Testing an External NTP Server

First off, NTP uses port 123. That was the first thing I checked when trying to telnet to one of the pool.ntp.org servers. Seems most NTP server ignore the telnet command.

Then I thought I'd use net time, but it has been deprecated in Windows 7 in favor of the newer w32tm command.

There's a litany of switches to use with it, but the /monitor /computers:server are the ones you want.

And using the command: c:\w32tm /monitor /computers:time.nist.gov
You will get the following output, showing it works:

time.nist.gov[64.250.177.145:123]:
    ICMP: 59ms delay
    NTP: -0.1402919s offset from local clock
        RefID: 'ACTS' [0x53544341]
        Stratum: 1

You can find a huge amount of popular public NTP servers at NTP.org

Cisco VPN Client PCF File

I could have sworn you exported the pcf profile (the VPN configuration file that can be imported for new installs) within the Cisco VPN IPSec Client, but I was wrong.

This little guy is actually a text file that's created as soon as you add a new connection. And it places it within the VPN client installation directory, as listed below.

C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\VPN Client\Profiles

Once you grab your profile, you can throw it in with the installation files for the client and it will automatically be imported for use immediately upon completion (reboot is necessary, of course).

Hide Your Windows System from the Network

Should you wish to hide your Windows system from the Network Neighborhood just run the command below:

c:\net config server /hidden:yes

There's a bevy of net commands to be used to perform all sorts of tasks; truly worth investigation.

Adding Windows XP Media Center to a Domain

During another domain migration yesterday, I came across a Windows XP Media Center PC in the workplace. This is certainly common with small companies, especially when they're bootstrapping. You buy what you can afford and that usually means Home and Media editions of Windows. Those work great for a small network, but of course can't be added to a domain, at least Home can't. Luckily Windows XP Media Center can be hacked into joining a domain, because unlike XP Home Edition, it won't upgrade to XP Professional.

So here's the hack:

1. If you haven't already, install the Windows Recovery Console (you'll need your Windows XP disk for this)


2. Boot into the Microsoft Windows Recovery Console when prompted
   
   
   
   1. Select the proper OS (usually 1) and enter the Administrator password (if prompted)
   
   
   
   


3. Copy the SYSTEM registry hive to C:\ copy c:\windows\system32\config\SYSTEM c:\


4. Type exit and boot into your Windows XP Media Center system as an administrator


5. Open Registry Editor (Start > Run... type regedit, click OK
   
   
   
   1. Highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
   
   
   2. Click File > Load Hive...
   
   
   3. Browse and select C:\SYSTEM
   
   
   4. Enter your PC-name or anything really
   
   
   5. Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PC-name\WPA\MedCtrUpg
   
   
   6. Change the IsLegacyMCE key in the right pane to the number 1 (default is 0)
   
   
   7. Highlight the PC-name under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and click File > Unload Hive..., click Yes
   
   
   
   


6. Reboot into the Microsoft Windows Recovery Console as in step 2
   
   
   
   1. Copy the SYSTEM registry hive back copy c:\SYSTEM c:\winsows\system32\config\system enter Y to overwrite
   
   
   2. Rename the old SYSTEM hive on C:\ ren c:\SYSTEM SYSTEM_old
   
   
   3. Type exit and reboot back into your Windows XP Media Center system as an administrator
   
   
   
   


7. Now you should be able to add the system to the domain


8. Optional: delete c:\SYSTEM_old and change the boot selection time from 30 seconds to 2 or 3 (now that the Recovery Console has been added)

Thanks to Aaron Tiensivu, who's article helped me yesterday. I decided to make an abridged post here since I'm getting annoyed at having to find this hack every time.

Optimize Windows Settings for SSD

So you got a shiny new SSD for your Windows system. As you may or may not know, there is only a finite number of writes to each sector before it becomes unusable, eventually causing the disk to be unusable.

So what can you go to make sure it lasts as long as it can? I've gathered a few tips from around the web to help.

• Go without a pagefile (if you have at least 2GB of RAM)


• Disable automatic disk defragmentation (only Vista and Win 7)


• Turn off hibernation


• Put a halt to prefetching


• If this is a system with two drives move the location of your Temp directory path (and move the pagefile rather than disabling it as above).

Versions after Windows XP actually do make some changes to optimize, but it doesn't hurt to check. And have fun with your new found (or bought) speed!

WMIC to the Rescue

A recent project had me trying to script the retrieval of the Dell Service Tag. Luckily there's WMI Command-line to the rescue.

From a command line or in a script wmic bios get serialnumber will display or grab the Dell Service Tag.

Furthermore, you can use the WMI Command-line to retrieve all kinds of system data and even make configuration changes. Rob van der Woude's great site on scripting has a great primer and examples on using WMIC. TechNet Magazine also has a very useful article on gathering system data using WMIC in your environment.

Finally, checkout the WMI Admin Tools pack. It contains more than I want to type about here, but it gives you the ability to browse the various objects, classes and properties, plus a custom event viewer and much more. Check it out and make your (administrative) life better.

Microsoft offers Security Essentials to (very) Small Businesses

Since Microsoft announced its own anti-malware product, Microsoft Security Essenstials, back in late 2008, the product has been steadily getting better. When asked what I use for anti-virus, I always answer MSE or AVG Free.

Both cost my favorite price, free, and are well regarded in the security community.

The big news of course, is that MSE is now free to small businesses with 10 or less PCs. I've actually been recommending it to smaller businesses for a while and now they'll be in compliance. (Now if only it was okay for servers...)

Paychex Preview Upgrade to Mapped Drive

This was actually too simple, but unless you speak with support, how is one to know?

I was recently tasked with upgrading a server installation of Paychex Preview software, which according to documentation cannot be done on the host server, it has to be upgraded from one of the workstations via mapped drive. It seemed simple enough, until the point of the install "wizard" where it prompts for installation directory. It listed C:\RAPID, and had a dropdown menu so I could choose one of the mapped drives; but instead of listing mapped drives it only offered the local C:\ drive. No problem, the instructions on the screen said reboot if it doesn't list your mapped drive. Wait a few minutes for the reboot... and no good, just C:\RAPID again; time to call support.

After starting a WebEx session, so the tech could see what I was saying was true, we copied the RAPID directory from the mapped drive to C:\, then ran the Paychex Preview software upgrade on C:\RAPID. When the upgrade was complete, it was just a copy and replace over the RAPID directory on the mapped drive and the deed was done. Oh yeah, don't forget to run WS_Setup.exe from each workstation to create appropriate shortcuts to the mapped drive.

Network Printer Offline

Yesterday I was at a client site where everyone prints directly to the printers, rather than sharing via a print server. One of the PCs kept showing a printer as offline, even though everyone else was printing to it. From the PC you could ping the printer and even browse to the builtin web server to see that it was low on cyan.

After chewing on this for quite a while, I found the issue: a checkbox on the Ports tab "SNMP Status Enabled", which when checked (along with SNMP turned off on the print device) will result in the printer being listed as Offline. Once the box was unchecked, it was back online and the customer was back to printing once again.

Control Panel Applets from Command Line

One of my customers doesn't allow user accounts to be in the local Administrators group,  something I wish more companies would do. In fact over 90% of infections could be stopped by not logging in as an administrator; but I'll save that "soapbox" topic for another post.

Many times I need to change settings or install/remove software on someones PC without logging them out of the system, in which case I will go to %windir%\system32, shift+right-click CMD.exe and choose Run As...

Once I've opened a Command window with an account in the administrators group, I can start the Services MMC (services.msc), Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) or Computer Manager (compmgmt.msc), plus many more useful consoles from the command line. Often times I need to remove software or make a change to network settings which involves Control Panel Applets. These also can be run at the command-line (or Run... prompt if you're already logged in as an administrator), some of my favs are listed below.

Appwiz.cpl - Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features in Vista or Windows 7)
Ncpa.cpl - Network Connections (for changing IPs and DNS)
Powercfg.cpl - Power Options (perhaps for turning off Standby or enabling the Performance setting)
Sysdm.cpl - System Properties (lots to find here: Remote Desktop, Pagefile, System Restore settings, etc.)
Wscui.cpl - Security Center (change Automatic Updating, the Firewall and Malware monitoring)

Want more? Check out the Wiki page.

Three Free Utilities

Everyone carries around a USB drive these days with a variety of utilities, these three have been very useful in the recent past.

CPU-Z - A great utility to find out what kind of memory is installed in a system. This is especially useful when a system is a plain box with out a service tag or serial number.  And it's really annoying to open a box only to find the memory is without a label.

Magic Jelly Bean - This little gem has been in my toolbox for a long time. It grabs the key codes for popular software installed on a system (Adobe, VMWare, Office) including the OS. This is very useful if you have a disk, but lost your installation key or have lots of keys and don't know which ones were used on a particular system.

Wireless Key View - And finally, this tool grabs the WPA/WEP wireless key(s) from a Windows system (must be using the built-in Windows wireless utility) when you can't see the actual text or log into your wireless router.

And while you're visiting these sites, check out the other free software they have. You'll have your 32GB thumb drive filled up in no time ;)

Internet Explorer 8 Released

Internet Explorer 8 was released today. I'm sure it's already been downloaded a billion times already, but you can get it here.

My first impressions have been favorable. I've been using Slim Browser for quite some time, but it still uses the IE7 engine and the performance has been lackluster as of late. I've stuck with Slim Browser over the last couple of years due to features like double-clicking tabs to close sites and not having multiple browser windows open when going from an internal to external site. These items seem to have been addressed in IE8 and so far I'm impressed with speed and functionality. Try it out (Windows users) it's free.

Lose the Shutdown Event Tracker

This tip has been around for a while, but I think it's still worth sharing due to its possibly high annoyance factor.

On a production machine, I consider the Shutdown Event Tracker worthwhile, especially in environments with multiple administrators. When in a lab situation or testing environment, this prompt before shutdown gets old quickly. 

To change the setting go to Start > Run…, type gpedit.msc and press OK.

Drill down: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates and highlight System. In the right pane, double-click the “Display Shutdown Event Tracker” and choose Disabled.

You're done, no more need for a reason to shutdown the system. (BTW, this tip works with Windows Server 2003 and you can even enable the Shutdown Event Tracker for Windows 7, Vista and XP.)

Emergency Patch Today!

A critical flaw in Internet Explorer (some say Exploder) has been found and patched today.

This is a very critical update due to the fact your system can be affected by just visiting a website.

Go to Windows Update and patch your system!

Windows XP SP3 Causes Windows Update to Fail

I've had this happen on a number of systems now, where installing Windows XP SP3 will cause Windows/Microsoft/Automatic Update to fail.

Thanks to Ron Crumbaker, a simple fix is all that is needed. The steps are listed below, the actual commands are in bold.

1. Stop Automatic Updates service - net stop wuauserv
2. Register wups2.dll - regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups2.dll
3. Restart Automatic Updates service - net start wuauserv

Windows 7

Some people think it's too soon for Windows 7, if that's what they're really going to call it. But having been released to manufacturing in November of 2006, it'll be almost three years by the time Windows 7 is relased (and that's if it's on time).

Looking at Apple's OS X delivery model, not to mention the Linux community, the operating system gets a refresh every year or two. And peering into the past a little, the Wintendo platforms (95, 98, 98SE, ME) all were released a few years apart. For the 32-bit family there was a large gap between NT4 and Windows 2000 (Oct 1996 and Feb 2000 respectively), but XP came out in Oct of 2001 and XP SP2 (essentially an OS refresh), in August of 2004. There's a timeline on Wikipedia.

So how does this make Vista a failure if Microsoft is just staying on track with it's release schedule?

A great amount of information can be found at the SuperSite for Windows.

Critical Windows Patch

This doesn't happen often for Microsoft, a patch outside the usual second Tuesday routine. Apparently a Critical patch for the server service that affects earlier versions of Windows (2000/XP/Server 2003 (they don't mention the expired NT4)) and an Important fix for the latest versions (Vista/ Server 2008) was needed for this vulnerability that they just couldn't wait another three weeks.

It can be downloaded via Windows Update and at the source: Microsoft.com