Posts Tagged ‘microsoft windows’
Monday, January 25th, 2016
One very handy "secret" feature of Windows Operating System which is very useful to people who administrate a dozen of Windows servers daily is called "God Mode".
The idea behind "God Mode" is pretty simple it aims to give you maximum control and viability concentrated in one single Window interface.
God Mode was quite a lot ranted over the past years so it is likely that many of my blog readers are already aware of that Windows secret, but for those who didn't it will be
nice to check it out. To see the God Mode Windows functionality just create a New Folder in Windows Desktop or Anywhere on the Windows PC and Rename the New Folder to:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
By creating folder witth his text string you will be able to do almost everything you ever tend to do on Windows from changing the outlook of theme and mouse cursor, changing,
Win explorer's folder's options, modify fonts, change cursor blink rate, get windows performance tools and information, add / remove programs, modify language, modify
firewall settings and in short do everything that is provided by Control Panel + some other goodies like Administrative Tools, Restore Options, Event logs etc. grouped in a fantastic readable manner.
GodMode naming says it all more or less it aims to give you "Godlike" accessibility to the Windows. Of course to be able to properly use the feature you will have to create
the Folder named GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} with Administrator user.
The GodMode is available in Windows OSes since quite a long (2007) and is documented officially by Microsoft
Another alternative shortcut that gives the Godmode Master control panel is:
God.{ed7ba470-8e54-465e-825c-99712043e01c}
Enjoy 🙂
Tags: aims, configure, control panel, everything, feature, goodies, microsoft windows, mouse cursor, text string, Windows God Mode
Posted in Everyday Life, Performance Tuning, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2015
If you’re a sysadmin which needs to deal with Microsoft Windows servers locally or remotely via Remote Desktop RDP client (MSTSC.EXE) or inside a Windows Domain Controller, you will have to frequently debug Windows isseus or Application caused errors by reviewing debug information stored in Event Logs.
Event Viewer is a precious tool to debug often errors with missing libraries or failing programs on Windows boot and thus on M$ Windows it is the Swiss Army knife of sysadmin.
However as staring Event Viewer using the GUI menus, takes a lot of step and looses you time, e.g., you have to navigate to menus:
1. Start button Picture of the Start button
2. clicking Control Panel
3. clicking System and Security
4. clicking Administrative Tools
5.then double-clicking Event Viewer.
6. Granting Administrator permission required If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation
It is much handier to just start it with a shortcut:
Press Windows (Button) + R
– To invoke run prompt
and type:
eventvwr.msc
In case if you’re running eventvwr.msc to connect to remote Windows Server run from command prompt (cmd.exe):
eventvwr.msc /computer=OTHER_Computer_Name
Tags: administrator password, command prompt, confirmation, deal, Event Logs, Event Viewer, exe, Granting Administrator, GUI, How to, information, lot, microsoft windows, MSTSC, run, running, Start, sysadmin, time, Windows Domain Controller, windows server
Posted in Curious Facts, Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Saturday, October 3rd, 2015
If you're into a huge company like IBM (no it doesn't stand for I Blame You butInternational Business Machines ) or Hewlett Packard – where using Microsoft Windows mailing is almost mandatory and you have to write tons of mails daily, you will certainly need to do plenty of screenshots.
Screenshotting in MS Windows is a very trivial thing, you press Prt + Scr (Print Screen Button), open Microsoft Paint and paste (CTRL+V) the file into it then Save the file as a lets say JPEG extension. However if you have to do that regularly, each time to create a screenshot you will have to loose a minute or two. Also it is quite annoying to open Paint and
Outlook version 2010 has a very useful feature Take screenshot from any existing opened Window on Windows host.
To make screenshot directly from Outlook mail client. Click the Write new mail Button
New E-mail -> Insert (tab) -> (click Screenshot)
Depending on your ribbon menu setup, this might be a tiny icon—specifically, a little camera icon with a dotted rectangle.
You will be offered to choose along all opened Windows, for the Window from which you would like to have screenshot, choose one and enjoy
If you don't see a window you want to insert, make sure the program isn't minimized to the taskbar.
Alternatively, if you want just a portion of the screen, click on the Screen Clipping button at the bottom of the Screenshot dropdown. This will bring up a crosshair cursor for you to drag around the area of the screen you want to select.
Your selection should then be inserted into your email – screenshot ready to share with your mates.
Tags: Click, email, everybody, file, ibm, import, make, Microsoft Paint, microsoft windows, Screen Clipping, Screenshotting, tiny icon, Windows Create
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2015
It is shocking news for me and probably to many that according to security specialists at National Vulnerability Database, at present moment for year 2014 Windows looks like more secure than both Apple's (iOS and Mac OS X) as well as to Linux.
Windows has been bullied for its bad OS design and easier to breach Security compared to Linux, there was a constant hype also of Mac OS users claiming the invulnerability of their BSD based OS, but it seems security breach statistics given by National Vulnerability Database security breach evaluation reports tell us security issues for 2014 Windows OSes while compared to other OS vulnerabilities in different operating systems such as Linux.
I will have to disappoint Apple Mac fans but in 2014 Mac OS X was found to be riddled with the greatest number of security problems — 147 in total, including 64 rated as high severity, and 67 as medium.
iOS's security was also ranked poor with 127 vulnerabilities including 32 high and 72 with a medium rating.
For comparison the latest Windows 8.1 had only 36 vulnerabilities, and its predecessors — Windows 8 and 7 — both had same number.
In Enterprise World (users) Windows Server 2007 and 2008 both have 38 vulnerabilities. Reported vulnerabilities were mainly of middle and high severity.
Overall statistics also show there has been a huge increase in the number security vulnerabilities in the NVD security reports database.
In 2013 the number of all logged vulnerabilities were 4,794 while this jumped to 7,038 in y. 2014. The good news is lower percentage of all logged in security issues were rated of critical security importance.
It is mostly third party software not part of OS which contain security issues, 83% of all reported vulnerabilities were laying in 3rd party applications, only 13% percantage were OS specific and 4% hardware related.
Though overall statistics shows Microsoft products more secure than Apple Inc. Products and (Open Source) Linux, though still M$ Internet Explorer is the most insecure web browser, for 2014, Internet Explorer had 242 vulnerabilities while Google Chrome had 124 security issues and the most secure browser rated for 2014 is (surprising for me) Mozilla Firefox.
It is important to say such statistics are not completely relevant because, for example you can rarely see a Linux desktop user infected with Malware but almost everyone around using Windows OS is malware infected, same goes for Mac OS users, there are plenty of vulnerabilities for Mac but overall security of Mac OS is better as I haven't still met Mac OS users with Viruses and Spyware but I fixed about (30!!) of Microsoft PCs and notebooks infected with various Viruses and badware throughout 2014. Also it should be considered that many securitty bugs are kept secret and actively exploited for a long time by blackhats like it happened recently with Heartbleed and ShellShock vulnerabilities
For those interested, below is a list of top vulnerable applications for 2014
Tags: Application Security, microsoft windows, National Vulnerability Database, news, number, Open Source Linux, overall, security issues, statistics, third party, Viruses
Posted in Computer Security, Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 4th, 2014
If you're admin using Mac OS X Desktop or casually on a place where you have no access to a Windows / Linux PC (only have access to your girlfriend of wife MAC OS notebook) and you need to administrate Windows hosts remotely out of office hours (from home), you will need some remote desktop client for Mac OS X.
I was just recently in that situation as we were guests to a friend in Shabla village nearby Sea coast and the only near PC, I had was my wife's MacBook Air running Mac OS X.
I looked in google to see if there is some default RDP (remote desktop protocol) client like MS Windows remote desktop command line client, i.e. (yes there is way to invoke remote desktop on Windows from command line 🙂 ):
mstsc [] [/v:] [/admin] [/f[ullscreen]] [/w:] [/h:] [/public] | [/span] [/edit “connection file”] [/migrate] [/?]
I also looked if there is Mac OS X version ofLinux's rdesktop (command) or RDP Linux GUI remmina
however I didn't find direct port of em, neither there is default integrated RDP Client on Mac OS X, thus after researching a bit further I tried installing the first returned result in Google which was leading to Apple's AppStore – Apple – Remote Desktop.
I tried installing the clicking it but it seemed my wife, didn't know her AppStore as it was her cousin which earlier configured her Mac OS PC on laptop initial install time. Contacting her cousin to ask for the password was a time eater as well as I was lazy to create new appstore account (plus I always prefer to use free software alternative when possible) … did a quick search in Google whether there is some Open Source / Free Software Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X and I found CoRD – Mac OS X remote desktop client for Microsoft Windows computers using the RDP protocol.
CoRD was originally ported from UNIX program rdesktop.
To have CoRD working you will need as a minimum requirement Mac OS X version 10.5 or later.
Here is CoRD's description quoted from its SourceForge website:
CoRD: Simple RDP Remote Desktop
Macs interact well with Windows, and with CoRD the experience is a bit smoother. Great for working on the office terminal server, administrating servers or any other time you'd like your PC to be a bit closer without leaving your Mac. CoRD allows you to view each session in its own window, or save space with all sessions in one window. Scale session windows to whatever size fits you—the screen is resized automatically. Enter full screen mode and feel like you're actually at the computer. The clipboard is automatically synchronized between CoRD and the server. For system administrators, CoRD creates a simpler workflow by allowing you to save server information, then quickly connect to that server by using HotKeys or the server drawer. This makes quickly connecting to a specific server easy, even when managing many servers.
Installing CoRD is pretty, straight forward, just download unzip the archive and run it:
To later run Cord either look it up in Finder or if you prefer like me to access it from command line, you will need to export CoRD PATH in Mac Terminal $PATH variable:
As you see in above screenshot to find out which directory is CoRD located, I've grepped through the processes with
ps ax | grep cord
and then added it to PATH with:
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/svetlana/Application/CoRD.app/Contents/MacOS/
Remembering CoRD to type it each time is annoying, thus to make CorD be accessed like on Linux with rdesktop (easy to remember command), I've used alias:
alias rdesktop='CoRD'
To make the new PATH and alias permanent for the user, I've added it to (/Users/svetlana) – ~/.profile
echo "export PATH=$PATH:/Users/svetlana/Application/CoRD.app/Contents/MacOS/" >> ~/.profile
echo "alias rdesktop='CoRD'" >> ~/.profile
Current CoRD MacOSX version is 0.5.7, for personal ease if I need to install it in future time, I've made my own mirror of cord here.
There is also Microsoft Remote Desktop client for Mac OS 2.1.1 however this version was released back in 2011 and is outdated (not supported for use with Mac OS X v10.7 (Lion) or later).
Tags: alias, bit, command, microsoft windows, need, remote desktop client, screen mode, screenshot, servers, sessions, system administrators, time, Users
Posted in Everyday Life, Mac OS X, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014
In Linux to check uptime there is the uptime command, so how is it possible to check your system uptime – e.g. check when was last time Windows host was rebooted?
Or in other words what is Windows server equivalent to Linux's uptime command?
To check uptime on Windows OS, there is the:
net statistics server
command a shorter reference to this command is net stats srv
To run it quickest way is to press Windows (button)+r type cmd.exe and exec command in Windows command prompt:
C:UsersGeorgi>net statistics server
Server Statistics for \SM07862
Statistics since 21.05.2014 09:55:21
Sessions accepted 1
Sessions timed-out 0
Sessions errored-out 0
Kilobytes sent 0
Kilobytes received 0
Mean response time (msec) 0
System errors 0
Permission violations 0
Password violations 0
Files accessed 0
Communication devices accessed 0
Print jobs spooled 0
Times buffers exhausted
Big buffers 0
Request buffers 0
The command completed successfully.
C:UsersGeorgi>
Statistics since 21.05.2014 09:55:21 – shows when system booted last time, so to check the difference between current time and when system booted last – you need to check current time with time command
C:UsersGeorgi>time
The current time is: 16:59:26,60
Enter the new time:
Alternative command to check when Windows system booted is:
C:UsersGeorgi>systeminfo|findstr "System Boot Time"
System Boot Time: 21.05.2014, 09:54:11
System Manufacturer: HP
System Model: ProLiant BL460c G7
System Type: x64-based PC
System Directory: C:Windowssystem32
Boot Device: DeviceHarddiskVolume1
System Locale: de;German (Germany)
Time Zone: (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
C:UsersGeorgi>
If you want to check Windows boot time "the Windows way" through the GUI, launch Windows Task Manager – run taskmgr command and go to Performance tab
Tags: buffers, check, command, current time, GUI, How to, last, last time, microsoft windows, net, Print, server, Server Statistics, sessions, statistics, system, system boot time, time, Windows
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2014
I'm working on a decomissioning project (for those who hear decomissioning for a first time – in corporate world this means removal of service/s or assigned resources of a server or a physical server hardware that is not to be used in future or is obsolete). The decomissioning includes removal of Apache Tomcat (Software Configuration Item CI – in HP terms) from Microsoft Windows 2007 – Service Pack 2.
Part of decomissioning is of course to create backup of Tomcat Application server and for that I needed to create compressed archive of Tomcat instances. Usually I do archives on Windows using Winrar or Winzip but this time as the server productive server has the minimum installed there was no any external vendor produced archiving software available.
My memories from past were that there is a native compressing program embedded into Windows as I've unzipped compressed archives on Win hosts with no need for external WinZip. However until so far I never did .ZIP archive with no available external uncompress software.
Using Winzip or Winrar so far to make archive from a number of files I used to select files to enter Archive press right mouse button and select Create Archive (Add To Archive) so I expected this will work whenever no Winrar, however there was no obvious button like this, so I googled a bit to find out how is that possible ending up on Article from Microsoft titled "Compress and uncompress files (zip files)", there is a dumb proof video teaching Compressing files with Microsoft default ZIP program is done by the the weird "Send To" menu 🙂
Selecting files to enter Archive;
–> (Click Right Mouse Button) -> (Send To Compressed Zipped Folder)
Honestly If I didn't checked the net probably I will never think of looking it there.
Tags: algorithm, archive, Create Archive, hp, make, memories, Microsoft, microsoft windows, mouse button, need, past, physical server, program, proof, server, server hardware, software, time, Tomcat Application, Win, Windows, WinZip, working, zip
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 13th, 2013
Last 10+ years I worked on GNU / Linux as Desktop. Last 7 years most of my SSH connections were managed from GNOME and I'm quite used to gnome-terminal ssh tabbing. In my new Employee Hewlett Packard. I'm forced to work on Microsoft Windows 7 and thus I used for a month or so Putty and Kitty fork from version 0.63 of PuTTY advertising itself as the best telnet / SSH client in the world. Both of the two lack tabbing and have interface which is pretty unfamiliar to me. As I'm so used to using native UNIX terminal. Fortunately a colleague of mine Ivelin was using an SSH client called MobaXTerm which very much did emulation similar to my favourite gnome-terminal. MobaXterm is not free software / open source app but this doesn't matter so much to me as anyways I'm running a non-free Win OS on my desktop. What makes MobaXterm so attractive is its rich functionality (cosmic years infront of Putty).
Here is website description of MobaXterm quoted from its website:
MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal for Windows with an X11 server, a tabbed SSH client and several other network tools for remote computing (VNC, RDP, telnet, rlogin). MobaXterm brings all the essential Unix commands to Windows desktop, in a single portable exe file which works out of the box.
Overall list of features MobaXterm offers are;
-
multitab terminal with embedded Unix commands (ls, cd, cat, sed, grep, awk, rsync, wget, …)
-
embedded X11 server for easily exporting your Unix/Linux display
-
a session manager with several network utilities: SSH, RDP, VNC, Telnet, Rlogin, FTP, SFTP and XDMCP
-
passwords management for SSH, RDP, VNC, SFTP (on demand password saving)
-
easy graphical file transfer using drag and drop during SSH sessions
-
advanced SSH tunnels creation tool (graphical port forwarding builder)
-
tasks automation using scripts or macros
Mobaxterm is portable just like Putty so its useful to use on HOP stations to servers like used in big companies like HP. Featured embedded Unix commands (e.g., ls, cd, cat, sed, grep, awk, rsync, wget) gives a feeling like you're working on pure Linux console making people addicted to Linux / BSD quite confortable. Some other very useful terminal emulator functions are support for anti-aliasing session manager (save / remember passwords for ssh sessions in Crypted format so much missing in Putty) and it even supports basic macros.
Basic UNIX commands embedded in MobaXterm are taken and ported from Cygwin project – Linux-like environment for Windows making it possible to port software running on POSIX systems (such as Linux, BSD, and Unix systems) to Windows. A very cool think is also MobaXterm gives you a Linux like feel of console navigation in between basic files installed from Cygwin. Some downside I found is program menus which look at first glimpse a bit confusing especially for people used to simplicity of gnome-terminal. Once logged in to remote host via ssh command the program offers you to log you in also via SFTP protocol listing in parallel small window with possibility to navigate / copy / move etc. between server files in SFTP session which at times is pretty useful as it saves you time to use some external SFTP connector tools like WinSCP.
From Tools configuration menu, there are few precious tools as well;
– embedded text editor MobaTextEditor
– MobaFoldersDiff (Able to show diffeernces between directories)
– AsciiTable (Complete List of Ascii table with respective codes and characters)
– Embedded simple Calculator
– List open network ports – GUI Tool to list all open ports on Windows localhost
– Network packets capture – A Gui tool showing basic info like from UNIX's tcpdump!
– Ability to start quickly on local machine (TFTP, FTP, SFTP / SSH server, Telnet server, NFS server, VNC Server and even simple implementation of HTTP server)
Below are few screenshots to get you also idea about what kind of configuration MobaXterm supports
To configure and use Telnet, RSH, RDP, VNC, FTP etc. Sessions use the Sessions tab on top menu.
One very handy thing is MobaXterm supports export of remote UNIX display with no requirement to install special Xserver like already a bit obsolete Xming – X server for Windows.
The X Display Manager Control Protocol (XCMCP) is a key feature of the X11 architecture. Together with XDMCP, the X network protocol allows distributed operation of the X server and X display manager. The requesting X server runs on the client (usually as an X terminal), thus providing a login service, that why the X server ported to MobaXterm from Cygwin also supports XDMCP. If, for example, you want to start a VNC session with a remote VNC server, all you have to do is enter the remote VNC server’s IP address in the VNC area; the default VNC port is already registered.
Accessing the remote Windows server via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is also a piece of cake. Once you establish a session to RDP or other Proto it is possible to save this session so later you just choose between session to access. The infamous (X11 Port Forwarding) or creation of SSH encrypted tunnels between hosts to transfer data securily or hide your hostname is also there.
MobaXterm is undoubtedly a very useful and versatile tool. Functionally, the software is well mannered, and Windows users who want to sniff a little Linux/Unix air can get a good idea of how Linux works. A closer look reveals that anything you can do with MobaXterm can be achieved directly with freely available tools (Cygwin) and Unix tools ported from Cygwin. However, although Cygwin provides a non-Posix environment for Windows, it doesn’t offer a decent terminal, which is one thing Moba-Xterm has going for it.
Admittedly, in pure vanilla Cygwin, you can start an X server automatically and then use xterm, but xterm lacks good-quality fonts, whereas MobaXterm conveniently lets you integrate a font server.
Tags: awk, cat, drag, drop, exe, file, Ftp, grep, infront, manager, microsoft windows, network, open source, password, Putty, RDP, session, session manager, sftp, software open source, ssh, Telnet, terminal, VNC, wget, Windows
Posted in System Administration, Various, Windows | 15 Comments »
Friday, October 11th, 2013
Most of my last 13 years are spend working on Linux. Now in my new job in Hewlett Packard. I'm forced to work again on Microsoft Windows … Therefore I'm trying to refresh my Windows knowledge. One thing I've forgotten with the years is what is Windows command equivalent to Linux grep. On Windows there is a command FINDSTR (find string).
Way to use it is almost identical as GREP on Linux. Lets say I would like to grep all opened listening ports on port 445 (used for samba – SMB shares connections) on Linux command will be:
linux:~# netstat -ant|grep -i 445|grep -i listen
...
Windows equivalent to above grep would be:
C:\> netstat -an | findstr 445 | findstr /I listen
TCP 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP [::]:445 [::]:0 LISTENING
As you can see findstr has the /I argument which instructs for case insesitive search.
FINDSTR has plenty of other useful options that are precious in BATCH scripting for more here is full list of arguments:
TCP 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP [::]:445 [::]:0 LISTENING
C:\> FINDSTR /?
FINDSTR [/B] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/I] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P] [/F:file]
[/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes] [/OFF[LINE]]
strings [[drive:][path]filename[ …]]
/B Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line.
/E Matches pattern if at the end of a line.
/L Uses search strings literally.
/R Uses search strings as regular expressions.
/S Searches for matching files in the current directory and all
subdirectories.
/I Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
/X Prints lines that match exactly.
/V Prints only lines that do not contain a match.
/N Prints the line number before each line that matches.
/M Prints only the filename if a file contains a match.
/O Prints character offset before each matching line.
/P Skip files with non-printable characters.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/A:attr Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?"
/F:file Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console).
/C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string.
/G:file Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console).
/D:dir Search a semicolon delimited list of directories
strings Text to be searched for.
[drive:][path]filename
Specifies a file or files to search.
Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed
with /C. For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello" or
"there" in file x.y. 'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for
"hello there" in file x.y.
Regular expression quick reference:
. Wildcard: any character
* Repeat: zero or more occurrences of previous character or class
^ Line position: beginning of line
$ Line position: end of line
[class] Character class: any one character in set
[^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set
[x-y] Range: any characters within the specified range
\x Escape: literal use of metacharacter x
\<xyz Word position: beginning of word
xyz\> Word position: end of word
For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online Command
Reference.
Tags: FINDSTR, microsoft windows, search string, search strings
Posted in System Administration, Various | No Comments »
Saturday, September 21st, 2013
In Microsoft Windows 8, there is embedded way to mount ISO files. However in Windows 7 still there is no way to mount ISO image files. I just installed a new Windows 7 on my office work notebook given by Hewlett Packard and had to mount an ISO with Microsoft Visio. Normally all know the two standard programs to mount ISO images in Windows;
1. DaemonTools Lite
2. MagicISO
3. Virtual CD-ROM (Microsoft program)
After consulting my colleague I was recommended to rather install Virtual Clone Drive, for the reason Daemontool's latest versions install Spyware on Computer. On the other hand MagicISO is nice one but a bit obsolete already.
Launching installation prompts opens below install Window;
As you can see from installation Virtual Clone Drive supports ISO / IMG / UDF / BIN and CCD images. Once installation complete to Mount an ISO into separate drive quickest way is to Double click on Image. Also it can be done from program by navigating to:
From my little experience so far with Virtual Clone Drive I would recommend Windows users to better install it instead of freeware alternatives. VCD feels more robust.
Tags: ccd images, clone, colleague, daemontools, hewlett packard, iso files, iso image file, iso images, latest versions, magiciso, Microsoft, microsoft visio, microsoft windows, mount iso, virtual cd rom, virtual clone drive, work notebook
Posted in Windows | No Comments »
