Archive for July, 2007

07.27.07

Root Certificate Authorties in Windows Products

Posted in OS, win2003, SBS2003, Vista, Windows XP, Windows Vista at 12:51 pm by webmaster

Often the question of what root certificate authrity is supported in a particular product.  This MSDN reference summarizes all root CA’s and the feature set they provide.

07.23.07

Adding a branch office to Small Business Server

Posted in OS, win2003, SBS2003 at 12:19 pm by webmaster

As of this writing there is no known official Microsoft documnets specific to addding a branch office to SBS. 

Defacto Microsoft documentation

  1. Branch Office Guide for Windows Server 2003

Check out these third party references:

  1. SmallBizServer (subscription)
  2. WindowsITPro 

07.20.07

Examine all hardware devices attached to a system

Posted in OS at 2:24 pm by webmaster

Ever want to see what devices the system thinks it has installed?

 This is useful if you ever need to remove drivers from a system after the hardware has been removed.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/241257

 

07.13.07

1 Mbyte and 10 Mbyte files used for testing

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:00 pm by webmaster

Ever want files of a certain size to test with?  Say to understand how fsrm in the new server products coming from Microsoft? 

Here are 1 MByte and 10 Mbyte files:

http://vhost2.hansenet.de/

This is how Windows Explorer reports the file size (Size on disk and Size):

 10.0 MB (10,485,760 bytes)

This is how fsrm reports the data:

Report Totals
Files shown in the report All files matching report criteria
Owners Files Total size on Disk Owners Files Total size on Disk
1 1 10.0 MB 1 1 10.0 MB

 

07.03.07

Powershell for the IT Professional

Posted in powershell at 11:41 am by webmaster

Powershell is a new scripting language for Windows that is very powerful.  It provides many of the benefits that UNIX provided years ago including things *real* support for regular expressions.  What follows is a short kickstart to get you up and running in powershell.

  1. Download and install powershell
  2. Start –> All Programs –> Windows Powershell
  3. Use the following following commands to see what Powershell can do (Format Verb-Noun)
    1. Get-Help
    2. dir | get-member | more
    3. Get-Service | get-member
  4.  Use powershell do run all your favorite dos/batch and vbscript scripts and commands.
    1. netstat -an | find “ESTABLISHED” should now be
    2. netstat -an | find `”ESTABLISHED`” (Escape the double quote with a backtick) Or you can use the Powershell version
    3. netstat.exe -an | select-string “ESTABLISHED”
  5. Navigate to the following site and run through all the examples there:
    1. http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/powershell/index.htm
  6. Readup on .Net framework.  Since Powershell is based on .Net Framework knowing it will certainly help you get around in Powershell
    1. http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/.NET_Framework Summary
    2. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa388745.aspx Programming interface
    3. http://msdn2.microsoft.com:80/en-us/library/zw4w595w(vs.71).aspx Technet .Net Framework overview

 

07.01.07

How to verify WMI queries can execute

Posted in OS at 2:57 pm by webmaster

WMI is increasingly being utilized to perform administrative and management duties on computers.  In order to ensure you have all the components working on the target computer use a small diagnostic program included in Windows XP.

  1. Start –> Run
  2. type WBEMTEST and hit Enter
  3. Click Connect and enter
    1. “root\cimv2″ for the namespace
  4. Hit the query button and type
    1. “Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem”
  5. Verify your Operating system name is diplayed.

This requires the remote registry service to be running.

Ensure you are supplying the correct credentials and that the user is part of the local Administrators group.