Don’t worry we wont narc on you and we will even help you to find out who on your network is listening to your tunes. When you go to close iTunes down and it yells back at you that someone is connected to your library – what do you do?

Leave it open so they can continue to get their music on? Close it even quicker because the concept of sharing scares you? Look to disable sharing all together?

Either which way this simple dos command will point you to who is listening to your music.

The answer I sent back to Inga was:

No the Internet is MUCH worse because it is socially acceptable – look people are doing it as they walk down the street…

Inga wrote back one final time FTW:

What do you think they are doing with Crack in the streets out here??

_TheTrueThatAdmiN_

I’m also not talking about graffiti and catching tags and fill-ins. Even though the above geeky graffiti shot is hysterical… But as usual I am going off topic!

I am talking about tagging images, blog posts, documents or what have you for easy indexing and searching. Do you find it strange that you can’t do this on Windows with everyday files?

Well it would be, IF you couldn’t but you can and AtA is here to give you a quick how to. If you right click on any file on your computer and bring up its properties and click on the summary tab and you will see a comments field.

I am sure you have given this a glance or two before but now lets put it to work for us! You can add a field to your windows explorer to display these comments like so:

1. Goto Windows Explorer
2. Right Click on the top bar and select more
3. and then comments like you see here:

To enable this on ALL folders across your machine, after making the above change goto tools Folder Options and hit that magic Apply to all Folders Button.

Now when you view a folder listing you will see your comments and give you a better idea of what’s what. Or you could name your files appropriately to begin with and not just HotChick1 and NewDocument8992… But hey to each there own!

And as a bonus if you want to search this field you can download Windows Desktop Search 3.01 and you will be greeted with a slew of new search options! Enjoy.

_TheTGIFAdmiN_

My favorite is The Assembler Apprentice and their quote “You’re Pwned!”

[Via blogoscoped]

_TheWhosLaughingNowAdmiN_

Hey there??? Hi!!!??

How’s it going?????

Nothings wrong! Why do you ask????

Oh no. We always shake lIkE thAt!

DoEsN’t EveRyOnE???

Alright we got the pleasantries out of the way now – Holy crap it has happened. This is something straight out of Futurama. (Sorry for the re-run!)

That’s right you shower and lather up this “Shower Shock” and get a heaping dose of caffeine.

Just don’t stay in there for hours and come out shaking. Unless of course you are into that kind of thing. Don’t worry we don’t judge…

Check out this item from our favorite online shop ThinkGeek – Starting at $7 a bar. It’s cheaper than Starbucks – Kind of…

Mornings Have Never Been So Invigorating!

• Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning java to brew?
• Are you one of those groggy early morning types that just needs that extra kick?
• Know any programmers who don’t regularly bathe and need some special motivation?

Introducing Shower Shock, the original and world’s first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek. When you think about it, ShowerShock is the ultimate clean buzz.

It Works! Featured On…

• TechTV
• NBC
• MSNBC
• CNN
• Good Morning America
• Washington Post
• Ripley’s Believe It Or Not
• Your Bathroom!

Shower Shock is an all vegetable based glycerine soap which does *not* contain any harsh ingredients like ethanol, diethanolamine, polyethylene glycol or cocyl isethionate. So it’s a gently invigorating soap Scented with peppermint oil and infused with caffeine anhydrous, each bar of Shower shock contains approximately 12 servings/showers per 4 ounce bar with 200 milligrams of caffeine per serving. No, we’re not kidding and no you don’t eat it. The caffeine is absorbed through the skin. For maximum effect, ThinkGeek recommends that you build up a good Shower Shock lather across your entire body before rinsing!

Have smelly co-workers that sleep in too much? Give them the gift of Shower Shock… Plus AtA gets a few pennies on the dollar for your purchase via any of these links! Help us help you by buying us a new server and getting some stuff in the process… Who doesn’t need stuff!

Or for that smelly geek you can’t bring yourself to get any where near even when you need their help!

_TheShakEyAdmiN_ sEnD MorE samPlEs PlEaSe

A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what is taking up so much space.

There are several tools for looking around your drive and getting a visual image of what is on it. Tools like WinDirStat, Folder Size and TreeSize all do a nice job of showing you where all that space is going.

But sometimes you need a quick and dirty tool and (if you’re like me) you don’t want to install something on your servers unless you really need to.

That’s one great thing about SequoiaView, it gives you a nice visual map of any drive or folder without installing anything. Download the zipped version, unzip it and run the executable. There’s nothing to install or risk messing up your servers with. Delete the whole folder when you are done and there’s no trace of it.

Of course, I am using JFFNMS to monitor my network so I was able to learn about this impending disaster early enough to do something about it. In my case – I had forgotten to reconfigure the IIS logging on my Exchange server, so the OWA logs were slowly filling up the system drive since they default to Windows\System32\LogFiles.

What do you use to monitor disk space on your servers? Do you have any horror stories to share with AtA? Well that is what the comments are for!

As with most servers, you want to configure it for static IP addressing to make life a little more simple for everybody. Linux servers are no exception. The only trouble with some flavors of Linux servers is that they are strictly command line for less overhead and better performance. So how does one configure Ubuntu server for static IP addressing in the terminal you ask? Simple:

1. First you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces using your favorite text editor (I like nano):

   sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

2. Next you need to enter your static IP information:

   #The primary network interface
   auto eth0
   iface eth0 inet static
   address 192.168.0.100
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   network 192.168.0.0
   broadcast 192.168.0.255
   gateway 192.168.0.1

3. Save your changes.
4. Now you need to point your server to your DNS server. To do this, you need to edit /etc/resolv.conf:

   sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

   name server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Replace the x’s with the IP address of your DNS server)

5. Save your changes, then restart your network:

   sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

6. Now test it by pinging www.asktheadmin.com. If all went well, you should be all set!

Have you had to set up a production Ubuntu server in your environment? Tell us about your experience in the comments!

By: El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

That’s right no more waiting to go check out the AskTheAdmin.com RSS feed – get updated information ASAP! I know this may stop some of you from dropping by the site as often – but to make our readers quality of life (tech) a little better we will risk it!

If you check your feeds any where as frequently as I do this will do wonders for you! Now your browser will check your feeds without interrupting you.

RSS Ticker is a free download for all platforms that can run FireFox. Awesome app Chris! Keep up the amazing work. [ChrisFinke]

And if you haven’t noticed that character is from a new cartoon strip called Being Five that we are syndicating at the bottom of any AtA page!

_TheTickingAdmiN_

I would say that Google is hating on us but we have had a huge INCREASE in traffic from Google in the last week or so.

So I shrugged my shoulders and started investigating. It turns out Feedburner is not displaying our email readers stats within our Subscriber number. Then when going to blogger I got some intermittent errors. Guess Feedburner IS getting Googlier as they put it.

I hope they are getting ready to roll out some great new features and not letting the Goog break shit!It looks like loads of sites got crushed with the same PR drop. According to DailyBloggingTips look at these drops:

• Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
• Engadget (from 7 to 5)
• AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
• Problogger (from 6 to 4)
• Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
• AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
• Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
• Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
• Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
• Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
• Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
• JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
• Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)
• CyberNet News (from 6 to 4)
• Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
• Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
• Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
• Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
• SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
• Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
• New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
• Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

But we got hit harder going from a 6 to a 3! Damn you Google, Damn you to Microsoft. (That would be hell for Google right?) Are you seeing drops? Vent in the comments!!

_TheSulkingAdmiN_

8 times out of 10 the keyboard is unplugged and does not show up in device manager. There is a 1 out of 10 chance it is the batteries going dead in their wireless keyboard But, there is the occasion that the keyboard is actually broken (the end user normally has spilled something on it.)

Sure this is one of those physical jobs that someone needs to walk on over to the machine in question and smack it around a little. BUT if your user NEEDS to type in a password to clock-in or something urgent you can have them open up the little know XP and Vista On-Screen Keyboard via the mouse.

The OSK lives at:
c:\windows\system32\osk.exe

Now they can (slowly) do what they need to do while I find a junior admin to do the dirty work (unless of course it is an exec and then I’m there lickity split!) (Sigh….Politics…End Sigh)

Don’t support end users? How about a machine that has a busted caps lock, num lock or some other key you HAVE to be able to hit during an install?

Do you back down and look for another keyboard? Hell No! You open up this biatch and do what you have to do like a good Admin!

Do you use the OSK for something? Let us know in the comments!

_TheWhatDidYouDoAdmiN_

Did you say something about cake? Sorry I am easily distracted this early in the morning…

Ah UAC Prompts getting you down? I have one word for you HotKeys (I put them together and that makes them one word! Like RTFM!) When your UAC pops up just hit

Alt-C this will activate the C in the Continue Button via its hidden Hot Key. Simple eh? Well not really if you think about it logically (Unlike Microsoft) C could mean Cancel or Continue… But whatever it works!

Does this make your life easier? Let us know in the comments. I have this strange craving for cake.

_TheCakeForBreakfastAdmiN_

When you have one machine to deploy, you insert your CD or DVD, click through the prompts, enter your license key, install all your software and make your customizations. It’s time consuming, but when you only have to do it for a single machine it’s not too bad. What happens when you need to deploy 10 machines, or 50, or 1000?

There is no way you are going to do 500 machines one at a time by yourself. It takes too long, it is error prone, and when you are done, every machine is going to be slightly different. What you need is a way to build one machine exactly the way you want it, and then make 500 copies of that machine. That is what disk imaging can do for you.

Using Imaging For Desktop Deployment

I am the Network Administrator at a small manufacturing company. At the end of 2005, we purchased about 30 new desktop systems that needed to be configured and deployed. The systems came from the manufacturer with Windows XP Professional and various versions of Office 2003 installed.

Some machines were unique, but the bulk of the machines consisted of only two configurations. The machines either had Office 2003 Standard Edition or Office 2003 Small Business Edition. All the other software on all the machines would be identical including our primary LOB application.

Although it was only 30 machines, this is a perfect scenario for system imaging since there would only need to be two images. Deploying systems by imaging leads to easier and faster deployment, more consistency and easier rebuilds. In addition, knowing that all your machines are configured identically makes updating and troubleshooting much easier.

Configuring The Sample Machine

I started by taking a representative unit and configuring it in the most generic way possible. The manufacturer already installed Office but it was not activated or configured for a specific user, so I left it that way. All other software was installed and configured using the local Administrator account; the sample machine should NOT be joined to the domain during the setup process.

All updates and patches were installed and all unnecessary services were disabled. It is very important that you carefully document your work during setup. Once setup is complete, you need to test the configuration to be sure it actually works and that your users can perform their jobs. Invariably you will discover something you forgot, and if you need to make changes to your setup, you need to know where you started. Testing is the most time consuming, but vitally important, part of a deployment. You don’t want to roll out an image to 500 machines only to discover a problem that is going to require you to visit all 500 machines to fix. It is much better to test and retest the image BEFORE it is deployed. Changing images after you have created them is a time-consuming process.

Using Sysprep

Once you have the system in a stable working state you need to prepare it for imaging by using Sysprep. Sysprep is a free tool provided by Microsoft that removes all the machine-specific information from the computer. There are many good articles available from Microsoft about how to use Sysprep.

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457073.aspx

There are several versions of Sysprep available so be sure you use the version that is designed specifically for the operating system you are imaging.

Sysprep can be a little confusing the first time you use it since it’s not always obvious what the different settings do. The best way to see the differences is to Sysprep a system using different settings, reboot the machine and observe the results. As with the rest of the setup, document your work carefully so you know what settings are correct for your environment. After running Sysprep for the final time the machine is shut down and the drive is ready for imaging.

Creating and Using The Image

There are many tools available for imaging disks. I used Symantec Ghost and had good results with it, but any imaging tool should do the job. The most important thing to consider when selecting an imaging tool for deployment is how are you going to save the image and get it onto all the other machines? If you can’t easily restore the image to a bare metal drive, it doesn’t do you much good. I opted to save the two images to DVD-Rs. That way I could boot the machine from the Ghost recovery disc and use the DVD-R to restore the image to the bare metal drive without any network connectivity or other hardware. You can save images to a network drive or removable hard disk, but you need to verify that you can access these devices from the restore environment.

Once you have installed and configured the software on your sample machine, run Sysprep, and imaged it, the hard work is done. Now, any time you need to deploy a new machine all you need to do is restore the appropriate image to it, join it to the domain and add the user account. When the user logs on, they will have all the software they need and be ready to work.

If you hire a new employee, all you need to do is obtain the new hardware, restore the image and it’s ready to go.

Imaging Vista

I performed this deployment about 18 months ago. With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has released the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 tools.

• Located on TechNet Here

These free tools provide some powerful alternatives to Sysprep and third-party imaging tools. The BDD tools are geared towards Vista but work with Windows XP also. If you are getting ready to deploy machines, and especially if you are going to deploy Vista, you should investigate the BDD tools.

Tips And Pointers

Create as few images as possible. Every image you build requires the same level of testing and maintenance, so the fewer images you have the better. It’s easier to create a few master images and configure the machines a little after imaging them than to create a new image for a handful of machines. Use the hardware as the primary determinant of the number of images you create.

You can only restore images to machines with identical (or very similar) hardware. If you restore an image to a machine with significantly different hardware, the image won’t contain a driver for that hardware and the machine will likely crash.

Partition the hard disk during setup. Create one partition for the operating system and the applications and other partition for the user data. That way, if the system gets really hosed, you can restore the operating system partition without disturbing the user data.

You can also use disk imaging to deploy servers. The process is similar, but you have to be very careful of the hardware differences. Many organizations have identical desktops, but not many have large numbers of servers with identical hardware.

Well, it turns out that OS X has this little known feature built-in. You just have to select the file and hit “Command-I”. It will display the info as usual. You can then click on the arrow at the left of “More Info”. The “Where from” option will appear with the URL of where you got the file. The only thing I noticed is that it seems to work only when you download the file with Safari. It doesn’t look like Camino or Firefox records that info.

Remember if you already de-compress your archives this wont work – it needs to be the file downloaded.

_TheWhatchaKnowAdmiN_

I used to strictly do control-Print Screen and paste into Photoshop, modify and save for web. Now it looks like MS lets you select what part of your screen you want to “Snip” and gives you multiple options for saving it – like jpg, gif or png! And check out the other goodies below in this screenshot:

Here is what Microsoft has to say about their Snipping Tool:

You can use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image. Simply use a mouse or tablet pen to capture any of the following types of snips:

	Free-form Snip. Draw an irregular line, such as a circle or a triangle, around an object.
	Rectangular Snip. Draw a precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.
	Window Snip. Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.
	Full-screen Snip. Capture the entire screen when you select this type of snip.

After you capture a snip, it’s automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save, or share the snip.

If you have Vista Basic or CAN’T find the snipping tool check out this information from PC World on how to “Activate” it.

If you have a version of Vista other than Home Basic, you already have the Snipping Tool screen capture utility: Choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, Snipping Tool. If you don’t see it there, it may not be activated. Go to Control Panel and open Program and Features (you may have to click Programs first). In the task pane on the left, click Turn Windows features on or off. If necessary, click Continue when prompted by User Account Control. Scroll through the list of features, check the box next to Tablet PC Optional Components, and click OK. Turning on these features gives you not only the Snipping Tool, but also the Tablet PC Input Panel, Windows Journal, and other stylus-related features.

Here are 5 tips courtesy of About.com for when to use what formats:

If your screen shot contains a limited number of colors and you want to retain crisp lines and keep the file size small, save as a GIF file. If your screen shot contains many colors and you want to retain crisp lines and full quality, save as a PNG file. If your screen shot contains many colors and you want to make the file size small, save as a JPEG file.

Before saving your screen shot, you can use the Pen and Highlighter tools in the Snipping Tool toolbar to add markup to your screen shot. The eraser tool will remove marks made with the Pen and Highlighter Tools.

You may email a screen shot without saving it by using the “Send To” button on the Snipping Tool toolbar.

Go to Tools > Options to change the way the Snipping Tool operates. For instance, you can change the color of the selection outline by selecting a new ink color, or turn the outline off entirely by unchecking the box for “Show selection ink after snips are captured.”

Enable the option “Display icon in the Quick Launch toolbar” if you want to keep the Snipping Tool handy for quick access.

_TheSnippyAdmiN_

So, what are you supposed to do? Give them a fake e-mail address? Perhaps, but what if they require verification. You know, they send you an e-mail and you have to open it up and click on some link. What are you supposed to do then?

I’ll tell you what I do, I go to a little website called 10 Minute Mail. The name says it all, they give you an e-mail address that is literally only good for 10 minutes. If you need additional time, there is a link that resets the timer. After the time is up, the e-mail address self destructs. No muss, no fuss, and more importantly, no spam!

This service is absolutely free. However, if you decide to use it, they ask for a small donation through paypal. The donation isn’t mandatory, but it is a nice gesture.

By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power.net

Here is a picture of what your network rack should NOT look like! I would hate to have to trace cables from the patch panel to the umm whatever other equipment is under there! Looks like it might be time to get a cable management solution!

How do you do cable management?

_TheManageThisAdmiN_

The thing is this guy normally backs up EVERYTHING! I was shocked he didn’t have another copy ready to go.

When I asked him why he didn’t back up his PST file regularly he kind of stared at me like a deer caught in my headlights and e said:

“Whats a PST? Is that like pssssst?” He made a come here gesture with his finger and I laughed.

So here we go! Your PST file is where Outlook stores your information like email and calendar information, on your local machine. These directions will do for all outlooks 97 or better.

First things first; we need to shutdown outlook and locate your PST file. So just follow these easy steps and you will be golden.

1. Search your PC for *.PST and make sure you select search hidden files and folders is checked. Also make sure there is a check box next to search system folders.
2. Highlight your PST file on the right it will be the one with the most recent access date.
3. Right Click — Copy
4. Paste your file to a USB memory stick, dvd, cd-r or a network share. (Make sure outlook is closed or you will not be able to perform this step!)

You can now rest easily that all of your contacts and saved email pictures of your friend with a felt tipped mustache will be saved forever – or until you destroy the disk!

Come back for how to archive data out of your PST to make it smaller.

_TheBackedUpAdmiN_

You seem to like useless information… Right??

This trick threw me for a loop. I was watching a junior admin install Windows Vista from a CD and he turned to me smirked and said

“Want to see something cool?”

Do you use this? Did you know about this? Why didn’t you tell me? Sheeeesh!

_TheLearnsSomethingNewEverydayAdmiN_

Do you remember when Ask The Admin covered a very interesting topic of Free Exchange services? For those who don’t, you can look here, here and sometimes here.

In a nutshell, this article talked about how me and my fiance’ had to plan our wedding and had tons of appointments flying in from both directions.

In order to get our two phones talking to one another and playing nicely, I used a free Exchange hosting service called www.Mail2Web.com to enable my WinMo PDA and my fiance’s Blackjack to sync calendars every 10 minutes logging into the service through ActiveSync, as if they are the same phone. As a result, both phones would have the same calendar information, and keep it that way every ten minutes.

I’ve had this system going for some time now, and it’s been working just fine. I haven’t even had to login to the control panel for anything!While figuring out this howto, I noticed in my own phone that WinMo gives you 4 categories of info items to sync, (as illustrated by the image so cleverly placed on the top of this blog) – Contacts, Calendar, Email, and Tasks. I realized that my fiance’s BlackJack also had the choice of 4 different points of info to sync. This meant that every WinMo device can choose which information to sync with an ActiveSync Server Source and more importantly, which information NOT to sync with an Exchange Server. So we’ve established that my fiance’s BlackJack and my ATT 8525/Hermes were acting as if they had the same calendar – consider them synced.

So this was a real world problem solved by the fact that 2 people have phones with WinMo and Activesync, and the availability of a free exchange service @ www.Mail2Web.com.
Now onto the next real-world problem: The Admin and I have a lot of tasks involved with keeping our beloved website up and running, current and fresh. Throughout the months tasks have come and gone, but certain tasks fell through the sieve and got replaced by more current, more urgent tasks that took precedence at the time. So basically tasks were getting lost. Since neither of us used the built in Tasks application in WinMo, this presented the perfect opportunity to put my theory to the test.

I know that I already have 2 people logging into MY Mail2Web account to sync calendars. But what would be wrong with 3 people logging into that same account – except that my Fiance’ will only sync Calendar information, and The Admin will only sync Tasks information (and NOBODY syncs Contact information).

So I had the The Admin log into my Mail2Web account through his ActiveSync Server Connection and sync only Tasks, and I had my own phone begin to sync Tasks with the same service it was already syncing to for Calendar information, which coincidentally my Fiance’s phone was simultaneously syncing Calendar information with as well.

Problem solved:
Me and the Admin with synced Tasklist,
Me and the Fiance with synced Calendar.
Free.
Automatic.
Just the way we like it.

AskTheAdmin.com.
Free Tech Support for the Masses.

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on.)

You probably also leave these machines on all the time. If you’re not using them to pull down torrents all night or need to remote into them, you really should shut them down when they aren’t being used for long periods of time. Shutting them down would save a lot of electricity, which will save you money.

By now you’re thinking, “Yeah, that sounds good, but it’s a PITA to turn them on and off all the time. And some of them are headless so how am I going to do that?”

You use Auto Poweron & Shutdown. The application runs as a Windows service and lets you schedule multiple on and off schedules per day, week or any custom schedule you want.

Technically, it doesn’t power down the machine completely, it puts it into hibernate. Obviously, if it was completely powered off, it wouldn’t be able to turn itself back on. But you can use the app to fully power down the machine if you really want to.

I have been using it to shut my file and print server down every night and then power it back on before I get up in the morning. I also power it down during the day when I’m at work and then back on before I get home. I have customized the schedule so it only shuts down during the day on weekdays.

Instead of running the machine 168 hours a week, I’m now running it less than 87 hours a week. That’s a 50% reduction in power with no real effort or inconvenience on my part.

The application costs $24.95 and there is a 30-day trial. I know we all love free stuff, but depending on how much you pay for electricity you’ll probably save more than you pay for it within a year.

There are tons of ways to shut a machine down at a specific time, but this is one of the very few I found that can turn a machine back on at a scheduled time. Do you know of any others?