IT Knowledge Base

Command Prompt Command:
> Vssadmin List Providers

In the registry you will find them here:
HK\LM\System\Currentcontrolset\services\VSS\Providers

I had some trouble with our Backup System today and noticed that that another VSS was installed. After removing the Acronis Registy entry it worked like a charm.

We have a monitor at our work which we use to monitor our company’s state. But how lazy I am I was looking for a quick solution to switch off and on this screen. So I don’t need to do this task anymore each morning;-) I did some research on the net but didn’t found a solution to do it with the Windows inbuilt functions. Then I discovered this great command prompt tool: Nircmd. It offers a lot of other functions. Just copy it into your Windows System 32 folder and you can simply run the command “nircmd monitor off” to switch off your screen. I used Windows Task Planer to run it each morning (switch on) and evening (switch off). Check out this great tool which offers heaps of other functions:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

Here a couple of quick and dirty examples:
sc \\REMOTEMACHINE query
sc \\REMOTEMACHINE start SERVICE_NAME
sc \\REMOTEMACHINE config SERVICE_NAME start= auto

You know the problem when you go into your device manager and you find unknown devices with missing drivers. What to do in this case?

Go into your device manager:
Start->Control Panel->Device Manager->Double Click on the unknown device->Details->Hardware-IDs

Lookup the hardware ID’s in the net or on this webpage: www.pcidatabase.com. The first number stands for the vendor and the second is for the device. For example in this case VEN_10DE stands for NVIDIA Corporation and 042f for NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290.

Open Command Console and type:
nslookup
set type=mx
google.com

wuauclt /detectnow

Today I tested some tools which should make your life much easier. You know the pain when you work with different kind of Operating Systems (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) and you want to access your files from everywhere. Or it could be even on your smartphone device like iphone, blackberry etc. First of all there is dropbox which works pretty much like an remote folder. You can simply drag files into it and you have 2 GB server storage. Another one I tested and I like very much is evernote. You can even just select some text or picture in your browser and upload it to the server. It will be indexed and you can simply search for your files. There is even a OCR recognition for images. But to use this service you just have 50Mb storage per month and afterwards you need to pay for premium account.

Programs can found be here:
www.getdropbox.com
www.evernote.com

Most of the time you can use xcopy and for more advance copying you can get robocopy. It is free from Microsoft but a little bit different to use. You can find it in Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools. I personally like to use xxcopy. It contains the same flags as xcopy but has more advanced functions. About 160 different flags which you can set. It is free for personal or none commercial use.

You can download it here:
http://www.xxcopy.com/

Example (Copy all new files and folders with the NTFS permissions on f:):
xxcopy *.* f: /H /E /R /X /D

Today I want to introduce to you a great tool with which you can make disk images during the time your OS is running. It is just about 250 KB big and you don’t even need to install it. It’s a dream. It belongs to all administrators pocket.

The name of the program is snapshot and can be downloaded here:
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/

Jus run this command:
rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState