For newbies on the MS-SCCM server here is another cool utility, it is aimed at the support role and will give you easy access to log-files and status of SCCM agents.
SMS Client Center – http://sourceforge.net/projects/smsclictr
And as its open source its quite cheap 😉
Thanks to: knudsen-consulting.com for sharing this tip 🙂
During one of those late nights browsing the net I stumbled across what turned out to be a time-saver in the high-roller end, what is the real interesting thing is that it is a was a total coincidence I got to think of an alternative use for a small utility aimed at a complete different audience.
If you are using MS-SCCM 2007 you know the hassle of hardware certification of new and old pc-models. If you wish to keep a tight leach on which drivers you install to the PC’s you deploy using MS-SCCM, you have to figure out which drivers are actually needed and obtain unpacked versions. Now even if this may sound like a very simple task, experience quickly makes you think twice, take a modern Laptop PC and try to see how many odd hardware devices it contains.
The process has so far been to install the PC using your installation CD, then download the drivers from the manufacture and install them and figure out which driver was related to which unknown hardware device. Then you would need to unpack the strange driver packages and figure out which files was actually required and import them to SCCM. Often you would end up with installation packages which could not easily be unpacked (if at all), and you would have to do a lot of manual labour and testing to obtain the drivers.
Well think again… and let me cut your hardware certification time to a fraction… Now you take your new laptop out of the box, start it up and let it install the preloaded OS. Then install “Driver Magician” and use the build in backup function to extract the drivers, finally import the extracted driver-directory to SCCM and you are done, the pc model can now be deployed using SCCM.
“Driver Magician” was not actually made with this in mind, it is actually what I would describe as a geek tool. It is intended for those who often install their computers and wish to minimize the time it takes to install the drivers, but believe me as a side effect it does a VERY good job of hardware certification for use with MS-SCCM.
This mean you can likely save at least 4-6 hours per pc model you need to hardware certify.
Piece of pie..
Watch a geeked YouTube intro, mind you this is not aimed at SCCM usage but more the original intend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uq6U0y25mE
Have you ever met the annoying dialog box stating that the file you are trying to delete can’t be deleted – stating that it is in use (even though you KNOW this NOT to be true?).. Sure you have, especially running Vista (strangely enough I seem to see this issue more often on my Vista box than on Win2003/xp) ..
Well anyhow, there are ways to deal with that (not guaranteed, but quite often it works)..
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
is a small freeware utility that will assist in resolving this, it can quite often delete a file that states its locked.
UPDATE Nov 2009;
Also check https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1045 for an alternate utility in a 64bit version (Lockhunter)
Another free WinZip replacement (supports many formats incl RAR), have not tested it yet but it looks promising.
A different solution for online backup is to use Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk is a software that utilize the Amazon S3 storage network which is very fair priced (approx $0.18 pr GB a month + an upload fee of about the same).
The solution has a quite good agent software (also comes in a USB version, so you can carry your online disk) which allow for scheduled backups, bandwidth throttling etc. etc. and the security seem quite convincing.
In the near future I will be comparing this with the www.Keepit.com solution, my feel for now is that Keepit is more home user aimed and Jungle Disk is usable for both, however the low FIXED price for Keepit do seem tempting.
Update Apr 8th, 2008: Please see warning against Keepit.com elsewhere in my blog
A company www.Keepit.com offers 2GB of free online backup-space (at least in Denmark) which may be quite nice for many users, may be enough to store your pictures and mail.
The client software is not the worlds most advanced I have been told, but again for home users it may be quite sufficient.
https://www.keepit.com/dansk/Home
Pay and get more :-), should you be willing to pay DKK 29 ($4.5 or €3.9) you get unlimited storage space. Seem like a quite reasonable solution.
I have not tried this yet so I am uncertain about security and encryption etc, but I have been told that it indeed uses encryption and your data should thus be safe from prying eyes.
You may have heard about the excellent utility TrueCrypt which create encrypted virtual drives or partitions!? But now it has been released in a version 5.0a which should support the underlying OS (that is transparent bootup encryption of the system drive). Excellent.. I have not had time to check it, but if it works its utterly excellent (and best of all FREEEEEEEEEE!).
Recovery is as I read it achieved via an ISO boot image created upon installation, but again I have not checked this.
Need to administer a remotely located server that has not enabled remote desktop!? Sure you can make a GP or do some registry editing, but hey it all takes time, some nice guy has made a util that will deal with this for you, just point and click..
http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/06/remotely-enable-remote-desktop.html
Nice, Microsoft is about to get some healthy competition to their Softgrid software virtualization. VMware just bought Thinstall, for those of you who have no experience with Softgrid / Thininstall the brief description of what is is all about would be something like this; Software virtualization is more or less the same as VMware Server / Microsoft Virtual Server is to OS virtualization, it allow you to run an application without installing it and without polluting the host os with registry entries and config files stored all over, an other cool thing is it will allow you to eg. install Office 2000, 2003 and 2007 all at the same time..
Goto http://www.vmware.com/whatsnew/thinstall.html to watch a demo or try http://www.thinstall.com/. Thinstall has the upper hand over Microsoft as Thininstall does not require client software to be installed in order to use a virtual application, Thinstall also include the option to create .msi files (just as softgrid).
Visual tour; http://www.thinstall.com/demos/intro_dec11/
Very cool, and pice of pie… thrust me….
We all experience it, at some time or other we forget an important password :-/
Luckily we also have a tendency of being lazy, and if so there is hope 🙂 Try visiting http://www.nirsoft.net here you will find password recovery software for all your needs (still, only works if you at some time have been lazy enough to make the windows remember your password)… IE Auto-complete, Mail and messenger passwords are only a few of the passwords that this site can assist in the recovery of.. Your product key for windows and office is also no problem, pice of pie 😉 Also this is a wake up call for all of us, passwords stored by Windows IS NOT SECURE….
