The free version of SetACL allows you to manage permissions for Windows objects such as folders or printers by manging their access control list on the command line.

Submitted by Helge Klein

If you look under the hood of Windows you find permissions everywhere. Files and folders, registry keys, network shares, printers, services and WMI objects – all of these have security descriptors storing ownership, permission and auditing information. That opens up powerful management options and SetACL is the great tool for the job. It sets and lists permissions practically anywhere in the system, locally and over the network, from the command line, scripts or programs.

SetACL – Manage access control lists (more…)

Rate this tool: (4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Console is a free portable Windows Command Prompt alternative that supports multiple-line copy and paste, comfortable window resizing, and tabs.

Windows is not really made to be managed from a command-line interface, and the somewhat primitive Windows Command Prompt stresses this fact. But the strongest side of Windows is that, for every weakness, a third party steps into the breach—and, in many cases, the stopgap is free. (Which is why the 4sysops list of free Windows admin tools now already contains 343 tools.) Console is another candidate.

Windows Command Prompt alternative – Console

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

The four ways to convert a batch file to an EXE file are IEXPRESS.EXE the free Bat To Exe Converter tool, the Sysadmin Geek's BAT to EXE converter script and commercial BAT to EXE compilers.

Why would you need a BAT to EXE converter? There are at least four reasons: You don’t want your users to view or mess with your batch files, your script depends on several other files that you can add to an EXE file, you have to run the batch script with administrator rights in a user context, or you want to pin EXE files to the Windows 7 taskbar or the Windows Start Menu (something you can’t do with BAT files). In this article, I will outline four ways to convert BAT files to EXE files.

1. IEXPRESS.EXE

IEXPRESS.EXE is a Windows tool that allows you to create your own setup programs. A setup program is just a program; that is, the output of IEXPRESS.EXE is simply an EXE file. You can find the tool under C:\windows\system32. Double-click to start the IEXPRESS wizard that guides you through the creation of the EXE file. Essentially, you tell the tool what files you want to add to your package and which files to execute when the EXE file is executed—in this case, this will be your BAT file. There are quite a few settings you can configure, such as whether the file extraction is visible to the user. Note that not all batch commands will work. For example, you can’t use the copy command, but xcopy works fine. A detailed description of how to use IEXPRESS.EXE for a BAT to EXE conversion can be found here.

(more…)

The number of reasons for Windows reboots has decreased considerably over the years. But, sometimes, it seems odd to me that operating systems still have to reboot at all. I think, the rise of tablets will force system developers to rethink this weakness. Until then, we have to shut down and reboot our computers at least every now and then.

The problem is that “now” is usually the wrong time from the user’s perspective, and sometimes Windows insists that “then” is too late. There are many reasons why Windows can initiate a restart without user consent, including during the processing of automatic Windows updates or when an updated application just wants to be sure that everything will work properly. Or perhaps you just initiated the shutdown at the moment your boss calls to ask for some important data and you want to stop it.

I know of four ways to stop or prevent shutdowns and reboots:

(more…)

Who says that WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS doesn’t run on Windows 7 x64? I was tempted to write this blog post with WordPefect, because I once was a great fan of this text processing software. Well, of course it doesn’t run natively on a 64-bit Windows. I used the free DOS emulator DOSBox. I suppose, its main purpose is to run old games on modern operating systems. However, I am pretty sure that there are quite a few legacy DOS programs in productive environments out there. Since Windows XP, the built-in DOS emulator has only limited capabilities. And on 64-bit Windows, you can’t even run 16-bit Windows apps, let alone DOS programs.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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…

(more…)

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

Rate this tool: (4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (6 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Submitted by costinel

a nice approach to running with/without elevated rights.

RunAsAdmin

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

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

Submitted by costinel

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

console

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit a free admin tool | Free admin tools index | Browse free admin tools

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)