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? [...]
Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Developer Preview
Microsoft has released the Windows 8 Developer Preview. This download is a full version of the pre-beta Windows 8 build and is chock full of disclaimers regarding its stability. Needless to say, I had to download it and give it a shot. The download (2.8GB to 4.8GB) can be found linked off the front page of [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
vbScript – List All Members Of Sensitive Groups: Schema, Enterprise and Domain Admins
Download Script: AD-Admin-Audit Update 2011.06.21: I found a missing line in this script keeping it from running. I fixed that in the code below. I also added a downloadable zip file with the script to help with the formatting issues caused when copying and pasting directly from the site. Update 2009.04.16: At the request of [...]
SNMP In A Windows Environment
The difficult part with managing SNMP via Group Policy is that SNMP is not installed by default. The first step is to install SNMP on all the machines you want to monitor via SNMP. This can be managed a couple ways. The simplest method that I have used is the one Zenoss recommends. If you [...]
