I came across an undocumented app the other day. For a number of reasons, we needed to restore the password but it wasn’t documented anywhere. Luckily, the service account was setup in an app pool. In IIS 7.0 or 7.5, APPCMD can be used to recover the password. In 6.0, adsutil.vbs can be used. cscript.exe [...]
The Power of Scripting: Finding Morto.A
Here I go on another vbScript tutorial. You might ask why I’m not doing this in powershell yet and it is simple: I still run into 2003 and XP environments. Oh yeah, and this works. I don’t care what scripting language I’m writing in if it gets the job done; you shouldn’t either. My $0.02. [...]
IsConnectible: My vbScript Ping Method
Whenever I am doing large sweeps of the network that require connecting to a large number of workstations (e.g. file copy, wmi query, etc.), I prefer to check to see if I can even see the system. This avoids waiting for (WMI) timeouts and also aids in troubleshooting failures. If the file copy failed, why? [...]
vbScript: Adding and Removing a Domain Group to a Local Group
Yes, I still use vbscript. Someday, I’ll get to work in an environment where everything is upgraded. Until then, I have to rely on the tried and true vbscript. One of the most common uses of a Group Policy startup script is for adding users to the local admin group. Just google it and you [...]
vbScript: Tweaking Power Settings (disabling hibernate and standby)
As is often the case in IT, when you need to push out that software package or migrate that computer to a new domain, it isn’t on the network. This has come up several times in the past year and I wanted to share my solution. Now, this isn’t the “greenest” solution because this will [...]
.Net Classes within VBScript: Doing Randomness and Arrays the Easy Way
Back in 2007, the Microsoft Scripting Guys posted a article titled “Hey, Scripting Guy! Be Careful What You Say.” This article changed everything in the way I scripted because it should how simply you can access some .Net classes through COM callable wrappers. The two they focus on are “System.Random” and “System.Collections.ArrayList”. 1 2 Set [...]
vbScript: Quickly determine architecture
I’ve been using a routine to determine 64-bit v 32-bit workstations for some time checking the registry for the PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE in the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment path. However, this was proving to be error prone. So, I just gave up that method altogether since all Windows x64 editions have a “%SystemDrive%\Program Files (x86)” directory. This makes it [...]
Installing Java via Script and Group Policy
Due to some software requirements, there was a need to get JRE 1.5.0_09 rolled out across our enterprise. The requirements were pretty straight forward: Only install on client operating systems (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7) Detect the versions of Java installed. If 1.5.0_09 is installed, exit. If 1.5.0_08 or less was [...]
Part 1: Blocking Bad Hosts – Finding Them, Easily
Download Script: get-bad-hosts.zip While troubleshooting some issues on an OWA Front-End server, I went over to the security log to see if the authentication attempts were getting past this box. The problem I found was the log was so full of failed logon attempts it was difficult to filter out what I was looking for. [...]
Logon Script: Move Local PST Files To Network Share
Download Script: move-pst-to-network.zip So, my buddy (and former co-worker) called me yesterday for some help with a script he put together. His script checked the local profile in Outlook for any PST files that were stored locally. If it found any, it would them move them to the users home space. We tried and tried [...]
