Category Microsoft

Run on client machine to see the status of user profiles on a Windows10 machine

Type the following PowerShell command :

gwmi win32_userprofile | select localpath, roamingpath, status

# Out puts computer accounts including status Enabled True or False
# Targets a specific OU
# Lists computer names

# OU Variable to set
$OU_HotWiredUK_location = “OU=Computers,OU=HotWiredHQ,OU=UK,DC=test,DC=com”

# Out put CSV to c:\scripts\…
Get-ADComputer -Properties * -Filter * -SearchBase $OU_HotWiredUK_location | Select Enabled, Name, DistinguishedName | export-csv C:\Scripts\OU_HotWiredUK_location.csv

#List Members of a specific AD group – output Username and User Full Name

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity “AD GROUP NAME” | Select samAccountName, Name

Create a batch file to check a text file is in the location specified, else run a task.

#This batch file checks to see if a text file is in a location, if it does not, then launch notepad.exe

Create IfNot.bat
Add the following :

If NOT exist “C:\Temp\IsThisFileHere.txt”\ (

notepad.exe
)
exit

A requirement to identify the total file size of all files not used in the last 3 months.

This was the solution

#Run as administrator
#You need to have permission of the files or folders 

$date = (Get-Date).AddMonths(-3)

dir C:\temp -Recurse | ?{$_.lastwritetime -lt $date -and !$_.PsIsContainer} | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum

# oneliner

dir C:\temp -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | `

    ?{$_.lastwritetime -lt (Get-Date).AddMonths(-6)} | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# resulting data will be in bytes. To convert them to gigabytes, you may do this:

$files = dir C:\temp -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | `

    ?{$_.lastwritetime -lt (Get-Date).AddMonths(-6)} | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

($files.sum / 1gb).ToString(“F02”)

# F02 determines how much digits will appears after comma. In my case – 2 digits.

dir C:\temp -Recurse | ?{$_.psiscontainer} | %{

    Write-Host current folder is $_.fullname;

    dir $_.fullname | measure-object -property Length -sum -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

} >c:\temp\file sizes

Credit to the  Original post script this is based on

Configuration was :

ESXi 6.7 – vSphere handling all the port groups tagged with VLANs

Firewall – CISCO ASA

Problem : New ESXi 6.7 hosts. A virtual machine if on the same host and vSwitch could communicate no problem. However if a virtual machince was communincating with another virtual machine on another host on a different, subnet they were unable to communicate between subnets and hosts. Both virtual machines could ping their local gateways. Firewall, CISCO ASA was just dropping all packets and showing the following error

Error on the Firewall when capturing ping traffic “No source port  on ping “Error (Type 8, Code 0), Denied ICMP type=8, code=0”

Solution

Sometimes its the simple tick box on the Firewall / ASA config

“Enable traffic between two or more interfaces which are configured with the same security levels”

All traffic started communicating and the virtual machines could talk between the subnets as per the rules on the Firewall.

#DSQuery

dsquery user -name “*” -limit 0 | dsget user -samid -hmdir -hmdrv -profile >c:\temp\usersV2.txt

#PowerShell # More flexibility # Includes the state of the computer account (Enable or Disabled)

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Property Name,CanonicalName,CN,DisplayName,DistinguishedName,HomeDirectory, HomeDrive,SamAccountName,UserPrincipalName | export-csv -path (Join-Path $pwd HomeDrive.csv) -encoding ascii -NoTypeInformation

Challenge : How to make a backup of a SQL 2008 database without knowing any working credentials.

Log on to the Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL Server 2008 as a domain admin.

Launch SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio)

Issue the windows credentials have no permissions and there were no obvious groups in AD (Active Directory) which would have access.

So…back to basics…..

PS tools to the rescue

….………………………………………………………………..

Download PS Tools https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

Store in c:\temp\

The tool to use is PSexec

Launch command prompt

Browse to c:\temp

Type : psexec -i -s SSMS.exe

This will launch SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) as system. By luck would have it, window auth under “system” has full SA rights in SQL 2008.

I can then connect to all databases and compete the backups. I can then also check the security permissions for users

#Remove directory in a batch file

#

rmdir /S /Q “C:\test\”

Map network drives to the correct locations

Run CMD as Administrator

Mirror file & directories and output detail to text file
robocopy E:\….. z:\…. /MIR /S >c:\temp\detail.txt