Category: Software

Random software

Performace Analysis of Logs (PAL)

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With my previous post about PolyMonRT I also would like to share PAL with you.

PAL is a  performance analyzer which analyzes your perfmon tracing with the Best Practice Treshholds from Microsoft for most of their products.

With the help of a easy GUI you can simply select your performance log and start the analyzing.
When the analyzing finished it’s reported in a nice colored HTML view which shows your warning and critical points you could review to let your machine perform better 🙂

Required Products (free and public):
– PowerShell v2.0 or greater.
– Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
– Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Source: http://pal.codeplex.com/

PolymonRT

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I have been working on some perfmon counter knowledge and came across something I would like to share. If you know what kind of things to measure you can visualize this with PolyMonRT or PolyMon. Yes there are some other products available which look better, but this one is free.

It’s highly customizable so you can get out whatever you want.

Source: http://polymonrt.codeplex.com/
Screenshots: http://polymonrt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Screenshots&referringTitle=Home

Remote Desktop Connection Manager

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I was browsing the web and found Remote Desktop Connection Manager. It should be a nice replacement and organizing tool for Remote Connections.
You can create groups, set your UID and password before connecting, see multiple screens live at a time.

You can download it at Microsoft’s website
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4603c621-6de7-4ccb-9f51-d53dc7e48047&displaylang=en

After you installed it, you can move the folder to another PC/Server and use it standalone.

Servers are organized into named groups. You can connect or disconnect to all servers in a group with a single command. You can view all the servers in a group as a set of thumbnails, showing live action in each session. Servers can inherit their logon settings from the group. Thus, when you change your lab account password, you only need to change the password stored by RDCMan in one place. By default passwords are stored securely by encrypting with CryptProtectData using the (locally) logged on user’s authority. Servers can be moved between groups using drag-and-drop or via their properties page.

Non-Win7/Vista users will need to get version 6 of the Terminal Services Client. You can obtain this from the Microsoft Download Center: XP; Win2003

WSUS Client Diagnostics

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This tool has been designed to aid the WSUS administrator in troubleshooting the client machines that are failing to report back to the WSUS Server.
The tool will do a few preliminary checks and test the communication between the WSUS Server and the client machine.
Once the tool has completed the tests it will display the results in the console window. The WSUS administrator also has the option to have the results logged to a file in addition to being displayed on the console.

Download : http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/7/6/976d1084-d2fd-45a1-8c27-a467c768d8ef/WSUS%20Client%20Diagnostic%20Tool.EXE

Registry comparing

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Due to a problem with some of our servers I was trying to compare 3 registry’s because 2 did function correct and one had an unidentified problem which caused the problem.

I found a nice and easy tool called regdiff. It once was nested inside the Windows Resource Kit.
You can download it at  http://www.p-nand-q.com/download/tools/regdiff.zip

Easiest is too export the two directories you want to  compare. You also can use the whole registry but think about all the variables which are different per server. You will get a lot of failed compares then.

If you just have a little clue where too search for your problem, try to compare some directories there instead of the whole regsitry.

You can find more information on:
http://www.p-nand-q.com/download/regdiff.html

Quitter (CLI Twitter Application)

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A few days ago I found a nice very lite twitter app. It’s a CLI which works like a charm.
So don’t expect flashy visuals and gui’s like most other twitter applications. Just back to basics for fast reading and posting 🙂

It’s also completely standalone uses only one executable and one configuration file. No installer needed, just unpack the ZIP file.

You can download it at
http://quitter.codeplex.com/

With Quitter, you can…

  • Read, post, reply and retweet.
  • Organize the people you follow into groups and read tweets by group.
  • Filter (or highlight) tweets from specific users or that contain certain #hashtags.
  • Use URL shorteners like TinyUrl.com for tweeting URLs.
  • Easily open tweeted links from other users in your default browser (no copy/paste needed)
  • Send and receive direct messages
  • Follow or unfollow other users

Quitter runs on Windows 2000/XP/Vista and requires Version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework or higher (version 2.0 was released in 2006; most Windows machines should have version 2.0 or higher).

  Quitter is free (as in beer) and open-source and will always be both.