Once again, we find out how worthless and pathetic Microsoft is when it comes to thoroughness. Starting with Server 2012, they added the ability to have a failover DHCP server using load balancing or by acting as a hot spare and have it replicate the server configuration, which is great, except they left out the MAC filtering lists, forcing us to use scripts yet again to accomplish something that should have been built in.
Continue reading “Server 2012 and Up – Sync DHCP Filter List on Hot Spare Failover Server”
Browse Recent:
Exchange 2010 – Add Send As Permission for All Users/Future Users from a User Account
No need for a bunch of hoopla, here’s the short and sweet version.
Add Send As Permission for All Users from a User Account
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Add-ADPermission -User "YourDomain\Username" -Extendedrights "Send As"
To add send as permissions for future users, we need to create a powershell script with the above line in it, make sure you have enabled the use of unsigned scripts by issuing the “Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned” command at an administrator ran PowerShell prompt, and create a task scheduler job to run our script with the administrator credentials saved in there.
Continue reading “Exchange 2010 – Add Send As Permission for All Users/Future Users from a User Account”
Batch Script – Parse MS Exchange IIS Log File, Filter All External Requests, and Email It
I needed a way to track which Exchange users were remotely retrieving their emails outside of the office on their phones and other email clients, so I pieced together this batch/pseudo VB script that can be ran from the Windows Task Scheduler at midnight. The only dependency/third party app required is the MS Log Parser executable. Also, for the SQL query to filter out the proper internal networks from the log file, you will have to edit the LOCALSUBNET and CHARLENGTH variables.
Continue reading “Batch Script – Parse MS Exchange IIS Log File, Filter All External Requests, and Email It”
HP Support Assistant – The Epitome of Spyware and How to Disable It
Sure there are several legitmate cases where the HP Support Assistant can be helpful, such as updating drivers or flashing the BIOS on the computer, but if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already established the fact that the software basically hijacks your computer and does a lot of shady shit in the background. I would absolutely classify the product as being spyware and would highly recommend that you take all steps necessary to disable it when it is not being used, and here are some reasons why.
My first problem is that by default, the HP Support Assistant does an intrusive scan of your network to search for “devices” every time the software runs and it appears you can’t turn that off. It doesn’t get much shadier than that folks, seeing as how you don’t really know what they are up to and why they are taking an inventory of your entire network.
Continue reading “HP Support Assistant – The Epitome of Spyware and How to Disable It”
Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class
At work, they wanted to ability to play a soundbyte on a schedule as a reminder to our sales employees. I think I may have found this on stackexchange but I can’t quite remember at this point to give the full creds. A lot of the solutions I found tried to use Windows Media Player to play sound files or MP3’s, but unfortunately, there was no way to close the program after the file had played. This way uses Windows PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class to play the file. Continue reading “Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class”
Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User
Here is a neat workaround you can use in Windows to run a batch script or any other command that would regularly require elevated administrator credentials. Using this method, you can essentially bypass UAC and allow a script to be ran as a standard user without them having to enter in an admin password. In theory, you could probably even use this same approach to install software as a regular user if you wanted to. For my example below, I was able to allow a standard user to kill processes and then restart the services.
The problem that I had to overcome was that one of my VPN users who used Shrewsoft VPN client would occasionally get disconnected and then never be able to fully connect again. Oddly enough, the client would show connected on the user’s end and immediately disconnect but it never made a connection on the server side. The problem was that the “iked” process would get hung up and then the VPN client would subsequently never fully connect all the way. Continue reading “Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User”