Life of a techno-guru

New Blog

2009-05-10T10:39:00.001-05:00

Hello! I know I don't have any readers, but if any of you are interested, I have a new blog:

http://trevorsullivan.wordpress.com

Cheers!

Parsing Windows 2003 Print Logs

2009-03-25T09:07:00.003-05:00

Here is a Powershell script that parses event log ID 10 on a Windows 2003 print server. Normally, you'll have a message that looks something like this:

Document 172, C:\Documents and Settings\Trevor\W5QZ4XUR\MyFinanceReport.pdf owned by Trevor was printed on 4thFloorHpPrinter via port IP_10.1.1.50. Size in bytes: 168123; pages printed: 2

Now, how do you get that information into a usable format? The answer lies below:

#################################################################################
# #
# Author: Trevor Sullivan #
# #
# Date: February 10th, 2009 #
# #
# Purpose: This script is meant for running against a Windows 2003 event log. #
# The verbage for the print log entries has changed for Windows Vista. #
# #
#################################################################################

Function GetPrintEntriesFromTextFile($tFileName)
{
Get-Content $tFileName
}

Function GetPrintEntriesFromServer()
{
$PrintEntries = Get-EventLog -LogName System | Where-Object { $_.EventId -eq 10 -and $_.Source -eq "Print" }
return $PrintEntries
}

# Parses username from a Windows 2003 Print log message
Function GetUserName($PrintEntry)
{
If ($PrintEntry -eq "" -or $PrintEntry -eq $null) { return $null }

$rxUserName = [regex]"owned by ([0-9a-zA-Z]{7})"
$rxUserName = [regex]"owned by ([0-9a-zA-Z]{1,}) was"
$rxMatches = $rxUserName.Match($PrintEntry)
return $rxMatches.Groups[1].Value
}

Function GetPrinterName($PrintEntry)
{
If ($PrintEntry -eq "" -or $PrintEntry -eq $null) { return $null }

#Write-Host "Parsing printer name"
$rxPrinterName = [regex]"printed on ([0-9a-zA-Z-_\s]{5,}) via"
$rxMatches = $rxPrinterName.Match($PrintEntry)
return $rxMatches.Groups[1].Value
}

Function GetPrintSize($PrintEntry)
{
If ($PrintEntry -eq "" -or $PrintEntry -eq $null) { return $null }

#Write-Host "Getting print size"
$rxPrintSize = [regex]"Size in bytes: ([0-9]+);"
$rxMatches = $rxPrintSize.Match($PrintEntry)
return $rxMatches.Groups[1].Value
}

Function GetPageCount($PrintEntry)
{
If ($PrintEntry -eq "" -or $PrintEntry -eq $null) { return $null }

#Write-Host "Getting page count"
$rxPageCount = [regex]"pages printed\: ([0-9]+)"
$rxMatches = $rxPageCount.Match($PrintEntry)
return $rxMatches.Groups[1].Value
}

Function GetDocumentName($PrintEntry)
{
If ($PrintEntry -eq "" -or $PrintEntry -eq $null) { return $null }

#Write-Host "Getting print size"
$rxDocumentName = [regex]", ([a-zA-Z-_:/\[#\]\?\\\=\d\.\s&-,]{1,}) owned by"
$rxMatches = $rxDocumentName.Match($PrintEntry)
return $rxMatches.Groups[1].Value
}

# Retrieves user's full name from AD
Function GetUserFullName($UserId)
{
if ($UserId -gt "")
{
$DirectorySearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
$LdapFilter = "(&(objectClass=user)(samAccountName=${UserId}))"
#Write-Host "Filter is: ${LdapFilter}"
$DirectorySearcher.Filter = $LdapFilter
$UserEntry = [adsi]"$($DirectorySearcher.FindOne().Path)"
#Write-Host $UserEntry.displayName
return $UserEntry.displayName
}

return
}

Function CreatePrintJob()
{
$PrintJob = New-Object PsObject
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name PageCount -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name UserName -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name DocumentName -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Size -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Printer -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Time -Value $null
Add-Member -Force -InputObject $PrintJob -MemberType NoteProperty -Name UserFullName -Value $null
return $PrintJob
}

Function ParsePrintEntry($PrintEntry)
{
$NewPrintJob = CreatePrintJob

if ($PrintEntry.GetType() -eq [System.String])
{
$NewPrintJob.PageCount = GetPageCount $PrintEntry
$NewPrintJob.UserName = GetUserName $PrintEntry
$NewPrintJob.DocumentName = GetDocumentName $PrintEntry
$NewPrintJob.Size = GetPrintSize $PrintEntry
$NewPrintJob.Printer = GetPrinterName $PrintEntry
$NewPrintJob.UserFullName = GetUserFullName $NewPrintJob.UserName
}
elseif ($PrintEntry.GetType() -eq [System.Diagnostics.EventLogEntry])
{
$NewPrintJob.PageCount = GetPageCount $PrintEntry.Message
$NewPrintJob.UserName = GetUserName $PrintEntry.Message
$NewPrintJob.DocumentName = GetDocumentName $PrintEntry.Message
$NewPrintJob.Size = GetPrintSize $PrintEntry.Message
$NewPrintJob.Printer = GetPrinterName $PrintEntry.Message
$NewPrintJob.Time = $PrintEntry.Time
$NewPrintJob.UserFullName = GetUserFullName $NewPrintJob.UserName
}

return $NewPrintJob
}

Function Main()
{
#$PrintEntries = GetPrintEntriesFromServer
$PrintEntries = GetPrintEntriesFromTextFile "c:\Users\i081225\Desktop\Powershell Scripts\Print Log Parser\PrintLog.txt"
$Global:ParsedEntries = @{}; $i = 0

ForEach ($PrintEntry in $PrintEntries)
{
$ParsedEntries.Add($i, $(ParsePrintEntry $PrintEntry))
#$ParsedEntries += (ParsePrintEntry $PrintEntry)
$i++

if ($i % 100 -eq 0)
{ Write-Host "Processed $i records" }
}

WriteToExcel $ParsedEntries
}

Function WriteToExcel($tEntries)
{
# Load Excel interop assembly
[Void] [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel")

# Create Excel application, workbook, and worksheet objects
$Excel = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.ApplicationClass
$Workbook = $Excel.Workbooks.Add()
$Worksheet = $Workbook.Worksheets.Add()

# Write Excel worksheet headers
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 1).Value2 = "Username"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 2).Value2 = "Full Name"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 3).Value2 = "Time"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 4).Value2 = "Page Count"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 5).Value2 = "Printer"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 6).Value2 = "Size (bytes)"
$Worksheet.Cells.Item(1, 7).Value2 = "Document Name"
# End writing Excel worksheet headers

# Iterate over each print entry
$row = 2
ForEach ($key in $tEntries.Keys)
{
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 1).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].UserName
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 2).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].UserFullName
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 3).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].Time
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 4).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].PageCount
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 5).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].Printer
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 6).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].Size
$Worksheet.Cells.Item($row, 7).Value2 = $tEntries[$key].DocumentName
$row++
}

# Do some formatting
# AutoFit the columns
[Void] $Excel.ActiveCell.CurrentRegion.Columns.AutoFit()

# Add table styling and auto-filtering
[Void] $Excel.ActiveCell.CurrentRegion.Select()
$ListObject = $Excel.ActiveSheet.ListObjects.Add([Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlListObjectSourceType]::xlSrcRange, $Excel.ActiveCell.CurrentRegion, $null ,[Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlYesNoGuess]::xlYes)
$ListObject.Name = "TableData"
$ListObject.TableStyle = "TableStyleLight9"

# Show the Excel window after writing data to spreadsheet
$Excel.Visible = $true
}

Main

I hope this helps someone out there :)

-Trevor Sullivan

Enable AutoProvision Policy with Powershell

2009-02-16T09:37:00.003-06:00

Hello,

Are you working with Out of Band Management (OOB) in ConfigMgr / SCCM? Instead of waiting for SCCM policy to apply to a client, would you like to force the auto-provisioning policy to apply on-demand? If so, then you've come to the right place. Here is some Powershell code that will enable auto-provisioning on an SCCM client.

$OobSettings = [wmiclass]”root\ccm\policy\machine\actualconfig:CCM_OutOfBandManagementSettings”
$OobSettingsInstance = $OobSettings.CreateInstance()
$OobSettingsInstance.AutoProvision = $True
$OobSettingsInstance.SiteSettingsKey = 1
$OobSettingsInstance.Put()

-Trevor Sullivan

Powershell - Compare Active Directory Groups

2009-02-11T07:31:00.001-06:00

Here is a Powershell script that compares two Active Directory groups, and determines the differences between the account membership of them.

$DN1 = "CN=Group1,OU=Groups,OU=Accounts,DC=subdomain,DC=mydomain,DC=local"
$DN2 = "CN=Group2,OU=Groups,OU=Accounts,DC=subdomain,DC=mydomain,DC=local"
$Group1 = [adsi]"LDAP://$DN1"
$Group2 = [adsi]"LDAP://$DN2"

ForEach ($User in $Group1.member)
{
if ($Group2.member -contains $User)
{
Write-Host "$User belongs to $($Group2.cn)"
}
else
{
Write-Host "$User does not belong to $($Group2.cn)"
}
}

-Trevor Sullivan

Powershell - Domain Distinguished Name

2009-02-10T13:47:00.003-06:00

Hello,

The two lines below allow you to use the LDAP "RootDSE" object to dynamically access the root of an Active Directory (AD) domain, from a domain member. The defaultNamingContext attribute on the RootDSE object contains the full distinguished name of the AD domain.

$RootDSE = [adsi]"LDAP://RootDSE"
$DomainRoot = [adsi]"$($RootDSE.DefaultNamingContext)"

Now that you have a reference to the domain root in the $DomainRoot variable, you can perform any operations you need to from that point. For example, to enumerate the children of the domain root, simply type the following at your interactive Powershell command prompt:

$DomainRoot.psbase.Children

-Trevor Sullivan

Office 2007, OpenXML and Powershell

2009-01-16T08:14:00.001-06:00

Here are some tools to work with Office 2007 documents from Windows Powershell:

http://www.codeplex.com/PowerTools

An open letter to Criterion Games

2009-01-10T10:51:00.002-06:00

I e-mailed this brief letter to Criterion Games today. If you have a PS3, and/or Xbox 360, and/or gaming PC (being released in February 2009), you should definitely purchase Burnout Paradise. It's one of the best games I have ever played, and enjoy many aspects of the game's design. I hope that everyone else, that has already bought and played this game, has gotten as much enjoyment from it as I have.

------------------

Hello Criterion,

I just wanted to thank you guys for making a fabulous game. These days, it’s hard to find games that provide a real return on investment, like Burnout Paradise (BP) does. BP achieves outstanding success in pretty much every area of game design. It has breathtaking graphics (despite being only 720p), it has an incredible soundtrack (I love the classical music, and the electronic remixes of other songs), it has phenomenal multiplayer integration (the seamlessness makes it quite appealing), it has awesome-looking slow-motion crashes, and the continual support of new, free content has blown me away. Keep all of this up in future games, and you will continue to be exceedingly successful and respected.

---

You know, of all the great things I have to say about Burnout Paradise, it’s really only lacking one major thing … instant replays. I can’t really think of anything else that’s missing, but having the ability to save instant replays of crashes, and races, would make the game all that much better.

---

Thanks for listening, and for making one of the best games I’ve seen on the PS3. Your hard work, focus on the customer, and excellent designers and developers, have made Burnout Paradise a shining star amongst a heaping pile of failed attempts. Keep up the good work, Criterion.

Sincerely,

Trevor Sullivan

Windows 7 RSAT

2009-01-09T20:52:00.002-06:00

Microsoft has released a beta version of the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for the Windows 7 Beta Build 7000.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproappcompat/thread/d9fb1643-0094-4cfe-8cb5-58f9aa0814ab

-------------------------------------

Where to Install:

• Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta (x86): http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/4/AD4D3903-E06D-456D-AED4-D53895D2C1A9/Windows6.1-KB958830-x86.msu

• Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta (x64): http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/4/AD4D3903-E06D-456D-AED4-D53895D2C1A9/Windows6.1-KB958830-x64.msu

The main download page is here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82516c35-c7dc-4652-b2ea-2df99ea83dbb&displaylang=en

RSAT Client is available to all customers as part of the supplemental Microsoft Software License Terms to Windows 7 licenses.

What Is Included in RSAT?
This is the list of Windows Server 2008 administration tools which are included in Win7 RSAT Client:

Server Administration Tools:
• Server Manager

Role Administration Tools:
• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
• DHCP Server Tools
• DNS Server Tools
• File Services Tools
• Hyper-V Tools
• Terminal Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:
• BitLocker Password Recovery Viewer
• Failover Clustering Tools
• Group Policy Management Tools
• Network Load Balancing Tools
• SMTP Server Tools
• Storage Explorer Tools
• Storage Manager for SANs Tools
• Windows System Resource Manager Tools

Forcing a Task Sequence to run in ConfigMgr

2008-12-04T10:05:00.000-06:00

This is just for my own documentation:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4207468&SiteID=17&mode=1

Retrieving a list of SCCM SP1 compatible vPro /AMT clients

2008-09-25T15:51:00.005-05:00

If you're running System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 and you have the ConfigMgr client deployed, and you have Intel vPro clients, you may want to know how many clients you have. Here is a quick script that you can use to get a list of Intel vPro clients that are running AMT firmware version 3.2.1 or greater, and are natively supported by ConfigMgr OOB (out-of-band) management. Replace the SiteServer and SiteCode variables, and you'll be good to go!

Option Explicit

dim SiteServer, SiteCode, AMTQuery, svcs, AMTAgent, AMTAgents

SiteServer = "SCCMServer"
SiteCode = "LAB"

AMTQuery = "select * from SMS_G_System_AMT_Agent " & _
"join SMS_G_System_Computer_System on SMS_G_System_AMT_Agent.ResourceID = SMS_G_System_Computer_System.ResourceID " & _
"where AMT not like '3.0%' " & _
"and AMT not like '2%' " & _
"and AMT not like '1%' "

set svcs = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & SiteServer & "\root\sms\site_" & SiteCode)
set AMTAgents = svcs.ExecQuery(AMTQuery)

for each AMTAgent in AMTAgents
wscript.echo AMTAgent.SMS_G_System_Computer_System.Name & vbtab & AMTAgent.SMS_G_System_Computer_System.Model & vbtab & AMTAgent.SMS_G_System_AMT_Agent.AMT
next

wscript.echo vbcrlf & vbcrlf & "Total count of ConfigMgr SP1 compatible vPro clients: " & AMTAgents.Count

Testing OSD in Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007

2008-09-10T09:49:00.002-05:00

If you are developing and testing your ConfigMgr 2007 OSD process, and you're running into a message saying "There are no task sequences available for this computer," then you might not want to have to completely reboot WinPE to restart the process.

After you fix your task sequence / policy problem, you can restart the task sequence engine / wizard without exiting WinPE. Here's how:

1. Enable the F8 command prompt in your Boot Image
2. When the wizard fails in PE, press F8 to invoke the command prompt
3. Run task manager by typing "taskmgr"
4. Kill the process named "TsmBootStrap.exe"
5. Start "TsBootShell.exe" (note the name difference) from the "x:\sms\bin\i386" folder

The task sequence wizard should restart!

NOTE: Do not kill the main instance of TsBootShell.exe! This will disable WinPE and force you to reboot into it!

Deleting Disabled Configuration Manager Drivers

2008-07-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, I thought I'd share a quick script I wrote to delete drivers that I had disabled in the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) console. See, you can disable multiple drivers through the ConfigMgr console, but you can't delete multiple driver ojects, which is pretty frustrating, if you ask me. Simply update the "xxx" with your site code, and execute the script on your SCCM site server!

namespace = "root\cimv2\site_xxx"
qry = "select * from sms_driver where IsEnabled = 'false'"
set sms = GetObject("winmgmts:" & namespace)
set drivers = sms.ExecQuery(qry)

for each driver in drivers
call driver.Delete_()
next

I hope this helps!

Microsoft Application Virtualization (Softgrid) 4.5 RC Issue

2008-06-26T08:32:00.002-05:00

I was recently getting an error message on a new AppVirt 4.5 Release Candidate installation stating

"The SoftGrid Client could not load Notepad++ 4.7.5.0.

The operation failed because you do not have sufficient permissions to stream from a file. Please report the following error code to your System Administrator.

Error code: 450260-14901604-0000180B"

Thanks to Aaron Parker's blog entry, this was easily resolved by changing the "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Softgrid\4.5\Client\Configuration:AllowIndependentFileStreaming" DWORD value from 0 to 1. Thanks Aaron!

I'm still interested in knowing why this is the default behavior for the Softgrid client, however. As was not the case with Aaron, I was trying to stream a file from off of a server, not a local package.

Media Distribution with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 4.1

2008-04-16T12:44:00.005-05:00

I recently ran into an interesting problem using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) v4.1, while trying to build a system using a DVD. I was getting an error message stating: "Non-zero return code executing command "X:\Deploy\Tools\x86\TsmBootstrap.exe" /env:SAStart, rc = -2147467259". I received this error as soon as I started the build process off of a DVD distribution.

As it turns out, apparently we had a rogue TS.xml file sitting in the root of the control folder, which was left over from back when we were still running BDD 2007. For some odd reason, the task sequence engine was attempting to load the TS.xml file in this location, which uses an older schema version, and it would fail out. The same file was actually also in the Deploy\Tools\x86 folder, and somehow the task sequence engine still found it there, and used IT rather than the TS.xml that was in the proper location, the subfolder with the task sequence ID. Neither myself, nor the guy I was working with from Premiere support could figure out why it was choosing to use these files, but after we removed both instances of them, everything just magically worked as it should have in the first place!

I'd be pretty confident saying that it should be treated as a bug within MDT, however maybe there's good reasoning behind why it's doing this. Either way, I'm glad to have it fixed.

Scripting with C#

2008-04-15T08:09:00.003-05:00

Here's a cool article about how to use C# to do scripting, and even debug them!

http://blogs.msdn.com/colinth/archive/2007/12/31/scripting-for-c.aspx

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Installation Troubles

2008-03-22T15:36:00.002-05:00

I recently came across some issues installing System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 in a disconnected/lab environment. During the installation, you are prompted to download updated prerequisite files, or give SCCM a path to where you've already downloaded them. Setup will not let you proceed without properly performing this step. After doing some additional searching, I finally came across a post by Jeff Gilbert, which stated, "To download the files from a different computer, just start Configuration Manager Setup on a computer with Internet connectivity and use the following command: Setup /download ."

Here is a link to the original post:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2007/09/01/downloading-client-setup-prerequisites.aspx

I hope this helps someone else, who comes across a similar error. The error message itself says "Component manifest was not found or it is invalid." I tried simply creating the file it was looking for, called ConfigMgr.Manifest.cab, but then the ConfigMgrSetup.log file indicated that it failed to validate the digital signature, so it looks like there's no getting around it without doing it properly.

Oh well .... on with the installation ....

Video Playing on top of WPF 3D Mesh

2008-01-08T22:17:00.000-06:00

Here is a video of a video playing on top of a 3D mesh inside a Viewport3D in Windows Presentation Foundation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2aPEHI16Fk

C# Method to Set WPF PerspectiveCamera Target

2008-01-08T17:44:00.001-06:00

Here's a method for Windows Presentation Foundation developers wanting to parse some text into a target location for a Camera, such as a PerspectiveCamera:

public static void SetCameraTarget(string Target, Camera Camera)
{
double[] TargetPoint = Array.ConvertAll(Target.Split(char.Parse(" ")), new Converter(DoubleStringConverter));
PerspectiveCamera MyCamera = (PerspectiveCamera)Camera;
Vector3D v1 = new Vector3D(MyCamera.Position.X, MyCamera.Position.Y, MyCamera.Position.Z);
Vector3D v2 = new Vector3D(TargetPoint[0], TargetPoint[1], TargetPoint[2]);
Vector3D NewVector = v2 - v1;
MyCamera.LookDirection = NewVector;
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(NewVector);
}

Just pass a space-delimited string value into it with 3 double values such as: "2 5 3" and a reference to the camera object you want to update.

Oops, I almost forgot ... you need this too:

private double DoubleStringConverter(string StringToParse)
{
try
{
return Double.Parse(StringToParse);
}
catch
{
return 0;
}
}

Debugging Powershell Cmdlets

2007-12-24T10:20:00.000-06:00

This is great! The ability to actually use Visual Studio to debug cmdlets is awesome!

Check out this article on the .NET debugging blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmstall/archive/2007/03/04/debugging-cmdlets.aspx

Windows Powershell v1.0 Problem

2007-12-24T06:27:00.000-06:00

First of all ... I just created by first Cmdlet last week! The bad part? It doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work as expected, I should say. Let me give you a brief overview of the issue I ran into.

I recently decided to go ahead and start developing a set of cmdlets to manage a Microsoft Systems Management 2003 Server. Since we use SMS 2003 at my company, I figured it would be cool to expose the functionality through Powershell in case we wanted to script/automate SMS "stuff." I know that there are some existing SMS cmdlets out there, however these seem to target SMS clients rather than servers.

I started out by writing a cmdlet called Get-SMSCollections that did simply that ... it retrieved a list of SMS collections from an SMS server that is specified as a parameter. I ran into a bit of a bind, however, when trying to run this cmdlet. I'm currently getting an error message stating
: "format-default : Value was either too large or too small for an Int32." Now, I assume, naturally, that this message is coming from the format-default cmdlet, and some value I'm passing to it from my cmdlet is larger or smaller than an Int32 can handle. I'm really at odds as to what exactly this value is, however. Please note that the yellow warning text is coming from an Exception handler in my cmdlet and is not actually reflective of the real problem (it's just some static text I wrote in, in case anything fails). Now, since the error message is coming from format-default, I figured that I'd try something else to see what happens: Get-SMSCollections | Select-Object name,collectionID. This command actually works, and outputs the names and collection IDs of all my SMS collections! Now, that tells me that something, somewhere, some sort of data is messing up the format-default cmdlet.

I wish I knew what it was ...

The really weird thing though, is that I can run a Select-Object on any of the properties individually, and successfully retrieve them! So, what sort of data is Powershell trying to retrieve that it's unable to display???

Odd Powershell FileSystemProvider Behavior

2007-12-21T13:08:00.001-06:00

So, I've been working with Powershell more and more recently. I ran into a rather interesting ... bug, at least, I think it is anyway. The other day I decided to use Powershell instead of my normal command prompt to mount a WIM file to a folder on the filesystem, so I could view/edit it. I ran the command, and was told that the folder successfully mounted to a folder on the root of my c:\ drive. As per my personal custom, I quickly did a dir (alias for Get-ChildItem in Powershell) to make sure the folder was there (don't ask me why, but I do ... it's just habit). Surprisingly enough, however, the folder disappeared!

After opening up Windows Explorer, and traversing the folder structure, I knew something had to be up. I did an actual dir command in the regular command prompt, and it showed up. So, I guess what the problem is, is some sort of bug in the FileSystemProvider .NET class, which is the provider used in the Get-ChildItem Cmdlet to browse an NTFS (at least) filesystem.

I'm kinda curious to know if anyone else has noticed this same behavior ...

Why I doubt FOSS will catch on anytime soon

2007-08-13T13:29:00.000-05:00

So, you keep hearing about "OMGZLINUCKSISTAKINGOVERTHESOFTWAREMARKET" and other such abusrd comments by Linux fanboys and such, right? Well, if you're a Linux fanboy, and reading this, then you would most likely say "no," however I hear plenty of it myself, mostly over at Digg. It's kind of sad that people don't understand how powerful the Windows platform is, not just in regards to using it, but developing software around it using the .NET platform as well.

So, you're asking yourself about the title of my post, right? Well, I was just poking around looking at FreeBSD, 'cuz I've been thinking about playing with it again, and a few links later, I found myself looking at the source code for libarchive. Within the README file contained in the source code download, I noticed the following paragraph:

"This is a heavily stream-oriented system. There is no direct support for in-place modification or random access and no intention of ever adding such support. Adding such support would require sacrificing a lot of other features, so don't bother asking."

Wow. Sounds like somebody has an attitude problem. Since when are you going to convince any customers to use your product when you clearly, and openly, state that you have absolutely no intention of complying with their potential needs? Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that there are some technical details as to why this particular feature isn't realistic in this scenario, but the whole approach to the situation is absolutely enthralling. I can't imagine any company being very successful without focusing on their customer's needs, and this snippet from the README in libarchive is no exception. I'm sure that some businesses, and individuals, out there are using this software library, but without offering to be dynamic and at least working with your customer to understand and ultimately meet their needs, then you can forget about business support.

Honestly, I wish people would grow up sometimes. The author of libarchive sounds like a stubborn 2 year old. If he is one, then I'm amazed at his programming talent at such an early age, but if he is not, then I suggest that he act his age. That is all.

Key Finder

2007-06-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

I came across this nice key finder today, since no one at my company had the licensing information for SQL Server 2000 from 3 years ago. Here's a link for it:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/11/24/decrypt-and-retrieve-serial-numbers-or-cd-product-keys-of-applications-with-keyfinder-thing/

Groupwise Fun

2007-05-16T09:33:00.000-05:00

So, I created a group in my personal contacts in Groupwise. I sent an e-mail to the group yesterday. This morning, I realized that it sent it to no-one. Thankfully it was not a time-critical e-mail, but .. what if it was?

WMI Helps Those Who Help Themselves

2007-05-07T09:35:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend the article, by Greg Stemp, called WMI Helps Those Who Helps Themselves. It just might teach you something new about how WMI works. Also, the concept of writing your own WMI class to do what you need it to ... is awesome :-)

Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 C# Express Orcas Beta

2007-04-24T06:02:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone! Microsoft has released a free, beta version of Visual Studio, known as Visual Studio Express, that allows you to visually develop applications based on the Windows Presentation Foundation! This is amazing news, especially for beginning programmers, and even for myself, as I use the Express edition of Visual Studio on several other computers that I use on a regular basis, where I don't have access to my copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard. Unfortunately, installing the Fall CTP of the Orcas extensions for VS2005 didn't work on VS Express 2005, so I guess this required them releasing a new version to fix (which they did!). Remember, it's only a beta, and I've already noticed that 30 seconds in, the XAML element tag completion isn't working (when you close the opening tag, it doesn't insert a closing tag), but I'm sure they'll have this fixed. I posted in the MSDN forums about this problem so that it hopefully gets full attention from the Visual Studio development team.

Free VBscript COM Objects

2007-04-23T09:29:00.000-05:00

Just to make you all aware, and for the purposes of documenting this for myself, here is a link to the Toolsack Baseline 1.0 Components. This is a free product that consists of 30 COM objects for visual basic scripters. Some of the tools include:

Timer
DNS Client
Socket Client & Listener
SMTP client
Binary File Saving/Loading
HTTP retriever

To be fully honest, I haven't actually used these yet, but I have been aware of their existence for some time. It came up in a Google search a few months ago when I was looking for "VBscript sockets." Enjoy!

Programming Using the Windows Presentation Foundation

2007-04-21T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well guys, sorry I haven't posted recently, but I've been learning some new tricks to stuff up my sleeve ;-)

One of the primary things I have been studying recently, is the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) component of the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0. WPF is an extremely powerful framework for building rich, interactive user interfaces both quickly and easily for Microsoft Windows systems. The separation of user interface design and procedural code is a very significant change between the .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 frameworks, however, I believe that it is for the better. The tools I have been using to learn about the Windows Presentation Foundation include the (very extensive) Windows SDK documentation, and a book I purchased from Amazon last week called Windows Presentation Foundation: Unleashed by Adam Nathan.

I figured that I would show you all (if anyone really reads my blog, I'd be surprised ;-) ) a screenshot of one proof-of-concept application that I put together really quick. It basically proves my earlier point of being able to build rich UIs without much effort at all. In fact, this entire example was built using XAML, and I wrote absolutely zero lines of procedural code. The purpose of this example was mostly to show the capabilities of embedding WPF controls inside of other WPF controls, to show how much you can do in WPF without procedural code, and also I wanted to show off the performance of WPF-based applications. I believe that Microsoft has done an excellent job of making the .NET 3.0 framework the most powerful and easy to use software development framework, and I can't say that I have any reservations about using it exclusively for any major application development.

This application is very simple. It has a Button control, and a couple labels, and two Slider controls. On the Button control, is a StackPanel that hosts a TreeView control and a MediaElement control. One Slider control controls the rotation of the Button, and the other controls the rotation of the MediaElement directly on top of the Button, independently. The Treeview control is host to a few MenuItems, and it also has a ContextMenu, that has a couple MenuItems, but one of those MenuItems contains yet another MediaElement control that's independent of the one on the Button. Yes, that's all kind of confusing, but just look at the screenshot and you'll see for yourself!

Edit: E-mail me for the XAML if you're curious to see how I did it. Hint: It's really, really easy ... I just think it's cool ;-)

Google Mail: pcgeek86

Edit2: Here's a link to the Binding Markup Extension I used to bind the output value from the Slider controls to the Angle property of the RotateTransform objects. This is mainly what kept me from having to use any C#

Dell Service Tag Converter

2007-04-11T07:21:00.000-05:00

Just so you all are aware, in the event that you call Dell Gold Tech Support (1-866-876-3355), and you are requested to input an Express Service Code number, there's a handy utility at this website, that allows you to convert a Service Tag to an Express Service Code.

Enjoy!

Novell Groupwise [is lame]

2007-04-03T10:51:00.000-05:00

This will be a very short post. I simply would like to express my extreme discontent and frustration with the Novell Groupwise system. It is buggy, very slow when your mailbox fills up, and best of all, when the Groupwise server in question is having problems (read: slow), it locks up the Groupwise client on all your client systems as well. Isn't that nice?

It reminds me of using Outlook/Exchange at my old job. Exchange server goes down? Continue working. Exchange server comes back online? Continue working, and all your pending mail gets sent in the background. It's just a much better stream-lined interface. Novell fails at enterprise-level software development.

Installing Print Drivers Remotely

2007-03-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

Well, someone else seemed to appreciate this tip a lot, and I don't know where else it may be posted online (I'm sure quit a few places), but basically, if you want to install a print driver on someone's computer for them, and don't wish to interrupt them, you can do so through a script or through Windows Explorer.

Goto Start --> Run
Type "\\[computername]"
Open Printers and Faxes (should now be at Printers and Faxes on )
Right-click in an open area and choose Server Properties
In the new window, choose the Drivers tab and click the Add button

Hopefully this helps you streamline your IT operations throughout the day :-) Perhaps I'll post a how-to on scripting this operation later on.

Using the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)

2007-02-08T22:38:00.001-06:00

Here's a video I briefly made on how to use Altiris SVS to switch which version of the Java Runtime you are using without removing/re-installing anything.

Sorry, video link didn't work ... it's a flash video, and I guess I can't upload it anywhere :(

Resolving CRC Errors on Windows XP

2007-02-02T23:56:00.000-06:00

Everyone hates errors, right? Yeah, well, I am certainly no exception to that ... so allow me to tell you a short story about some problems I have been having, and how I (finally) resolved them.

To give you a quick overview of the symptoms of my problem, I've been having an ongoing problem trying to install GTA: San Andreas on my gaming PC. I would always get a CRC error at the same spot every time; Needless to say, this was quite aggravating. I had all sorts of ideas flying through my head, including hardware problems (my friend was convinced it was my ECS KN1 Extreme motherboard ... it wasn't).

After trying re-installing the nForce 4 Ultra platform drivers (thinking the software interface between the DVD-RW and mobo was faulty), stopping every single background service I could, removing all un-used devices from Device Manager (search Microsoft support for "devmgr_show_nonpresentdevices"), removing VMware (thinking that it had something to do with VMware's virtual CD interface) , and so on ... it still wasn't working. What the hell??

Well, it finally turns out that the least of my worries, Daemon Tools (v3.47), which has never failed me in the past, and I have relied on for quite some time now, has turned its back on me. After removing DT, rebooting, and installing GTA: SA, everything worked perfectly. So, for anyone out there getting CRC's trying to install GTA: San Andreas ... make sure you aren't running DT!!

Cheers!

Running Novell ConsoleOne as Non-admin

2007-02-02T15:56:00.000-06:00

So, the other day, I ran into some issues running ConsoleOne under my standard user account. It didn't really surprise me, as ConsoleOne seems like a pretty prematurely released tool, however, it is the latest tool that Novell has provided to work with their products, so it's kind of a necessity. Actually, IIRC, the issues I had were specifically related to the snap-ins for Zenworks for Desktop Management version 7, not ConsoleOne by itself.

I was getting some weird behavior from the Zenworks application objects when I'd try to open up the properties on them; In fact, what happened, was that ConsoleOne would lock up entirely. I started by giving the \Users security group modify access to the ConsoleOne folder. This seemed to clear up the issue of ConsoleOne locking up, however I ran into something new; I began receiving a pop-up message when trying to open an Application object, saying that I was using a Zenworks trial version. Since we had not had any such issues in the past, this led me to believe that I had another issue to work through. Luckily, I had noticed earlier on that ConsoleOne took the liberty of creating a file on the root of my harddisk called licenses7.read. Without too much thought, I granted permissions to this file as well, to the local Users group. Since then, I believe everything has been working OK.

If you have any questions regarding my quest to run my machine at work as a non-Administrator, please feel free to contact me.

Fresh Groupwise Client Install

2007-02-01T08:59:00.000-06:00

So, the whole Outlook connector thing wasn't quite working out. I get this message saying "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error" when replying to an e-mail on our Groupwise 7 system. I have no idea what's going on, and it's pretty clear that Novell has no intentions of working with Microsoft products (surprise, surprise).

So ... I ended up loading the Groupwise 7 client this morning. Uhm .... anyone see anything wrong here?

Using Outlook 2003 With Groupwise 7 Server

2007-01-30T11:03:00.000-06:00

Okay, well I didn't really find an explicit guide on using Outlook with Groupwise, and I really don't want to use the Groupwise 7 client, so I figured I would put together a quick guide on how to get it up and running here. First and foremost, in my experiences, you must set a Groupwise password, as Outlook will not authenticate using your eDirectory userID/password.

1. Install Outlook 2003
2. Download/Install the Outlook connector for Groupwise (registration required to access downloads; The name of the file is gw301olcm.exe)
3. Run Outlook, goto Tools --> E-mail Accounts --> Add New
4. Choose Additional Server Types, then Novell Groupwise
5. Specify your server/user information
6. Make sure you have Outlook deliver new e-mail to your Groupwise account (Tools --> E-mail Accounts --> View/Change Existing --> Deliver New E-mail ...

That's pretty much all there is to it. Unfortunately it took a bit of searching and experimenting to gather all this information, but now that it's working, it's ... well, working well I guess. At least I don't have to deal with the Groupwise client anymore! :) Hope this helps someone out there ...

Running as Non-Admin

2007-01-30T08:37:00.000-06:00

Ok, well today at work, I loaded up a new computer, and am running as a non-admin. I am still logging in with my domain admin account, however, I removed Domain Admins from the local Administrators group on my PC. I'm installing software simply by using right-click --> Run As. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not too worried about it .. I think I will feel safer, and have a better-running PC since I won't be able to make mistakes as easily. :)

Auditing File Shares on Clients

2006-12-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

Here is a script I wrote that will list out all the file and printer shares on all the machines in your domain. The script uses the RootDSE object to locate the root of your domain, and then connects to the WMI service on all your machines remotely, so you'll need to be logged in as a Domain Administrator for this script to work properly.

Output: The script will output a set of comma-separated headers that have been statically entered (Computer Name, Share Name, Share Type), and then will echo out a line for each printer or file share it encounters that contains the previously mentioned variables. The script will also detect if any computers were not able to be contacted, or had errors when attempting a connection to the remote WMI service and will echo those out at the end. I encourage you to run the script and review the output. Then, modify the script as necessary to suit your needs! I would be welcome to any suggestions you have as to how to improve this to assist your network administration and monitoring!

set pcsDown = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
set pcsErr = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
main()

function main()
set rootdse = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
domain = rootdse.Get("defaultNamingContext")
wscript.echo "Computer Name,Share Name,Share Type"
searchDir(domain)
printBadPCs()
end function

'***************************
'Declaration: function searchDir(ldappath)
'Purpose: Takes LDAP-formatted string as parameter. Performs an operation based on the directory object's class
'Return value: none
'***************************
function searchDir(ldappath)
set ou = GetObject("LDAP://" & ldappath)

for each dirObj in ou
select case dirObj.class
case "organizationalUnit"
searchDir(dirObj.distinguishedName)
case "container"
searchDir(dirObj.distinguishedName)
case "computer"
if isAlive(dirObj.cn) then
printShares(dirObj.cn)
else
pcsDown.Add dirObj.cn, ""
end if
end select
next
end function

'***************************
'Declaration: printShares(pcname)
'Purpose: Prints the name of any type 0 (disk) or type 1 (print queue) shares on the machine
'Return value: nothing
'***************************
function printShares(pcname)
on error resume next
numShares = 0
set shares = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & pcname & "\root\cimv2:Win32_Share").Instances_
if Err.Number <> 0 then
pcsErr.Add pcname, ""
exit function
end if

for each share in shares
select case share.Type
case 0
wscript.echo pcname & "," & share.Name & ",disk"
numShares = numShares + 1
case 1
wscript.echo pcname & "," & share.Name & ",printer"
numShares = numShares + 1
end select
next
' if numShares <> 0 then wscript.echo "Total number of shares on " & pcname & ": " & numShares
end function

'***************************
'Declaration: function isAlive(pcname)
'Purpose: Sends ICMP packet to remote machine
'Return value: BOOL true if machine is alive, else BOOL false
'***************************
function isAlive(pcname)
isAlive = false
set ping = GetObject("winmgmts:").ExecQuery("select * from Win32_PingStatus where Address = '" & pcname & "'")

for each png in ping
if png.StatusCode = 0 then isAlive = true
next
end function

function printBadPCs()
wscript.echo vbcrlf & "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"
wscript.echo "The following computers could not be contacted"
wscript.echo "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"
for each pc in pcsDown
wscript.echo pc
next

wscript.echo vbcrlf & "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"
wscript.echo "The following computers generated an error msg"
wscript.echo "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"
for each pc in pcsDown
wscript.echo pc
next
end function

Response to Digg Article Claiming to Free up Memory

2006-12-06T06:08:00.000-06:00

So, a post on Digg.com recently came up where someone claimed that running rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks would in reality "clear up your system memory" and make your system run faster as a result! Of course, no claim like this should be believed these days without some factual basis, so I decided to do a little bit of research since I have a relatively good understanding of Windows as an o/s, and a novice understanding of programming.

As it turns out, there truly is a function in advapi32.dll called ProcessIdleTasks; This can be found using a tool from Nirsoft called DllExport Viewer. What is not correct, however, is the general understanding of what this function does. Simply doing a Google search for this function's name yielded quite a few results including articles and forum postings in which people claimed that this function freed up memory in Windows. Another interesting search result came from Microsoft itself, in the form of an article about benchmarking. In this article, it clearly states the following:

"The file placement optimization, which is done no more often than once every three days, is an example of a task that is carried out when the system is deemed to be idle. System Restore and other features of Windows XP also attempt to defer some work until the system is deemed to be idle. There are also some done-once-after-setup work items that also operate under the Idle Task Scheduling mechanisms.

All of these "idle tasks" are controllable by a system API in advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks. The APIs sole purpose is to allow benchmarks a simple way to force any pending idle tasks to be executed immediately, without having to wait a lengthy period of time."

That, to me, seems like it has absolutely nothing to do with "memory optimization." It would seem that this function simply puts Windows XP into an idle state, enabling it to perform tasks that it wouldn't normally do while the computer is in use. Anyway, I hope this clears up some misunderstandings regarding the usage of this function.

Sketching out the Lightbox

2006-12-01T08:22:00.000-06:00

Here is the next video in which I draw out a quick sketch of the lightbox.

Creating a Lightbox for Indoor Photography

2006-11-30T21:34:00.000-06:00

Okay, so all my posts until now have been pretty much related to systems administration. It's time to take a turn and focus on the hobby that has recently been consuming a portion of my time, photography. The temperature was around 60 the past several days and the weather has been great ... until today. It dropped all the way to the mid 20's, it's overcast, and just gloomy in general. I decided this afternoon after work that I was going to find something to photography. I got some street clothes on, grabbed my camera, and headed out the door to find my photography subject(s). Not more than 30 seconds after walking out the door, I noticed that my hoody wasn't keeping me very warm, and before another 15 seconds passed, I was complaining to myself about how cold and windy it was. Due to my determination, I continued on for a couple minutes and went to my apartment complex's commons area, which has a nice pond and a path around it, expecting to find something to photograph. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the path, I was done, and I sure wasn't going to find any good photos outdoors today, so I headed back home.

Determined to not be phased by the unfortunate turn of events this afternoon, I decided that I was going to make a lightbox. After all, I have been wanting to do close-up photography, and the weather can't affect what you're doing inside :-) I did some quick searching online, found a basic idea for a lightbox, and headed over to Home Depot, and then Hobby Lobby in search of my materials. In an hour's time, I was home with everything I needed to get started! I documented the process of building a lightbox for anyone who has never done it before, and I have just posted my first video in the short series on Youtube. For all of you out there, here it is:

Windows XP Shortcut Key Frustrations

2006-11-29T07:27:00.000-06:00

Okay, so my machine at work was imaged for me when I started here, and unfortunately, one person seemed to think that using ctrl+alt+home on a shortcut file to a script, and then sticking it in the All Users profile was something that everyone should use. Since I have other uses for ctrl+alt+home, specifically Winamp's global hotkeys to pause my music, I really wanted to get rid of this shortcut. At the time, I didn't know the shortcut existed, much less where it existed, so after searching around, I found a utility that lists out shortcut files with XP global shortcut keys assigned to them. I deleted the shortcut file, but lo and behold Winamp still wouldn't register my global shortcut key!

Great ... I figured I was stuck, but then I thought of a workaround: Find another shortcut file, assign the global hotkey to it, apply the change, and then remove it. Voila ... after doing this, Winamp was able to successfully register the hotkey :)

Comparing Machine Accounts in Two Directories

2006-10-31T11:47:00.000-06:00

The purpose of this script is to pull a registry key from all of our client machines to determine whether it has statically configured DNS servers or not. The challenge I am targeting is that some of our machines are joined to our Active Directory domain and can be authenticated against using my domain user account, however, about half of them are still not and I need to use a local user account on those machines to authenticate with. I approached this challenge, instead of using error handling, by using a Scripting.Dictionary object in which the keys contain the computer names ("Workstation" objects) from eDirectory/ZENworks, and the value contains the same machine name ("computer" objects) in Active Directory IF, and only IF the machine account exists in Active Directory. If Active Directory does not have a corresponding machine account, the value for the key will remain (string) "NULL". By iterating over the Scripting.Dictionary object, I can easily determine whether I should use domain authentication or local authentication based on whether the value for each key contains the same computer name or "NULL". Of course, I'm sure there will be some exceptions that need to be handled via error handling, but at least I'm not using error handling as my primary method of testing authentication. Here is the main logic of the script without the nitty gritty registry stuff:

'Dictionary will hold name of computer from eDirectory AND Active Directory (if applicable). Use this to test for local or domain authentication!
dim computers, cycle
set computers = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

'Dynamically obtain root of Active Directory domain partition
set rootdse = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
dirRoot = rootdse.Get("defaultNamingContext")

main()

function main()
'Populate computer names from eDirectory
searchDir "o=[YourRootNetwareOrg]","[eDirectoryServerIP]/"
'Populate computer names from Active Directory
searchDir dirRoot, ""

pckeys = computers.keys()
for each key in pckeys
wscript.echo key & " :: " & computers(key)
next
end function

'Server is OPTIONAL parameter. If connecting to Active Directory from a domain account, just use double quotes.
'Please put a slash after the name/IP if you specify one.
function searchDir(dn, server)
set root = GetObject("LDAP://" & server & dn)

for each dirobj in root
select case dirobj.class
case "ndsContainerLoginProperties"
searchDir dirobj.name & "," & dn, server
case "organizationalUnit"
searchDir dirobj.distinguishedName, ""
case "container"
searchDir dirobj.distinguishedName, ""
case "computer"
'Need to use Right function to cut of "cn=" from the computer's name
pcname = right(dirobj.name,len(dirobj.name)-3)
if computers.exists(pcname) then computers.item(pcname) = pcname
case "Workstation"
'Need to use Right function to cut of "cn=" from the computer's name
computers.add right(dirobj.name,len(dirobj.name)-3),"NULL"
end select
next

end function

Now that you have this much, you can write another function that iterates over the Dictionary object and perform some random operation based on whether or not each computer has a corresponding computer object in Active Directory, or, any directory really. Due to the differences in directories though, you might have to tweak the object classes that the select case statement is testing for. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me!

Trevor Sullivan

Reading EXIF Data from VBscript

2006-10-30T19:46:00.000-06:00

Well, today I came across SImage. This free, and open-source COM object allows you to work with EXIF data from image files. Pretty nifty ... I'm playing with a classic ASP that'll display such data using this free library :) Perhaps I'll post some examples ... enjoy!

Disabling NetBIOS over TCP/IP Via Registry

2006-10-10T05:58:00.000-05:00

So, if anyone out there is trying to get rid of NetBIOS to reduce broadcast traffic and optimize their network, I'm putting together a short guide on how to disable NetBIOS via the registry, should you need to perform this operation on a large number of computers. Since manually visiting each computer requires too much work, we'll look at the registry value we need to change using a script to disable NetBIOS.

The registry value we need to change resides in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters\Interfaces\Tcpip_\ key, and the value's name is NetBIOSOptions. There are three valid values for this value:

0x0: Use NetBIOS setting from DHCP server or Enable if static IP is used
0x1: Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP
0x2: Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP

As you can probably tell, we want to use the last option, 0x2 as the correct value to disable NetBIOS. Let's look at how we can use WMI to access the registry of a computer remotely and change this value for us.

strComputer = "."
HKLM = 2147483650
valuename = "NetBIOSOptions"
subkey = "System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters\Interfaces\"

'Get registry provider from WMI
set registry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")
'Get subkeys of Interfaces key ... these will be random GUIDs, so we need to grab them dynamically
registry.EnumKey HKLM, subkey, subkeys

for i = 0 to ubound(subkeys)
'Set hex value of registry value to 0x2. We have to use the built-in VBscript hex function to convert from decimal to hex data type
registry.SetDWORDValue HKLM, subkey & subkeys(i), valuename, hex(2)
next

Using the ShellExec Object to Your Advantage

2006-09-29T06:38:00.000-05:00

Good day everyone! Today, I have for you a short article on using the WshScriptExec object to help you write quality VBscripts while still being able to make calls to external executables. The WshScriptExec object cannot be directly instantiated, but rather is captured when executing a process. By setting a variable equal to the output of the WshShell.Exec method, you can grab an instance of the WshScriptExec object. Once you "get" this object, you are able to manipulate the running process by sending commands to it, or by looking at the console output of the program. Let's run through a quick example of how we can use the WshScriptExec object to make a better script.

Sample Script

Purpose: We will create a sample script to back up some plain-text log files (IIS logs for example), compress them into an archive folder using 7-zip, and then delete the temporary copy of the log files we create. Yes, I know we could back them up directly from the source, but it's always good to have a temporary working copy and clean up afterwards.

Strategy: 1) Using the FileSystemObject (FSO), copy the log files from a network path to the local machine. 2) Use the WshShell.Exec method to execute 7-zip with proper arguments. 3) We will use the StdOut property of the WshScriptExec object to determine when 7-zip has completed. 4) Use existing FSO to remove the (now compressed) log files.

'Create FSO and Shell object
set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set shell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
'Establish local and remote working directories
remotedir = "\\fileserver01\logs"
localdir = shell.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments") & "\logs\"

'Function to copy log files from remotedir to localdir
function copyFiles()
    'Use CopyFile method of FSO to copy files
  fso.copyfile remotedir & "\*.log", localdir
end function

'Function to compress files with 7-zip
function compressFiles()
    'use WshShell.Exec method to execute 7-zip command. Double-double quotes are there to encapsulate file paths with spaces--IMPORTANT
    'Capture return value (the WshScriptExec object we want) in variable output
  set output = shell.exec "7za a """ & localdir &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; "archive"" """ & localdir & "*.log"""

    'Don't proceed with rest of script (log clean-up) until 7-zip is done executing. 7-zip will normally write "Everything is OK" to the console when completed successfully
    while not (instr(output.stdout.readall, "Everything") <> 0)
    wscript.sleep 100
    wend
end function

function cleanUp()
   fso.deletefile localdir & "*.log"
end function

So there you have it. By using the StdOut property, we can test the console output to see if 7-zip executed properly. It's missing a main function to make calls to the other functions, but ... the concept is there, and 7-zip compression is awesome.

A little more personal info, and ...

2006-09-28T17:25:00.000-05:00

Well, I've mostly recovered from the vehicle accident, and I've got a new car now, a 2006 Hyundai Sonata v6 :-) Finally settled with the insurance company and all ... which took much longer than it should have, but oh well, at least I got my reimbursement and hopefully I won't have to deal with this type of situation again in the near future ... *sigh*

Anyway, you all aren't here to hear about my personal life, I don't think ... so, I figured I would introduce a small utility included with VMware Server called vmware-mount. This utility is great, because it allows you to mount a virtual hard disk image as a partition in another Windows computer! Pretty neat isn't it? Well, here's the situation I've got: I'm installing Windows 2003 on a VM at work, and I need to transfer 2003 SP1 to the VM. I'm not sure if there's a way to do this through the VMware GUI, but I know that vmware-mount will come to the rescue! Here's the basic syntax to mount a hard-disk image: vmware-mount x: "c:\virtual machines\imagefile.vmdk" <-- this will mount the specified hard-disk to x:. Pretty handy 'eh?

On a More Personal Note ...

2006-08-09T14:08:00.000-05:00

This is what happens when a semi turns in front of you at an intersection ... my dead 2003 Saturn ION.

Deploying a BIOS Update to Dell Systems

2006-07-31T16:24:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way responsible for any damage to any system cause by following the instructions in this article. This is purely informational and should only be used by trained Systems Administrators well-versed in both computer hardware and software. Your actions, your responsibilities. :-)

Introduction

So, if you're a Systems/Network Administrator, a Desktop Admin, or maybe even part of a smaller helpdesk staff, you may be familiar with the task of BIOS upgrades. BIOS upgrades have been a pesky task, often because there hasn't been a method of upgrading large numbers of systems simultaneously, or at least automatically. What I'm going to show you today is how you can use a few simple components to update the firmware on any number of Dell Systems automatically. For simplicity's sake, I'm not going to go into the details of how to actually deploy a script, because that's ultimately up to you, although I'll leave a couple of recommendations for how you could do it.

My Situation

In my particular case, I have approximately 550 client computers needing BIOS upgrades, which consist of a variety of Dell Optiplex GX270 and GX280 small form-factor (SFF) desktops; Most of them are the older 270's. This morning, I happened to notice that on 7/21/2006, Dell released a new revision of the GX270's firmware. This prompted me to investigate some method of deploying the BIOS update, especially since I've come across this situation before, but haven't had the brains to find a real resolution to it; That said, Dell's Support department didn't exactly help that much ... despite a couple calls placed this morning, I ended up telling both technicians I spoke to how to do it in the end. One of them didn't even know what Dell OpenManage was before I told him about it ... *yikes*

What You Need

You really don't need much to complete this seemingly onerous task. Within about the next 15 minutes, I'll bet you have a pretty good idea in mind of how to approach this. The four things you need to mass-update your desktop computer's firmware are:

Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation (OMCI)
Basic Windows Scripting Host skills
The executable file for upgrading your system's BIOS (I've only tested the GX270's)
Some method of deploying a script file (I'll get into this later)

Armed with these four tools, you'll be able to get your entire network up-to-date in no time. Now that we know what we need ahead of time, let's get down to the grindstone and make things happen!

How It Works

The basic process is going to look something like this:

Deploy the OMCI to all client machines (no reboot required)
Extract the ever so valuable HDR file from the BIOS update executable
Whip up a quick script that uses the OMCI's WMI provider to flash the BIOS
Deploy the script

Deploying the OMCI

Deploying Dell's OMCI is pretty simple. You'll want to download the latest version of the client for your system from http://support.dell.com. As of this writing, the most current version if v7.3. After unpacking the file you download from Dell Support, you'll be left with a setup.exe and a couple other files. Setup.exe is the one we want from here; You'll want to run this from the command-line on each computer you want to install the OMCI on: "setup.exe /s /v/qn". This will instruct setup.exe to execute silently, and will pass the /qn CLI parameters to msiexec.exe which instruct it to operate quietly with no user interface. Once you get this packaged up, here's a few methods you could use to deploy it:

Novell Zenworks Desktop Management
Microsoft Active Directory Group Policy Startup Script
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Application Package
Script using WMI's Win32_Process class to spawn a process locally or remotely

Extracting the HDR File

Since we are using the OMCI to install the BIOS update, we can't pass the executable file to it, we have to give it an HDR file. If you're using a Windows computer to extract the HDR file, open a command prompt, cd to the folder where the BIOS executable resides, and run the following command: " -writehdrfile" minus the quotes. If you're running a Linux system, Dell has some instructions on how to extract the HDR file from the executable. I'm assuming that most of you will have a Windows workstation available to do these operations on. Now that we've got the HDR file, put it on a network share accessible to your clients (eg. \\server\ITshare), and then let's look at how to create a script to install the new update.

Write a Quick Script

Well, when I said whip up a script earlier on, I really meant it; This script will be 2 lines long and will perform the task of updating the machine's BIOS. First, a little bit of background; The Dell OMCI actually isn't much more than a WMI provider that exposes quite a bit of information and functionality to the WMI service. Once installed though, it started popping up a bunch of messages at me about chassis intrusion, but how to disable those dumb notifications is beyond the scope of this article. Basically, our script will connect to the newly installed namespace (root\dellomci), grab the Dell_Configuration class, and call the FlashBios static method (more on static classes/members), passing it the path to the HDR file as its only parameter, to finally update the system's BIOS. Without further to do, here we go:

set dellconf = GetObject("winmgmts:root\dellomci:Dell_Configuration)
dellconf.FlashBIOS("\\server\ITshare\gx270.hdr")

Yep, that's it. This is what you'll want to run on the systems you want to update with this BIOS version. Pretty simple script isn't it? If you want to investigate more functionality in the OMCI, I encourage you to use the wbemtest utility provided by Microsoft in Windows XP and connect to the root\dellomci namespace. Choose Enum Classes --> Recursive --> OK for a full list of classes in this namespace.

Deploying Your Script

Well, now that we have all the pieces together, we can finally deploy the script to our clients. Again, we can use similar methods as above to deploy the script:

Novell Zenworks Desktop Management
Active Directory Startup Scripts (untested)
Remotely spawn a process using the Win32_Process class in WMI (root\cimv2)
E-mail out a script file to users (unreliable/insecure)

Once you've decided on one of these methods to deploy your script, you should be good to go.

Conclusion

Well, I hope this short tutorial has provided some insight to someone out there. I took the time to write this guide because my own attempts to locate information regarding BIOS deployment failed pitifully. I couldn't really find any firm answers to many of my questions, especially about using OpenManage IT Assistant to send out the firmware updates. No one at Dell could give me straight answers, and no one knew how all the pieces fit together properly. My initial attempts to resolve this predicament began a little over a year ago, but I gave up trying to find information on it. After learning about scripting, WMI, and other general computing concepts, I was finally able to gather the pieces myself and make everything work the way I wanted it to. If anyone would like to ask questions about this tutorial, or about WSH scripting, WMI, or related technologies, I'd love to hear them. Please feel free to e-mail me at pcNOSPAMgeek101 at gmail.com. Until next time ....

Trevor Sullivan

DNS Client :: DNS Resolution Suffixes

2006-07-12T09:45:00.000-05:00

What is DNS?

DNS is an interesting, but very well thought-out concept for name-to-IP, IP-to-name, SRV-to-name, and other types of resolution. It is much more versatile than NetBIOS, it's easier to manage, it's more organized, and it just makes sense, plain and simple. DNS also allows you to have multiple servers of the same name, but still be able to tell them apart.

Microsoft's Active Directory relies heavily on DNS and is required for operating an Active Directory Domain. It is required for clients to locate vital services via DNS Service Records (SRV records) such as LDAP, Global Catalogue, and a Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC). With this in mind, you ought to realize that without DNS, you can't really have a working Active Directory Domain. So ... what if you have several Active Directory domains and you need to set up proper DNS name resolution on your client machines?

A Multi-Domain Environment

Well, say you have a tri-Active Directory Domain environment with the names DomA.local, DomB.local, and DomC.local, and you need your clients to be able to access resources in each of these domains (in case you haven't guessed, this is the scenario at my current employer). Well, normally (I shouldn't say normally, because these are all old technologies), your clients would resolve names via NetBIOS broadcasts, a HOSTS file (ugh), or WINS, but WINS is dying, so we're left with a pure DNS environment (ahhhhhh, when properly set up, DNS is best). So your clients are most likely pointed to whichever DNS server is authoritative for the client's domain, and when you ping a resource by hostname alone, everything works okay, right? Well, that depends entirely on which domain you are trying to access a resource in. If your client is a member of DomA.local, is pointed at the authoritative server for that domain, and you're trying to access a resource in DomB.local by only its hostname (eg. server01), chances are that you'll be unable to resolve its name properly. Why is this?

A Scenario of Ambiguous Names

When a DNS client attempts to resolve a name in DNS, it must resolve its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) because you could have an identically named resource that's in a different domain. The DNS suffix (the actual domain name itself) is what separates an identically named resource in DomA.local, DomB.local, and even DomC.local. What this means is that if you have a server named server01 in each of your three domains, your clients would have to resolve it via its FQDN to void the ambiguity of the three identically named servers. So how can you avoid having to type the FQDN of a server if it has an similarly named twin in another domain? Well, you can't! But there is a way to tell your clients which one to locate first, and this is what we'll investigate below.

Also ...

Another scenario may be this: You have a client that is a member of DomA.local. The client needs to resolve the IP of server99.DomB.local, but doesn't specify the domain name (aka domain suffix), only the hostname (server99). If it doesn't try to append DomB.local when resolving the name, it will fail, because DomA.local doesn't have a server99, and it stops there. You must instruct the client to append DomB.local when trying to resolve the hostname in order for it to work properly (this is assuming that your DNS Administrator has properly set up conditional forwarding for each of the domains).

So What Do I Have to Change?

Once you know how the setting is stored, you can then decide on how to change the given setting. The setting in question is a comma-separated string value stored in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive on each computer. Here is the full path: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters\SearchList. So in order to change this setting, all you need to do is figure out what domains you have (DomA.local, DomB.local, and DomC.local), and decide on what order you would like clients to resolve names in. In most, if not all, circumstances your clients should first try the domain suffix which they are a member of (eg. client is member of DomA.local, and should therefore attempt to resolve names to that domain first) so that they can contact Domain Controllers and such properly, but beyond that it's basically up to you what order you'd like them to try name resolution in. Basically, you'll end up having a string value looking like "doma.local,domb.local,domc.local". If you ever add a 4th domain (DomD.local), just append a comma and the domain name to it.

And How Do I Change It?

In Windows, the DNS client's Default Search Suffix(es) is configurable via the TCP/IP properties of a particular network adapter. This setting tells the client which Domain Names (aka Suffixes) to append to a hostname, when only a hostname is provided, to attempt to resolve its name. Multiple domains can be specified, and the top one is always tried first, followed by the 2nd, 3rd, and so on. If none of the FQDNs generated by appending the suffix to the hostname can be resolved, the client will fail. Setting this option through the Windows GUI is easy (see screenshot), but how, as a desktop administrator, can you configure this option on 10 clients at once? What about 50, or 500?

I Knew You'd Say That ...

Yes indeed, once again in our lifetime, we'll need to write a script to change this. As you probably can recall from a previous article, I showed you how to change registry data with a Visual Basic Script plus the added strength of WMI. You don't need WMI and can also change registry data with a Wscript.Shell object which we'll review here briefly; The nice thing about WMI is that you can run one script locally on your management workstation or server, instead of having to delpoy a script to all your workstations. We'll write one script to see how to change the actual registry value using a Wscript.Shell object, and then we'll write a script with WMI and ADSI/LDAP to grab all your computer accounts from your Active Directory domain, and connect to each of them to change this value. Here goes:

'Create a shell object
set myShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
'Write the registry value
myShell.RegWrite "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters\SearchList","doma.local,domb.local,domc.local"

Simply save that text to a file with a vbs extension and double-click it. OMG was that hard or what? Two lines of actual code to accomplish our simple administration task? It cannot be! My hope is that you realize that programming/scripting is not as hard as it seems, and that you too can master it even if you haven't started, or just recently starting learning it. The code to connect to a directory service and use WMI is almost just as easy, it's just a little bit more code. For simplicity purposes, this script will assume that all your computer objects are in the default Computers container in Active Directory.

'Get the RootDSE LDAP object
set oLDAP = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
'Extract the domain name in LDAP format
myDomain = oLDAP.Get("defaultNamingContext")
'Get the default computers container in your domain
set oLDAP = GetObject("LDAP://cn=computers," & myDomain)

'For each computer object in the computers container, call the updateDNSSearchOrder method with the computer's name LDAP attribute
for each item in oLDAP
if item.class = computer then updateDNSSearchOrder(item.name)
next

'Create a function that takes the target PC name as a parameter
function updateDNSSearchOrder(computername)
'Get a WMI object on the remote machine pointing to the StdRegProv class in the root\default namespace
set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; computername & "\root\default:StdRegProv")
'Set the string value using the SetStringValue method of the StdRegProv class. Note the comma at the beginning. Because HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is the default hive, you don't need to specify the value for it
objWMI.SetStringValue ,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TcpIp\Parameters","SearchList","doma.local,domb.local,domc.local"
end function

There, that wasn't so bad was it? If you remove all the comments in the code, it's only a few lines long, in fact it's exactly 10! Not bad at all for making a domain-wide change! Anyway, I hope you learned something from this tutorial! Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions at pcNOgeekSPAM101@gmail.com!

Firefox Rant

2006-07-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, Firefox is really starting to annoy me. Don't get me wrong, it's a fabulous browser, and I could go on for hours (almost literally) about why it's better (yes, it is unarguably much better) than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Some of the nicest things about Firefox are:

The about:config page that allows you to configure almost anything
Tabbed browsing
Search as you type :: I love this
Clear Private Data :: Keep your personal data secure
Nice bookmark manager
Keyboard shortcuts to open/close/switch tabs, and more
Extensions :: I use Forecast Fox, Adblock, and SessionSaver (not using SS right at the moment though)
Page source viewer and nicely organized Page Properties window
Resizable text :: This is great for my laptop's high-res LCD panel, ouch on the eyes

Okay, so there I've named off exactly (wow) 10 points that I like about Firefox without really even trying to think of much. Now why am I going off on a rant about why I dislike it? Well, maybe because my laptop has 2GB of RAM in it, and Firefox is using TWENTY-FIVE percent of it! (see screenshot to the left) I currently have FIVE tabs open in Firefox, nothing special, no big images, no embedded flash objects, no media player objects. Just text, some basic images in the respective web pages, and that's it. Why in heaven's name would Firefox be using 512MB+ of RAM for five tabs? I've read stuff on this phenomenon before, and people say it's not memory leaks, they say it's because Firefox caches stuff in memroy. That may or may not be true, but all I know is that I really don't appreciate Firefox using up 25% of my RAM; That's not caching, that's either a memory leak, or they need to fix the amount of caching that Firefox does. Also, did you notice the 6 hours of CPU time there? My laptop has been running for 16 days now, and Firefox has used 6 hours of CPU time. The system process on here has only used half of that, and everybody complains about Explorer's use of CPU time, and that's only 24 minutes. Firefox is a generally good browser, but talk about a resource hog! I wouldn't recommend people with computers older than maybe a year or two to use Firefox ... it's either that, or when Firefox is open for a while, you might as well kiss other program's access to system resources goodbye. Anyway, make your own judgments about Firefox, but I'm seriously thinking about trying Opera for my daily browsing tasks. It seems to run a lot quicker, and there isn't lag opening tabs after a while like Firefox has. Okay, I'm done.

Finding the Most Recently Used Direct3D Application

2006-06-26T10:38:00.000-05:00

The Windows registry stores a lot of interesting information, and is home to a lot of settings in Windows. Many people seem to overlook this when looking for information, most likely because it can be very intimidating. Things aren't always as hard to find as you might imagine; Most settings are spelled out in plain english. One interesting piece of information I just found out you can obtain is the most recently used application that utilized the Direct3D API. I'm not exactly sure how this could be useful information, but in the right environment, it might be something you need to know. Anyway, the name of the last executable to initialize the Direct3D API is located in the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Direct3D\MostRecentApplication, and the value's name is Name. For example, my computer is currently set to googleearth.exe because that is the last Direct3D-enabled app I used. Anyway, hopefully someone finds this interesting and useful :) Here's a VB script to grab the value, and if you want to use it, copy/paste the text into a .VBS file and double-click it to run it:

dim appname
set regprov = GetObject("winmgmts:root\default:stdregprov")
regprov.GetStringValue 2147483649, "Software\Microsoft\Direct3D\MostRecentApplication", "Name", appname
wscript.echo appname

Remote Task Manager

2006-06-23T17:42:00.000-05:00

So ... I decided I would post a small HTML application I wrote a little while ago. I've been thinking about how I could improve it, but I don't see much else other than being able to specify a username and password perhaps. I'm sure I could be creative, but that's too much effort :)

Anyway, you're probably itching to know what the HTA does. As you may derive from the title, it is basically a task manager that allows you to view and kill tasks either locally or remotely. Basically, you use it by typing a computer name in the box, and click List Processes. Assuming you are logged on as a user with administrative access to the remote machine (eg. Domain Admin), you'll be able to then view the processes running on the machine, and click the small Kill link beside the respective process to make it go bye-bye. It doesn't really do all that much, but it's still sort of cool. Any comments or recommendations on improvements?

Try it yourself
http://www.filehosting.cc/download.php?id=D32ED46D

Fixing problems with WMI

2006-06-15T17:11:00.000-05:00

Sometimes (rarely though) you will have a case where the WMI repository gets corrupted, and when you have a script that attempts to run, you get a Null Exception or something like that. Anyway, that's what I got a couple of times today when I deployed a script that applies a few registry changes using the root\default:StdRegProv class, and I got a couple of reports of it erroring. I didn't initially know any better, but I thought that maybe the StdRegProv class didn't exist in Windows XP SP1 (hence the Null Reference), but that wasn't the case, because it worked on some other SP1 machines. It wasn't until I tried connecting to the root\cimv2 namespace on the couple of affected machines that I understood what was going on; the WMI repository was corrupt. Here's a quick way of testing if there's a problem with WMI:

Goto Start --> Run ... --> type wbemtest --> hit Enter
In the Tester utility, press Connect
Type root\cimv2 in the top-left box where by default it says root\default
Press Enter

At this point, if you get an error saying Invalid Namespace or This Operation is Not Supported, or anything to that effect, chances are that you have a problem with the WMI repository. The reason for this, is that the root\cimv2 is what you could call the "primary" namespace of WMI, or the one that provides the most information about your system; If this namespace isn't working, it's likely that none of them are. Now, here's the steps you can take to actually fix the problem:

Refresh the WMI Repository

Goto Start --> Run ... --> type net stop winmgmt --> press enter

Input Y, if prompted --> press Enter

Open Windows Explorer ([Windows] + E, keyboard shortcut) and navigate to %WINDIR%\System32\wbem\repository
Delete all the contents of the wbem\repository folder
Goto Start --> Run ... --> type net start winmgmt --> press enter

Test the WMI Repository

Goto Start --> Run ... --> type wbemtest --> press enter
Press the connect button
Type root\cimv2 in the upper-left box
Press Enter

At this point, your computer may hesitate for a moment while it rebuilds the WMI repository. Remember, after you delete the repostiory and restart the service, WMI doesn't rebuild the repository until you actually use the WMI service. From this point forward, your problems ought to be resolved and you can go on scripting (or programming) happily :-)

Microsoft Office 2007 Development

2006-06-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally installed the Microsoft Office 2007 beta today. The interface has been change significantly, and I must admit, I had trouble finding the file menu. While that may sound quite embarrassing, you'd have to understand that there is no file menu; Instead, Microsoft has replaced it with a shiny Office logo in the upper-left corner of Excel, the first application I played with. The entire toolbar system has been replaced also, with several groups of tasks that you may come across in your usage of Excel. Along the top, there are the following groups: Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, and View.

What I'm more interested in than the UI though, is development around the Microsoft Office object model. Microsoft has kindly provided wrappers for all the various Office components for use in managed code. Since using DllImport to call unmanaged code seems to be somewhat of a pain in .NET, the fact that Microsoft Provided the wrappers is very nice, and hopefully everything will be as straightforward to work with as the Microsoft Office COM interfaces were in Visual Basic 6. Anyway, feel free to grab the Office 2007 beta and give it a whirl! All the managed code libraries are in the root of the install directory, I believe, so load up Visual Studio and start coding! :-) Enjoy!

First Thoughts on Vista

2006-06-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm going to make this brief, but I thought I'd post a couple of comments about Windows Vista. I just got it up and running on VMware, and thankfully I didn't have any problems with the installation. The initial installation of Vista is very nice, and while not by any means quick, it's not ridden with dialog boxes until after all the major stuff is finished; I always hated coming back to a Windows XP install and seeing it waiting for some bit of user input. Anyway, the GUI setup is a breeze, and the initial boot up is pretty normal. A balloon popup warns you of out-of-date definition files for Windows Defender, and of missing anti-virus software, a nice background awaits you, and that's about it. The UI layout really hasn't been changed all that much, which comes as somewhat of a disappointment to me, but I guess you can't change too much between each version of Windows without confusing your entire userbase :-| I did happen across one thing which I'd like to post a screenshot of tonight before I actually do go to bed (I'm wondering if that will ever happen right about now). I came across the Performance Monitor application whilst browsing the System32 folder, and I must say I'm rather impressed. The new layout is well-designed, and it certainly provides a better feel for an overall idea of how your system is running. Also, I took a quick look at the blank MMC console, and it seems that they've done a nice job updating the MMC UI as well. For some reason (and I can't figure out why), the text is easier to read, everything looks a bit more organized, and I feel a bit more in control of what's going on. So anyway, with that ... I'll leave you to make your own assumptions about the rest of the o/s. I'm going to bed now :)

Script to find ProgID's Registered with the local COM server

2006-06-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

Here's a script I wrote up quickly tonight that grabs all the registered COM objects with ProgID's and outputs it to comma-delimited text. Basically, what I do with it, since I was way too lazy (hey, I had other things going on too :-) to use a Scripting.FileSystemObject is to run it from the command line using cscript.exe and use the ">" to redirect to a file. Here's an example from the command line:

cscript findProgIDs.vbs > progIDs.csv

Then remove the first couple lines from the text document, and open the CSV file with OpenOffice Calc. Select columns A and B, goto Data --> Sort --> OK, and voila! You now have a list of COM objects, complete with both ProgID and VersionIndependentProgID pulled fresh from your local computer's registry! Now, as for what you can do with these, I have absolutely no idea, but this is at least a start :) Here's what I do: find something that sounds interesting that you'd want to script with (I chose Microsoft.Update.ServiceManager), goto Google, type in the name of the COM object, and see if anyone has examples or documentation on how to use it. Anyway, hopefully this helps someone out or puts some new ideas in someone's mind .... just throwing it out there for fun. You never know what you can find ... maybe even a script that prints out a PDF document without taking the steps of opening it up and choosing print? Until next time ...

EDIT: Here's a link I found to some documentation on using the Windows Update API

on error resume next
subkey = "CLSID"
const HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT = 2147483648
set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:root\default:StdRegProv")

objWMI.EnumKey HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, subkey, keys

for each key in keys
skey = subkey & "\" & key & "\ProgID"
svkey = subkey & "\" & key & "\VersionIndependentProgID"
objWMI.GetStringValue HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, skey, "", ProgID
objWMI.GetStringValue HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, svkey, "", IProgID
if ProgID <> "" and IProgID = "" then
wscript.echo ProgID
elseif ProgID <> "" and IProgID <> "" then
wscript.echo ProgID & "," & IProgID
end if
next

Using Oleview.exe to find scriptable COM objects

2006-06-09T11:48:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone ... today, I have for you, a quick posting on how to use the Oleview program to locate COM objects that are scriptable in your daily VB scripting! I'm guessing that from the few search results on Google, that not many people are aware of this, but the Windows Resource Kit tools has a handy tool that allows you to view information about the type libraries registered with the COM server on a Windows computer. First, download and install the Windows 2003 resource kit, and then navigate to the folder you installed it to. Open up the oleview executable and browse around in it for a bit if you'd like.

The purpose of using this tool (at least my purpose) is to find some COM objects that I can use with VB script to do cool stuff. One particular object I came across is the Windows Media Player type library. This can be instantiated with the following code:

set playerobject = CreateObject("wmplayer.ocx")

For beginners out there who are asking "How do you know to use wmplayer.ocx?" I do have an answer! Using the oleview tool, you can figure out the name of the object you would like to create an instance of. If you'd like, follow along by opening up Oleview, and navigating to Objects Classes --> Grouped by Component Category --> Automation Objects --> Windows Media Player, and click that item. In the right-hand pane of Oleview, you'll see some information about the type library, and more specifically, the ProgID (or VersionIndependentProgID) of the object. This is what you need to know in order to create an instance of a COM object. While writing this article, I decided to randomly choose another object in the same list as another example, so go ahead and navigate to Microsoft Agent Control 2.0. Again, on the right side you should see the VersionIndependentProgID of "Agent.Control". By calling the built-in VBscript function CreateObject, you can instantiate this object as well.

Now, you might be asking yourself: "What can I do with this object once I've got an instance of it?" That will hopefully come in another article shortly as I'm running out of time, however, I will tell you that you can use Oleview to find out the answer for yourself. Happy scripting!

Novell vs Windows login prompt?

2006-06-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I started a new job, and I have been re-introduced to Novell Netware! :-o Anyway, I updated my computer provided to me from Windows XP Service Pack 1 to SP2, and I started having trouble getting the login prompt to show up. I remember having come across this problem almost 2 years ago now, but I thankfully remembered how to get around it. Besides, for whatever reason, it seems that the Novell authentication still works even without using the Novell login box. Well, here's how to fix the problem if you upgrade to XP Service Pack 2 while you've got the Novell client installed:

First, a little background information. Windows XP uses a DLL file called msgina.dll (located in %windir%\system32) to display the login prompt and accept user credentials. When the Netware client is installed, it "takes over your system" by replacing msgina.dll with its own login prompt, appropriately named nwgina.dll. The setting that changes which login prompt is used, is found in the registry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive. If you can't get the Netware login prompt to display after upgrading to SP2, here's a method that worked for me to get around the problem:

Boot into Windows XP safe mode by pressing F8 right between POST (Power-on self-test) and Windows XP loading
Make sure you choose basic safe mode, not safe mode with networking, as this will still attempt to load nwgina.dll
Login to a local user account with administrative access to the computer
Choose Start --> Run ... --> type "regedit" and press enter
Navigate to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon
Find the GinaDLL value, double-click to change it, and type in "msgina.dll"
Reboot your computer into normal mode, and login

I hope this helps someone out there who's still forced to work with Netware :) Feel free to leave a comment if this works for you. Cheers!

Adding Time Servers to Windows XP

2006-05-18T08:39:00.000-05:00

Windows XP normally only has two time servers configured. Actually, on the fresh installation of XP Media Center Edition that came on my new Inspiron e1705 had a few additional ones as well, but nonetheless, I was curious to know if there was a way to permanently add additional time servers. While I was working on a completely unrelated project this morning, however, I found a registry key that would allow you to do just this. If you're looking for the DNS addresses of additional time servers, I recommend doing a Google search for time servers, or try here or here. Following below are the directions you'll need to add these DNS addresses to your computer to synchronize with:

Open the Registry Editor by choosing Start --> Run ... --> type "regedit" in the prompt, and press OK
Navigate your way through the registry tree to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers
Create a new REG_SZ (string value) by right-clicking in the right-hand pane, select New --> String Value and make sure to use a integer as its name. The way this works is that the lowest numbered value shows up at the top of the NTP time server list in the Windows Date/Time utility
Open the reg key and type in the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the NTP server you'd like to use
Open the Date/Time Windows utility by right-clicking the systray and click "Adjust Date/Time"
Go to the Internet Time tab and select the new NTP server you added to the registry

As you can see, there are quite a few things that you may not normally think of sitting in the registry, you just have to find them. Later on when you do happen across them, you think ... hey I always wondered how to do that! :)

Enumerate Administrators

2006-05-16T11:01:00.000-05:00

Well, here's a script that pulls a list of computers from your Active Directory domain, connects to each computer, and enumerates a list of users, groups, or computer accounts that have local administrative permissions. When I wrote this script, I had in mind security auditing, as I wanted to make sure that no one who didn't need Administrator privileges, didn't have them. The script will also echo out the user currently logged onto each computer. For terminal servers, this will only show one user, but it was designed with single-logon XP clients after-all, so don't be picky :)

If you have any trouble running this script, feel free to let me know. I designed it be cross-domain compatible so that I could post it up here and anyone could use it. I welcome any comments, questions, and constructive criticism; I'm always looking for ideas on how to make some cool new script. Anyway, without further to do, here is the script:

'Computers array
dim computers
'Computers that weren't accessible
dim bad

set objAD = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
domain = objAD.Get("DefaultNamingContext")
set objAD = GetObject("LDAP://" & domain)
objAD.filter = array("computer","organizationalUnit")

getComputers(objAD)
computerlist = split(computers)

for i = 0 to ubound(computerlist)-1
if isAlive(computerlist(i)) then enumAdmins(computerlist(i))
next

'==================FUNCTION==================
'Name/Params: getComputers(pcname)
'Purpose: Connect to computer, grab local Administrators group, and echo out members
'==============================================
function getComputers(objAD)
for each adobj in objAD
if adobj.class = "organizationalUnit" then
'The replace here fixes up any OUs that might have slashes in the names
set ou = GetObject("LDAP://" & replace(adobj.distinguishedName,"/","\/"))
getComputers(ou)
elseif adobj.class = "computer" then
pcname = right(adobj.name,len(adobj.name)-3)
computers = computers & pcname & " "
end if
next
end function

'==================FUNCTION==================
'Name/Params: enumAdmins(pcname)
'Purpose: Connect to computer, grab local Administrators group, and echo out members
'==============================================
function enumAdmins(pcname)
on error resume next
set computer = GetObject("WinNT://" & pcname & "/Administrators")
if err.number <> 0 then
bad = bad & pcname & " "
else
set users = computer.Members()
wscript.echo "##### " & pcname & " (" & getLoggedOnUser(pcname) & ") #####"

for each user in users
wscript.echo user.name
next
end if

Err.clear
end function

'==================FUNCTION==================
'Name/Params: getLoggedOnUser(pcname)
'Purpose: Connect to computer, grab currently logged on user and return value
'==============================================
function getLoggedOnUser(pcname)
on error resume next
set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & pcname & "\root\cimv2:win32_computersystem")

if err.number = 0 then
set results = objWMI.Instances_
for each obj in results
getLoggedOnUser = obj.username
next
end if
err.clear
end function

'==================FUNCTION==================
'Name/Params: isAlive(pcname)
'Purpose: Ping computer to pre-test for IP connectivity. Returns true if resolved IP address is pingable
'==============================================
function isAlive(pcname)
isAlive = false
set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
sQuery = "select * from win32_pingstatus where address='" & pcname & "' and timeout=1000"
set results = objWMI.ExecQuery(sQuery)

for each result in results
if result.statuscode = 0 then
isAlive = true
end if
next
end function

badmachines = split(bad)
wscript.echo vbcrlf & "The following computers were unable to be contacted. Please audit these individually"
wscript.echo "===================================================================================="
for i = 0 to badmachines - 1
wscript.echo badmachines(i)
next

Script to enable RDP

2006-03-30T15:19:00.000-06:00

Today I developed a script that enables RDP on a remote computer. Unfortunately the script was not designed to take alternate credentials when making the connection to WMI, although I may do that at some point. Here's the story on how I came up with it:
This morning, I was planning on installing Exchange onto a test Windows Server at home to experiment with some settings. I popped the CD for Exchange into the drive of the machine, and left for work thinking I was all set to go. Well, the problem is that I installed Windows at the last minute before going to bed last night, so I didn't configure any options, namely, to enable remote desktop connections. So then I get to work, find out that I can't connect to it, and figure that I will simply edit the registry as usual using regedit from one of my other machines. Boy was I wrong; for some reason, regedit wasn't properly taking alternate credentials, so I had no way to connect into the machine. I attempted connecting to the administrative share of the machine, and was successful, so I knew I could at least copy files to it, and also that I had the userID/password right. So then I decide that the only way I'm gonna get on that box is to do something through the command line. As far as I know, there's no way to import a section of the registry with a command-line (although I'm sure there is), but what I do know is that cscript is a command-line interpreter for WSH. So I went ahead and wrote out this script, ran into a couple of problems, fixed 'em, then used psexec from Sysinternals to execute the script using cscript from the command-line. The nice thing about psexec, is that it allows you to submit alternate credentials, and it worked flawlessly. So all in all, it was a bit more effort than was really necessary, but I had no other choice except to be physically in front of the machine. It pays off to know how to script in Windows (and *nix I'm sure), because if you find yourself in a pinch, you've always got a way to get yourself unstuck. So without further to do, here's the script:

NOTE: If you use a utility such as psexec or something else to execute it on a remote machine, to enable it on that machine, simply pass a "." as the argument, which is a substitute for "localhost" basically.

'Author: Trevor Sullivan
'Date: March 30th, 2006
'Purpose: enable remote desktop from a script. This script
'can be used with psexec or other remote command line
'utilities to enable RDP.
'Usage: [cscript | wscript] enableRDP.vbs
set args = Wscript.Arguments

if args.count <> 0 then
enableRDP(args.item(0))
else
wscript.echo "Usage: [cscript] enableRDP.vbs "
end if

function enableRDP(pcname)
strNS = "root\default"
strcls = "stdRegProv"
strConn = "winmgmts:\\" & pcname & "\" & strNS &amp; ":" & strcls
wscript.echo strConn

set objWMI = GetObject(strConn)
result = objWMI.SetDWORDValue(,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server","fDenyTSConnections","0")

wscript.echo result
end function

Starbucks Coffee Break Day

2006-03-15T07:04:00.000-06:00

Well, today I stopped into Starbucks before work as usual, and I was kindly told that today, March 15th was the first day that Starbucks is going to host free coffee between the hours of 10am and 12pm! It sounds like a great promotion for them, and I'll bet Starbucks shops nationwide will be packed with people between those hours.

L2TP Tunneling in Windows Server 2003

2006-03-07T08:53:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm looking for a method of replacing a Cisco VPN implementation with the built-in Windows Server 2003 Routing and Remote Access service, which provides a secure VPN tunnel end-point. As far as I know, PPTP tunnels are insecure and generally not recommended, so I'm looking for information on how to implement the L2T protocol. From my research so far, I've learned that you must use certificate authentication and encryption; the problem with this, is that I haven't had a lot of experience using digital certificates in Windows (or any o/s for that matter). Once I get some additional information about this, I'll write up a small guide for other system administrators out there that need to get a secure, and more easily managable VPN solution in place. A lot of you out there may ask why I'd like to replace a Cisco PIX VPN solution with a Windows RRAS solution. Well, the primary reason is that Windows is plenty secure when configured properly, and because using Windows authentication for VPN purges the need to manage two separate user databases.

Quick VBscript

2006-02-28T15:29:00.000-06:00

Well, today I briefly developed this script (under one minute I think) to grab a serial number from a remote computer using WMI. It's not exactly an elegant script, as it'll throw a nasty error if it can't contact the remote computer, although if you know the computer is most likely on, you should have no problems retrieving the serial # from it. Anyway, without further to do, here it is:

strComputer = inputbox("Computer name:")
set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
sClass = "win32_bios"
sQuery = "select serialnumber from " & sClass
set results = objWMI.ExecQuery(sQuery)

for each result in results
wscript.echo strComputer & " :: " & result.serialnumber
next

Stunning results with multi-threaded application development

2006-02-04T17:28:00.000-06:00

Wow ... I've just spent some time today studying multi-threaded application development, and have been absolutely amazed with the results from the multi-threaded test program I created. What kills me most about this new discovery of mine is how easy it is to spawn additional worker threads to make your application more responsive. Here's a great example of how you could use multi-threading: if your application is accessing data from a remote computer on a slow WAN link, you can tell you app to spawn a new thread for the data access, while your main user interface window can continue on in perfect bliss! This is almost exactly what I'm doing with my current test application when connecting to the WMI service on a remote computer. Additionally, since you can specify a different priority for a new thread, this is perfect for times you're running a particularly hefty (lower-priority) WMI query in the background and don't want to make your app lock up while it's in progress. In my future development of a computer management application, I will be sure to take advantage of this awesome, yet easily-implemented feature.

FYI: Don't forget to leave out the parentheses when you're specifying a delegate method, otherwise it'll think you're trying to call the function and give the the following compile-time error: "Method name expected"

Solutions to problems

2006-02-04T11:30:00.000-06:00

Well I've been hacking at a problem that I just figured out. In my code writing, I'm trying to access some information retained in the WMI repository on a computer, and I was having some issues with data conversions. I did some debugging of my own, and I found out that the type being returned from WMI was a uint64, and of course I'm expecting the conversion to be easy. It turns out you can't do an implicit/explicit cast on the value to get a 32-bit integer, which makes sense, and the System.Convert class in the .NET 2.0 Framework doesn't contain a ToUint32 method that takes a uint64 as a parameter (but the .NET 1.1 Framework does). Anyway, I finally figured out that I could call the ToString() method on the property value I was retrieving from WMI (the capacity property in the \\localhost\root\cimv2:Win32_PhysicalMemory class), and then convert the string to a int32. Finally!

Creating a collection class

2006-02-03T17:53:00.001-06:00

I came across this great article within the MSDN documentation that explains how to create your own collection class in .NET. It explains how to implement the Add() and Remove() methods along with the Item property to allow you to access a particular object in your collection via its index value. While they show the index as being an integer in this article, I am assuming that you can also use a string as an index.

C# Progress

2006-01-30T17:58:00.000-06:00

As you already know, I'm trying to learn c# and develop my own applications for ... various tasks. At the moment I'm just beginning a program that will hopefully assist with retrieving important information about computers to aid in systems management. WMI is a great resource to tap into for systems information and management; there are a ton of WMI classes built into Windows XP and Server 2003 that allow you to obtain almost any bit of information you could want, from the depths of the BIOS all the way up to network performance counters.

At the moment, my program called WMI Reader doesn't exactly do a whole lot, but I began by creating a computer class that will eventually be extended further to contain one computer's complete set of information. There is also a small menu which allows you to add a computer to a TreeView control which will allow you to select which computer you are currently working with. I also want to expand the program to log information about computers to a database and allow the user to work in an "offline" or "cached" mode if they would like to view info about a computer that is not powered on but does exist in the database. Anyway, that's all for now ... we'll see how things turn out in my continued learning experience.

Introduction to myself

2006-01-28T16:31:00.000-06:00

Hello, my name is Trevor Sullivan. I'm a resident of the great (yet cold) state of Illinois in the US. My life through now has always consisted of anything and everything computer-related. I've fallen completely in love with computers and technology, and no matter what subject you name about computers, be it network administration, programming using simple scripts, web applications, or even gaming, I always want to know more and learn more about it. Despite the large amount of knowledge available regarding computers, I strive to learn everything I can get my hands on. I'm currently mostly a Windows user, although I do have a server running FreeBSD 5. My current job is in IT, and I assist end-users with computer hard/software issues, and pretty much manage about 200 desktop computers in a Microsoft Active Directory domain. Despite my love for administering large numbers of workstations and helping out with Windows 2003 servers, I also very much enjoy programming. I've taken a big interest into scripting to make reconfiguring the desktop computers easier, faster, and more consistent, and most recently, I've been doing my best to learn C# and the .NET 2.0 Framework so I can develop both my own web applications, windows forms applications, and hopefully some basic games once I start looking at the DirectX API. Programming has always catptured my interest, and the ability for one to create his/her own applications to perform whatever task they need or want is quite powerful. Anyway, I must be going now, but hopefully I will continue to keep this blog updated with my experiences with my various skills using computers so that someone else may learn something from my efforts.