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.

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.

It is that time again. Microsoft is getting close to releasing IE 9 in its final form. According to my sources, it will be released on Monday, March 14th.

This also means it will show up in automatic updates as an “Important Update”

If you want to prevent this from happening, you can setup a registry key that will block it.

The key is under this path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\9.0

You will need to create the key above. Once you do that, add this DWORD value:

DoNotAllowIE90

Set it to 1 to block, Set it to 0 to unblock.

We also have updated the free version of Network Administrator to set this key for you – that way you don’t have to mess around with the registry by hand:

Download a free copy from here

One final note – keep in mind this will only prevent it from showing up in Automatic Update. Users can still install IE 9 by hand if they wish.

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.

When I first came across Windows 2008 Core, I was happy. Finally, a version of windows you could chisel down to just the base components that you needed.

Microsoft did such a good job – that it is hard to configure it with the default settings

No graphical tools are provided (Well there are a few…but not many). When you logon, you are welcomed with a command line window that sits in the middle of the screen:

The frustration level increases exponentially when you want to get something done.

For security reasons, remote administration is disabled by default. Remote Administration – not to be confused with Remote Desktop is the file and printer sharing component that allows you to remotely use computer management, event viewer, service manager, or third party tools like our Network Administrator

To remove the firewall restrictions that block its use, simply type this at the command line:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Administration" new enable=yes

After that command, some remote services will work. For example, you can remotely reboot or shutdown the machine using Network Administrator

But…if you want to manage services, add/remove/edit users using computer management, or look at the event log remotely…you will still get access denied messages.

You need to tell Core 2008 what users are allowed to connect. You can do this by typing this at the command line:

cmdkey /add:ServerName /user:UserName /pass:password

Where ServerName is the name of the local server, and the username and password are for an administrator account.

That is all there is to it. After those two commands you can remotely manage your 2008 core server with ease.

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

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:

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

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

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.

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.

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

-Multi Server Deployments

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:

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.

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

During the install plan I got to this step:

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:

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