Personal IT Experiences

• To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.
• To copy the entire desktop, press Command-Control-Shift-3. The screen shot will be placed on your clipboard for you to paste into another program.
• To capture a portion of the desktop, press Command-Shift-4. A cross-hair cursor will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture. When you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)
• To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Spacebar. The cursor will change to a camera, and you can move it around the screen. As you move the cursor over an application window, the window will be highlighted. The entire window does not need to be visible for you to capture it. When you have the cursor over a window you want to capture, just click the mouse button and the screen shot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)

From about.com

Restoring the factory Windows OS partition (assuming Windows XP here) for your Dell hard drive.

1. When the computer boots up and you see the blue Dell menu bar at the top, press Cntr-F11
2. Follow the menu choices to restore the OS partition.
3. You will have to reinstall all of your software programs – this restore process completely replaces the contents of your hard drive with the Dell factory image.
4. Once the restore is completed, don’t forget to apply ALL of the Microsoft OS patches http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and AFTERWARDS install your favorite anti-virus utility.
5. Only after Microsoft patching is completed, anti-virus utility installed and updated, then install your other software programs.

More details from Inside the Dell PC Restore Process

The hardware configuration I sought for my home lab server was a single server with 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM. All of these items were purchased at NewEgg.com for about $664, not including the shipping charges or sales tax.

The rest of the items typically needed to build a bare-bones computer such as a CD drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor were castoff items already at hand.

This setup currently hosts 2-64-bit guest operating systems using XenServer 5.5.  No compatibility problems.  It’s a quiet setup and I am very happy with its speed and performance.

Experienced this problem with HP DL360 servers w/ 2-72GB disks, RAID 1.

After restoring a Windows 2003 DISK image (GHOST image) to the server, able to boot and work with drive C:. Unable to see and access drives E: and F: also thought to have been restored in the DISK image.

Solved by using DiskPart this way:

• At a command prompt, type Diskpart <enter>
• Type List Volumes <enter>
• Missing volumes are seen, but they don’t show labels or drive letter assignment
• Type Select Volume 2 <enter>
• Type Assign <enter>
• You’ll see an affirmative message.
• Type List Volumes <enter>
• Does the drive letter appear along with a volume label? Good.
• Type Select Volume 3 <enter>
• Type Assign <enter>
• You’ll see an affirmative message.
• Type List Volumes <enter>
• All drive letters appear with their volume labels?
• Type exit <enter> and close the command prompt.
• Reboot the server to verify drive letters appear normally.

• %HOMESHARE%
• %ERRORLEVEL%
• %APPDATA%
• %ALLUSERSPROFILE%

You can use the command shell to create and edit batch files (also called scripts) to automate routine tasks. For example, you can use scripts to automate the management of user accounts or nightly backups. You can also use the Windows Script Host, CScript.exe, to run more sophisticated scripts in the command shell. You can perform operations more efficiently by using batch files than you can by using the user interface. Batch files accept all commands that are available at the command line. For more information about batch files and scripting, see Using batch files

Microsoft Command Shell Overview

No third party utilities required.

Merge two file names ( may.csv and may1.csv ) into a new file called may2.csv, use the following from a command window:

copy/b may.csv +may1.csv may2.csv <Enter>

How do I merge or join files from the command line?

Alcohol 52 is emulation software allowing users to play CDs DVDs without the need for the physical disc. Notebook users and PC Game players would benefit the most from Alcohol 52%. It supports 25 plus languages and can handle up to 6 virtual CD DVD-ROM drives, all at once. The reading speed of a virtual CD-ROM is 200X.

Example use: Trying to install the Windows Vista Automated Installation Kit to access the Windows PE utilities. This WAIK download saved to a hard disk is stored as vista_6000.16386.061101-2205-LRMAIK_EN.img (note the .img file extension). Mount the WAIK image via the Alcohol 52 interface.

Alcohol 52% Free Edition

Have a 40GB external USB drive you’re trying to use with Ghost? If you format the external drive with the XP formatting tool, the maximum size XP will format it to is 32 GB. To format the drive to a full 40 GB, use Windows 98 or ME formatting tools — yes that means booting into one of those operating systems.

From a XP command prompt type:

format X:/fs:fat32

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to retrieve accidentally deleted files, NTFS files, files removed from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from a network drive, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. Free utility software that does not have to be “installed” before using.
Undelete Plus. Free file recovery software. Retrieve accidentally deleted files

In Windows XP or Windows 2003, open an entire command window and type -> GPUpdate <enter>. All of the current policy settings affecting your computer (or server) and your account are displayed.

You can also see a history of the application of group policies by inspecting the registry.

To inspect the group policies applied to your local computer, use Regedt32 to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\History

To inspect the group policies applied to your account, navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\History

Each sub-key represents an installed Group Policy Extension and each Group Policy Object is a subkey numbered from 0, the first GPO applied.

JSI Tip 2487. What group policies have been applied?