I’ve put together a simple script to perform a ping test against an endpoint across a VPN connection to confirm VPN connectivity. If the endpoint can’t be pinged, it sends an email notification to your desired internal email address. I’ve built in a notification interval so that you are not spammed with notification emails. And,…
Category: Windows Administration
Posts pertaining to performance of administrative tasks in Windows operating systems
PowerShell – Get Windows Host Info with PsExec
Over the past several days, I have been exploring the idea of retrieving information for diagnostic purposes from Windows hosts using PsExec of the Sysinternals suite. This is something that might make sense for a small environment, as it is clientless, and there is really no overhead besides the lightweight PsExec tool, and the ThreadJob…
PowerShell, Reddit, Confetti, and Rick Astley
The other day, I came across this Reddit post on r/sysadmin: https://reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/FkC30bMxCJ The OP explains that his CEO has requested that he make confetti appear on everyone’s screen simultaneously to celebrate a milestone. I found the absurdity of the request hilarious. And, I took it as a challenge to script something similar- but I took…
PowerShell – Convert PsExec-run Cmdlet Output Strings Back to Objects, Properties, & Values
I have been experimenting with using PsExec of the Sysinternals suite to gather information from remote Windows systems for diagnostic use. I’ve found it to be a powerful tool, especially when integrated with PowerShell scripts. It is able to execute a script or command on a remote machine and return the output back to the…
PowerShell – Programmatically Determine the Primary User of a Device
Configuration Manager includes the device property and concept of UserDeviceAffinity, with which the Primary User of a device can easily be determined and referenced. But, what if your environment does not have MECM in place? MECM is a lot of overhead for a small environment. How might one maintain this capability? Well, user log on…
PowerShell- Launch Applications With Other User Context Within Interactive Session
There are many reasons one might want to establish a workflow in which they can quickly launch PowerShell or the ISE with alternative credentials from their interactive session, such as executing a script with a more privileged user context. To do so, create a script like the one below: Then, create a shortcut to execute…
PowerShell- UltimateOCD Update + Demo
For the gentleman requesting assistance with my UltimateOCD script, I have revised it further to allow you to easily provide some parameters like the target directory, directory exclusions, and a custom temporary directory path. In addition, I have revised the logic to use the “product” & “x.x.x” (version number) directories to detect Oracle client instances….
Build Your Own “Lab Hydration Kit”
When performing iterative development or testing work, it is critical to be able to quickly stand up a “clean slate” environment. The concept behind the hydration kit is to be able to rapidly “hydrate” a small Windows Domain to simulate a small enterprise environment, “Just add water!” When I am configuring an enterprise lab environment,…
Preliminary Batch Job Version – Ultimate Oracle Client Deinstaller
This is for the gentleman that kindly requested a modification of my UltimateOCD script to allow for batch deployment. Please note that this preliminary example is untested. I will be testing and revising in the days to come, but this may get you on the right track with some testing of your own. In the…
PowerShell – Update to Ultimate Oracle Deinstaller
A few months back, I had built what I dubbed the “Ultimate Oracle Client Deinstaller.” It could handle the deinstallation of Oracle database clients 11g, 12c, and 19c to include having multiple clients installed- even if they share the same Oracle_Home location. Recently, I ran into some alternate configurations of the Oracle client that required…