Anyone ever come across something like this?  It is a Windows 2003 box.

To install just download uptime.exe and place it in the windows directory.  Then run it from the command line.

uptime /? will give a listing of all the options and uptime /help will give detailed instructions.

UPTIME, Version 1.01
(C) Copyright 1999, Microsoft Corporation

Uptime [server] [/s ] [/a] [/d:mm/dd/yyyy | /p:n] [/heartbeat] [/? | /help]
server  Name or IP address of remote server to process.
/s  Display key system events and statistics.
/a  Display application failure events (assumes /s).
/d:  Only calculate for events after mm/dd/yyyy.
/p:  Only calculate for events in the previous n days.
/heartbeat  Turn on/off the system's heartbeat
/? Basic usage.
/help  Additional usage information.

Uptime works by checking the windows event logs for startup and shutdown times.  Running uptime with the /s switch will provide more detailed statistics as shown below.  If the event log has been cleared or is corrupted uptime will not show correct stats.

I have found it helpful to set up .bat files with the servers I want to check. This then gives me a quick list of the uptime of various servers.  It is quite a useful command.  I’m not sure why Microsoft didn’t just stick it in the directory with all their other commands.

C:\uptime \\myserver -s

Uptime Report for: \\myserver

Current OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2, Multiprocessor Free.
Time Zone: Eastern Daylight Time

System Events as of 6/6/2008 9:59:47 AM:

Date:      Time:        Event:               Comment:
---------- -----------  -------------------  -----------------------------------

12/2/2007  1:18:11 PM   Shutdown
12/2/2007  1:20:14 PM   Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:3s
12/4/2007  10:45:19 PM  Shutdown             Prior uptime:2d 9h:25m:5s
12/4/2007  10:47:23 PM  Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:4s
12/16/2007  9:23:16 PM  Shutdown             Prior uptime:11d 22h:35m:53s
12/16/2007  9:25:30 PM  Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:14s
3/1/2008  10:51:12 PM   Shutdown             Prior uptime:76d 1h:25m:42s
3/1/2008  10:54:05 PM   Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:53s
3/16/2008  5:04:48 PM   Shutdown             Prior uptime:14d 17h:10m:43s
3/16/2008  5:07:07 PM   Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:19s
4/9/2008  7:00:38 PM    Shutdown             Prior uptime:24d 1h:53m:31s
4/9/2008  7:02:47 PM    Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:9s
4/9/2008  7:23:35 PM    Shutdown             Prior uptime:0d 0h:20m:48s
4/9/2008  7:25:47 PM    Boot                 Prior downtime:0d 0h:2m:12s

Current System Uptime: 57 day(s), 14 hour(s), 34 minute(s), 44 second(s)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since 12/2/2007:

  System Availability: 99.9941%
  Total Uptime: 186d 19h:25m:42s
  Total Downtime: 0d 0h:15m:54s
  Total Reboots: 7
  Mean Time Between Reboots: 26.69 days
  Total Bluescreens: 0

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.

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.

IISWeb can be used to create, delete, start, stop, pause, and query websites. Just enter >iisweb /create c:\sitefolder “My Site” to create a site. There are also options to add ip address(/i ipaddress), host header(/d header), port (/b port), and options to set up a website on a remote computer. Just use /delete to delete the site.

IISvdir is the script to create and delete virtual directories. iisvdir /create “My Site” “Virtual Dir” c:\sitefolder\vdir will create a virtual directory named Virtual Dir in the web site My Site. Note that the website comes before the virtual directory name.

Unfortunatly I didn’t find any config options to setup other options in the site, but just these two in some scripts are going to save me tons of time.

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.

The program is pretty simple as can be seen in this screenshot. It can generate multiple passwords of any length with lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols.

You will need IIS installed host computer for the virtual server administration website. IIS can be installed by opening up Add/Remove Programs in the control panel, select windows components from the bar on the left. Select IIS. When you click next it will ask for your windows disk and install IIS.

Then start the virtual server setup program. This series of screenshots shows the whole setup process. Its pretty simple, just select next for everything. The last screen shows what you will see if everything goes right. Click any image for full size.

To setup a new host:

Click on Create in the virtual machines section. You will see a screen like this:

Here you can give the virtual machine a name, setup how much ram, connect it to a network, and add a hard drive.

Then insert your windows xp cd into your hard drive and boot up the new virtual computer. It will boot off the cd and start windows setup.

After windows is setup be sure to install the Virtual Machine Additions from the status page. This will allow you to integrate the virtual machine with the physical host.

To access your virtual machines you use the Virtual Machine Remote Control Client. This utility is very similar to windows remote desktop, except that it show the console. To use this you must first enable the Remote control Server. The property page for this can be found by going to Server Properties, and then Remote control Server properties. Click enable and ok to enable remote control.

Then open up the client and connect to your machines by entering this long goofy string. I wish they would make it as easy as just entering a name. But this does allow this client to open virtual machines on other servers.

Other features
One of virtual servers features is the ability to have different networks. These are each bound to either an externally connected network interface or to an internal network. Virtual machines connected to an external network can access other virtual and physical machines on the same network. The internal network can also be setup to allow you to have virtual networks that don’t connect to the outside.

Virtual server has the ability to allocate cpu resources among different virtual machines. This can reserve cpu cycles for a specific virtual machine. This can be helpful if you have multiple virtaul machines all vying for cpu. If you have a multiple cpu system a single virtual machine can not use more than one cpu however.

Virtual server can create virtual hard and floppy disks. These are stored on the hard drive as .vhd and .vfd files. A useful feature is the Linked Virtual Hard Drive. This is a virtual hard drive that is linked to a physical drive. This is an easy way to have your virtual machine acces your host hard drive for file copying.

Microsoft’s Virtual Server is a great (free!) tool for create and running multiple machines. I have used it many times to create test networks, dedicate a virtual machine for an app, run honeypots, web servers, and anything you need an extra computer for. You can run any operating system you want with it too. I have virtual machines with Linux, BeOS, Plan9, QNX, and even Windows 1.01.

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.