Everyday Nerd » How To

How-To log off a user from remote computer

Nerd — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:33:47 +0000

If you work in IT, I’m sure you’ve run across a time that you needed to log off a user from a remote computers – even if it’s yourself (especially when it’s time to change your password). Personally, I have to change my network password every 30 days, and there are times that I may be logged into any of 150 computers. I try to remember to use the log off button, but sometimes, I have idle sessions on computers.

This being said, I needed a way to log off any session I was logged into, in a list of computers I knew I might be logged into. My first thought was to use PSLOGGEDON.exe (from Sysinternals) which is a fantastic tool, but I don’t want to search the entire domain, plus I might be logged in to multiple domains.

So, I found a nice little utility built right into windows – quser.exe

Quser.exe can be used to show what user is logged in to a remote computer, as well as the localhost. Use quser.exe /SERVER:servername to query a remote system.

If you want to specify just one user account instead of finding all users logged in, user this syntax: quser.exe user6 /SERVER:servername

Now to log off this user, or session, you can use another built-in utility in Windows – Logoff.exe

Logoff.exe can either log off a session ID, or SessionName remotely – not by username (username works locally though). The syntax is similar to quser.exe:

LOGOFF [sessionname | sessionid] [/SERVER:servername]

So to log off user6 from the example above, I can use either the session name (rdp-rcp#443 – or I can use the ID – 2 – I’ll go with the ID

logoff 2 /SERVER:server1

That was easy! Now, to check to see if I’m logged any of the 150 servers I manage, I create a quick bat file using excel (more on that here) and now I can run it at any time, and see what remote systems I’m logged into, and log my session off if needed.

This is a really simple way to do this, but if you have another way to do it, please post below! I’d love to see how you handle this problem!

New “How To” posted

Nerd — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:42:19 +0000

Have you backed up your pictures lately? or ever? Go read the newest How To, and get to backing up those pictures! Read: How to backup your pictures using Picasa Related posts: By Request: How to Backup all My Pictures? … Continue reading → Related posts:

New How-To added: How to secure your wireless network

Nerd — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:09:31 +0000

Most wireless networks are unsecured, which can cause major security concerns. Go check out the new How To here on EverydayNerd.com

[ How to Secure your Wireless Network ]

New How-to added: 10 ways to protect your computer from Malware

Nerd — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:44:25 +0000

Here are a couple of steps to help keep malware off of your computer: Continue reading → Related posts:

Create a font of your own handwriting

Nerd — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:46:13 +0000

I was just talking to some friends of mine that past week, and we were talking about how hard it is to write letters, and how much easier it is to type them. I’ve seen commercial software that does this before, but I found a website that does it for free! Print the template page, write each letter out, scan it to your computer, upload to their website, and BAM! There’s your font!

My handwriting is pretty messy, and I did the template in a hurry with a fat sharpie (I’d use a fine tip sharpie if I were you) and this is what the outcome is:

This sure makes letter writing a whole lot easier!!!

[ Font Capture ]

Easily connect to 2nd monitor or projector with Windows 7

Nerd — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:34:00 +0000

Every laptop user has been there… at the start of a meeting, plugging in the projector, trying to get what you have on your screen to show up on the projector, pushing Fn+F8, opps, that just put you in sleep mode… argh!

Windows 7 makes it really easy for you. Just press the Windows Key + P

Just select the configuration that you want to use! Easy huh?

New How To section on EverydayNerd.com

Nerd — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:37:58 +0000

I have a lot of people asking common questions, so in order to help in a more efficient manner, I’ve added the “Everyday How To” section. I’ll be adding to this section on a semi-regular basis (how-to’s take longer to write than normal blog entries), and will update the blog with new entries are added.

First up, I’ve added two How To’s:

I have another one, “How to protect your PC from Malware” in the works, but it is rather extensive, so stay tuned.

Hope you enjoy, and if you want to request a topic to be added, just use the Contact link, or post it on Facebook. Either way works!

Use Excel to create easy batch jobs

Nerd — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:05:38 +0000

Do you have to run a command on several servers remotely? You can enter each command separately, but every good admin should know how to make life easier for him/her self. For example, I wanted to use the psloggedon.exe tool to find out who was logged in to all the servers I manage (about 150). Naturally, I could log into each server, check the Terminal Server Manager, and go on the next, but who wants to do that?

The PSTool – psloggedon.exe is a nice little utility that I can run from my command prompt, and have it query a remote computer, returning who is logged on to that server. So, starting in Excel (I already had a list of all the servers), I pasted the list of servers in the C column.

Next, in Column A, I entered "psloggedon.exe” – the name of the executable I want to run. in Column B, I put a “ \\” – note the space in front of the \\. In column E, I entered my first switch, “ –l” – and in column F, a second switch “ –x” again, note the spaces before the switches.

Now, to bring the whole thing together. I LOVE the command Concatenate.

In column G, I entered =concatenate(A1,B1,C1,D1,E1)

This will combine all the columns together (now you know why the spaces were above) for your final command.

You can now select column G, and copy and paste it into notepad, and save it as a .bat file. You now have an easily made bat file, using Excel.

Change Firefox address search engine provider

Nerd — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:54:56 +0000

Somehow… my default search engine in Firefox defaulted to Bing, and I wanted to change it back to Google, so I figured I’d show ya’ll how to do it too!

In Firefox, type in about:config in the address bar, click “I’ll be careful, I promise”.
Filter the results by typing in keyword.URL
Modify the entry, with your preference:

Ask: http://www.ask.com/web?q=
Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?FORM=IEFM1&q=
Google: http://www.google.com/search?&q=
Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=

Close the About:config page, and you can now search from the address bar, using the search engine you set!

Install Windows 7 from USB Disk

Nerd — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I told you before about a utility that will create a bootable USB windows installer, but for all us command line junkies, this is just drop dead easy…

Get a spare 4GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive, reformatted it as FAT32, and simply copy the contents of the Windows 7 ISO image to the memory stick using xcopy e:\ f:\ /e /f (where e: was the DVD drive and f: was the removable drive location).

Done. Boot to USB, and you will install Windows 7 faster than you EVER would with DVD.

Disable Group Policy Service on Windows Vista/7

Nerd — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

As an administrator, I like to have FULL control of the computer that I use everyday. Most companies deploy group policies that will set defaults to your computer, and not allow you to change those settings. This will require that you are an administrator of the computer that you are using.

Open Regedit, and navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\gpsrv. Right click on the gpsrv key, and select Permissions. Go to Advanced, and the Owner Tab. Change owner to your account, and click OK. Next, select Administrators, and check the Full Control box.

Click OK to close the permissions window, and look on the right hand section of Regedit. Look for this start key. Double click the Start DWORD, and change the value to 4 – this disables the service.

Reboot, and you will not get any group policies assigned to your computer. Note, that every time you log in, you will get a message, warning you that Windows cannot connect to the Group Policy service. Just click the X, and ignore.

It is best to do this before you have joined your computer to the domain. Do it with a local account that has administrative rights, reboot, then join the domain. This will ensure that you do not get any policies applied to your machine.

Windows 7 – Enable $admin share

Nerd — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:28:50 +0000

So I‘ve been running Windows 7 RTM for a while now, and really liking it. There are a few “gotcha’s”, and the $admin share is one of them. Out of the box, Windows 7 (and Windows Vista) disabled File and Printer sharing, as well as the $admin share. Normally, in the home environment, the $admin share is not needed, but in the corporate world, it’s used quite regularly, especially with tools like psexec, IntelliAdmin tools, and certain software deployments.

This is how to enable the $admin share in Windows 7:

First, Folder and Printer Sharing must be enabled. Open the Control Panel, and select Network and Internet. Then click on Network and Sharing Center.

Look to the left side of the Network and Sharing Center, and click on Change advanced sharing settings.

In the new window, you can change each network’s sharing settings (Home, Public, and Work/Domain). Expand the profile you want to modify, and click on “File and Printer Sharing”

Save your changes.

Next (I know, I wish it was just that easy…) you have to add a registry key. Open Regedit, navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System – create a new DWORD:

LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy with the Value of 1

Reboot. You can now access the $admin share remotely.

Windows 7: Robocopy is Multi Threaded!

Nerd — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:05:32 +0000

OK, so not everyone uses Robocopy on a regular basis, but I sure do! I am super excited about Windows 7′s version of Robocopy. Robocopy was created by Mark Russinovich, and was included in a whole suite of free windows tools called Sysinternal Tools. Well, Mark works for Microsoft now, and has continued his development of his tools, including robocopy. Basically, robocopy is a command line tool that copies/moves files from one location to another. While this seems to be a common task (copy/cut/paste) for most users, sometimes administrators need to tweak the copy process.

Robocopy has a plethora of options for administrators to use, some used more often than others, but all prove priceless at one time or another. To list all the options for robocopy, just use the /? switch to list all available switches.

OK, on to Multi-threaded file copy! Up until now, robocopy copied one file at a time. Most of the time, that was OK, but it would be really nice to do it faster. Windows 7 version of robocopy includes the /MT switch. The default is 8, so if you use the switch, it will copy 8 files at a time. I did a few tests, and here are my results:

I copied a folder from my hard drive to a mapped drive on a server, over a Gigabit network. The folder was 35MB, and had 1140 files it it.

Without /MT switch: (robocopy Source Destination/E)

Directories: 166

Files: 1140

Size: 35.71MB

Time: 03:55

With /MT:8 switch: (robocopy Source Destination/E /MT:

Directories: 166
Files: 1140
Size: 35.71MB
Time: 52 seconds

Needless to say, using the multi-thread switch with robocopy is much faster! Unfortunately, the Windows 7 Version of robocopy does NOT work on any previous version of windows. Bummer! Anyway, Win7 is a great OS so far, so this is just another added bonus of buying that upgrade!

Free Computer Training from VTC (While it lasts)

Nerd — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:16:48 +0000

VTC (Video Training Company) has a free 30 day unlimited promotion going on right now – Unlimited access for 30 days to more than 70,000 video tutorials for software, programing, and other technology.

The promo code is only going to be good for a week (supposedly) so sign up fast! Video’s are viewable in QuickTime or Flash format.

Promo Code: rtm

Signup: http://www.vtc.com/promos/filemaker/signup.php

Easy hyperlink trick for Windows (Even if it has a space in the UNC path)

Nerd — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:57:45 +0000

Home users may not ever use this, but in an office environment, I’m sure everyone has received an email at one time, pointing them to a network share, or something similar. It’s OK, except if you have a space in the share name, as it tends to break the hyperlink.

Here’s a trick to get around this:

\\server\share name with space

See the hyperlink only grabs up to the first space?

OK, here’s the trick: Put a Greater-Than and Less-Than sign on either end of the UNC path: < >

<\\server\share name with space>

and once you press enter, it will look like this:

\\server\share name with space

By Request: How to Backup all My Pictures?

Nerd — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:46:57 +0000

Thanks KF for asking a great question, and something that almost everyone with a digital camera is going to ask at some point in time!

There are several ways to backup items on your computer; burning files to DVD (See Infra Recorder), using online backup services such as Mozy, or as simple as taking your flash memory to any photo processing location, and letting them archive the pictures to CD/DVD.

But in this case, when talking specifically about pictures, I only have one way that I will back them up: Picasa!

That’s right, you read that right, Picasa! I’ve told you before about how much I love Picasa, especially Picasa 3! Well, now, here’s one more reason to love it even more!

Open Picasa, and go to Tools, Backup Pictures.

At the bottom of Picasa, the Backup steps (all two of them) appear:

First, either accept the default backup set name, or create/edit the set in Step 1. The set can be customized to backup to DVD, or to a drive (good if you are backing up to an external Hard Drive, or network drive), as well as choosing All file types, All Pictures, or only JPEG with Camera Information. I go with the default, because I want my movies backed up as well (I have Picasa “watch” my home movies folder as well).

If this is your first time backing up your pictures, you will want to choose “Select All” in step 2, otherwise, Picasa will automatically select all the pictures that have not been backed up since your last backup.

Also, if you wish, you can manually select the folders that you want to backup.

If you have a lot of pictures, it may take a couple of DVD’s to backup, but trust me, it’s a LOT better to have a backup of those precious memories, than your hard drive going “clack clack clack” with the only copy of your pictures on it…

Restoring from the Picasa DVD Backups is just as easy as the backup process. Simply insert the DVD, let the auto-play run, and a nice restore wizard asks you if you want to restore to the original location, or a new one. Easy as pie!

REMEMBER: ALL HARD DRIVES GO BAD! It’s a matter of when – not if!

Backup often, cry less…

Download Picasa 3

By Request: Cleaning your Registry – How and Why?

Nerd — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:17:43 +0000

The Windows Registry. Most people cringe when they hear this, or are afraid of even messing with it, until they see that ad on the Internet claiming that their computer is slow, and they need to buy their registry cleaner! Heck yeah! Whip out your Credit Card, and fire that bad boy up right? Well….

The Registry is basically a database, holding information for the entire operating system, it’s programs, and settings. If you were to look at any given registry, it would be hundreds of thousands of lines long (mine is 1.9 million lines long in Vista Ultimate). With this in mind, even a 100 or so keys in the registry that are “dirty” are not going to slow your computer down in a noticeable manner. Now that being said, if you have a corrupt key for an application, it may cause issues with that particular application, for sure, but a registry cleaner isn’t going to fix those issues!

So, is cleaning out your registry going to speed up your computer? Doubt it. Should you clean your registry anyway? Yes, but don’t stop there!

What do I use to clean my registry? CCleaner. It’s a free, easy to use, and very good system cleaner. Not only does it clean your registry, it will also clean up browser, application, temp, and java junk files, and even comes with an application remover – it’s faster than using the one in Add/Remove Programs! Using CCleaner on your system can definitely speed up a sluggish computer.

How often should you run CCleaner? That is entirely up to you. I usually run it about once a month. Some people run it daily, and others weekly. This part is entirely up to you, but I wouldn’t go over a month between cleanings.

One thing to remember when cleaning the registry; make sure to ALWAYS make a backup! CCleaner prompts you to do so, before making any changes to the registry.

My only gripe with CCleaner, is during the install, it wants to install the Yahoo! toolbar. I HATE installers that always want to throw toolbars in my browser!!!!

Coming soon, I’ll be adding some more system optimizations for your PC, so stay tuned!

Thanks E. B. for the Request!

Download CCleaner

Software I Like: InfraRecorder

Nerd — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:07:48 +0000

Everyone needs a good CD/DVD burning program, but nobody really wants to pay a really good one like Nero! Don’t get me wrong, Nero is a great program, but if you just need a burning application, no frills, just does the job, then InfraRecorder is the one for you!

InfraRecorder has all of the best features of any retail burning app, but with the sweet price of free!

Create custom data, audio and mixed-mode projects and record them to physical discs as well as disc images.
Supports recording to dual-layer DVDs.
Blank (erase) rewritable discs using four different methods.
Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).
Fixate discs (write lead-out information to prevent further data from being added to the disc).
Scan the SCSI/IDE bus for devices and collect information about their capabilities.
Create disc copies, on the fly and using a temporary disc image.
Import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions to them.
Display disc information.
Save audio and data tracks to files (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 and .iso).

This is a great product, and have never had an issue while using it! I give it two thumbs up for sure!

Download InfraRecorder

Software I Like: Virtual CloneDrive

Nerd — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:18:43 +0000

If you are a good nerd, you’ve downloaded some sort of CD / DVD image file, in in number of formats: .iso .bin .cue, and several other types. There are many ways to access these files, like burning them (as intended I suppose) or mounting them with a virtual device. I used to use Daemon Tools for everything, but I ran across Elby’s Virtual Clone Drive.

One of the coolest thing is that you can right click on the virtual CD/DVD drive, and choose to Mount or Unmount. Nothing runs in the tray, and I didn’t even have to restart my machine after installing!

Virtual CloneDrive is a free product from Elby, a company that offers cloning software.

Download Virtual CloneDrive Here

Tame Vista UAC to be less annoying

Nerd — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:02:03 +0000

UAC is a great security enhancement to Windows Vista (over XP) but you know, it can be rather annoying too! As an administrator, I use certain programs that require me to “Run as Administrator” – such as command prompt, computer management, and others. Thanks to the HowToGeek, here are 4 ways to make your vista experience better…

**Note: Disabling and/or modifying UAC may put your system at risk. To be the most secure, leave UAC at default settings.

1: Disable UAC completely via Command line:

Disable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

2: Disable for Administrators Only

To configure this setting on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration. Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.

Now browse down to Local Policies \ Security Options

Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.

Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done.

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

3: Disable Screen Dimming

UAC itself is a good thing – but on some video cards, it seems to take forever for the screen dimming to pop, and prompt you. So, this is my personal favorite – keep the security, but get rid of the dimming:

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

4: Create Specific shortcuts that don’t prompt for UAC

This is quite a nice little trick. You want UAC, you want Desktop Dimming, but you just have one program that you run all the time that you don’t want to prompt you for UAC. This is for you…

Open up Task Scheduler (Start, Search box, type task), and then on the right-hand side click the “Create Task” link:

Enter a name for the task, and check the box for “Run with highest privileges”

Click the Actions tab, choose New, and enter the path to the program you want to run.

Choose OK button to close. Right click the task, and choose “Run” – just to make sure that you have done it correctly, and it doesn’t prompt for UAC.

Create the Shortcut to Start the Task

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New, Shortcut

Enter the following: schtasks /run /tn “TASKNAMEINQUOTES”

As you can see, I used Command Prompt as the name for the task.

Give your shortcut a meaningful name, and then click next to finish.

You now have a shortcut that will launch your application in administrator mode without prompting you for UAC!

I’m a bit anal, and don’t like that generic icon, so right click on the shortcut, choose properties, and then Change Icon. Also, change the Run drop-down to “Minimized” (to hide the schtasks command line utility).

The simplest thing to do is just browse down to the application that you are opening with the shortcut… and you should see the icons for the application itself.

So now you have a nice looking icon that launches an application in Administrator mode… with no prompts whatsoever.

Enable Vista’s Administrator Account

Nerd — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:00:49 +0000

Source: [Lifehacker]

For the average Windows Vista session, the "Needs your permission to continue" prompts are just momentary, occasional annoyances which can be disabled or by-passed. But if you’re planning to do a lot of tweaking or installations, having a dedicated Administrator account—like the kind available in XP—can be mighty helpful. The How-To Geek blog shows how to enable (and disable) the account from the log-in screen:

First you’ll need to open a command prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and choosing "Run as administrator"

Now type the following command:
net user administrator /active:yes

Log out and you should see an "Administrator" account available. Un-doing the tweak requires running nearly the same command, but with /active:no at the end. Like the Geek, we’ll note here that only experienced users who know exactly what they’re doing should use this type of account, and that Microsoft obviously doesn’t want you to do this as a normal thing. All the same, it could be a boon for easier troubleshooting.

Tip: Uninstall software that doesn’t give you the option

Nerd — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:01:00 +0000

Have you ever had software that shows up in Add/Remove Programs, but doesn’t have the Remove/Uninstall button?

I recently had a program (a custom repack of WinZip) that only had the Repair option. Well, I use WinRAR exclusively, so I wanted to remove it.

To fix this open Regedit (Start, run Regedit), and navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\

From here, you can either go through each sub-folder, looking for the software in question, or highlight Uninstall, go to Edit, Find and type the name of software you are looking for.

Once you find it, look for two keys: NoModify & NoRemove – they are pretty self explanatory as to what each key does. Change the key value from a 1 to a 0 (zero) to deactivate the key.

Next, open Add/Remove Programs again, and you will see the Uninstall button now!

This works for Windows XP / Vista (Probably 2000 as well, but not tested)

Slow Terminal Session from Vista to 2003 R2 – Fixed

Nerd — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:01:00 +0000

I regularly remote administer servers, most of which are Windows Server 2003 R2. I starting having an issue a few weeks ago when connecting to certain servers that the mouse response was extremely slow. The keyboard function was fine. I had a quick fix – every time I click the mouse, I would press the Ctrl key, which seemed to speed it up, but was extremely annoying.

Now I have found a fix!

Open a Command prompt as Administrator, and enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

If you want to to re-enable it:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

This immediately fixed the issue – no more slow RDP sessions! Now, back to work…

Remote Desktop Sidebar Widget

Nerd — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:50:00 +0000

I like widgets… One that I use every day, many times a day is the Remote Desktop widget.

I love that it has a history, and favorites, as well as an easy console and full screen selection.

Go get it here!

Edit File Types in Windows Vista

Nerd — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:11:00 +0000

VISTA ONLY

Source: annoyances.org

"File Type" associations are the links between your documents and the applications that create them. For instance, when you double-click a Microsoft Word Document on your desktop, Windows knows to start Word and instruct it to open the document because of the Microsoft Word Document file type. Likewise, when you click a website link in an email message, Windows knows which browser to open (e.g., Firefox, Internet Explorer) because of the HTTP Protocol file type.

The Folder Options window in Windows Vista is missing the File Types tab found in earlier versions of Windows. So how do you edit file type associations in Windows Vista?

There are three ways:

Method #1 (on the fly):

Right-click a file of the type you want to change, and select Properties.
In the General tab, click the Change button.
Choose a program from the list, or click Browse to select an .EXE file on your hard disk.

Method #2 (view a list of file types):

Open Control Panel.
In Control Panel Home, click Programs, and then click Make a file type always open in a specific program.
Or, in the Classic View, open Default Programs and then click Associate a file type or protocol with a program.
Highlight a file type in the list and click Change Program.

Unfortunately, neither method in Vista allows you to choose anything but the default programs, such as the programs listed in your files’ context menus. If you want complete control over your file types, use this tool:

Method #3 (File Type Doctor):

Download and install Creative Element Power Tools.
Open the Creative Element Power Tools Control Panel.
Turn on the Edit file type associations option, and click Accept.
Right-click a file of the type you want to change, and select Edit File Type to show this window:
Click Help if you need more information.