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Make mailto links open Yahoo mail on Windows
This isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing. I’m using Windows 7, but this should work (with a few tweaks) on other versions too. You do NOT need to install any additional software, so Yahoo...
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Find print servers in Active Directory from the command line
Run the following on a machine that has the AD DS Snap-ins and Command-Line tools installed (or appropriate on older OS, e.g. AdminPak on Windows XP): for /f "delims=, tokens=2" %i in ('dsquery *...
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Pharos Uniprint 8.2 ADLDAP authentication failure
On a fairly recently installed test system of Pharos Uniprint 8.2 running on WIndows Server 2008 R2 (i.e. 64-bit OS) I configured the Pharos Remote bank to use the ADLDAPLogon.exe plugin. This allows...
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VBScript: Delete registry values that contain a backslash in the name
VBscript is great for most stuff, but occasionally you try and do something and it can’t handle it. I came across another one of these yesterday, trying to remove some old network printer connections....
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VBScript error -2147023080
Had this when trying to copy a file using a Scripting.FileSystem object’s .CopyFile method. Could find no information on error -2147023080 but trying the same using the command prompt’s copy command...
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Upgrade PST files to Unicode and run ScanPST from the command line
Identified an issue with old PST files that started to misbehave when Microsoft Office was upgraded to 2010. PST files created by Outlook 97, 2000 or XP are stored using ANSI, whereas the ones created...
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Powershell: Remove computer from Active Directory
This is in theory easy, just import the ActiveDirectory module: Import-Module ActiveDirectory and then remove the computer: Remove-ADComputer -Identity "computername" Except that sometimes it fails...
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Autologon after creating virtual machine from template with VMM 2012 SP1 beta
I’ve been having a fun time trying to get System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 beta to do things. It’s been even more fun when I’ve been trying via the delightful PowerShell – I want to get...
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Getting PowerShell scripts to run with no prompts
I am currently experimenting with Windows Server 2012, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1, and automation of various processes related to creating/building Server 2012 virtual machines. I...
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PowerShell: Mounting and dismounting ISO images on Windows Server 2012 and...
Had need to do this recently, and as per usual with powershell, it was kind of easy, but there were a few fiddly bits that don’t appear to have been thought through by the designers. Note that as the...
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PowerShell: Parallel ping test with CSV result files
I’ve been experimenting with parallel workflows in PowerShell and this seemed like a good thing to try and do with it. No guarantees that this script is the best, but it does work. Give it a list of...
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Script comparison: CMD, VBScript, Powershell
This was going to be a short scripting exercise for a new member of staff, but has been ditched due to time constraints. I’d written some sample scripts to see how long it’d take, so thought I’d post...
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Logon scripts do not run at logon – Server 2012 R2
Another genius bit of fiddling by Microsoft means that on Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, logon scripts no longer run as part of the logon process. This had me totally foxed for hours. I have my logon...
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Search for VMware RDMs
A storage admin recently asked me if a couple of LUNs were still in use. They had very little info about them, but knew they were presented to the vSphere hosts. So I wrote a quick script to find all...
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Find vSphere VM locations: Folder, vApp and Resource Pool
The vSphere client doesn’t seem to give you a nice overview where you can see all the location data about your virtual machines. You can see the Folder and vApp by expanding all the branches in the VMs...
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Browse for and display a PowerShell Clixml file in a DataGrid window
I’ve been using Out-DataGrid a lot recently, I seem to have a lot of uses for it. One of the things I’m displaying is an array of custom objects. Sometimes the script that generates this data takes a...
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Basic RDS 2012 R2 Shadowing Console
Whereas older versions of Windows had the tsadmin.exe utility, Server 2012 R2 doesn’t have anything equivalent. Helpdesk staff need a simple, easy to manage and configure console to allow them to...
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Get and delete DNS A and PTR records via PowerShell
My Remote Desktop Session Host build process is now pretty slick. I can easily rebuild a lot of RDSH VMs very quickly. The process basically involved powering off the existing VM, deleting both it and...
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Powershell function to pin and unpin from Windows Taskbar
Wrote this to make it easy to add and remove pinned items from the taskbar. Code function Pin-Taskbar([string]$Item = "",[string]$Action = ""){ if($Item -eq ""){ Write-Error -Message "You need to...
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PowerShell: There are null values and then there are SQL null values
I was reading some data out of a SQL Server table, and wanted to do an operation if one of the string values returned, MAC, was either blank or null. I was using the following code: $NewServerName =...
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