A few Windows Tips

Configuration 

• Run msconfig to edit configuration for startup 
• Services.msc 
• Msinfo32  - to show general config  
• Use set to view settings. 

• Msinfo32 to show System Configuration 

Active Directory 

• Aduc, adsi (run) 

How to Change Password via RDP 

1. Login into server over RDP session. 
2. Click on Start > Windows Security 
3. Click on the "Change Password" button. 

WSUS   (validate) 

• Check  c:\%windir%\Windowsupdate.log and search for WSUS Server 

Process File Locks 

• Use Process Explorer to find locked files 
• Click the Find menu, and choose Find Handle or DLL... 

Restore Volume Icon in System Tray 

1.  Go to Start > Run (or Windows-key + R), type in regedit and hit OK.  
2. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify.  
3. Delete the values IconStreams and PastIconsStream.  
4. Open up the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), go to the Processes tab, select explorer.exe and click End Process.  
5. Open the Applications tab and click New Task at the bottom-right of the window.  
6. In the message box that pops up type in explorer.exe and hit OK.  
7. Explorer.exe will reload, and the missing icons should now be back in the system-tray where they belong.  
8. Then if the volume bar isn't there, go to taskbar properties (where the volume was gray) and simply tick the box.  

Setup PowerShell/PowerCli

Configure Powershell on Windows7

• Go start > search > type ‘powershell’ and drag PowerShell ISE to desktop for shortcut. 

Download Quest Active Roles 

• http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx 

Download PowerCLI 

• https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details/sdkwin40u1/ZHcqYmQlcHRiZGVqd

 

• Run set-executionPolicy unrestricted  (allow unsigned scripts) 

Setup PowerShell Profile 

• run $profile  which should show you path in middle pane  
• run test-path $profile and will probably return False since there's no profile created yet.  
• run this New-Item -path $profile -type file -force  
• This will create a new profile file, otherwise next step would fail  
• Run notepad $profile and edit the file as you want. I just added in this  
• add-pssnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin 
• add-pssnapin quest.activeroles.admanagement  
• add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core  
• set-location c:\scripts  

Quest Authentication Commands

This post lists some very basic and common commands for Quest Authentication Services or Vintela Authentication Services. This is clean up of some of my older documentation.

QAS/VAS is used for authentication to Active Directory from Linux/Unix.

This page will contain basic and frequently used vastool commands. VAS is Vintela Authentication Services (or Quest Authentication Services) and is used to allow to connect to Active Directory for single sign on or AD Authentication for Linux access. 

Check user Access 

• vastool user checkaccess UserID 
  • ex: vastool user checkaccess twalters 
  
  

Check User Login 

• # vastool user checklogin twalters 
• Password for twalters@mydomain.com: 

List User Info 

• $ vastool list user twalters 

Change Password 

• # vastool passwd 

Show Credentials Cache 

• vastool klist 
• 
  

List Domain 

• vastool info domain 
• vastool info site 

Show Schema List 

• $ vastool schema  list 

Join Computer to Domain 

• vastool join domain 

Print VAS License Info 

• $ vastool license -q