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Option 2
Looking for an alternative to your expensive commercial software? Look no further than Open Source As Alternative at http://www.osalt.com/
Group Policy Troubleshooting
I ran into a problem with group policy this week. Here are some useful commands that help you with troubleshooting:
gpresult > c:\out.txt - Shows the polices that are applied to the computer you run this on
gpupdate - This tool is used for refreshing local and Active Directory policy settings on the computer from which you run the GPUpdate command.
gpmonitor - The Group Policy Monitor tool works on Windows XP and higher computers. Group Policy Monitor tool collects Group Policy information at every Group Policy refresh and sends that information to a centralized location that you specify. You can then use the Group Policy Monitor user interface (UI) to view the data. The Group Policy Monitor UI can provide a historical view of policy changes. The UI is also designed to make it easy to navigate through historical snapshots of data and trace changes. You can find full documentation for the Group Policy Monitor tool in the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit Tools.
gotool - The Group Policy Verification tool works on Windows 2000 and higher computers. You use Group Policy Verification tool to check the health of the Group Policy objects on domain controllers. The tool checks GPOs for consistency on each domain controller in your domain. The tool also determines whether the policies are valid and displays detailed information about replicated Group Policy objects (GPOs).GPOTool.exe ships with the Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit and is also available as a free download at the Gpotool.exe: Group Policy Verification Tool page.
admx - The ADM File Parser (AdmX) is a command-line tool that enables an administrator to export Group Policy settings to a tab-delimited text file. The administrator can then use the text produced by ADM File Parser (AdmX) to find changes for the policy settings between different versions of the operating systems. AdmX is for use only with policies based on administrative templates.
And, of course, Group Policy Management Console
Vista crawl
Those of you that have to use Vista for one reason or other may have noticed now slow the bandwidth is compared to and XP box on the same LAN. Here is a lovely nugget from Dana Epp, a Microsoft MVP :
Start a cmd window as an administrator and type these commands in:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global chimney=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
If you are unsure of your current settings, you can run:
netsh interface tcp show global
If you need to turn it back on, you can do this by typing:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal
netsh interface tcp set global chimney=enable
netsh interface tcp set global rss=enable
Lazy (wo)man’s news
Ok, I know there is a million RSS readers that don’t require an install, but sometimes it is just easier to have it on your desktop. I like this little pearl called NewsPiper. Simple, clean, free, customizable and supports multiple languages (yes, I have to have my Russian news fix), what more can you ask for?
Anti-virus faves
Yes, I have to use commercial products at work too, the same as most of us. Symantec and McAfee are pretty comparable. Relatively easy to deploy, annoyingly slow Java interface, larger and larger install files though out the years. Symantec does have an all-in-one setup.exe file now that can be as easily deployed from the network share as from a USB key and policy updates to the clients are almost instantaneous. Beware, if you have a Lotus domino client open, the computer based install from the server will not work.
In the freebie world, I have to say, I love AVG and Comodo. Simple, clean, fast running and the definition updates are timely.
A separate positive note for Comodo firewall, takes a bit of configuration, especially on a domain, but very nice.
Zip it
It’s small, it’s free and it works.
Love the 7-Zip.
winlockpwn
The memory dump on a disk encrypted machine was awesome. This tool beats it no question.
This is an exploit of a feature of Firewire that allows a user run commands in memory on a running workstation. So, a live firewire port and physical access == owned. No user authentication credentials necessary. You can launch a shell and create a user account with admin right. You know what happens then. Nothing short of brilliant
The tool name is winlockpwn
Here is the site of the creator
Read all those .dat files
I have a need to look through the contents of index.dat files quite a bit. Call it the curse of doing internal audits. This a tool that helps easily extract the data:
Missing avi codec
Tired of trying to play a video just to be confronted with image without sound or the dreaded C00D1XX error? Find the missing codec with this nifty little tool - Gspot @ http://www.headbands.com/gspot/