I had to make a small change to the network of a QA box I manage. So I logged in, via remote desktop using a domain admin account and went to the open the network connection. Which was missing. An ipconfig confirmed that I did have a network address, and of course it was working since I was accessing the machine remotely. Very puzzling. A reboot did not solve the problem either. Since it is working, I’m not gonna mess with it. I took this screenshot to document the problem.
Archive for the 'Windows' Category
There is a very useful Windows command that Microsoft didn’t include in any version of windows but should have. This is the uptime command. There is a knowledge base article here. It was released back in the Windows NT days, but still works on all current versions of windows. I have found this to be an easy way to find out the uptime of the windows servers I maintain without have to log on to the box.
Over the past week I have been playing with Symantec Endpoint in preparation for a migration from Symantec Client Security 10. Endpoint is basically the next version of Symantec’s anti-virus with a firewall and antispyware combined. The management server seemed to have way more features than the previous version, however the interface is not any more intuitive than before. Now, I’ve always noticed that symantec’s products are huge resource hogs, so I was surprised to notice that the size of rtvscan.exe had only a fraction of the mem usage of previous versions. However on further investigation on several test machines I found that the usage was actually rediculously higher. I’ve compiled a chart showing the differences in the usage. I had four test machines running on VMware virtual machines. Two windows xp clients, and two windows 2003 servers, one as a client, and the other as a management server. Both Endpoint, and Client Security 10 memory usage is shown.
| XP SP3 | No client | 110 mb |
| XP SP3 | Client Security 10 | 190 mb |
| XP SP3 | Endpoint | 283 mb |
| Win2003 | No client | 90 mb |
| Win2003 | Client Security 10 | 266 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Client | 285 mb |
| Win2003 | Symantec 10 Server | 555 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Server | 1037 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Server w/ Management program open | 1403 mb |
All the test machines has a fully updated system with nothing running but the Symantec program, wiht the exception of the Symantec 10 server which was also running several smaller inhouse apps. The management program uses java, (another pig) which explains the high use of memory when the management app is open. I attempted to do PCmark benchmarks, however it didnt like the virtual machines.
This is an horrible misuse of memory. The program’s size on disk is less than all that. Several posts by developers on symantec’s forums mentioned that they tried to reduce the memory footprint. Not sure how they thought they were doing that. I am hesitant to start rolling this out, because I know that all my users will start complaining about their machines slowing down. I am running the endpoint client on my machine, however its a brand new Dell and has plenty of resources to spare. I just need to install it on a Vista machine for the ultimate bloat experience.
Well tonight I reinstalled Windows XP on my computer. However I put the 32-bit version on instead of 64-bit which I had on before. I was having too many driver problems, and found I didn’t get any benefits from x64.
The install went smoothly, however I found out that Windows XP before sp1 does not support hard drives more than 130gb. But once I installed sp2, it recognized the rest of the hard drive. I just had to use Partition Magic to combine the partitions.
I would have liked to kept Windows XP x64, but it still has too many driver problems and program incompatibilities to be viable for a typical desktop setup.
While building a new web server today I decided to see if there was a way to create Virtual Directories in IIS 6 from the command line. I had a bunch to create and wanted to script the creation for the next time I build a web server. I came across two vbscripts that are installed into c:\windows\system32 with IIS. This is the Microsoft article for the scripts. Continue reading ‘Create IIS6 Web Sites and Virtual Directories from the Command Line’
Winternals Software announced today that they have been bought by Microsoft. They were bought so that Microsoft could hire the two founders of the company, Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. These two guys are talented Windows programmers who should add a lot to the Windows development team. They are well known for Sysinternals, the system tools that are extremely helpful in troubleshooting windows. Microsoft is also aquiring all these tools in the deal. I think that this is an excellent move by Microsoft. They get two excellent developers, and all the great support tools. I know Microsoft likes to use the Sysinternals tools, because every time I am on a support call with them they have me download and use one of the tools. It would be great if Microsoft could bundle these tools into Windows, or the windows support tools pack. This would make it much easier to use these tools.
However part of the reason that the Sysinternals tools were so great were because they were third party tools. Now that they are owned by Microsoft, more people will be more distrustful of the tools. But I think that it is a good move overall. Perhaps some other developers in Microsoft will be able to add helpful features to the tools. I definitly do not think that Microsoft will charge for these tools, since there support department uses them so much.
I have written a small program that will generate random passwords of any size. I am constantly making up new passwords for different things, and found several other password generators online. But I thought I’d write my own for the fun of it. I wrote it in C# using the new Visual C# Express Edition. So it requires the .Net 2.0 framework to run. Next I’d like to convert it to javascript and put it online. You can download the program here and the source here. Feel free to do with it as you like. Continue reading ‘C# Password Generator’
I have mentioned how I use Microsoft’s Virtual Server to create hosts for different projects. So I thought I would write a howto showing how to get Virtual Server up and running. I took screenshots of the whole process and describe some useful features that I use. There are several different virtualization products, but I think the Virtual Server is one of the better ones. It is also free too.
First download Virtual Server from Microsoft’s web site. Continue reading ‘Setup a host with virtual server’
Somebody obviously wasn’t thinking when they set the default power options in Windows. I have been setting up new desktops and laptops from Dell the last few days, and every single one has the power options set like this:
This is from a Dell laptop. Why would anybody in there right mind want the laptop to go into standby in 25 minutes if it is plugged in. For that matter, why would they wait 1 hour while it is on battery. And all the desktops are set up like this too! Why anybody would want to have their desktop computer go into standby is beyond me. I keep my computer turned on, so I can have stuff running on it while I am away, and so that when I need to get to it I can without having to wait for it to come up. Standby defeats that. And hibernate is even worse.
While I’m on a rant, why would Dell disable the internal nic when the laptop is on battery power? That gave me the biggest headache one morning a while back. I even went so far as to call Dell to see if the motherboard was bad, cause the nic kept disappearing.
I came across a very useful tool for logging port use in Windows. It is called the Port Reporter. This tool runs as a service on a Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 computer. It logs all TCP and UDP port use to log files. A seperate utility called the Port Reporter Parser provides a nice GUI interface for viewing the log files and analyzing the data.
Continue reading ‘Port Reporter, a Windows tool for logging port use’