Archive for Windows 2008

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

Remote Control 4.0 Released

Posted by Steve Wiseman on June 19, 2009 with 0 Comments

This is a quick one – The final version of Remote Control 4.0 has been released. Current customers with an upgrade protection license should receive their email within 24 hours. If you did not, please send an email to support@intelliadmin.com and we will take care of you as soon as possible.

Here are the screenshots:
http://www.intelliadmin.com/RemoteControl4_ScreenShots.htm

And a link to the trial download:
setupex.exe

Filed Under: Remote Control, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Clean boot into Windows 2008, and Vista

Posted by Steve Wiseman on June 1, 2009 with 5 Comments

I was troubleshooting a server yesterday and a came across an easy way to clean boot into Vista, or 2008. When I say clean boot I mean that Windows starts without any 3rd party services running.

To do it, startup MSCONFIG, (Start then run…type msconfig.exe)

Once it launches, move over to the services tab:

Windows 2008 Clean Boot Services

Then move down, and hide Microsoft services (We don’t want to disable those)

Windows 2008 Clean Boot Hide Microsoft

After you do that, click the “Disable Services” button on the right:

Windows 2008 Clean Boot Disable

Now click OK, and reboot. When Windows restarts, no 3rd party services will be running.

Once you have completed your troubleshooting you can reverse the process to turn them back on.

Filed Under: Boot, Windows, Windows 2008, Windows Vista

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

Filed Under: Books, Microsoft, Remote Control, Terminal Services, Windows, Windows 2008

Remote Control 4.0 Beta

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 26, 2009 with 17 Comments

We have been working hard on the new version of IntelliAdmin Remote Control.

Some things that will be in the new version:

Screen scaling – The client will automatically shrink the view to fit the screen within the window. With huge resolutions, you no longer are forced to constantly scroll around

Alpha Capture Disable – Applications like Office 2007 need alpha capture turned on, or parts of their windows will not be sent back to the remote client. This was always turned on in 3.x. Once side effect of this setting is the mouse flickers with some video cards. Now you have the option to turn this off and keep the mouse flicker to a minimum – great if you are given the task of watching a user without them knowing.

Screen Shots – You can easily save the current view in the client window to a JPG file. This is good for keeping a visual log of crash events, or activity of users.

Auto-Reconnect – When a connection is lost, it will automatically attempt to re-establish the connection

Computer Lists – We have loaded it up with options for getting lists of computers. You can get them from Windows Networking like you do right now, but in addition you can import them from an XML file, add them manually, or update them in real time from a http URL – this allows you to create a common computer list that all administrators can see and use.

Computer Search – This is the big one. When talking with customers the biggest complaint is finding a single computer among 1000s. When remote control connects to a machine, it will pull username, computername, and operating system info. All of this is stored in a database. When you click on the find button in the client window, you are shown a full listing of computers:

IntelliAdmin 4 Preview

When you start typing in the search box at the top it will narrow down your results immediately. So, if you get a call from a user you can simply start typing their username and their computer will be automatically filtered out – no more digging around for their IP address, or computer name.

Lots of time was spent to make sure this was efficient – we threw the client on an old XP machine and it was able to search 10,000 computer records in less than 1 second.

Everything about the “find computer” section was designed to reduce the time it takes to find and control a computer, and make you more productive.

Why am I teasing you with all of this? Because I want you to join our beta program. To join, simply follow this link:

Make sure you check the 4.0 beta option.

The final release date will be June 27th. If you order Remote Control 3.2 right now the upgrade protection option will allow you to get a free upgrade when it comes out – a good deal since this will give you close to 40% in savings

While we are at it. What do you want to see in 4.5? File Transfers, Chat, or what other wish do you have for the next version. Post in the comments.

Filed Under: Beta, Remote Control, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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.

Filed Under: Exchange, Exchange 2007, Microsoft, Widnows 2008, Windows, Windows 2008

Delete files securely

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 13, 2009 with 0 Comments

Since 2000 every version of Windows uses object reuse protection. When you create a file, the space on the hard drive for that file will be zeroed out.

Another way of looking at this is when a file is created, Windows will make it impossible to see what was there before.

But what about right after you delete a file? Nothing has been written to that space yet. What is on the physical hard drive? The entire file of course. Not good if the file is highly confidential.

What if you wanted to delete a file securely?

There are plenty of tools out there that can do this, and most of them cost quite a bit of money. But there is a free alternative.

It is called SDelete and it is from Microsoft:

http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/SDelete.zip

How does it work?

Simply download the program and run it from the command line. By default it will only complete 1 pass when erasing a file. I would suggest overriding that with a higher number – the higher the better, but it will be slower.

Lets delete a file with it, using 25 passes:

sdelete.exe -p 25 FileToDelete.zip

This will securely delete FileToDelete.zip

SDelete implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M. This will give you confidence that once deleted with this tool, your file is gone forever. Note that it does delete the file, but the file name is still recoverable from the file system (Make sure the file name itself does not have any revealing information).

The full list of possible commands for SDelete are:

usage: sdelete [-p passes] [-s] [-q]
sdelete [-p passes] [-z|-c] [drive letter]
-c Zero free space (good for virtual disk optimization)
-p passes Specifies number of overwrite passes (default is 1)
-q Don’t print errors (Quiet)
-s Recurse subdirectories
-z Clean free space

It supports wildcards too. So if you wanted to securely delete an entire folder you can call it like this:

C:\>sdelete c:\temp\*.*

SDelete – Secure Delete v1.51
Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals – www.sysinternals.com

SDelete is set for 1 pass.
c:\temp\Eula.txt…deleted.
c:\temp\Import.csv…deleted.
c:\temp\readme.txt…deleted.
c:\temp\sdelete.exe…deleted.
c:\temp\VCdControlTool.exe…deleted.
c:\temp\VCdRom.sys…deleted.

If you have files that need to remain secure, SDelete is a great way to make sure they are removed from your hard drive.

Filed Under: Command Line, Microsoft, Sysinternals, Tools, Utility, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Write script results to the event log

Posted by Steve Wiseman on May 12, 2009 with 0 Comments

I have quite a few scripts that are run by task scheduler on my server.  One of the ways I track the results is by writing to a text file in a common share. After a while this can become a little ridiculous to follow.

Recently I discovered that it is possible to create your own Application, or System events from a script that will show up in the Windows event viewer.

To create your own events, you need to use the “eventcreate” command line argument. This command line program is available in Windows XP, 2003, Vista, and Windows 7 – unfortunately not in Windows 2000.

How can you use it?

Let me take a simple example, and then I will walk you through writing an event to the log. In one of my scripts I have an xcopy that I check for errors:

@echo off

xcopy c:\temp c:\temp2 /y /i /c

if ERRORLEVEL 5 GOTO ERROR
if ERRORLEVEL 4 GOTO ERROR
if ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ERROR

REM SUCCESS

goto exit

:ERROR

REM FAILURE

:EXIT

The above script looks for the different error codes that XCOPY can return – right now we won’t concentrate on that. What we want to do is add our EventCreate command right around where we have our “REM FAILURE”

There are a few details we need to collect together before we can call our command. First we want to determine which event log we want to write.

For our example I want to pick the “Application” log

Then, we need to determine an event source. The event source specifies the text that will be shown as the source in the log. The trick is you need to pick something unique that won’t have a name conflict with Windows, or other scripts. This means don’t pick DNS, VSS, or W32Time – or any common windows service name. At the same time, no spaces, and keep it short.

I picked XCOPYRESLT

Next we need to pick an event type. Our choices are Information, Warning, or Error. In the case of my example, I am only going to report errors so the obvious pick is “Error”.

What else? Well an event ID is needed. This is an arbitrary number that you may pick to suite your own custom needs. 1000 sounds good to me.

And finally, a description. “Domain Controller XCOPY Failure” seems like an easy description.

Now, lets bring it all together at the command line:

eventcreate /l Application /so XCOPYRESLT /t Error /id 1000 /d “Domain Controller XCOPY Failure”

One run at the prompt:

XCOPY Event Error

Now, if we take a peek at the event log:

Custom Event Log Entry

So there you go. Custom event log items right from your batch file. For more detailed information on the eventcreate command, visit this section on Microsoft Technet.

Filed Under: Command Line, Microsoft, Tools, Utility, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 Links

Posted by Steve Wiseman on January 20, 2009 with 0 Comments

I have been looking through Microsoft’s website for more information about Windows 7, and 2008 R2. I thought you might appreciate some of my findings:

Remote Administrator tools for Windows 7

Windows 7 (Beta) Automated Installation Kit

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Deployment Image Servicing and Management

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Problem Steps Recorder

Windows 7 Walkthrough: User State Migration Tool

Release Documents for this Beta Release of Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows 7 Walkthrough: Enterprise Application Compatibility

Before we know it 2008 R2, and Windows 7 will be released, and Vista will be a bad memory.

Filed Under: Beta, Windows 2008, Windows 7

Prevent users from clearing history in IE 7

Posted by Steve Wiseman on December 18, 2008 with 7 Comments

This tip is only for Vista….so I apologize in advance to those of you still using XP. In Vista you can easily clear your browsing history by going into the options of Internet Explorer. I have helped a few organizations that use this information after a spyware incident to determine where the problem came from.

Users may notice that something happened, and call the IT department for help. Before they do that they clear their history so they don’t get in trouble. This vital information is now lost, and a potentially bad site could cause the problem again.

So how could you prevent this? Easy, use group policy. You can do this locally, or on your domain controller if you want to apply the changes across your network.

To change the policy on your Vista machine, click on the start button, and type gpedit.msc – then press enter.

 

GPEDIT.MSC

Then the local policy window will be displayed. You will need to drill down to:

Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Internet Explorer\

Once you are in that section, scroll down and you will see three items:

“Turn off ‘Delete Browsing History’ functionality”
“Turn off ‘Delete Passwords’ functionality”
“Turn off ‘Delete forms’ functionality” 

Only the first one is necessary for what we are trying to accomplish, but the other two are related and you may want to use them.
 

Gpedit Disable Clear Cookies

I am not a big fan of how many policy items are worded. It forces you to enable them when you want something disabled. So if you want to disable them, then use the enable option. Now, if you go into internet explorer, and try to clear the history, you will notice that the button is disabled:
 

Disable Clear History

This same tip could be used on a domain controller. If you have 2008 it will already be available. On some versions of 2003, you will need to get the updated administrative template for Internet Explorer.

Filed Under: Group Policy, IE, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 2008, Windows Vista
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