe /list

It will return a list of your current IP addresses to the command line:

C:\temp>myip /list
10.10.29.231
192.168.68.1
192.168.198.1

The second option is /wait. It will pause until it sees an IP change. When the change happens it will pause for 15 seconds to allow any DHCP addressing to settle down, and then finally return the result to the command line.

How do we set this up to email when we detect an IP change?

We can use blat. Blat is a tool for sending email from the command line.

Here is how I would structure a bat file to use both programs:

:Loop
@ECHO OFF
ECHO IP Address Change > status.log
ECHO ========================= >> status.log
ECHO The computer %COMPUTERNAME% has had an IP address change >> status.log
ECHO This is the new IP list: >> status.log
MyIP.exe /wait >> status.log
blat.exe -f support@intelliadmin.com -to support@intelliadmin.com -server mysmtp.server.com -subject "IP Change" -bodyF status.log
ECHO "Waiting for IP Change..."
goto loop

What is going on in the code above?

First we build up a file called status.log. It is filled with the body of our email. It contains everything except our list of changed IP addresses. Then MyIP.exe will wait until a change happens - when it does, those IPs are written to the end of status.log

Finally, blat sends out the text file with the subject "IP Change". When that is done, it loops back around to wait for a change all over again.

One important thing to note about SMTP - Many internet providers are blocking send from port 25 by default, except to their own email servers. So make sure you test the script out before depending on it.

MyIP.exe can be found in our downloads section:

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

Blat can be found here:

http://www.blat.net/

One final note. Most likely you want this IP address information because you need to remote into their computer from time to time. Our Enterprise Remote control has this functionality built in. It will automatically track all IP address changes on remote machines, and you only need a username to find their computer! - Might save you a lot of time and trouble:)

I got a question from Justin this week:

“Hi steve,

Have a few scripts that I use for regular admin work. I want to combine them with a simple menu. I was wondering if there was an easy way to make a menu in a batch file.”

Yes there is Justin, and it is actually quite simple.

The SET command is perfect for this. When you call SET /P from the command line it will take a line of input and set it to a variable.

So if you had three options in your batch file like this:

echo Press 1 for Option1
echo Press 2 for Option2
echo Press 3 for Option3
echo Press 4 to Exit


You could put the set command right after it:

set /P OPT=Please make a selection and press enter

This would print the text “Please make a selection..” and then store the users input after they press enter – into the %OPT% variable.

Once that happens we can use a few if statements to conditionally execute.

Here is it all together:

:EXIT


Save the file as menu.bat and run it

That is all there is to it.

Just change the echo statements to the batch commands you want to execute for each option, and you have an easy to use menu from the command line.

Don’t know about you, but I have a few programs that I use through the day that require administrator access.

This means every time I launch, I get the annoying UAC prompt:

There is a simple trick to create a shortuct that will launch with no prompts.

You can do it by creating a task that is never scheduled to run, but it is started by your shortcut.

To get started, go into the control panel, then administrative tools, and finally task scheduler.

On the right, pick the option to create a new task:

Give it a name (Take note of this, you will need this later) and make sure you select the option that will run the program with the highest privileges.

Go to the actions tab, and add a new action:

Point it at the program you want to launch with your shortcut.

Before closing it all out, take a peek at the conditions tab and uncheck any power options that are selected:

Now that we have our task, we just need to create our shortcut.

Right click on the desktop and select the option to create a new shortcut.

In the path put:

schtasks.exe /run /tn "[NAME]"

Where [NAME] is the name of your task

Now when you launch your app, you don’t get the annoying prompt.

I got a question from Tracy this week:

“Hi Steve. Love all the tools and tips you keep sending our way. Got a question. Is there any easy way to logoff a user when they are not active for say, 15 Minutes?”

I spoke with Tracy further to explain that forcing a logoff could cause data loss.

For example, a user has a Word document open and they walk away. Then boom the forced logoff happens and their document is gone.

In her case she needs it for public facing kiosks. If one of the technicians walks away, it leaves the system wide open.

Locking the workstation for this situation is bad too – since it makes it so the customer cannot use the machine.

Did some googling and found some hacks that used chopped up screen savers that would activate, and then call some logoff code.

Didn’t like that. So I had the team build a little app that would just logoff or lock idle users.

Here is how it works, you call the program like this:

idlelogoff.exe [timeout] [action]

action - [logoff / lock] You can lock the workstation or log the user off

If you wanted a user to get booted off after 5 minutes (300 Seconds) of no activity, You would call it like this:

idlelogoff.exe 300 LOGOFF

Or, if you wanted it to lock the workstation after 30 seconds of no activity this would do the trick

idlelogoff.exe 30 LOCK

It has some sanity checking for the timeout. Anything less than 10 seconds is set to 10 seconds.

Call it from the users startup script to make sure it is active while they are logged in.

Get it from our downloads page:

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

It is free for personal and commercial use.

If you spend any amount of time working with Unix, you will come across Cron and the CronTab file.

What is it?

Cron allows you to schedule programs to run at specified intervals, like every Sunday at 1AM.

Now I can already hear it…”Steve, that is what the task scheduler is for in Windows”

While it is true you can schedule tasks in Windows, one big issue with task scheduler is how do you transfer scheduled tasks from one computer to another?

You could copy the folder c:\windows\tasks, but this is totally unsupported and it does not always work.

That is the beauty of Cron. Every bit of scheduling info is contained within the Crontab file.

If you want a group of servers to have the same scheduled jobs, you just need to sync this file. No registry hacks, no tricks. Just one file.

Not only that, since it is just a simple text file you can easily schedule jobs from PHP, PowerShell or VBScript…without any ActiveX or hooks into Windows. You just need to modify a simple text file.

There are a few Windows implementations out there…but most of them are quite old. We wanted something that would work on 2000 through 2008 x64 – so we built our own

To use it, download the setup file from our downloads page:

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

The install does not create any icons, or shortcuts. It installs all the application files into c:\program files\IntelliAdmin\Cron by default, and automatically starts the cron service (Named icronsvr).

There are two files for configuration, they are both in the same folder as the service.

The first to look at is the file config.cfg:

[Configuration]
status_enabled=true
status_handler=
path=


Here is what each option does:

status_enabled (true/false) – If set to true, each time a program is executed it is logged to a file named status.log in the same folder as the service

status_handler – If set to point to an executable file, it is executed each time a process is run. The first argument is the status text shown in status.log. (Example usage of this would be to send an email each time a process is executed by cron..using a bat file and a command like tool blat)

path – An alternative path for the crontab file. By default the service looks for the crontab in the same folder as the service. Setting this tells the service to look at the specified folder for the crontab file

The next is the actual crontab file. It roughly follows the same format as the Unix crontab

The file is formatted in this way:

[M] [H] [D] [M] [DOW] [Process Name] [Process Arguments]

M – The minute that the process should be executed (0-59)
H – The hour that the process should be executed (0-23)
D – The day that the process should be executed (1-31)
M – The month that the process should be executed (1-12)
DOW – The day of the week that the process should be executed (0-6 Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, Etc)

Note: Our format does not support names such as THU, or JAN…only numerical values

Each section can:

-Have a range of values like this: 12-24 (All items from 12 to 24)
-Have a list of values like this: 12,13,14,15
-Include all possible values like this: *
-Skip values using the / like this: 0-59/5 (This would only include 0,5,10,15,20,etc)

Lets put it all together. If we wanted a process to run every 5 minutes we would create a line like this in our crontab file:

*/5 * * * * c:\process.bat

See how the skip value works? We specified the * for the minute section (All minutes), and then told it to skip 5. This means it will run at 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.

If you wanted to run a process every Sunday at 1 pm:

00 01 * * 00 c:\process.bat

Or how about, only every Sunday from June to the end of the year:

00 01 * 06-12 00 c:\process.bat

At 15, and 30 minutes past every hour:

15,30 * * * * c:\process.bat

This might give you a clearer picture:

*     *     *   *    *     C:\SomeEXE.EXE ARG1 ARG2 ARG3
-     -     -   -    -
|     |     |   |    |
|     |     |   |    +----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
|     |     |   +------- month (1 - 12)
|     |     +--------- day of        month (1 - 31)
|     +----------- hour (0 - 23)
+------------- min (0 - 59)

It takes a little time to get used to the format, but once you do it is a breeze to work with.

A few things to think about when using this:

-Make sure you secure the crontab file by only allowing ‘System’ and Administrator write access. Otherwise a standard user could simply alter the crontab file and start running stuff as ‘System’

-The programs are run in the context of a service. By default the user account is ‘System’, and for security reasons it does not have network share access. If you want to allow access to network shares you would have to go into the settings of the IntelliAdmin Cron Service, and have it login as a user with the appropriate rights.

-Since it is a service, make sure your program does not pop up forms or message boxes…otherwise they will just get stuck and you will never see them. Test…test…test before you deploy.

If you have any other features you would like to add to this little tool, let us know and we will see what we can do.