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Ever want to prevent a user from attaching a USB drive? Well, you could turn off USB in the system BIOS, but that prevents attachment of all USB devices, not just drives. That could be disastrous if you don't have a PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse attached.
There's a simple registry hack that manages how Windows XP SP2 and later and Vista manage attached drives (including external hard drives as well as flash) but not prevent the use of HID devices and other non-drive devices. There's a very good write-up on the How-To Geek. The hack can be summed up in this simple line:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies]
"WriteProtect"=dword:00000001
For more security, you can look at physical protection. Unfortunately the USB physical standard doesn't allow any realistic way to permanently lock the drives, but you can block them. Lindy makes USB port blockers that will at least deter casual attempts to plug in USB and at least slightly slow determined users. They can be removed with a carefully bent paper clip, but once in, you can't easily remove with bare hands. Different colors use different keys to remove. Of course, you can buy them in colors other than pink...
Telnet is bad, mkay? It's insecure. I get it. Everything goes in plaintext totally in the clear. However, it's still a useful tool. Vista (including Ultimate) apparently feels that such a powerful tool should be hidden away from prying eyes and doesn't install it by default.
To install the Microsoft telnet client, do the following:
1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Open Programs and Features
3. Go to Turn Windows features on or off (requires a UAC authentication if you don't have UAC turned off.)
4. Click the check box next to Telnet Client
5. Hit OK
6. "Please wait while the features are configured. This might take several minutes."
7. No, really, it takes a minute
8. Enjoy. May I recommend telnetting to towel.blinkenlights.nl for some ASCII Star Wars love?
Edit: Current Windows 7 Betas behave in the same manner.
For all of you guys out there tasked with migrating users from a previous authentication domain (or workgroup) to a new domain know that when a user logs in with the new credentials, a new profile will be created and all of the user's previous settings and files will remain in the old profile.
You can go in after the fact and clean this up or use some other tricks (like using the FAST wizard, treating the old profile as the old computer and new profile as the new) but I've found something faster. I'm probably boneheaded for not hearing of this sooner, but I did a 7k workstation migration at an old job and they never tried anything this simple and relatively foolproof.
Go into Documents and Settings (typically on c:) and locate the Default User profile. It's hidden with stock XP settings, so you need to turn on the option to show hidden files and folders. Under normal circumstances, this profile gets stamped out as a template for new users. You can twiddle with this to make bulk changes to new users, but we'll use it for a slightly more nefarious purpose.
Go ahead and back up Default User, as we'll be replacing the entire profile. You never know-- you might want it later.
Take the user's existing profile and copy it, renaming it as... you guessed it, Default User.
Now go ahead and perform your domain migration. Upon first login, the user's old, familiar profile will 'stamp' itself into the new one. The only 'gotchas' are that you can only do this for one account per computer and if your users have limited drive space and large profiles, you might run short on hard drive space with essentially 3 copies of the profile hanging out there. Still, this is a very easy migration method, and you can remove the old copies once you're sure the user is happy with the migration.
This should work just fine on Windows 2000, and I assume Vista as well. I just haven't tested it.
Download Squad had a great article recently listing 24 open-source, free tools for admins and technicians. I'm already sold on PuTTY, DBAN, Memtest86/Memtest86+ and 7-Zip, but there are some real gems out there that I hadn't even heard of.
WCD in particular scratches an itch I've had since giving up Norton ncd many a year ago and being spoiled by locate under *nix. You do need to know how to manually set a Path variable, but otherwise it works as advertised.
They did have one recommendation that is good, but I think you can do better... Visualization tools for data are invaluable in giving you a meaningful picture (literally) of what is and is not taking up space. They recommend a product called WinDirStat.
WinDirStat looks like a re-working of the same concept that was pioneered by SequoiaView: "Cushion Treemaps" to visualize data. The strength of this method is that it can show individual files and folders easily by size and type, and groups them together, but the weakness is that it lacks a true hierarchical view. It's also a very busy interface which makes it hard to tell usage in terms of rough percentages or amounts. Unfortunately, SequoiaView lacks any type of obvious licensing. You're probably safe to use it for any purpose, but it's not OSS. It's also rapidly aging, so WinDirStat looks like a great replacement.
There are times when it is the best tool for the job, but for a first-pass on a Windows system I prefer an application called Scanner, written buy a guy named Steffan Gerlach. The licensing is also unclear, but presumed freeware with the source supplied. This app has the strength of being able to show disk usage as a pie chart, with a hierarchical view. It lacks color coding by file and doesn't show individual files at all until you drill down into that directory. It is, however, nice and portable, so you can run it from a USB drive or a network share.
Between the two, you should have pair of complementary products that'll allow you to better manage your storage.
Finding a good deal on pretty much anything is tricky nowadays. Fortunately, deal aggregators do most of the work for you. You'll often see Internet forum posts with a note to "check the Usual Suspects" for deals, coupons, etc. The big computer OEMs --Dell, Lenovo and HP in particular are noted for running big sales. These sites aren't just good for computer/electronic stuff, either. I've scored free magazine subscriptions and all sorts of cheap stuff.
Who are the usual suspects? I like to use these guys, in rough order of preference:
Special mention goes out to Woot. Woot.com only offers one random thing a day, but the deal is usually stupidly good. Shirt.woot.com offers one T-shirt a day -- designs vary, but it's $10, shipped. I highly recommend both.
Got any more? Post a comment and tell me about your favorite!
You've probably accumulated a number of basic computer cables and need to keep a stock of stuff like DVI, VGA, Power, USB A-to-B, etc. Fortunately, most of these come in a standard 6'/2m size!
Get a coat rack or two-- depending on how much you need to store--and affix it to a wall or hang it behind a door at least 4'/2.5m off the ground. Loop the cables over each hook, looping halfway down the cable. Each hook gets its own type of cable. I can get between 25-50 cables per hook, but this will obviously vary with the coat rack you choose and the thickness of the cables.
If you keep Cat 5/5e/6 networking cable in bulk, you can use one hook for each length and/or color. The only problem here is that cables longer than 10' will end up being looped anyway, or they'll be too long for this method.
This is a real time saver in two ways: No more constant bundling cables for storage, and you can easily see and grab what you need when you need it.
A general purpose cart is tremendously helpful for moving stuff around. Here are two tips to make your life easier if you can manage to get a cart:
Get a two level cart where the top level is completely flat without a lip. That makes sliding heavy equipment on/off much easier.
Get a cart with pneumatic tires. You'll thank me when wheeling that blade chassis across the parking lot.
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