Tools

Best practices for… chkdsk

By Alexander Trofimov

The longer I work, the more I’m aware of the simple fact: even the most routine and mundane thing, technology or tool can have something to learn about it. Like you never know what is a cake you it is made from, unless you try to make it yourself =) The same stuff can be told about, say, chkdsk. What do you think: do you need to know something more than command line switches about chkdsk? Ok, if you don’t have an inquiring mind then probably not. But probably you just don’t know what impact it can have on your … Continue reading Best practices for… chkdsk

Creating your own troubleshooting pack

By Alexander Trofimov

Take notice: My new feed address is now http://feed.feedcat.net/806052. Please re-subscribe. As I wrote in one of my blogs, you not only can tell your user which exactly troubleshooting pack to run, you can also create one of your own. Finally I decided to learn how and to tell you. I was pretty sure it was very hard, creating those. But I was plain wrong: it’s easy. Moreover it’s fun, because for creating it you should collect all the components of a geek’s fun: 1) Use GUI 2) Use scripting 3) Run the automation and see the result! So, let’s … Continue reading Creating your own troubleshooting pack

Network trace without NetMon, wireShark, etc… Part 2

By Alexander Trofimov

As I told you in the previous episode, there is more than just capturing without installing any software. Much more, actually. There is a .cab file which contains many files: 33 to be accurate (at least in my case). The files contain the heck of information about the computer’s networking configuration as well as logs. Let’s take a look at those files:   1) adapterinfo.txt: contains info about your NICs’ drivers: How can this be useful? Easily, say, you see the driver for a physical NIC which was issued 5 years ago: why not to upgrade it first? Anyway, this … Continue reading Network trace without NetMon, wireShark, etc… Part 2

Network trace without NetMon, WireShark, etc…

By Alexander Trofimov

It is often necessary to capture and analyze some network traffic to troubleshoot a problem. Usually, it requires to install some software package similar to several stated in the subject to this article. It’s ok, when the computer in question is, say, your laptop, or its user is at least advanced user, has administrative permissions and it is permitted by a security policy to install some new software. But what if it is not the case? A user is some sales manager who don’t want to spend their time installing anything? Or this is a server, where you cannot change … Continue reading Network trace without NetMon, WireShark, etc…

%systemroot%\System32 secrets: defrag

By Alexander Trofimov

The next command also seems to be used the further the less. Partly, probably, because performance of modern computers allows forgetting about the problem of fragmentation unless it is too late becomes huge. Partly because some myths about it have successfully died. But mostly because it is running by default once a week. Earlier (in 9x age) we had a nice GUI-based defragmentation program, now we have only a command line tool and very reduced (without that visualized fragmentation status: it was totally useless, but absolutely awesome. Hey, I believe that the fact we don’t have this magic now is … Continue reading %systemroot%\System32 secrets: defrag

LCDS: Create your own curriculum

By Alexander Trofimov

Often I need to conduct some kind of internal presentation, just to relay the knowledge I have about the infrastructure and the procedures. It always take some time to create or refresh some PowerPoint slides and get myself prepared to deliver it. It’s cool, but very time consuming. Now I am considering creation of some internal learning curriculums for these purposes. The tool I think I’ll be using for it is named MS Learning Content Development System. It’s quite a tool with simple yet powerful interface, many features and abilities. You can download it here, then just install it and … Continue reading LCDS: Create your own curriculum

TextAnalysisTool.NET

By Alexander Trofimov

A friend of mine twitted about some new small but great good tool: TextAnalysisTool.NET. It’s simple, yet can be very useful. What it does is just simple search for a string or several strings in a file. Do you think “who has written such a stupid thing”? We have findstr, not speaking of PoSh and all that stuff. I thought so too. But when I took a look at it, I discovered that there are situation when it is simply great. For example: Looking for several different strings at the same time. Using the tools mentioned above it is not … Continue reading TextAnalysisTool.NET

%SystemRoot%\System32 Secrets: compact & convert

By Alexander Trofimov

I’ve been quite busy for some time, so there is a quick run over two utilities: compact and convert. The first one can be used sometimes while the second, I think, has almost died out. Let’s take a look on them. compact Remember cipher? The same stuff: cipher deals with encryption, this one – with compression on an NTFS volume. You need to script it or find it boring to use all that GUI? It’s for you. But seriously: do many people use it? I don’t like the feature, actually. But anyway, if you need it, you get it. convert … Continue reading %SystemRoot%\System32 Secrets: compact & convert

%SystemRoot%\system32 secrets: cipher

By Alexander Trofimov

Next command in my list is what you never remember about unless user comes in with a cry: “I’ve reset my password and now all my EFS-encrypted files are gone!!!”. Are you familiar with the situation? I am not, fortunately, but I heard some related horror stories. Backup the encryption keys is the key. And updating of keys on the files. And creating of recovery keys. And backing up the encryption keys. All that the utility in the question can do for you. There are plenty of articles about the actions described above. But when I tried to look at … Continue reading %SystemRoot%\system32 secrets: cipher

BITS Transfer PowerShell cmdlets

By Alexander Trofimov

One friend of mine told me that I shouldn’t have spread knowledge about BITSAdmin command while there was the PowerShell cmdlets in place. Well, to some extent he is definitely right: 1) PowerShell is better self-documented. 2) It is waaaay easier to script with. 3) It is more simple to use in some basic situations like “just give me that darn file”. 4) Many people just like PoSh. So, the tasks I did in my post about BITSAdmin seems to be done in one command: Start-BitsTransfer –source <URL> –destination <PathToFile> but one need to do his homework better: Seems like … Continue reading BITS Transfer PowerShell cmdlets