For any administrator, who want to use any kind of free tools to have better access or monitor some functionalities in Windows environments, here we have a list of many free tools. Just look which is usable for you and use it:
https://4sysops.com/best-free-windows-admin-tools/
And please, test it in test environment prior you use it in production. Many times tolls are not exactly the same as you expect..
Category: Management
Forgot ILO Password?
No problem. You can reset it via software from your operating system. It is possible to do it from almost any Windows server system and from Linux (from Linux I didn’t try).
To do this, you have to install HP Lights-Out Online Configuration Utility for the system that you are using. You can download it form HP web page, where the drivers are located.
After you have installed this software, you will need a XML file with this content:
<ribcl VERSION=”2.0″>
<login USER_LOGIN=”Administrator” PASSWORD=”boguspassword”>
<user_INFO MODE=”write”>
<mod_USER USER_LOGIN=”Administrator”>
<password value=”YourNewPassword”/>
</mod_USER>
</user_INFO>
</login>
</ribcl>
I know, that the login password (the old one) is not correct, but you don’t need to know it (scary…), it will work.
Save this file into the folder C:\Progam Files\HP\hponcfg and launch the command prompt as Administrator. Navigate to the folder and type:
Hponcfg /f YourFile.xml /l YourLogFile.txt
You will be noticed that script worked correctly. Now you have just to login into ILO with the new password.
Easy to do it. Maybe too easy.
More reading:
Export ILO configuration
Remotly manage Local Admins
Many times I come in environments, where it is normal that any user has a local administrator right on his computer. As you probably know (I hope), this is not the best practice and it is very dangerous from the point of security.
Anyway, removing all this users from all computers is an annoying job. Of course, you can do it via Group policy, but you can’t use a filter in case someone has to remain. For those cases, I wrote a small vbs script that you can use.
The usage is simple. Form the administrative command prompt change the directory to the place, where the script is located and run it: RemoveAdmin.vbs ComputerName. ComputerName is the name of the computer you want to check.
The script will have a look into local admin group and you will be asked for every member if you want to remove it or not. Simply, you can filter who will remain local admin and who will lost this privilege. Think twice before you leave this privilege to a user member of local admin group – remove it, if you don’t have a really good reason to keep it.
Download: RemoveAdmin
.
BYOD – Bring Your Own Device (Disaster) at work
Everyone is talking that the future is, that users have the same device at work and at home. I agree that this is becoming reality and we can see it every day in almost every company (for example smart phones connected to Wi-Fi networks or tablets etc.), but this is not always good for our companies and administrators. If you want to enable BYOD for their employees, please read this article before you start. I completely agree with the 16 rules and as a result of missing them, you can get some malware attacks, because the malware is using all possible ways to enter into your network. You will be also surprised how many zero day attacks are present today… it’s an interesting reading!.
Group Policy and WMI filtering for OS
Many times, we have to apply some GPO only to particular OS, domain controllers or servers. As we know, this is possible with WMI filtering, but it is very difficult to found all parameters to determinate the operating system in one place. This is why I want to write this post.
When you want to use a WMI filter for query OS, you have to use WMI\CimV2 namespace and there are listed some values that you must know:
Operating system version – we can determinate the version of OS with the variable Version:
Windows Server 2012 Version like “6.2%”
Windows Server 2008 R2 Version like “6.1%”
Windows Server 2008 Version like “6.0%”
Windows Server 2003 Version like “5.2%”
Windows 8 Version like “6.2%”
Windows 7 Version like “6.1%”
Windows Vista Version like “6.0%”
Windows XP (Version like “5.1%” or Version like “5.2%”)
As we can see very quickly, some OS have the same number of OS Version, so we have to adopt the second variable ProductType to have a selection:
Client operating systems ProductType=”1″
Domain controllers ProductType=”2″
Servers that are not domain controllers ProductType=”3″
Now, with the combination of those two variables, we can find only the operating system that we need. However, is it a 32 or 64 bit system? Of course, we can sort also this characteristic with another variable – AddressWidth:
32bit systems AddressWidth = “32”
64bit systems AddressWidth = “64”
At the end, to be more clear, I want to write some examples:
All domain controllers in domain:
select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where ProductType = “3”
All 64 bit Windows 8 OS:
select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where Version like “6.2%” and ProductType = “1” and AddressWidth = “64”
All Windows 2012 servers that are non DC’s:
select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where Version like “6.2%” and ProductType = “3”
Of course, we can filter on many more variables than explained. There are many parameters, which are explained on TechNet and in White papers. For example, we can apply policy (e.g. to install some software) only to computers that have more than 1GB of space on HD:
Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk where FreeSpace > 1073741824 (space is in kb).
