The longer a person serves as a network admin, the more tips and tricks
they are likely to pick up along the way. Some could be shortcuts,
others might seem like magic, but all are intended to save you time and
help you solve problems. Assume that all of these Windows commands
should be run from an administrative command prompt if you are using
Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 2008.
Active Directory
1. To quickly list all the groups in your domain, with
members, run this command:
dsquery group -limit 0 | dsget group -members –expand
2. To find all users whose accounts are set to have a
non-expiring password, run this command:
dsquery * domainroot -filter
“(&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(lockoutTime=*))” -limit 0
3. To list all the FSMO role holders in your forest, run
this command:
netdom query fsmo
4. To refresh group policy settings, run this command:
gpupdate
5. To check Active Directory replication on a domain
controller, run this command:
repadmin /replsummary
6. To force replication from a domain controller without
having to go through to Active
Directory Sites and Services, run this command:
repadmin /syncall
7. To see what server authenticated you (or if you logged
on with cached credentials) you can run either of these commands:
set l
echo %logonserver%
8. To see what account you are logged on as, run this
command:
whoami
9. To see what security groups you belong to, run this
command:
whoami /groups
10. To see the domain account policy (password
requirements, lockout thresholds, etc) run this command:
net accounts
Windows Networking
1. To quickly reset your NIC back to DHCP with no manual
settings, run this command:
netsh int ip reset all
2. To quickly generate a text summary of your system, run
this command:
systeminfo | more
3. To see all network connections your client has open, run
this command:
net use
4. To see your routing table, run either of these commands:
route print
netstat -r
5. Need to run a trace, but don’t have Netmon or Wireshark,
and aren’t allowed to install either one? Run this command:
netsh trace start capture=yes tracefile=c:\capture.etl
netsh trace stop
6. To quickly open a port on the firewall, run this
command, changing the name, protocol, and port to suit. This example opens
syslog:
netsh firewall set portopening udp 161 syslog enable all
7. To add an entry to your routing table that will be
permanent, run the route add command with the –p option. Omitting that, the
entry will be lost at next reboot:
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 172.16.250.5 –p
8. Here’s a simple way to see all open network connections,
refreshing every second:
netstat –ano 1
9. You can add a | findstr
value to watch for only
a specific connection, like a client ip.addr or port:
netstat –ano | findstr 216.134.217.20
10. You can use the shutdown to shutdown or reboot a
machine, including your own, in a simple scheduled task like this:
shutdown –r –t 0 –m \\localhost
11. To make planned DNS changes go faster, reduce the TTL
on the DNS records you plan on changing to 30 seconds the day before changes
are to be made. You can set the TTL back to normal after you confirm the
changes have been successful.
12. Set a short lease on DHCP scopes that service laptops,
and set Microsoft Option 002 to release a DHCP leas on shutdown. This helps to
ensure your scope is not exhausted and that machines can easily get on another
network when the move to a new site.
Windows 7
1. Want to enable the local administrator account on
Windows 7? Run this command from an administrative command prompt. It will
prompt you to set a password:
net user administrator * /active:yes
2. You can do the same thing during install by pressing
SHIFT-F10 at the screen where you set your initial user password.
Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts:
3. Windows Key+G
Display gadgets in front of other windows.
4. Windows Key++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where appropriate.
5. Windows Key+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where appropriate.
6. Windows Key+Up Arrow
Maximize the current window.
7. Windows Key+Down Arrow
Minimize the current window.
8. Windows Key+Left Arrow
Snap to the left hand side of the screen
9. Windows Key+Right Arrow
Snap to the right hand side of the screen.
10. To quickly launch an application as an administrator
(without the right-click, run as administrator), type the name in the Search
programs and files field, and then press
Ctrl-Shift-Enter.
Here are some tips that can save you from buying commercial software:
11. Need to make a quick screencast to show someone how to
do something? The Problem Steps Recorder can create an
MHTML file that shows
what you have done by creating a screen capture each time you take an action.
Click the Start button and type
‘psr’ to open the Problem Steps Recorder.
12. Need to burn a disc? The isoburn.exe can burn ISO and
IMG files. You can right click a file and select burn, or launch it from the
command line.
13. Windows 7 includes a screen scraping tool called the
Snipping Tool. I have tons of users request a license for SnagIt, only to find
this free tool (it’s under Accessories) does what they need.
14. You can download
this bootable security
scanner from Microsoft that will run off a USB key, which is very useful if
you suspect a machine has a virus.
15. A great way to save all your command line tools and
make them available across all your computers is to install
Dropbox, create a folder to save all your
scripts and tools, and add that folder to your path. That way, they can be
called from the command line or any other scripts, and if you update a script,
it will carry across to
any other machine you have.
Windows 2008
1. You can free up disk space on your servers by disabling
hibernate. Windows 2008 will create a hiberfil.sys equal to the amount of RAM.
This is very useful with VMs that have lots of RAM but smaller C: drives. To
disable hibernation, and reclaim that space, run this command:
powercfg -h off
2. You can get to the complete collection of Sysinternals
tools online. You can even invoke them from the run command. Use the url:
http://live.sysinternals.com or the
UNC path: \\live.sysinternals.com\tools.
3. Speaking of the Sysinternals tools, almost any command
line in this article can be run remotely on another machine (as long as you
have administrative rights) using the psexec command included in the
Sysinternals tools.
4. You can kill RDP sessions at the command line when you
find that all the RDP sessions to a server are tied up.
regsvr32 query.dll [enter] You only have to do this the first time.
query session /server:servername [enter]
reset session # /server:servername [enter]
5. You can create a list of files and display the last time
they were accessed, which is very useful when a network drive is low on space
and users swear they have to have that copy of Office 2003 on the network. My
advice? If they haven’t touched it in two years, burn it to DVD or write it to
tape and then delete it from disk:
dir /t:a /s /od >> list.txt [enter]
6. The Microsoft Exchange Err command is one of the best
all around troubleshooting tools you will find, as it can decode any hex error
code you find as long as the products are installed on the machine. Download it
from
here.
7. You can see all the open files on a system by running
this command:
openfiles /query
8. You can pull all the readable data out of a corrupt file
using this command:
recover
filename.ext
9. Need to pause a batch file for a period of time but
don’t have the sleep command from the old resource kit handy? Here’s how to
build a ten second delay into a script:
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1 > NUL 2>&1
10. If your Windows website has stopped responding, or is
throwing a 500 error, and you are not sure what to do, you can reset IIS
without having to reboot the whole server. Run this command:
iisreset
11. You can use
&& to string multiple commands
together; they will run sequentially.
12. If you find yourself restarting services frequently,
you can use that && trick to create a batch file called restart.cmd and
use it to restart services:
net stop %1 && net start %1
13. You can download a Windows port of the wget tool
from here, and use
it to mirror websites using this command:
wget -mk http://www.example.com/
