More than 1,100 4sysops readers took part in this poll. I asked whether a graphical user interface (GUI) or a command line interface (CLI) was preferred when it comes to Windows administration. The results are quite clear: 66% prefer a GUI tool, 17% prefer the command line, and for another 17%, it doesn’t make a difference.

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Recently, I stumbled upon a sentence in a Microsoft blog that made me wonder if there is a paradigmatic change happening in Redmond. Ned Pyle discussed the Windows Server 2003 adminpak tool RepImon (Active Directory Replication Monitor utility) as a replacement for the Windows Server 2008, Repadmin (Replication Diagnostics Tool). Both tools allow you to view the Active Directory replication status and to force synchronization between domain controllers. What is interesting here is that RepImon has a graphical user interface, whereas Repadmin is a command line tool.

To some extent, the article reads as if Repadmin is a new tool, yet both tools have already been introduced in Windows 2000. Therefore, Microsoft dropped a GUI tool in favor of the command line version. This is in contradiction to Microsoft’s official policy, i.e., that command line and graphical admin tools are supported in the same manner. It has occurred to me several times, however, that this is really no longer the case. Ned Pyle indicates why:

Windows administrators are much more comfortable with the command-line, and that’s great…

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Submitted by hs2n

With the command line tool Export.exe you can put the stdout output of win32 console programs into CMD.EXE environment variables, which is very useful for batch files

It partly covers the functionality of the tool conset.exe (but export.exe also comes with a 64-bit version) or the linux export – command

export.exe

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NirCmd is one of those tools that belongs in every admin’s tool box. It was released in 2003 and the number of features has been growing ever since. It is hard to describe in a few words what you can actually do with this nifty tool because its functionality is so versatile. There is no special field of application; thus you could say it is a Swiss army knife for system administrators.

While the future of command line administration and scripting certainly belongs to PowerShell, I know that many admins still prefer simple batch scripts when it comes to scripting in a Windows environment. PowerShell is powerful, but it also requires a powerful memory if you only use it every now and then. What I like most about NirCmd is that its structure is so simple that one can easily memorize its commands.

Another advantage of simple batch scripts is that you can run them on every Windows box without installing .NET and PowerShell. Because NirCmd is only about 30KB, you can load it from a network share when you have to run a script on remote machines. In addition, it is possible to execute NirCmd commands on remote computers. You can explicitly add the computer names in your script or specify a text file with a list of the computers on which you want to run a specific NirCmd command.

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Submitted by costinel

a nice approach to running with/without elevated rights.

RunAsAdmin

Rate this tool: (4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)

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Submitted by costinel

nice eye-candy replacement for cmd.exe (launches cmd but adds transparency, tabs, cursors, etc)

console

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Submitted by costinel

the best S.M.A.R.T. software; add blat.exe and you’ll get automated email reports for failing disks.

Publisher’s description:

The smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks. In many cases, these utilities will provide advanced warning of disk degradation and failure.

smartmontools for win32

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Blat is a free tool that allows you to send emails from the command line or from a batch file. Of course, you can also use it with any scripting language that allows you to launch external commands. This can be useful, if you want to be informed when a script has failed or when it finished its job.

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Actually, you could also say, it is an introduction into Windows Powershell from Microsoft. When I skimmed over the document, I came once again to the conclusion that Powershell is not really a shell, but just another scripting language.

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Windows PowerShell is finally available for Vista, too. Download and installation took me only a minute or so. It is interesting to note, that WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) already checks Windows before the download. If you download it with Firefox, you have to install a plugin first.

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This is what you get when you enter “xcopy /?” on a Vista command prompt. Of course, you can still use xcopy, but it isn’t wrong to move to Robocopy now. It has many interesting features.

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You can now download Microsoft’s new command line shell and scripting language. If you don’t run an English Windows version, make sure that you also get the Multilingual User Interface Package. It is interesting to note that there is not yet a version for Windows Vista. You can download Windows Powershell 1.0 RC2, but it is only for Vista RC1. There seems to be a big interest in Powershell, judging from the number of comments in the relatively new Powershell blog. However, I think, most Windows administrators will need some time to make friends with the idea of going back to the command line, like in the good old times of MS DOS. Okay, Powershell is a bit more powerful.

PowerShell originally was planned as a part of Windows Vista. Now, it seems it might be available even before Vista since RC2 is already available. I’ve read many marvellous things about Microsoft’s new command line shell. Some say that even Unix admins will get envious. This remains to be seen, though.

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ProcessWatchV2 is a simple, free tool which allows you to automatically:

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XDir and YourDir are two very different Windows programs, but they basically have the same purpose. They create your directory structure’s output which you can use for further processing. XDir is a powerful command line tool, whereas, YourDir is a relatively easy-to-use Windows tool with a GUI.

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