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What is PowerGUI ? PowerGUI is an extensible graphical administrative console for managing systems based on Windows PowerShell. These include Windows OS (XP, 2003, Vista), Exchange 2007, Operations Manager 2007 and other new systems from Microsoft. The tool allows to use the rich capabilities of Windows PowerShell in a familiar and intuitive GUI console. PowerShell is built-in feature under Windows Server 2008 Download PowerShell for Windows Vista, Windows 2003 and Windows XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx Download PowerGUI Power Packs Active Directory: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=46 Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM): http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=49 Virtualization: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=290 Microsoft Exchange: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=47 Network: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=48 SQL: http://powergui.o...

This is very funny XP machine as a domain controller 1) Create a share called SYSVOL on an XP machine 2) Try to unshare the directory you shared as SYSVOL. 3) You will get a nice warning stating: "This share is required for the machine to act properly as a domain controller. Removing it will cause a loss of functionality on all clients that this domain controller serves. Are you sure you wish to stop sharing SYSVOL?" Screenshot: But do not worry - unsharing SYSVOL on XP will not break your AD. This is just an example of code reuse that Microsoft does. Don't forget to post your comments :) Thanks, Aresh Useful Blog: Guy Teverovsky: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/guyt/archive/2007/09/06/XP-as-Domain-Controller-_3F00_.aspx

Accidentally deleted user, computer account or OU’s from Active Directory. Don’t worry, now you can get them back using ADRestore tool using GUI interface. Though there is a command line version of tombstone reanimation tool called adrestore - sysinternals, many people are not CLI savvies and having a GUI version of this functionality could really help them out. Insight on tombstone: Reanimating Active Directory Tombstone Objects - By Gil Kirkpatrick Gil Kirkpatrick's article at Technet Main features: Browsing the tombstones Domain Controller targeting Can be used with alternative credentials (convenient if you do not logon to your desktop as Domain Admin, which you should never do anyway) User/Computer/OU/Container reanimation Preview of tombstone attributes Here are some sceenshots: Enumerating tombstones Previewing the tombstone attributes Restoring a deleted user account Notice that if you delete an OU with accounts in it,...

One of the most useful videos I have found on the internet, for Hyper-V. Thanks to John Savill for his efforts and time. Hyper-V Architecture Overview http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/hypervarch/hypervarch640480sml.wmv Overview and configuration of Hyper-V Server http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/HyperVServer/HyperVSrv.avi Overview and configuration of Hyper-V Quick Migration http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/QuickMigration/QuickMigration.wmv Overview of Hyper-V Networking http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/hypervnetwork/hypervnetwork800600.wmv Overview of Windows Server 2008 R2 Live Migration http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/LiveMigration/LiveMigration800600.wmv SCVMM 2008 Physical To Virtual (P2V) http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/scvmm2008p2v/scvmm2008p2v800600.wmv SCVMM 2008 Virtual To Virtual (V2V) http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/scvmm2008v2v/scvmm2008v2v800600.wmv ...

Windows 32-bit Operating Systems implement a virtual memory system based on a flat 32-bit address space.  32-bits of address space translates into 4GB of virtual memory.  A process can access up to 4GB of memory address space (using the /3GB switch changes this behavior - and we'll cover that in a later post). You can't have a discussion of Memory Management basics, without distinguishing between Kernel-mode and User-mode memory.  The system space (aka Kernel space) is the portion of the address space in which the OS and kernel-mode drivers reside.  Only kernel-mode code can access this space.  User-mode threads can access data only in the context of their own process.  User-mode threads cannot access data within another processes space directly, nor can it access the system address space directly.  Kernel-mode drivers are trusted by the OS and can access both kernel and user space.  When a driver routine is called from a user thread, the thread...

Tired of parsing the Perfmon (*.blg) manually. Let PAL make your job easier, give you html output and highlight high thresholds. Website: http://www.codeplex.com/PAL Project Description Ever have a performance problem, but don't know what performance counters to collect or how to analyze them? The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds (provided). The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded. The thresholds are originally based on thresholds defined by the Microsoft product teams and members of Microsoft support, but continue to be expanded by this ongoing project. This tool is not a replacement of traditional performance analysis, but it automates the analysis of performance counter logs enough to save you time. This is a VBScript ...

One of the most useful videos I have found on the internet, for failover clustering. Thanks to John Savill for his efforts and time. Creating Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/clustercreate/ClusterCreate.wmv Configuring a Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster from the command line: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/clustercmd/clustercmd.wmv Understanding Failover Cluster Quorum: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/ClusterQuorum/ClusterQuorum.wmv Hyper-V Quick Migration: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/QuickMigration/QuickMigration.wmv Configuring iSCSI connections from the command line: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/iscsicli/iscsicli.wmv Failover Clustering with MELIO File System: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/meliofs/meliofs.wmv Don't forget to post your comments :) Thanks, Aresh

All of these commands are for kernel mode. These are few useful commands, that I use on daily basis for debugging. I hope you find them useful Vertarget: Lists Version information for the machine/dump you're debugging.  You can also use "version" to tell you about the debugger bits. 1: kd> vertarget Windows Kernel Version 6001 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: LanManNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 6001.18000.amd64fre.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840 Kernel base = 0xfffff800`0160c000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`017d1db0 Debug session time: Tue Apr  1 14:29:22.553 2008 (GMT-7) System Uptime: 0 days 0:03:14.328   !sysinfo Good utility to check the CPU revs, BIOS revs, etc 1: kd> !sysinfo machineid Machine ID Information [From Smbios 2.31, DMIVersion 0, Size=1695] BiosVendor = Phoenix Technologies LTD BiosVersion = 6.00 BiosReleaseDate = 09/24/2007 SystemManufacturer = VMw...