Windows Server 2003 Utilities 1

Whenever I find the right Windows Server tool for the right job, I always get a satisfying glow.  I particularly enjoy discovering a new utility that saves me time, ADSI Edit for interrogating LDAP properties, springs to mind.  Other utilities come into their own in an emergency, NTDSutil and ESEutil are life savers in a disaster recovery situation.  There again, I love old friends like, Ipconfig for checking IP configuration.  However, in Windows 2003 they have new twists, such as Ipconfig -flushdns and in Vista Ipconfig -allcompartments

 

The most common fault when evaluating new tools is forgetting where they came from; take DCDIAG for an example, is it built-in?  Or does it come in the resource kit.  Actually its neither, you install it from the Windows Server 2003, Support tools folder.

 

One curiosity with these Windows utilities is that even amongst top techies, it's a case of one man's meat is another man's poison.  Few others rate cmdhere as highly as I do, whereas I have never really got on with diskpart or dsmod.

 

Support Tools -Server CD

  • ADSI Edit - Getting Started
  • ADSI Edit - More Examples
  • DCDiag - Domain Replication
  • LDP - LDAP Search of you Domain
  • NetDiag - Network Testing
  • Replmon - Directory Replication
  • Windiff - Compare Files

 

Built-in Tools - Executables that come with the operating system.

  • Authoritative Restore - Active Directory Restore (F8)
  • CACLS - Modify Access Control Lists (ACL)
  • NTDSutil
  • Ipconfig, Ping
  • Shutdown - Restart a remote machine
  • Taskmanger - Check those server processes
  • TCP/IP Suite

 

Ten tools to run from the command line

  1. GPupdate
  2. Where
  3. SystemInfo
  4. CSVDE
  5. LDIFDE
  6. CMDCONS
  7. Ipconfig
  8. RoboCopy
  9. CMDHere
  10. PathPing