Windows 2008 Server Admin Tools: February 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Great IIS Resources- IIS 7.0- Windows Server 2008

Hello,

I have found a great resource for IIS 7.0 Server. Includes troubleshooting, installation, and many other topics.

Please head to:

http://iis70.blogspot.com

Thanks,

Admin.

Howto: Enable remote desktop on a windows xp machine - remotely

Howto: Enable remote desktop on a windows xp machine - remotely

I've been configuring my LAN for spiceworks this afternoon. The Windows XP firewall is enabled on most of our PCs, and I didn't want to visit each station to configure it to allow spiceworks to inventory the machine. I'm also not big into group policy here at the office (what the saying about the cobbler's son's shoes?) so I didn't want to make the setting change that way.

My first idea was to use remote desktop to access the computers from my machine. That worked fine, since I have local administrator access on each machine… but I'd have to interrupt each user's work, log them off, make my firewall adjustments, then tell them it's okay to log on now… assuming that I could even get into their machines remotely.

I needed a solution for users with remote desktop disabled. If your remote user has administrator access to their machine, have them click on Start - Run and type:

netsh firewall set service remoteadmin enable

netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable

[note: remoteadmin = remote administration, while remotedesktop = remote assistance and remote desktop]

You can also enable remote desktop over the network via regedit if you have administrator rights to the remote machine:

Run Regedit
Select File –> Connect Network registry
Enter the name of the remote computer and select Check Name
At the bottom of the registry tree you will see 2 Hives appear Hkey_Local_Machine and
Hkey_Users (under the remote computer's name)
Goto hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server\FdenyTSConnections=1
Change the FdenyTSConnections to 0
Attempt to Re-Login

This worked okay, but I like to implement the most elegant solution possible.

So I fired up the command line on my local machine, and used psexec to configure the firewall service on the remote machine via netsh. The users never even knew I was working on their computer, which is fine by me.

To enable remote access to a machine via the command line, type:

psexec \\remotecomputername netsh firewall set service remoteadmin enable

psexec \\remotecomputername netsh firewall set service remotedesktop enable

If you aren't familiar with the PStools suite of utilities, and you like administration from the command line, you need to check out the Sysinternals web site. Too bad they were acquired by Microsoft in 2006.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

SIW Review

Review- Software- SIW* Plus -FREE Download.

What is SIW?

SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.

SIW can create a report file (CVS,HTML,TXT or XML ), and is able to run in batch mode (for Asset

The system information is divided into few major categories:

Software Inventory: Operating System, Installed Software and Hotfixes, Processes, Services, Users, Open Files, System Uptime, Installed Codecs, Software Licenses (Product Keys / Serial Numbers / CD Key), Secrets (Password Recovery).
Hardware Inventory: Motherboard, Sensors, BIOS, CPU, chipset, PCI/AGP, USB and ISA/PnP Devices, Memory, Video Card, Monitor, Disk Drives, CD/DVD Devices, SCSI Devices, S.M.A.R.T., Ports, Printers.
Network Information: Network Cards, Network Shares, currently active Network Connections, Open Ports.
Network Tools: MAC Address Changer, Neighborhood Scan, Ping, Trace, Statistics
Miscellaneous Tools: Eureka! (Reveal lost passwords hidden behind asterisks), Monitor Test, Shutdown / Restart.
Real-time monitors: CPU, Memory, Page File usage and Network Traffic.

Well Until recently, this amazing software used to be free. Now, it seems like gtopola software is charging money for this great utility. Well, if you are new to this software then what you don't know is that this software used to be completely free of charge, there is still a freeware version on gtopola's site, however, they have greatly reduced the functionality of this software. Now, I did some research on the previous versions and I was amazed to find (what a lot of people don't know) that the previous FREE versions do almost all the functions of the NEW PAID version. And it's FREELY available on the NET you just have to look in the RIGHT places.

Below I have listed the features of the FREE VS PAID versions if you download it today from gtopala.com. Look at it carefully to see how many features have been blocked.

This is just a way of making money, I don't blame them, they made the product, but what I do want to inform the ill informed public that just download one of the previous versions of the software and you'll get all these features for FREE. The software is still 100% original, no cracks, illegal registrations, warez, or such ways have been applied as I don't believe in piracy of software. It's 100% original software as it was built.

To download this previous version please go to

http://SIWFREE.blogspot.com