Saturday, April 6, 2013

Lack of GUI options within VMware Tools

In the past, VMware Tools installed within a Windows guest offered several options via the GUI of the system tray icon.  Starting with Workstation version 9 and ESXi version 5.1, the old options are no longer present.

vmware_tools_1

Some of the features available via the GUI in the past are still present using the VMwareToolboxCMD.exe application.  The “help” switch will display some available options.

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool

The Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool is a companion to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer web site.  The utility provides the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for five common connectivity symptoms directly from a local computer and save results in an HTML format.

https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/?tabid=client

Ulteo

Ulteo is open-source virtual desktop solution.

http://www.ulteo.com/

How to change network firewall profiles within Windows 8 using PowerShell

To change network firewall profiles within Windows 8 using PowerShell (such as going from Public to Private), use the following command to list all network interfaces and the current values.

Get-NetConnectionProfile

To modify the profile, use the following command including the network interface to change and the new value.

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceAlias Ethernet -NetworkCategory Private

powershell_change_network_profile

How to create a report of when passwords have expired using Quest’s AD cmdlets

To create a report of when user account’s passwords have expired with Quest’s AD cmdlets, use the following command.  By sorting by ParentContainer, the output should be grouped by Organizational Units.

Get-QADUser -SizeLimit 5000 | Select LogonName, ParentContainer, LastLogon, PasswordLastSet, PasswordExpires | Sort ParentContainer, PasswordExpires | Export-CSV report.csv

Rsnapshot

Rsnapshot is a file system snapshot utility written in Perl for making backups of local and remote systems with Unix-based systems.

http://www.rsnapshot.org/

Tail option with PowerShell

PowerShell has an option similar to the Tail command with Linux/Unix to monitor log files.  The syntax to use is:

Get-Content logfilename –Tail number of lines to return

powershell_tail

Disable application start screen with Office 2013

Applications within the Office 2013 suite by default have a start screen.  To disable this with Word, launch a new blank document.  Click on File – Options.

office_2013_disable_start_screen_1

Within the Startup options area, disable the Start screen item.  The same procedure can be used with other applications within the suite such as Excel.

office_2013_disable_start_screen_2