In this second part of two I will describe some technical details of ManageEngine Desktop Central 7 and give an overview of the tool's systems management features.

Role-based access control

Desktop Central 7 uses a role-based access control (RBAC) motif in which you can log into the system as a full-fledged administrator or as one of a series of dedicated sub-administrative roles, including the following:

• Patch Manager
• Auditor
• Asset Manager
• Remote Desktop Technician

Once you are logged in as an administrator, Desktop Central offers you a plethora of administrative action options for managed devices; some of these are shown in the screenshot below.

Desktop Central 7 administrative options

(more…)

ManageEngine Desktop Central 7's is a powerful systems management software. In this article (the first of two) I will give an overview of the tool's functionality.

Zoho Corp., the publisher of ManageEngine Desktop Central raffles off two license of its desktop management software. The winner will receive a 100 computers annual subscription license of the Professional Edition (worth $995 USD) and the runner a 50 computer license ($545 USD). The deadline of this contest is January 7, 2012. If you want to have a chance to win one of the licenses, please send an email with the subject “Desktop Central” to .

Notice that Zoho Corp. also offers Desktop Central MSP 7 for managed service providers. This review is about Desktop Central 7.

Why do you need ManageEngine Desktop Central?

In a nutshell, ManageEngine Desktop Central is agent-based server and desktop administration software. Because Desktop Central 7 is managed by using a Web browser, you can perform systems management from any system in your organization, either on-campus or off-campus.

ManageEngine Desktop Central 7

(more…)

Workspace Manager Express stores desktop and application settings in a central database, which in some cases allows you to replace roaming user profiles.

Would you like to reduce your reliance on Windows roaming user profiles and the hassle that can be caused by corrupt profiles? How about having sub 20-second logon for all users? What about settings that work across all platforms and architectures, configured from one central place? Or applying just-in-time settings to applications as needed rather than all at the beginning of the user session?

Workspace Manager Express

Sounds great? All of this functionality is available for free with a tool that’s been around for a while: Workspace Manager Express from RES Software.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

This article discusses installation requirements of the free network monitoring software Spiceworks and contains a concise walkthrough of the Spiceworks installation process.

Spiceworks is a great free network inventory and monitoring tool that is very useful for administrators and help desk staff. Spiceworks supports hardware and software inventory, facilitates network monitoring, and offers help desk functionality. For a more detailed feature list, please read this overview of Spiceworks’s functionality. In this article, I will help you get started quickly with Spiceworks.

Spiceworks

(more…)

nspaces is a free Virtual Desktop Manager that allows you to password protect workspaces.

Submitted by Dion Zhu

Virtual desktops are always useful for separating your work into multiple workspaces for more efficiently organizing and managing your work. nSpaces is a virtual desktop manager application to manage multiple workspaces.

Virtual Desktop Manager – nspaces

(more…)

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

WMI Explorer allows you to browse WMI classes, objects and their properties and execute any WMI query.

This is part three of a three part series of articles covering two great WMI tools, the second and final tool being WMI Explorer.

WMI Explorer v1.10 is another lightweight (at 533KB), portable tool. To demonstrate its abilities I need to use WMI to find something I don’t already know and without using any books or the web. My example is to list the games I have installed and the path. The first step is to connect to a different namespace, as in the screenshot below.

WMI Explorer – Connecting to different namespaces

(more…)

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

This is part two of a three part series of articles covering two great WMI tools, the first tool being Microsoft's free WMI Code Creator.

WMI Code Creator is a tiny (300KB) Microsoft tool available here. To demonstrate its features, the code snippet below is for querying a machine’s model and gives us enough info to start using the tool.

strComputer = "."
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strQuery="SELECT * from Win32_ComputerSystem"
Set col=GetObject("WinMgmts://" & strComputer & "/root/cimv2").ExecQuery(strQuery)
For Each WMIProperty in col
PCModel = WMIProperty.Model

First, I need to select the CIMV2 namespace and then find the win32_computersystem class in the class drop-down box. Without reference to a huge book or the internet, you would struggle to discover the properties in the class without perhaps writing a script. Code creator makes this trivial, with the click of a single button which lists all properties. The model is just one property of many, as you can see in figure 2 below:

(more…)

Rate this tool: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

Delprof2 allows you to delete a user profile. It is an extended version of Microsoft's Delprof and works on all Windows versions including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Submitted by Helge Klein – Website: helgeklein.com

While user profiles are great for personalization, sometimes a cleanup is required and some or all profiles need to be deleted. As it turns out, Windows has no tool for automating this task from the command line. There used to be a tool called Delprof, but it does not work correctly on Windows 7 and Server 2008 (R2). Delprof2 does. It is a kind of unofficial successor to Delprof. Although it is more powerful than the original it is still syntax-compatible, so existing scripts can be reused without any change.

Delprof2 – Delete user profile

(more…)

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

VisualCron is an advanced task scheduler for Windows that supports central management. Its power task scheduling features go far beyond the capabilities of the Windows Task Scheduler.

VisualCron raffles off three licenses of their central task scheduling software for Windows to 4sysops readers. The winner will receive a 5-Server license worth $717 USD. The two runners-up will each receive a 1-Server license worth $197 USD. The deadline of this contest is July 26, 2011. If you want to take part in this raffle, please send an email with the subject VisualCron to .

(more…)

VirtuAll User Environment Manager is free user environment management tool designed for virtual desktops but it can also centrally manage settings of traditional desktops.

Submitted by Pierre Marmignon – Website: VirtuAll Solutions

VirtuAll User Environment Manager (VUEM) allows you to eliminate login scripts and mange centrally manage user environments.

VirtuAll User Environment Manager (VUEM) navigation

(more…)

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

SimpleSysInfo is a free system information tool for Windows that allows you to retrieve any kind of system information because allows you to customize the displayed sysinfo.

So many sysinfo tools exist for Windows, and I’m guessing you already have a couple of them in your tool box. But SimpleSysInfo is worth a look. It is quite useful for help desk personnel who need to get an overview of a PC’s configuration, and it is also an interesting option for sys admins who have to retrieve the same PC settings frequently.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

WindowsPager is a free virtual desktop manager that allows you to organize your opened application on multiple virtual desktops.

Virtual desktop managers are quite popular under Linux. I wonder why Microsoft never introduced such a feature in Windows. Perhaps virtual desktop managers confuse some users because they forget that an application is already started and is just not visible on the foreground desktop. However, I think that for IT professionals, who are used to working with many different applications at the same time, a virtual desktop manager can be quite helpful.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

WhatInStartup allows you to manage Windows startup programs—that is, programs that are automatically started when Windows boots up.

Some of you might wonder why I review WhatInStartup because the ultimate free Windows startup manager is Microsoft’s Sysinternals Autoruns. There appears to be no room for a competitor. Not so fast! Read on, and you will see that NirSoft’s WhatInStartup is worth a try.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

ABC Deploy is a free software deployment and Windows client maintenance tool. It can distribute all types of management tasks to computers as well as to end users.

Submitted by Flemming Varmer

ABC Deploy allows you to install any type of software to your client systems, and also to create and maintain user profiles for that software. The free tool supports all Windows 32 and 64 bit versions since Windows 2000.

Task definition is made real simple. In most cases installing software like Adobe Acrobat Reader only requires you to name the task, and supply the path to a .MSI file. Error handling and logging activity is fully automated. You can also monitor client activity in real-time.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (6 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

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

ClipX is a free clipboard manager that stores the clipboard history in a file and allows you to access previous clipboard entries easily, clear the clipboard history, and edit clipboard items.

I have always wondered why Windows only allows you to store one clipboard item. On a normal work day, it usually happens several times that I have to access previous clipboard entries that were already overwritten with new ones. Many clipboard managers are available that pick up the slack; this doesn’t really excuse the lack of this Windows feature but it at least offers a solution. I hope Windows 8 will come with its own clipboard manager.

(more…)