I have been working lately on trying to round out my skill set again instead of being primarily focused just on the operating system.  One of the areas that I have started to look at again is Internet Information Server 7.  One of the best sites out there for free training material is http://learn.iis.net.   The site has a great overview that gets you up to speed on what IIS is capable of doing.  The site also has a download section, community section, forums section, and a blogs section.  The people that provide content are experts with IIS 7.  The videos that I have watched so far are spot on.  Check out the links below to learn more about the site.

Overview of The site –  learn.iis.net
http://www.iis.net/overview

 Download Section –  learn.iis.net
 http://www.iis.net/download

Forums Section – learn.iis.net
http://forums.iis.net/

Server benchmark is the latest tool that I have discovered over the past couple of days.  I am a true geek at heart and can never find enough of these programs to test and burn in a new system.  Server Benchmark is a free tool and can be downloaded from SourceForge.  It is very strait forward and easy to use.  Check out the screenshot below for the user interface.  This tool is great for pushing both the memory and cpu of the server.  With that said this tool is not meant to be a benchmark tool for your standard PC as it does push your video card. Let us know if you have used this great tool and what you think.

Server Benchmark

Server Benchmark’s Main Site
http://www.cibengineering.com/blog/server-benchmark/

Server Benchmark’s Download On SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/serverbenchmark/

Features From SourceForge

• Server “burn in” (memory and processor benchmark)
• Citrix & XenApp performance testing
• VMware and XenDesktop performance testing
• Server 2008 R2 support
• 64 bit & 32 bit support

PowerhShell has turned into one of the best tools that we have as administrators of windows products.  Support from the community is truly amazing.  PoshWSUS is a module that was created to help administrate WSUS.  The below commands can be used instead of executing everything through the GUI.  Stop by the CodePlex site and check it out.  Below are also a couple more links you can reference.  Please leave a comment if you have used it and what you think.

Current Commands From The PoshCode website.  (http://poshwsus.codeplex.com/)

Current commands are:

• Add-WSUSClientToGroup
• Approve-WSUSUpdate
• Connect-WSUSDatabaseServer
• Connect-WSUSServer
• Deny-WSUSUpdate
• Disconnect-WSUSServer
• Export-WSUSMetaData
• Get-WSUSChildServer
• Get-WSUSClient
• Get-WSUSClientGroupMembership
• Get-WSUSClientPerUpdate
• Get-WSUSClientsInGroup
• Get-WSUSCommand
• Get-WSUSContentDownloadProgress
• Get-WSUSCurrentUserRole
• Get-WSUSDatabaseConfig
• Get-WSUSDownstreamServer
• Get-WSUSEmailConfig
• Get-WSUSEvent
• Get-WSUSGroup
• Get-WSUSInstallableItem
• Get-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Get-WSUSServer
• Get-WSUSStatus
• Get-WSUSSubscription
• Get-WSUSSyncEvent
• Get-WSUSSyncHistory
• Get-WSUSSyncProgress
• Get-WSUSUpdate
• Get-WSUSUpdateApproval
• Get-WSUSUpdateCategory
• Get-WSUSUpdateClassification
• Get-WSUSUpdateFile
• Get-WSUSUpdatePerClient
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummary
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerGroup
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerClient
• Import-WSUSMetaData
• New-WSUSComputerScope
• New-WSUSGroup
• New-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• New-WSUSLocalPackage
• New-WSUSUpdateScope
• Remove-WSUSClient
• Remove-WSUSClientFromGroup
• Remove-WSUSGroup
• Remove-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Remove-WSUSUpdate
• Reset-WSUSContent
• Resume-WSUSDownload
• Resume-WSUSUpdateDownload
• Set-WSUSEmailConfig
• Set-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Start-WSUSCleanup
• Start-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Start-WSUSSync
• Stop-WSUSDownload
• Stop-WSUSSync
• Stop-WSUSUpdateDownload
• Test-WSUSDatabaseServerConnection

Examples Of PoshWSUS
http://learn-powershell.net/2010/11/14/wsus-administrator-module/ 

7zip is one of the best free file compression utilities currently available for download.  Just like its competitors 7zip can handle several different formats for zipping and unzipping of files.  The big thing that makes 7zip stand apart is its own compression standard.  You will usually see about 20-30 percent better compression when using the 7zip standard compared to the other industry standards.  Some of the advanced options include creating self extracting archives and the ability to adjust compression levels.  So if you are looking for a new file compression utility I highly recommend trying it out.  Please let us know what you think.

Main Features From 7zip Site (www.7-zip.org)

• High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression
• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 79 languages

7zip Console

7-ZIP Download
http://www.7-zip.org/

PAL version 2.1 was released on November 8, 2011.  I just wanted to take a few minutes to create another post so hopefully more people will hear about this great tool.  PAL stands for Performance Analysis Of Logs and is hosted on SourceForge.  Clint Huffman who is a premier field engineer (PFE) for Microsoft is the main contributor to the project.

PAL is used to read performance logs from Windows and analyze them based on thresholds that are set.   From the SourceForge website here are some of the features.

• Thresholds files for most of the major Microsoft products such as IIS, MOSS, SQL Server, BizTalk, Exchange, and Active Directory.
• An easy to use GUI interface which makes creating batch files for the PAL.ps1 script.
• A GUI editor for creating or editing your own threshold files.
• Creates an HTML based report for ease of copy/pasting into other applications.
• Analyzes performance counter logs for thresholds using thresholds that change their criteria based on the computer’s role or hardware specs.

PAL 2.1 By Clint Huffman

PAL SourceForge Site
http://pal.codeplex.com/

PAL v2.0’s New Counter Generation Feature is Powerful
http://blogs.technet.com/b/clinth/archive/2010/03/02/pal-v2-0-s-new-counter-generation-feature-is-powerful.aspx

 The PAL Tool on Memory Leaks
http://blogs.technet.com/b/clinth/archive/2011/03/28/the-pal-tool-on-memory-leaks.aspx

System administrators sometimes need to be able to produce a list of drivers that are installed on their system.  Driveryquery.exe is an excellent command line tool from Microsoft to accomplish this.  This tool will give you a report on all of the current device drivers that are loaded on your system.  The command line tool also gives you several options on the information that it will display.  Below is a screenshot that shows all of the options available for running Driverquery.exe.

Driverquery.exe From Microsoft

Examples Of Driverquery.exe

This example will pipe the information from driverquery.exe to a txt file on the drive.
C:\driverquery.exe > C:\driverqueyr.txt

This example will format the output into a list view.
C:\driverquery.exe /fo list

This example will turn on verbose output for more information.
C:\driverquery.exe /V

This example will show drivers that are currently running.
C:\driverquery.exe /v | findstr Running

Filezilla is another one of those must have tools for both your work and home PC.  Even though with everything moving to the cloud I still run into a frequent need to FTP files to different companies and friends.

FileZilla is a free open source FTP application.  So one of the best features is that is is free to use. The interface is also another great feature as it is strait forward and easy to use.  Some of the highlights of the program is that is allows you to download and upload multiple files from several different servers at the same time.  You are also  able to customize the interface to set it up the way you like.   I have added a screenshot below of the user interface along with a link to their site.  Please leave us a comment if you have used FileZilla and like it.

FileZilla Interface

Features From the FileZilla Site:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
• IPv6 support
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Tabbed user interface
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Bookmarks
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable transfer speed limits
• Filename filters
• Directory comparison
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support
• Logging to file
• Synchronized directory browsing
• Remote file search

FileZilla Site
http://filezilla-project.org/

Additional FileZilla Screenshots
http://filezilla-project.org/client_screenshots.php

FileZilla Download Link
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

Image resizer is just one of those must have tools to have on your home PC.  The project is a clone of the old power toy image resizer.   One of the reasons it is a must have is I made the change this past year to a Cannon T2i DSLR camera.  Sending a 8-12 megabyte picture to family and friends is nearly impossible.  This tool makes it quick and painless to resize pictures down to an acceptable size limit.  It also comes in very handy when you are trying to upload profile pictures or send pictures to mobile devices.  Below you can see a screenshot of the option you have to choose from.  You can basically choose from small, medium, large, mobile, or a custom size.  The nice part about the tool is that it will automatically save a new picture and and onto the file name the size you chose.  I have also included the link for the project homepage where you can download it from.  If you use it let me know what you think by leaving a comment in the post.

Image Resizer Source Forge

Description From the SourceForge Project Site
This is a clone of Image Resizer which is one of the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP. It enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. This version will work also on non-XP versions of Windows including Windows Vista.

Image Resizer – SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phototoysclone/

I recently ran across the error “The directory name is invalid” when I used the the run as feature launching PowerShell on XP.  The reason you get this error is because you can’t use the Run as feature to access logged on users mapped home drive.  If you go to the properties of the exe you are running you will probably find %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% in the “Start In” options.  The great thing about the issue is that you can fix it very easily.  Just change the “Start In” property to a system wide path like “C:\Temp” or something like that.  You can also reference the below KB to read more about the problem.

Microsoft KB Article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832434

I recently took on the task of upgrading a friends computer from XP to Windows 7.  I always forget that doing this also means you have to deal with all of the applications that they have installed.  The one app that I have learned to love and hate is iTunes.  It actually turns out the transferring the iTunes library was fairly easy except for one tricky part.  Here are the steps I completed to transfer their library.  Hopefully it helps somebody out.  The tricky part was step number seven.

1.  Backed up the user profile from the XP machine to the external hard drive.
2.  Connected the external hard drive to the new Windows 7 machine.
3.  Installed iTunes on the Windows 7 machine.  Should be the same version as the old machine.
4.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to             c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\apple computer\iTunes
5.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to
C:\users\username\appdata\local\apple computer\itunes
6.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\my documents\music\itunes to
C:\users\username\music\iTunes
7.  The final step I completed was to launch iTunes and open up preferences.  On the advanced tab changed the
iTunes media folder location from c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Media to
c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Music.