Useful Windows resources

This page contains a list of handy tools used frequently by network administrators and software developers on the Windows platform.

Security

Howto secure a Windows server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetsec/html/openhack.asp

If you happen to be stuck in whatever incarnation of Windows for some reason, and need to use SSH, check out Putty

Applications & Programming

AutoIt - Automation

Outlook, Exchange, etc - http://www.slipstick.com/ -

See http://www.roth.net/ for tons of resources about Perl Programming for Windows

Cygwin - Unix tools for Win32

Rsync for Windows - http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/help/rsync/

Gimp

Tons of apps: http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/pc/simtelnet/

Monitoring

http://www.vncscan.com - VNC based remote management console

TightVNC - remote display

NetOp - remote control

http://www.iarsn.com/ - TaskInfo2000 for monitoring processes, threads, etc

http://sysinternals.com/ - more handy tools

http://www.demosten.com/download.html - some networking sniffers and other Windows tools

General

Found via SlashDot, here is an article by Microsoft proving that for Hotmail, replacing UNIX with Windows 2000 is/was a very difficult task: http://sage.che.pitt.edu/~harrold/tmp/memo.html

Changing the WinXP serial number: http://www.mwright.plus.com/xp.htm

Information about future Windows releases: http://www.winsupersite.com

Change the NT4 Mac Address: http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=23256

Change the XP/2000 MAC Address: http://www.klcconsulting.net/smac/

Free XP/2000 MAC changing tool: http://macshift.natetrue.com

Registry hacks: http://www.winguides.com/registry/

Mount ISOs, emulate CD/DVDs: http://www.daemon-tools.cc/portal/download.php

Slip Streaming XP updates: http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp1-bootcd.html

Need a super-duper-network-boot-disk? http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/

Screen OCR

Windows 2000 Services Tweak Guide - http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/win2k_services/index.shtml

Windows 2000/NT command line - http://www.ss64.com/nt/index.html

Howto script IP changes with netsh - http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/20743/20743.html

"A computer without Windows is like a chocolate cake without mustard."

Audit what software/hardware a computer is running: http://www.kaseya.com/feature/audit-asset-inventory.phtml

Nim's Codec Pack: http://nimo.titanesk.com/modules/freecontent/content/filemirror/dl.php?mid=31

Windows XP: Home vs. Pro

Many ask, what's the big difference? Why pay $100 more for Pro, when all you get is no activation and the ability to log on domains? Well, there are many more differences... such as remote desktop, ipsec, etc. Search google for more info, or see articles like this: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2820882,00.html

Here's another article listing a bunch of differences: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article10-002

In short, any power or network user needs Pro.

AT.exe

Hmm... the at.exe command in Windows is pretty handy: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/ntat.html

Just used it to schedule a batch script to run on a bunch of Windows systems :-)

What's interesting is that the scheduled process runs on the remote system as the SYSTEM user, not as the user you connected to the system as.

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