Five Windows Commands Every Administrator Needs To Know

May 26, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman Leave a comment

You should always feel like a little ninja when a chance to use the command line rolls around. These command should give you an excuse to open and use the command line just a bit more.

wuauclt /detectnow – This command makes Windows check for updates in accordance with the settings on the workstation. This is very helpful in domain environments where you have a Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) running and want it to go grab new updates from that server and not use the Microsoft Update website and try to remember which ones you had and hadn’t approved.
runas /user:administrator cmd – This command is a simple RunAs command that opens command prompt. This is important to know if you want to run other programs as an administrator while leaving a user logged in. This will allows you to start and other program as administrator simply by typing it in your administrator command window. Just be sure to close it when you leave, if not the user will have open reign on the computer using your account.
oobe/msoobe /a – This command will start the Microsoft Product Activation Wizard. This may not be the most useful command on the enterprise environment but when it comes to reinstalling a PC for someone you know it is a necessary evil. None the less, when there is no activation link, just run the command it it will get you rolling.
netstat and netstat -a – These two commands shows you the IP address, port and other vital information about the connections your computer is using. These information can be helpful when trying to troubleshoot a PC that has slow internet or some type of malware issue, or when you are setting up a new service on your server and trying to determine why you can’t use a certain port because it is already in use.
shutdown -i – Although many people use the shutdown command to shutdown or restart computers, most people don’t know that this has a handy GUI interface which makes declaring all those parameters in the command line obsolete. Give it a shot and shut down your coworkers computer, but give them some time to see if they can figure out the shutdown -a command to abort your shutdown request. This works especially good to test the new guys skills.

I’m sure there are many commands I have forgotten to add that are just as great as these, if you think of one put it in the comments and share it with everyone else.

How to Remotely Manage Workstation in Your Network

May 7, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman 1 Comment

You would be surprised at how often I solve a users issue without having to leave my desk. Users typically calls me about issues about how they need an icon, need a printer job canceled, or can’t find the file they are looking for. Here are some helpful methods that you can use your environment to fix problems without leaving your desk.

Using Hidden Drive Shares
This is the one of the easiest to use and the most flexible to help you manage files on remote workstations. By default Microsoft Windows shares hard disk drives as a hidden share that only administrators can access. When you are setting up your domain you basically centralize the user authentication so now you have an administrator account on all the computers in your domain. This does require that file and print sharing is turned on in the Windows Firewall but for most environments this is most likely already on. To enable it from command line just type netsh firewall set service type = fileandprint mode = enable in command line window or run box. To configure it using Group Policy follow the these instructions

Open the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in to edit the Group Policy object (GPO) that is used to manage Windows Firewall settings in your organization.
Open Computer Configuration, open Administrative Templates, open Network, open Network Connections, open Windows Firewall, and then open either Domain Profile or Standard Profile, depending on which profile you want to configure.
In the details pane, double-click Windows Firewall: Allow file and printer sharing exception.
In the Windows Firewall: Allow file and printer sharing exception dialog box, on the Settings tab, click Enabled or Disabled.

To access these shares you need to go to the UNC path of the computer followed by the drive letter and a dollar sign. Ex: \\computername\C$ and bam there is the entire drive of that computer. Now you can browse in the Documents and Settings and the user and add the icon on the desktop all from your computer. This should work for any Microsoft Windows since 2000 including server operating systems.

Remote Microsoft Management Console
If you are not familiar with Microsoft Management Console or MMC then you need to be. It is a unified management console that allows you to adjust not only settings on your computer but remote ones as well. To use this command remotely you need to enable “Remote Administration” in the Windows Firewall this can be done by running the following command: netsh firewall set service type = remoteadmin mode = enable or you can enable it using group policy by following these Microsoft steps: Microsoft Article

Open the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in to edit the Group Policy object (GPO) that is used to manage Windows Firewall settings in your organization.
Open Computer Configuration, open Administrative Templates, open Network, open Network Connections, open Windows Firewall, and then open either Domain Profile or Standard Profile, depending on which profile you want to configure.
In the details pane, double-click Windows Firewall: Allow remote administration exception.
In the Windows Firewall: Allow remote administration exception properties dialog box, on the Settings tab, click Enabled or Disabled.

Once you have the exception in place you can run different commands remotely either by accessing a menu with the console or starting it from command line to open a computer. To start the Computer Management Console from command line just type compmgmt.msc /computer:computername in your run box or at the command line and it should automatically open the Computer Management console to that remote computer. Now you can go though the different parts of the machines from your desktop without interrupting the user. You should be able to do most things that you could if you were running this locally on the PC except for the Device Manager which is in read-only mode.

Remote Registry Editing
Another less know feature of the registry editor is the ability to open a remote computers registry and make changes. To open the registry editor type regedit in your run box or command line, once it has open go to the File Menu and select Connect Network Registry… then just type in the name of the computer in the box and it should just open as another computer in the tree view. There are a few things to be aware of when editing another computers registry, you cannot undo your changes, so be sure you know what you are doing or the next call might be about the computer you just hosed by changing something you shouldn’t have. Also, the current user hive is sort of hard to find. It is under HKEY_USERS then it is probably something like S-1-5-XX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXX, if you have multiple entries like this you will need to check the Volatile Environment key named SESSIONNAME, it is set to Console then that is the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive. The local machine class is in the same place in both the remote registry and the local one.

Allow Users on Domain to Control Power Settings

April 9, 2009May 28, 2014 Wayne Zimmerman 2 Comments

In some domain environments you need to allow some control back to the users where they can manage it best. A perfect example of this is Power Settings, by default a normal domain user does not have the rights to control the power settings on the PC. This can lead to the computer turning off the monitor or going to standby at inopportune times. A way to solve this problem is by modifying the registry so any user authenticated / interactive user can modify these settings. To do this you need to use the regini.exe, it allows you to modify permissions in the registry from command line. Basically anything under registry key: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\) need to be given permissions to be modify by the user. Below I have included some code that needs to be placed in a text file for parameters to pass to regini.exe during workstation start up.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\GlobalPowerPolicy [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\0 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\1 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\2 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\3 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\4 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\5 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\0 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\1 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\2 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\3 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\4 [1 5 7 11 17 21]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg\ProcessorPolicies\5 [1 5 7 11 17 21]

Once you have this file made save it Machine Startup Scripts directory for Group Policy. Then add the following entry to the Group Policy (shown below) and the users should now be able to modify their computers power settings.

For more detail on parameters or what exactly regini.exe can do for you hop on over to Microsoft KB 237607.