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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows Server 2008 R2’ Category

Batch file to open a specific TCP port in Windows 7 / 2008 Server and up

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/09/18

Thanks to the answer by Kevin Richardson on How to open ports on Windows firewall through batch file, I wrote this batch file that uses the add command of the Netsh AdvFirewall Firewall Commands which requires Admin privileges to run:


:: open port (first argument passed to batch script, second argument is description)
:checkPrivileges
net file 1>nul 2>nul
if '%errorlevel%' == '0' ( goto :gotPrivileges ) else ( goto :getPrivileges )
:isNotAdmin
:getPrivileges
echo You need to be admin running with an elevated security token to run %0
goto :exit
:isAdmin
:gotPrivileges
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Open Port %1 for %2" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=%1
:exit
::pause
exit /b

–jeroen

via: How to open ports on Windows firewall through batch file – Stack Overflow

Posted in Firewall, Infrastructure, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a Comment »

Translating non-English error messages into English

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/06

For a long time, I’ve persuading people to install English versions of their operating systems (especially on server side) at least for some parts of their environment.

The main reason is that searching for English error messages gives you a much bigger chance of finding the cause than non-English ones.

I’m still standing by that recommendation, but life has become a bit easier because of these two sites that offer quite good translations of Windows Error messages in many languages to English:

I like the latter a bit more because of the overview, but the former more because of the catalog.

The way I landed there was because of a search for “Cannot SetData on a frozen OLE data object” which I bumped into for one of my C# .NET projects.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

logparser – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/07/31

Thanks to Sebastian Gingter for pointing me at Logparser:

Logparser […] powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. The results of the input query can be custom-formatted in text based output, or they can be persisted to more specialty targets like SQL, SYSLOG, or a chart.

Common use:

$ logparser [options] [SQL expression]

–jeroen

via logparser – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Posted in Development, IIS, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a Comment »

Saving MMC files as MSC and prevent the “save console settings” dialog.

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/07/24

Two tricks when creating MSC files that contain the snap-in configuration of the MMC (Management Console).

Normally you do this once:

  1. Start MMC
  2. Add some snap-ins
  3. Save your configuration as an MSC file

And then when you need that particular configuration, each time:

  1. Open the MSC file
  2. Perform some actions
  3. Close the MMC
  4. Answer No to this question:

---------------------------
Microsoft Management Console
---------------------------
Save console settings to [filename].msc?
---------------------------
Yes No Cancel
---------------------------

The trick around this last question is:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Windows < 8: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows if they contain %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA%.

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/07/13

Older Windows versions than 8.x will not correctly expand %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA% in environment variables: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows..

This even happens when the registry storage of the environment variables are marked as REG_EXPAND_SZ under these keys:

Basically there are four categories of Windows versions:

  • For Windows 10.x this is fixed.
  • For Windows 8.x and Windows Server 2012 R2, there are updates in KB2919355.
  • For Windows 7.x and Windows Server 2008 R2, there is a hotfix.
  • For older Windows versions, there is no solution.

–jeroen

via: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows.

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

Error 13EC when installing The .NET Framework 4.5.2 means you need to free more disk space. 3GB that is.

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/05/23

About a year and a half ago, I wrote:

My conclusion is that various Microsoft updates now require 3 gigabytes of disk space.

This seems to be the case with the .NET Framework 4.5.1 KB 2858725 update, and probably more future updates. I tried installing the KB 2858725 update with slightly less than 3 gigabytes of space (and after the 3 gigabyte reserve.tmp appeared), and I was still getting error 13EC. But with slightly more than 3 gigabyte the update would install.

That is quite difficult when you run loads of VMs on SSDs: they usually don’t have an awful lot of disk space left.

The same issue holds for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 for Windows 7 x64-based Systems (KB2901983) which got released earlier this week:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »

From batch file or shortcut: start Windows Update (via: Windows 7 Help Forums)

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/05/15

Call either of these from a batch file or Windows shortcut to end up at the Windows Update screen in the Control Panel:

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler wuapp.exe
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{36eef7db-88ad-4e81-ad49-0e313f0c35f8}

Notes:

  • I’ve tested this in Windows 7, 8.x and 9 and it works fine in all these.
  • Unlike Control Printers calling Control Updates does not work.
  • I suspect there are many more magic GUID values you could use for other functions because the built-in syntax has been there for a long time.

–jeroen

via: Windows Update Shortcut – Create in Windows 7 – Windows 7 Help Forums.

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a Comment »

Debugging problems with the network proxy (via: The Chromium Projects)

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/05/08

In this case, another tool didn’t obtain the right Proxy settings.

Chrome to the rescue as chrome://net-internals/#proxy shows you the system proxy settings:

When browsers are experiencing network problems, generally the first thing to test is your network proxy settings. Misconfigured settings, or misbehaving settings, can have a profound impact on your network traffic possibly resulting in pages not loading at all.

Main take aways: chrome://net-internals/#proxy

Since then, I created this small batch file:

reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" | findstr proxy

And this one to edit the settings:

"C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe" shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL inetcpl.cpl,,4

It will open the same Window that your Control Panel or Internet Explorer uses to manage connection and proxy settings.
From there click the “LAN Settings” button to edit the proxy configuration.

–jeroen

via: Debugging problems with the network proxy – The Chromium Projects.

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows-Http-Proxy | Leave a Comment »

Batch file that finds and starts Cntlm.exe in verbose mode.

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/13

As a follow up on the Cntlm configuration post last week, here is a small batch file that will find Cntlm.exe (on x86 and x64 systems) then start it in verbose mode.


call :start %ProgramFiles%
call :start %ProgramFiles(x86)%
goto :end
:start
startlocal
set cntlm="%*\Cntlm\Cntlm.exe"
echo %cntlm%
if exist %cntlm% start "Cntlm verbose" %cntlm% -v
endlocal
goto :end
:end

–jeroen

Posted in Cntlm, Development, Fiddler, NTLM, Power User, Web Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows-Http-Proxy | Leave a Comment »

How to fill proxy information in cntlm config file (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/10

This is an elaboration of How to fill proxy information in cntlm config file – Stack Overflow.

When digging around how to get authentication stuff going, I want as much information, so this was the command-line I used:

cntlm.exe -v -c cntlm.ini -I -M http://www.bbc.co.uk

The -v is important: it shows you why things fail, and where: It also shows you the NTLM headers sent back/forth over the wire.

These are the switches used:

  • -v verbose
  • -c configuration file
  • -I interactive (prompt for password)
  • -M magically detect the NTLM level used by the proxy

Since it is unsafe to store plain text passwords in configuration files, cntlm allows you to store the hashes.

Storing hashes not passwords locally is safer, but not much safer. See for instance Still Passing the Hash 15 Years Later: Guest Post: Let’s talk about Pass-the-Hash by Scriptjunkie the video How to own a Windows Domain or search for Mark Russinovich video windows hash ntlm hack.

Anyway: you can generate the password hashes using either     Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Fiddler, git, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, Mercurial/Hg, NTLM, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, TCP, Web Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »