57 Tips Every Admin Should Know

Emmanuel Carabotton August 24, 2011

The longer a person serves as a network admin, the more tips and tricks they are likely to pick up along
the way. Some could be shortcuts, others might seem like magic, but all are intended to save you time
and help you solve problems. Assume that all of these Windows commands should be run from an
administrative command prompt if you are using Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 2008.

Active Directory
1. To quickly list all the groups in your domain, with members, run this command:
dsquery group -limit 0 | dsget group -members expand
2. To find all users whose accounts are set to have a non-expiring password, run this command:
dsquery * domainroot -filter (&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(lockoutTime=*)) -limit 0
3. To list all the FSMO role holders in your forest, run this command:
netdom query fsmo
4. To refresh group policy settings, run this command:
gpupdate
5. To check Active Directory replication on a domain controller, run this command:
repadmin /replsummary

6. To force replication from a domain controller without having to go through to Active

Directory Sites and Services, run this command:
repadmin /syncall
7. To see what server authenticated you (or if you logged on with cached credentials) you can run
either of these commands:
set l
echo %logonserver%
8. To see what account you are logged on as, run this command:
whoami
9. To see what security groups you belong to, run this command:
whoami /groups
10. To see the domain account policy (password requirements, lockout thresholds, etc) run this
command:
net accounts

Windows Networking
11. To quickly reset your NIC back to DHCP with no manual settings, run this command:
netsh int ip reset all
12. To quickly generate a text summary of your system, run this command:
systeminfo | more
13. To see all network connections your client has open, run this command:
net use
14. To see your routing table, run either of these commands:
route print
netstat r

15. Need to run a trace, but dont have Netmon or Wireshark, and arent allowed to install either one?
Run this command:
netsh trace start capture=yes tracefile=c:\capture.etl
netsh trace stop
16. To quickly open a port on the firewall, run this command, changing the name, protocol, and port
to suit. This example opens syslog:
netsh firewall set portopening udp 161 syslog enable all
17. To add an entry to your routing table that will be permanent, run the route add command with the
p option. Omitting that, the entry will be lost at next reboot:
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 172.16.250.5 p
18. Heres a simple way to see all open network connections, refreshing every second:
netstat ano 1
19. You can add a | findstr value to watch for only a specific connection, like a client ip.addr or port:
netstat ano | findstr 216.134.217.20
20. You can use the shutdown to shutdown or reboot a machine, including your own, in a simple
scheduled task like this:
shutdown r t 0 m \\localhost
21. To make planned DNS changes go faster, reduce the TTL on the DNS records you plan on changing
to 30 seconds the day before changes are to be made. You can set the TTL back to normal after you
confirm the changes have been successful.
22. Set a short lease on DHCP scopes that service laptops, and set Microsoft Option 002 to release a
DHCP leas on shutdown. This helps to ensure your scope is not exhausted and that machines can easily
get on another network when the move to a new site.

Windows 7
23. Want to enable the local administrator account on Windows 7? Run this command from an
administrative command prompt. It will prompt you to set a password:
net user administrator * /active:yes
24. You can do the same thing during install by pressing SHIFT-F10 at the screen where you set your
initial user password.

Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts:

25. Windows Key+G
Display gadgets in front of other windows.
26. Windows Key++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where appropriate.
27. Windows Key+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where appropriate.
28. Windows Key+Up Arrow
Maximize the current window.
29. Windows Key+Down Arrow
Minimize the current window.
30. Windows Key+Left Arrow
Snap to the left hand side of the screen
31. Windows Key+Right Arrow
Snap to the right hand side of the screen.
32. To quickly launch an application as an administrator (without the right-click, run as administrator),
type the name in the Search programs and files field, and then press Ctrl-Shift-Enter.
Here are some tips that can save you from buying commercial software:
33. Need to make a quick screencast to show someone how to do something? The Problem Steps
Recorder can create an MHTML file that shows what you have done by creating a screen capture each
time you take an action. Click the Start button and type psr to open the Problem Steps Recorder.
34. Need to burn a disc? The isoburn.exe can burn ISO and IMG files. You can right click a file and
select burn, or launch it from the command line.
35. Windows 7 includes a screen scraping tool called the Snipping Tool. I have tons of users request a
license for SnagIt, only to find this free tool (its under Accessories) does what they need.
36. You can download this bootable security scanner from Microsoft that will run off a USB key, which
is very useful if you suspect a machine has a virus.

37. A great way to save all your command line tools and make them available across all your computers
is to install Dropbox, create a folder to save all your scripts and tools, and add that folder to your path.
That way, they can be called from the command line or any other scripts, and if you update a script, it
will carry across to any other machine you have.

Windows 2008
38. You can free up disk space on your servers by disabling hibernate. Windows 2008 will create a
hiberfil.sys equal to the amount of RAM. This is very useful with VMs that have lots of RAM but smaller
C: drives. To disable hibernation, and reclaim that space, run this command:
powercfg -h off
39. You can get to the complete collection of Sysinternals tools online. You can even invoke them from
the run command. Use the url: http://live.sysinternals.com or the UNC path:
\\live.sysinternals.com\tools.
40. Speaking of the Sysinternals tools, almost any command line in this article can be run remotely on
another machine (as long as you have administrative rights) using the psexec command included in the
Sysinternals tools.
41. You can kill RDP sessions at the command line when you find that all the RDP sessions to a server
are tied up.
regsvr32 query.dll [enter] You only have to do this the first time.
query session /server:servername [enter]
reset session # /server:servername [enter]
42. You can create a list of files and display the last time they were accessed, which is very useful
when a network drive is low on space and users swear they have to have that copy of Office 2003 on
the network. My advice? If they havent touched it in two years, burn it to DVD or write it to tape and
then delete it from disk:
dir /t:a /s /od >> list.txt [enter]
43. The Microsoft Exchange Err command is one of the best all around troubleshooting tools you will
find, as it can decode any hex error code you find as long as the products are installed on the machine.
Download it from here.
44. You can see all the open files on a system by running this command:
openfiles /query

45. You can pull all the readable data out of a corrupt file using this command:
recover filename.ext
46. Need to pause a batch file for a period of time but dont have the sleep command from the old
resource kit handy? Heres how to build a ten second delay into a script:
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1 > NUL 2>&1
47. If your Windows website has stopped responding, or is throwing a 500 error, and you are not sure
what to do, you can reset IIS without having to reboot the whole server. Run this command:
iisreset
48. You can use && to string multiple commands together; they will run sequentially.
49. If you find yourself restarting services frequently, you can use that && trick to create a batch file
called restart.cmd and use it to restart services:
net stop %1 && net start %1
50. You can download a Windows port of the wget tool from here, and use it to mirror websites using
this command:
wget -mk http://www.example.com/

Linux
51. You can list files sorted by size using this command:
ls lSr
52. You can view the amount of free disk space in usable format using this command:
df h
53. To see how much space /some/dir is consuming:
du -sh /some/dir
54. List all running processes containing the string stuff:
ps aux | grep stuff
55. If you have ever run a command but forgot to sudo, you can use this to rerun the command:
sudo !!

56. If you put a space before a command or response, it will be omitted from the shell history.
57. If you really liked a long command that you just ran, and want to save it as a script, use this trick:
echo !! > script.sh
With 57 tips in this bag of tricks, youre bound to find something useful. Have your own tips to share?
Leave us a comment!