• Download Server Core CoreConfigurator. The developer removed the download temporarily. As long as nobody complains you can download it at 4sysops.
• Five Microsoft Exchange Server backup worst practices. I don’t share the skepticism about disk backups, but 5 (testing Exchange Backups) is important.
• Enable or Disable UAC (User Account Control) From a Batch File in Windows Vista. Sooner or later you will need this.
• The Stupidity of Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment I have to agree with the analysis at PCMech. It is funny anyway.
• Good review about VMware ThinApp at PC World. This HTTP-based synchronisation feature is interesting.
• Mary Jo Foley discussed scoop, Microsoft’s scripting language for the cloud. This sounds all quite interesting.

The Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 Shutdown Event Tracker is a little like the UAC prompts. It gets on my nerves with a prompt whenever I have to reboot a server. What comment do you usually enter in the Shutdown Event Tracker? My favorite comment is “a” because it is the first character in the alphabet. You can disable this prompt easily with Group Policy or locally with gpedit.msc.

Shortly after this feature was first introduced, I always tried to think of a reasonable comment. But I have never needed to look up the reason why a server had to be rebooted. The problem is that Windows servers have to be rebooted so often, that it doesn’t matter anyway. However, I am sure this feature makes sense in some environments.

(more…)

Some weeks ago, I blogged about a little script that allows you to turn off Vista’s UAC temporarily by killing the Windows Explorer process and restarting it with administrator rights. In a comment, Marty remarked that one doesn’t have to kill the Explorer process if one configures Windows Explorer to start in a separate process. Now, I just stumbled across a blog post that explains how to elevate Windows Explorer, which is essentially the same topic. I suppose many of you didn’t follow the discussion in my original post, so I thought I would repeat it here with some new insights.

This is not only about disabling UAC, though. It is also helpful if you want to edit a file in the Windows or Programs directory. You probably know that you can’t just do that by opening the file through Explorer. If you try it this way, your editor won’t be able to save the file. It doesn’t help if you elevate Explorer before you open the file, either. The reason for this is that Explorer is already running, since the Windows desktop is also an Explorer process.

(more…)

• 41% had no direct experience of Vista, but are offering an opinion on Vista’s suitability in a business context. http://snurl.com/2aduv #
• Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 available: Intel AMT support, new Inventory capabilties, Vista SP1+Server 2008 support http://snurl.com/2adx7 #
• Technet and MSDN are now hosted on Hyper-V. They have 4 million hits daily. Guess the final will be released soon. http://snurl.com/2adxo #
• New white paper from Microsoft comparing Vista SP1 with XP SP3. This is highly recommended for Windows XP fans. http://snurl.com/2adyf #
• Just tried Hyper-V-Manager for Vista SP1 that was originally released for Hyper-V RC0 with RC1. No problems so far. http://snurl.com/2apw9
• PCWorld has an interesting article according to which UAC helps better against rootkits than anti-virus software. http://snurl.com/2apuv

One of the features Vista’s UAC lacks is a way to temporary disable it without reboot. Under Linux you can just run the su command if you to have to accomplish several tasks that need root privileges. Vista and Windows Server 2008 don’t have such a feature. The only way to get rid of the UAC prompts temporarily is to logon with a domain administrator account. But sometimes this is very inconvenient. This is where a nice workaround, which I found in the Windows IT pro magazine (April 2008, p. 10) can be quite useful.

The trick is to elevate the desktop shell (explorer.exe), temporarily. Any tool that is launched from an elevated application will run with administrator rights. And best of all, UAC will not display its disturbing prompts from then on. The downside of this solution is that you have to kill the explorer process, first. You can just imagine the problems, it might cause. So I would recommend using this workaround with caution.

(more…)

The results of my poll about Vista’s User Account Control (UAC) are quite impressive. More than 2000 4sysops readers voted so far. 67% have disabled UAC altogether, 5% disabled the elevation prompts, 3% changed other UAC settings and only 24% use the default UAC settings.

(more…)

I just stumbled across TweakUAC, a nifty free tool that allows you to turn off UAC faster than with Vista’s onboard method. What is so useful about this utility is that you can also disable and enable UAC Prompts with it.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit favorite free admin tool | Free tools ranking list | Descriptions of all tools

With Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) enabled, you need an elevated command shell if you have to run commands with administrator privileges from the command line. This post explains how you can alter the Windows Explorer context menu to open an elevated command prompt in a certain directory using Microsoft’s Script Elevation PowerToys for Windows Vista. The elevate.cmd that comes with the PowerToys allows you to launch commands and scripts with administrative rights from a non-elevated command prompt. You can also use them to elevate other file types such as MSI or MSP easily.

(more…)

Rate this tool: (1 votes, average: 2 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Submit favorite free admin tool | Free tools ranking list | Descriptions of all tools

Most of the more tech savvy Vista users I talked to disabled UAC (User Account Control) or at least its confirmation prompts. I didn’t like UAC right from the beginning, but I was curious enough to see if it would really increase security and how it would affect my work. So I kept its default settings. But I wonder how many of you weren’t so patient and disabled it.

(more…)

Stefan Krueger of the InstallSite Blog links to two posts describing how to elevate scripts, that is to run them with administrator rights. One has an example for VBScript and the other one is for JScript. Both solutions use a wrapper script that launches the main script. Note that they don’t circumvent UAC. If an admin is running this script, she will get the UAC prompt if this feature is not disabled. Under Windows XP, you only had the problem of running scripts with sufficient privileges, while under Vista you have the additional problem of telling UAC that a script will need admin privileges. So you have to take two lines of defense now before actually getting things done.