Admin Arsenal Blog

PDQ Inventory 1.1.2 (Beta 1)

Adam Ruth — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce the availability of Beta 1 of PDQ Inventory 1.1.2. As always, you can download it from here. This beta is mostly fixes and a few features.

Uninstall Applications
Applications can be uninstalled from the Applications Panel. This requires that the application have a silent "Uninstall String" value, which most will. This command can be executed with PDQ Inventory or copied and pasted to PDQ Deploy. We will improve the integration with PDQ Deploy in a future version.
Integration support with the upcoming PDQ Deploy 2 beta. Deploy is moving to .NET 4 in version 2 and this requird changes to PDQ Inventory for the integration to work, so versions of PDQ Inventory earlier than this beta won't work with PDQ Deploy 2.
Fixed a crash when upgrading from version 1.0.
Fixed an issue with sending Wake-on-LAN to computers with multiple NICs.
A few other small fixes, which can be viewed here.

As always we hope you enjoy the software and please let us know what more we can do in our Feature Request Forum.

Get the latest PDQ Inventory Beta

How to continually push software only to computers that need it

Shawn Anderson — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:40:00 GMT

Automatically keep computers to the same software level

One of the major features of PDQ Deploy Pro Mode is the ability to push software via the "Link To" feature.

Long time users of PDQ will be familiar with pushing to targets (computers that they choose during the time of deployment), but using Link To is a little different. The Link To feature is available when you schedule a deployment. It comes in very handy when you schedule a recurring deployment. For example, if you want to ensure that all workstations with Office 2007 are running Service Pack 3 then you could create a Collection (in PDQ Inventory) which contains all workstations missing Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 3 and then have your Office SP 3 Installer "Link To" that collection. You could set your recurring schedule to deploy SP 3 every Friday at 6 PM. Every Friday Office 2007 SP3 will be deployed to the member computers of this collection. Computers that successfully receive the deployment will be (at the next Inventory scan) removed from this collection.

OK, that's a little long winded. It's tough to explain, but very easy to show. So, in typical Shane format, he created a video to demonstrate how to push Office 2007 SP3 to all computers that have Office 2007 SP2, not just now, but on a daily or weekly basis. (If you only need to push once then you won't need to create a schedule or link, just deploy it).

Here's the video. Please give it a whirl. This is one of the truly advanced features of PDQ Deploy Pro Mode that we are really stoked about.

You can also Link To computes via Active Directory, Spiceworks and Target Lists.

Silent Install Foxit Reader with PDQ Deploy

Shane Corellian — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:48:00 GMT

This is an update to a previous, now outdated, article describing how you can deploy Foxit Reader 4.x. Foxit has removed the deploy ability of their standard free Reader application. In order to deploy Foxit Reader you need to use the Foxit Enterprise Reader. Don't worry, this is still free. You can register to receive this download here.

The great thing about the Enterprise Reader is that it isn't garbled up with the ebay or ask.com add-ons.

Here is the PDQ Deploy installer window for my Foxit Installer. Notice that I added the DESKTOP_SHORTCUT=0 property to my parameters field. This way my end users won't see the Foxit shortcut on their desktops.

Here are some additional properties that you may want to disable. To modify an MSI property just add it to your Parameters field (like I did with DESKTOP_SHORTCUT=0). These settings are enabled, by default. If you want to disable them just pass the property name with a "=0".

MAKEDEFAULT (When enabled, this setting will make Foxit Reader the default PDF application and will associate all .PDF files with Foxit.

LAUNCHCHECKDEFAULT (When application starts up it will verify that Foxit is the default PDF reader)

VIEW_IN_BROWSER (This will allow PDF files to be read in your web browser)

STARTMENU_SHORTCUT (Place Foxit shortcut in Start menu)

DESKTOP_SHORTCUT ( I disabled the Foxit desktop shortcut in my installer)

If you didn't want Foxit Reader to be your default PDF application you would add MAKEDEFAULT=0 to your Parameters field.

Once you're ready to deploy it, choose the Deploy Now button from your main PDQ Deploy window, choose your targets and you should be good to go.

***NOTE*** If you have an earlier version of Foxit (and that version isn't the Enterprise version) then you will need to uninstall the older version before you can install the new Foxit. If you are using PDQ Deploy in Pro Mode, then you can accomplish this by create a new Command Action. Click on New Action and select Command. In the Command to Run field type

"%ProgramFiles%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\unins000.exe" /silent.

If you have Foxit installed on some 64 bit versions of Windows you can create another command action and use this for the Command to run:

"%ProgramFiles(x64)%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\unins000.exe" /silent

If you have Foxit version 4 installed, then instead of unins000.exe you would run (change to x64 if needed)

"%ProgramFiles%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\uninstall.exe" /u

Highlight the original Action (it should be Action 1) and press the Move Down button until it is below the two new Command actions. On your command actions uncheck the "Stop Deployment if this Action fails" box. This way if an earlier version of Foxit doesn't exist the error returned won't prevent the following actions (most notably the action which installs Foxit Enterprise Reader) from running. You can also just add the number 3 to the Successful Return Codes field as error 3 means unins000.exe couldn't be found.

Inventory Scans - Using multiple accounts for mixed environments

Shawn Anderson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:30:00 GMT

Mixed computer environments are pretty common, so it was pretty clear out the gate that we needed to include a way for admin to use multiple credentials when using PDQ Inventory to collect inventory.

A common setup is an organization that has most, but not all, of its Windows computers managed in Active Directory. The non-domain computers also need to be scanned. Another situation that we see quite a bit is the multi-domain environment.

In this video Shane demonstrates setting up multiple credentials in PDQ Inventory and assigning which accounts are for which computers.

Remember, PDQ Inventory requires admin privileges on all the computers that it scans.

Advanced - Group Computers into PDQ Inventory Collections

Shawn Anderson — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:33:00 GMT

Collections are the secret to making PDQ Inventory one of your favorite admin tools.

Shane put together a video which shows a step by step into creating multiple collections which server many purposes. He uses computers with or without Silverlight in his example.

Remember that with the pro mode of PDQ Inventory you can sync with Active Directory.

Deploy Adobe Reader (or any application) the Smart Way

Shane Corellian — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:40:00 GMT

We've written several articles on deploying Adobe Reader to your systems.

http://www.adminarsenal.com/admin-arsenal-blog/bid/54081/How-To-Install-Adobe-Reader-10-Silently

http://www.adminarsenal.com/admin-arsenal-blog/bid/53953/6-steps-for-using-the-Adobe-Customization-Wizard-for-Adobe-Reader-10

These articles contain deployment methods that certainly work however let's get a little more advanced this time. Basically, we want to leave the stone-age of brute force deployments and only deploy the latest Adobe Reader to systems that don't already have it installed. So, assuming you have PDQ Deploy installed and you have built your installer for Adobe Reader (see the above articles) let's move forward. Oh, you'll need to install PDQ Inventory as well. If you aren't using it yet, no worries, it's free to use.

Now, we can accomplish what we want by creating the necessary Inventory Collections which break down which systems do or don't have Adobe Reader and which systems have older versions of Adobe Reader.

Open PDQ Inventory. Make certain your computers have recently been scanned. You can import the Collections or you can just create your own from scratch. To import the collections, extract the XML file from the zip archive and import via PDQ Inventory. (Go to File > Import or hit CTRL+i).

Here is what our Adobe Collection hierarchy will look when we finish.

Our first Collection is called Adobe Reader. It has only one filter which includes all systems which have any application whose name contains "Adobe Reader".

Our next Collection will contain all systems which have Adobe Reader X (version 10)

Now let's break it up a little more. Let's create a collection which contains ALL systems that have Adobe Reader version 10 BUT don't have the latest version of 10.1.3. To tdo this we will use the "version between" comparison. BTW, when you use "version between" the beginning and ending numbers ARE INCLUDED in the range.

Let's create a collection which contains all systems that have the latest version of Adobe Reader. At this writing the latest version is 10.1.3. This way we can expect membership in this collection to increase as we deploy the latest 10.1.3 (and the targets are subsequently scanned).

This collection will contain computers which have Adobe Reader but the version is lower than 10. (e.g. Adobe Reader 9)

Now let's create a collection to contain all Servers that do NOT have ANY version of Adobe Reader. The collection below will probably be confusing. Look at it carefully. Notice that we have changed the Match Criteria (highlighted in yellow) from the default "Match All" to "Don't Match Any". Normally the Collections filter IN systems which match the filters. In the case below we will change the behavior to filter OUT systems which match the filters.

We also have created 2 different filters. The first is an Operating System filter. In it we say that the Operating System Name does not contain the word "server". Normally (using Match) this would mean that only Windows workstations would be members. However, since we are filtering OUT (Don't Match) the filters the opposite will happen. Only machines that have the word Server in their OS Name will be included.

The second filter is an Application filter. In it we say that an Application name contains Adobe Reader. Once again, this would normally include computers which have this application however our Don't Match changes that. Now we filter OUT systems which have Adobe Reader.

OK, you may be asking "Hey Shane, why don't you just have two filters where the first says Operating System contains server and the other says Application Name does not contain Adobe Reader?"

This logic is understandable but it is flawed. When you create an application filter that says "Name does not contain Adobe Reader" you are effectively saying that you will include any computer which has any application where the name doesn't contain "Adobe Reader". This means that a computer that has an application called "Microsoft Office 2010" would be included in the collection EVEN IF IT ALSO HAD ADOBE READER. This is expected in SQL logic. Let's say that I have a computer called Butters with 3 applications installed. The installed applications are Microsoft Office 2010, Adobe Reader and Mozilla Firefox. This filter would be applied 3 times (once for each application) and if it found an application that didn't contain "Adobe Reader" the test would pass. If you were typing the raw SQL n a query you would resolve this problem by using the Group By clause NOT HAVING. Well, by changing the Match to Don't Match we are doing the same thing as using a NOT HAVING. Therefore by having a filter that says "Name contains Adobe Reader" we would find all systems that had any application called Adobe Reader but changing Match to Don't Match (but keeping the filter the same) we would strip out any computer that passes the filter "Application Name contains Adobe Reader".

The collection below is similar to the example above except in this one we are showing only Non-Server systems that don't have Adobe Reader. Note, however, that I added a third filter. This filter will effectively remove any computer that has never been successfully scanned by Inventory.

Why is the third filter important in this case? Well, let's say we have a computer called Homer. Homer has never had a successful inventory scan. With no inventory Homer would pass the filters below. Think about it. It would pass the first filter because it does, strictly, have an OS that doesn't contain an OS name containing the word "server". It passes the second filter because it doesn't have an application called Adobe Reader. According to Inventory it doesn't have ANY applications so, once again, it passes the test. I want to filter out Homer (and any other computer that has never had a successful inventory scan) until I know for sure what applications exist on Homer.

In my lab these are the systems which are in this collection.

Now let's see what happens when I remove the Computer Never Scanned filter. Note that I have two computers, Homer and Malory, that have never been scanned. Since they both pass the collection filters they show up.

OK, now I can deploy Adobe Reader to the appropriate computers. If I wanted to deploy version 10.1.3 to my workstations that are missing Adobe Reader I would simply right click on the collection and select Tools > PDQ Deploy. (You need to have PDQ Deploy installed). Select your Adobe Acrobat Reader installer in PDQ Deploy.

After you select your installer you will see that the computers in your selected collection are added to your Deploy Now window.

Follow @admarsenal on Twitter to get more tips and tricks

Professional IT Community Conference - PICC 2012

Shawn Anderson — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:16:00 GMT

We've enjoyed our association with the folks from the Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) the last couple of years. It's nice to see local IT sys admins taking control of local conferences.

Local conferences are great, and I'd like to see more of them pop up. It's always a plus to network with local sys admins who are facing some of the same challenges that you are. Plus, it's just plain nice to attend a conference without needing to jump on a plane or pass a kidney stone when you see the hotel room mini-bar prices.

I had the opportunity to exchange some info with John Boris, a past attendee who will be making it to PICC 2012 in New Brunswick, NJ.

Q: What are the three reasons you continue to attend PICC?

1. Low cost Training in my back yard. You can't beat the price. Getting a full day of training runs twice that much and you can get two days. The instructors have been top notch so it is a no brainer for me.

2. Community experience. Besides the training and presentations there is the Hallway track and dinner. You get to meet a lot of people during the breaks and meals. It is neat to have exchanged emails with a person for a year and then meet them face to face.

3. To learn new things. I live my work life at a command prompt on an operating system that is way past end of life. So being able to get somewhere and see what is going on is a plus. Getting to see how someone else solved a problem or handle an issue is something that you can find at PICC.

Q: Do you feel that there are differences between local sys admin
conferences and national conferences? If so, will you list one or two?

The one big difference between a national conference and a local one, in my opinion, is the closeness of the venue. The training sessions may not be as diverse as a week long conference but at PICC you will most likely meet and speak to every attendee at the conference. That is something you would not do at a big National conference.

Q: As a sys admin, what have you learned from past PICC conferences that
you implemented into your daily workflow?

One main thing I have learned at PICC is Time Management through Tom Limmoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators class. From his class and his book I implemented a Request Tracker (RT) system at work to handle my Tecj support calls and practically everything that I need to track goes into that system. The use of RT in my work has streamlined my desk and has kept me on track. This is coming from an person who has to support 500 users, 25 servers over a five county area plus an office of administrators.

Thank you to John for taking the time to share his thoughts on PICC. If you are interested in attending a conference in your local area check out The League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) which lists local IT conferences.

PDQ Inventory 1.1 (Release 2)

Adam Ruth — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce the release of PDQ Inventory 1.1 (Release 2). As always, you can download it from here. This release fixes a number of bugs and adds a couple of new features that you should hopefully find helpful.

New Features

Version Comparisons in Reports and Collections
Useful for filtering on file and application version numbers. Shane has already gone into this in some detail.
Added O/S Serial Number
When upgrading to a new version the whole database is backed up
File and Registry scanner row limits can now be configured
Reports can now have a global filter, like the collection window

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where scans were showing up multiple times in the scan or computer window.
Fixed issue with Active Directory renames not being properly synchronized.
Fixed occasional "CreateProcess error 32" when anti-virus software would lock the scanner program.
Fixed bug preventing credentials in name@domain format.
Fixed issue comparing empty date/time values in report filters.
Fixed n duplicate key error in scanning certain computer Windows Features.
Fixed an issue with the Design Report menu being disabled.
Fixed an issue where some computers would get Access Denied to the service manager.

As always we hope you enjoy the software and please let us know what more we can do in our Feature Request Forum.

Deploy .NET 4

Shane Corellian — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Installing .NET Framework 4 on your client computers is almost mandatory these days. So many applications require .NET 4. Not to worry, the installation doesn't need to be a pain.

In these examples I will be using PDQ Deploy and PDQ Inventory which are free Systems Management tools available from Admin Arsenal.

The Get-it-done-now-dammit Way

If you haven't already, download Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) from Microsoft. Save it to a directory on your computer (or on an accessible shared directory on your network).

Create a new Installer in PDQ Deploy. (File > New Installer). Name your new PDQ Installer something like "Microsoft .NET Framework 4. In the Install File field enter the path to your .NET 4 executable (actually click the elipsis button and navigate to the .NET 4 executable).

Save your new Installer. Highlight the installer and push the Deploy Now button.

The Deploy Now window appears. This is where we will choose the computers which will receive .NET 4. You can either enter the names of your target computers or you can import computers from PDQ Inventory (the next example will show you how to do this), Active Directory, Spiceworks or text files. In this example we will just type in two target computers: Lebowski and Quintana.

After you have defined your targets simply hit the Deploy Now button.

You can see a quick view of your deployment by highlighting the Installer and selecting the Deployment tab.

You can see more detailed information by opening up the deployment

The Slightly More Elegant Way

In this example we will take the Installer that we built earlier but instead of just typing in our target computers we will only deploy to workstations (non-server systems) which we know do not have .NET 4 already installed. We will use PDQ Inventory to do this. (The data in PDQ Inventory is only as good as the last scan so make sure you have recently scanned your computers)

Open up PDQ Inventory. Create a new Collection (CTRL+N or Collection > New Dynamic Collection). Give your new Collection a name. Add three different filters.

Computer > .NET Versions does not contain 4.0
Computer > Never Scanned is not true
Operating System > Name does not contain server

The first filter effectively says: Only Show computers that do not have .NET Framework 4 installed.

The second filter effectively says: Only show computers that have a successful inventory scan. (This is important since a computer in PDQ Inventory that has NEVER been scanned will pass the first filter)

The third filter effectively says: Only show me computers with Operating System name that does not contain the word "Server". All Windows servers have the word server in their OS Name. (e.g. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise)

Your Collection filters should look something like this:

Right click on your new collection and select Tools > PDQ Deploy. A window will appear asking you which PDQ Deploy Installer to use. Select the Installer you created earlier.

When you select your Installer PDQ Deploy will display the Deploy Now window with your target computers already populated. These are the workstations which do not have .NET 4 installed.

Hit Deploy Now and go pour yourself a Guinness.

9 Business Travel Tips for Sys Admins

Shane Corellian — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:36:00 GMT

Like many of my Sys Admin brethren and sisters I often travel for work. Last year I spent over 250 nights in different hotels. Sure there are plenty of perks to traveling but I'm going to focus on the negative stuff because, well, that's how I am.

Let's get started shall we?

Know the local liquor laws before you travel

Few things suck more than spending 5 hours on a flight, 3 hours in airports and an hour in a rental car that runs on 3 squirrels only to find that you can't buy liquor on a Sunday or even buy beer at a grocery store. This is very important since the days of packing a flask or two on your flight have gone bye bye. Plus, purchasing booze from your mini-bar is rarely a reimbursable expense. Trust me.

Pack your Aux audio cable first and then, if you have time, your passport

When you get your rental car you'll thank me. Hell, you don't know where your driving anyway so if you're going to get lost you may as well be blasting your tunes. Plus, many hotels are leaving 1985 and replacing the old-school clock radios with Clock radios that actually have aux ports. You may as well wake up to Monty Python's All Things Dull and Ugly as opposed some staticky morning douche jockey who should be DJing Karaoke at an Idaho truck stop.

Carry a few music CDs with you

You know that MSDN DVD pack you lug everywhere? Just Replace the BizTalk 2006 and Microsoft Customer Care Framework DVDs that you have never used with some choice CDs. You'll thank me when Hertz gives you the latest Hyundai Sphincter that has a stereo with no Aux port.

Be friendly to the TSA \ Security agents at your home airport

After the same agents have seen your fake, smiling mug about 3 dozen times they will give you less crap. You want them to be as comfortable with you as your favorite bartenders are. No, you won't get a free Guinness while you wait but you just may avoid an extra few finger-rapings at the hands of that bitter agent who's going through a divorce.

You're out of luck with TSA agents at airports that you don't often frequent. Just pick the line with the most business travelers. How can you tell a business travler? Well, first we all look like we have a plate of crap under our noses and we roll our eyes a lot. If that doesn't help then just pick the line with the fewest cameras. If the ratio of SLR cameras to non-Apple laptops is greater than 1:3 you're in the wrong line. Also, business travelers don't usually travel with diaper bags and Dora backpacks.

Don't be a tool when it comes to trading seats on a plane

If someone wants to trade seats then it's usually cool to accomodate them. I'm not talking about giving up seat 3B for 43E. Just don't act like you just dilated to 9cm when a guy asks if he can sit next to his kid. It's better anyway... It's discombobulating watching Saw IV with an 11 year old kid sittin' next to you.

Hoarde your drink coupons

Remove all the crap in your seat pocket

C'mon, you need to make room for your iPad, that 6 year old company-supplied Dell PP09S laptop and that 763 page Group Policy Guide from Microsoft Press.

If you're going to access the Internet inflight, establish your session the moment you hit 10,000 feet

If you wait 'til you finish your movie then chances are good that you won't get a session.
Also, keep an eye out for that one person who tries stream Breaking Bad from Netflix at 1.3 kbps. Chances are they'll ask for a refund within 15 minutes and then complain the rest of the flight.

Finally, don't wear that vendor-supplied polo shirt

First, that skin-tight CA shirt doesn't even fit you and that Tech-Ed 2007 hat has never helped you score a hot (or even luke-warm) date. Second, computer vendor apparel only invites discussions or comments from other travelers and, if you're a Sys Admin, human interaction probably isn't your strong suit.

Check out Adam's Sys Admin Drinking Game post. Still one of my favs.

Compare Application Versions in Latest PDQ Inventory Beta

Shane Corellian — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:56:00 GMT

We have added some new filter comparisons that you can use in your PDQ Inventory collection and report filters. These are known as the Version comparisons and are available in at least version 1.1.1 beta 1 (which is a public beta for Inventory 1.2). If you want to be notified when new beta versions are available you can sign up for notifications here.

The available Version comparisons are:

version between
version does not equal
version equals
version higher than
version lower than
version not between
version not higher than
version not lower than

Let's say you want to breakddown all the machines in your network by their Microsoft Office Service Pack versions. This is very handy if you want deploy Office 2010 SP1 to all systems with Microsoft Office 2010 but which don't have SP1.

Go to your Systems with Microsoft Office collection and expand it. Right click on the Systems with Microsoft Office 2010 and select Duplicate.

A new Collection will be created called Systems with Microsoft Office 2010 Copy. Drag this new collection on top of the Systems with Microsoft Office 2010. This will make your new collection a sub-collection (aka Child Collection). With your new collection selected press the Edit button or right click and select "Edit Collection" at the top of your menu.

At this point, rename this new collection to something like Office 2010 (No SP).

Click the Version link and select the version lower than comparison. Enter the value 14.0.6023.1000 in the comparison field. (Enter this value for any filter you have specified)

Your new Collection filter should look something like this:

This collection has two filters. In order for a computer to be a member it must meet the requirements for 1 of these filters (that is where the Match Any grouping comes in). Notice that we have added a version lower than comparison on the Version column in both filters.

What if you want to group computers that only have Office 2007 SP2? Well Office 2007 SP2 has a version that is at least 12.0.6425.1000. So you could use a version higher than comparison, correct? No. If you use a higher than comparison on that value you will also match systems that are running Office 2007 SP3. In this case you would want to use the version between comparison. All you have to do is identify the range of versions that constitute Office 2007 SP2. Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 will have a version no lower than 12.0.6425.1000 and SP3 will have no version lower than 12.0.6612.1000After finding the appropriate values (Microsoft didn't have the versions for Office 2007 SP3 readily available to I installed SP3 to determine it's version which turned out to be 12.0.6612.1000) I created a filter that looked like this:

Let's create a report showing all computers that are running Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 with update lower than 31. To know what version to look for, just go to open a computer (in PDQ Inventory) that is running version 31 and see how it's version is displayed in the Applications panel. I can tell from the screenshot below that Java 6 Update 31 will have a version of 6.0.310.

Go to the Report menu and select New Report > Basic. Call your new report something like "Java 6 lower than Update 31". On the Columns tab click the Add Column button and add Computer > Name. The Computer Name column should show up. Add two more columns, Applications > Name and Applications Version.

After you have entered which columns you want to display go to the Filters tab. Click the Add Filter button. A new Filter will be created. At this point click the Add Column button and select Application > Name. Choose the starts with comparison and enter Java(TM) 6 in the field. Click Add Column and choose Application > Version. Choose the version lower than comparison and type in 6.0.310.

Click the Run Report icon and (assuming you have computers that meet these filter criteria) you should see a window which looks something like the image below. In order to save your new report you must be running PDQ Inventory in Pro Mode.

Remember, in order to use the Version comparisons you must be running PDQ Inventory version 1.1.1. beta 1 or higher.

*Note - The Version comparisons expect digits and can be delimited by dots or commas. The values will stop evaluating at the 4th delimeter or when it hits the first non-digit (dots and commas excluded) character.

Version 1.2.3.4.5.6 will be evaluated as 1.2.3.4

Version 10.2.3R2 will be evaluated as 10.2.3

Version one.two.three will be evaluated as NULL

To determine Microsoft Office Service Pack versions I referred to these KB articles. The Office 2010 article did not, at this writing, contain the version info for Office 2010 SP3.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2121559

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928116

How to Repair or Reinstall .NET Framework 3.5

Shane Corellian — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:09:00 GMT

There are times when .NET Framework can get corrupted on a computer. A corrupt .NET 3.5 can prevent PDQ Inventory 1.0 and 1.1 from successfully scanning / managing the computer. To repair .NET Framework 3.5 refer to the instructions below. It is suggested that you log into the problem computer to repair. This way you can get some good feedback on whether the repair worked.

Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is included in these two OSes and cannot be installed, repaired or uninstalled via the .NET Framework setup file. They need to be enabled or disabled as Windows Features.

To Repair From The Command Line

Open cmd.exe in an Elevated session (needed if UAC is implemented).

The next step is to disable the .NET 3 Windows Feature.

Run the following command at your command line:

DISM /online /disable-feature /FeatureName:NetFx3

(note that when using DISM all Feature Names are Case Sensitive. Using "netfx3" will result in a failure)

After you successfully disable the NetFx3 feature you can now re-enable it.

DISM /online /enable-feature /FeatureName:NetFx3

The screenshot below shows the results of both commands run in sequence.

To Repair Manually from GUI

Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off

Clear the check box for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1. Say OK.

After Windows disables the feature you will need to go back re-enable Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1

Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008

To Repair From Command Line

Open cmd.exe in an Elevated session (needed if UAC is implemented).

The next step is to call the Setup.exe and pass the appropriate command line arguments.

Run the following command at your command line:

"%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1\setup.exe" /qb /norestart

If you pass the

/qb

argument you will still see the uninstall window but you will not be prompted for any input. Do not use /qb if you are going to deploy the .NET installation / repair via PDQ Deploy. Instead use the

/q

argument as this will suppress all install windows.

To Repair Manually from GUI

Go to the .NET setup directory in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 and run setup.exe. After the .NET installation files are loaded the following window will appear. Choose to Repair (recommended) or Uninstall. If you choose to Uninstall you will need to re-install .NET again.

If you want a comprehensive resource to reference .NET repairs you should check out this excellent article from Aaron Stebner's WebLog.

Uninstall Flash Player | Silently uninstall Flash from your computers

Shane Corellian — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:09:00 GMT

We have written about deploying Adobe Flash to all of your computers in a few previous posts, most notably Shawn's post from Feb 2011.

This time we are going to look at how we can silently uninstall Adobe Flash Player from all of our computers. This walk-thru assumes that you have PDQ Deploy. If you don't have it, go download it. It's free for crying out loud!

Step One: Download the flash player utilities from Adobe.

Adobe provides separate uninstall files for 32-bit and 64-bit systems. You can read about them here or you can just download the 32-bit and 64-bit files.

Step Two: Build your PDQ Installer (which will, counter-intuitively, Uninstall Flash)

Choose which uninstall file you want to use. In this example we will use the 32 bit version. Right click on the file and select "Deploy with PDQ Deploy"

Name the Installer something like "Uninstall Adobe Flash (32 bit)" (or whatever you want).

Add

-uninstall

to the Parameters field. As always all parameters vary from application to application and the valid values are dependent upon the vendor (in this case, Adobe).

Step Three: Deploy the Uninstaller to your target computers.

Now that you have your new "installer" you are ready to deploy it to your computers. Find your new Installer in your main PDQ Deploy window. Highlight the new installer and hit the Deploy Now button. (You can also right-click the Installer and select Deploy Now).

Now it's time to choose your target computers. In this example we'll just type in the computer names but ideally you would import your targets from other sources such as PDQ Inventory¹, Active Directory or Spiceworks.

Once you have all your targets selected, press the Deploy Now button. You can view the status of your deployment from the main PDQ Deploy window by selecting All Deployments or just selecting your specific Installer and clicking the Deployment tab (shown below).

You can see, at a glance, the specifics of your deployment. The computer Sobchak finished the uninstall in 6 seconds and the computer Yerbouti finished in 47 seconds.

Additional Notes

When uninstalling Adobe Flash it is important that all web browsers are closed on the target computers. If you run PDQ Deploy in Pro mode you can define multiple "Actions" in your Installer.

I like using the multiple actions in cases like this where you want to control the target environment during a deployment. I will provide an example below of Uninstalling Flash Player while also making sure to close any web browsers before the uninstall begins. In addition to defining multiple actions Pro Mode allows you to schedule your deployments, utilize DFS, configure bandwidth throttling, receive e-mail notifications of your deployments and more. f you don't have Pro mode enabled, you can get your Pro Mode Trial Key now.

In Pro mode you create a new action by clicking the New Action button in your Installer window. You will need to choose what type of Action you want: Package or Command. In this case you will want a Command action because all we are going to do is run a command. After you create your new Action, move it above the original Action by using the Move Up button.

Notice that I unchecked the "Stop Deployment if this Action fails" checkbox. I did this because even if the attempt to kill running browsers failed I wanted to move to the next Action and perform the uninstall of Adobe Flash. Incidentally, you can just add the return code 128 to the Successful Return Codes field. Exit code 128 is thrown by Taskkill.exe if the specified process (like iexplore.exe) wasn't running. If you don't want to uncheck the "Stop Deployment..." check box at least add 128 as a successful code to the taskkill command window.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them on the comments or you can submit them to our PDQ Deploy support forum.

¹With PDQ Inventory you can create a collection will shows all 32 bit computers which have Flash Player installed. Then your deploy target would simply be this collection and you wouldn't have to manually keep track of which computers need to have Flash removed.

Install Flash 10 Silently | Deploying Adobe Flash Player

Shawn Anderson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:07:00 GMT

NOTE: This post was accidentally republished on 20 Feb 2012. Sorry about that.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 has been released. The installation is pretty straight forward, with one caveat. There are two installation files; one for Internet Explorer and the other for Firefox.

Both of these installation files are easily deployed silently to all your computers using default .msi silent parameters.

We're going to demonstrate deploying this application using PDQ Deploy Pro. We normally illustrate using our free version of PDQ Deploy, but Flash Player comes in two files; one for Internet Explorer and the other for Firefox. Since PDQ Deploy Pro allows us to have multiple packages in one installer it makes sense to demonstrate using the pro version.

If you would like to install Adobe Flash to all of your computers using the free version that is still possible, but if you use both IE and Firefox you'll need to create two installers.

If you would like to give the trial version of PDQ Deploy Pro 1.2 a whirl, grab it here and follow the steps shown in the video below to create a single installer for both IE and Firefox versions of Flash Player 10.

Here is the step-by-step video of deploying Flash player to all your computers (if your company blocks YouTube simply shoot us a note and we'll get it to you via our support forum).

In the video we illustrate determining which of your computers require the Adobe Flash upgrade by using our flagship product, AA Console.

If you have any requests on other video demonstrations that you'd like to see please let us know. We love whipping videos out. Please visit our YouTube page at YouTube.AdminArsenal.com and be sure to sign up for notification when we release new vids (several times per month).

Check out PDQ Inventory 1.1

Shane Corellian — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

We just rolled out PDQ Inventory 1.1. Here is a break down of the features that I feel like writing about. You can see a boring list of new features in the What's New page in PDQ Inventory documentation.

Active Directory (AD) Collections

These are new collections which show your computers as they appear in Active Directory.
You can still build dynamic collections using Active Directory attributes but these new AD Collections will help those who wish to manage computers based off of OU membership

Offline Policy

Attempt Scan

When this policy is selected a scan will attempted on all computers submitted for scan regardless of their online status. If a computer is offline during a scan a Target Computer Offline error will be logged.

Do Not Attempt Scan

If a computer is offline during an inventory scan then a scan will not be attempted.
The noticable differences between the Do Not Attempt Scan and Attempt Scan policies are that there will not be a Target Computer Offline error logged and the scan will not have to "timeout" since the scan was not attempted on the offline computer.

Wake-on-LAN then attempt scan

If a computer is offline during a scan then PDQ Inventory will send a "wake" packet to the target computer. At that point the scan will wait up to 5 minutes before attempting the scan. If the target computer doesn't come online then a Target Computer Offline error will be logged.

Remote Share Access

In the Windows Shares panel on the Computer window the shared directories will have a link that will take you, via Windows Explorer, to the shared directory on the remote computer

New Scanner Data

Windows Features

Go beyond Software Inventory. With this new scanner you will be able to see which Windows Features (AKA Optional Components) are enabled on your computers. There is a new panel on the Computer window for Windows Features.

Windows Features also added to Dynamic Collections and Reports

There are some other features, most notably the improved AD Sync. I won't document that here because it really deserves its own article. That will be forthcoming.

Thanks to everyone who participated in public beta and to everyone who has made their feature requests in the PDQ Inventory forum.

We aren't just picking our noses over here (note the word "just"). We are already working on the next release of PDQ Inventory. A quick heads up: In order to accommodate the planned features for the next version of PDQ Inventory we will require that Microsoft .NET Framework 4 be installed on the Console computer. This requirement does NOT extend to the target computers (the remote computers that are scanned). It only applies to the computer running the PDQ Inventory console.

Deploy software to your Spiceworks Groups!

Shane Corellian — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:09:00 GMT

Have you ever wanted an easy way to deploy software to your computers based off of Spiceworks^TM Inventory?

Well now you can with the free PDQ Deploy 1.5.

This means that with PDQ Deploy you can deploy software to computers based off of Active Directory (OU and Group membership), PDQ Inventory and Spiceworks.

To deploy to Spiceworks targets you first need to provide some Spiceworks settings to PDQ Deploy. Go to File > Preferences > Spiceworks.

The image below shows the settings I used to connect to Spiceworks on the server Lebowski. By default Spiceworks listens on Port 80 and Port 443 for SSL. (It may also use 9675/9676 if 80/443 were already being used when Spiceworks was installed.)

NOTE: If you are running PDQ Deploy on separate computers you may need to configure your Firewall settings on the Spiceworks server to allow TCP traffic on the Spiceworks ports.

To view or change the ports that Spiceworks uses right click on the System Tray icon (on the Spiceworks server) and select Preferences. See the instructions listed here.

If you are running PDQ Deploy on the same computer as Spiceworks then you can just use localhost for the Host Name.

Provide the appropriate Spiceworks user for the User Name value.

After you have confirmed that your Spiceworks settings work within PDQ Deploy (that's what that little Test button is for) you can reference target computers in Spiceworks just as you would for targets based off of Active Directory and PDQ Inventory.

Select the PDQ Installer that you want to deploy (in this example I am using Windows Vista Service Pack 2) and select Deploy Now. When the Deploy Now window select Import and choose Spiceworks.

A window will open displaying the Spiceworks Groups that you can choose from. In this example I chose the group, Windows Vista. At this point the computers in this group will be displayed in the Computers window. Here you can select your computers.

After selecting the computers push the appropriate button to add them to the Selected Computers window and select the OK button. (The > button will add selected computers. The >> button will add ALL computers listed in the Computers window.)

At this point you can deploy your Installer. If you want to schedule your deployment you need to be running in PDQ Deploy Pro mode. If you are running in Free mode then you can only use the Deploy Now option.

It's that simple. If you are going to always choose all the computers in a Spiceworks Group you should consider using a Target List. A target list would let you basically say "The targets in this List will always be the members of the Spiceworks group called Windows Vista.

From the File menu choose New Target List. Give your Target List a name. In this example I called it "Windows Vista (from Spiceworks)". Instead of selecting Import choose "Link To" and select Spiceworks Group from the drop down menu.

A window will display the available Spiceworks groups.

Your new Target List will show the group(s) that you linked to.

Using this example, whenever I want to deploy anything to the Spiceworks Group, Windows Vista, I can simply deploy to the Target List called "Windows Vista (from Spiceworks)". When the target list is selected as the target PDQ Deploy queries Spiceworks to extract all the computers in the group Windows Vista. Scheduled deployments will query the source of their targets at the scheduled time of Deployment. This is very helpful for recurring deployments.

Choose the Target List you created.

After selecting your Target List the current member computers will be displayed.

PDQ Deploy can in Free Mode or Pro Mode. Free Mode is completely free to use. To unlock additional features such as Scheduling, email notifications, bandwidth throttling and the awesome Pull File capabilty you will need to run in Pro Mode. Try out Pro Mode of PDQ Deploy now.

Deploy software to Active Directory Groups

Shane Corellian — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Want to install software to Active Directory computers? Sure, you can deploy software via Group Policy and this is a decent method in some cases however you are still quite limited on what you can install via Group Policy.

PDQ Deploy can silently install software and run scripts (.vbs, powershell or batch) on targets based on Active Directory Groups and Organizational Units (OUs). Oh, and PDQ Deploy is free. ahem. (Target computers can also be imported from PDQ Inventory collections and Spiceworks Groups)

Check out this video where we deploy Firefox 10 to computers in the Contractor Computers group in Active Directory.

I followed Shawn's directions to build a PDQ Deploy installer for Firefox by checking out his Install Firefox Silently post from May, 2011.

If you have a software deployment question feel free to post it on our PDQ Deploy forum.

Which computers are missing Microsoft Office?

Shane Corellian — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:36:00 GMT

We hear variations of this question quite often. Sys Admins write in and say something like "Hey, it's great that I can see what applications are installed but how can I find the computers that are missing certain applications?"

This is a valid question and, good news, you can, most likely, have it answered quickly and for free. PDQ Inventory Collections are a great way to organize your office computers by which software is or ISN'T installed.

Let's take Microsoft Office. Out of the box PDQ Inventory has a collection called Systems with Microsoft Office. Under this collection exist 3 child (or Sub) collections. The parent collection (Systems with Microsoft Office) has a simple filter. Show all computers that have an application containing Microsoft Office in the name. (OK, it's a tad smarter than that, but I'll get into the specifics of the filter later). Each child collection has a filter which identifies even more specifically as to whether the computers have 2003, 2007 or 2010 versions of Microsoft Office. That is all fine and good but let's take this a little farther and identify computers missing Office.

There are two excellent ways to do this. One is slightly more intuitive so we'll discuss this method today.

Since we already have a Collection which already identifies which systems have Microsoft Office you can build a collection which effectively says "show me computers that aren't in the collection called "Systems with Microsoft Office". Let's use the following steps:

Create a Dynamic Collection called "Systems missing Microsoft Office"
Add a filter type of Collection and specify that any computer cannot be a member of the collection "Systems with Microsoft Office"
Save it and look at the results. Wait... We don't care about Servers since they will never have Office installed. So let's define another filter to strip out servers.
Edit the Collection and add a new Operating System filter (click the blue + icon to add a new filter) where the OS Name does not contain the word "server". Let's also add a Never Scanned is False filter to strip out any computer from showing up which has never had an inventory scan.

Here is a video showing how to create this collection.

See more examples on our public forums

http://support.adminarsenal.com/entries/20914353-collections-group-computers-which-are-missing-certain-apps-example-two

Final Beta for PDQ Deploy 1.5 released

Shane Corellian — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:15:00 GMT

Rock on. We just released (OK, a few days ago... gimme a break I've been helping a friend move) Beta 4 of PDQ Deploy. You can get it here. Here is a quick summary of the features introduced since beta 3:

New Offline Policy option to send Wake-on-LAN (WOL) to offline computers before deployment.

This feature is enabled in Pro mode of PDQ Inventory
PDQ Inventory (free or pro) required

Add descriptions to all Credentials that are used in PDQ Deploy.
Recurring scheduled deployments only send out email notifications if the status of computers has changed since the last scheduled run.
PDQ Deploy will automatically create additional target (staging) directories if previous deployment left locked files on the target.
Ability to run individual deployments and schedules as Local System. (This was, previously, a global setting)
Added Started and Run Time values to each computer in a deployment.
Option to send or not send email notifications per deployment or schedule. (This was, previously, a global setting)

Thanks to our online community of users who have been using the beta versions of PDQ Deploy. From bug reports to feature requests to offers to "buy the next round" we are very grateful.

Speaking to the screaming hordes of fans that live in his head, Adam Ruth calmly laid out plans for the official release of PDQ Deploy 1.5 by saying "...yeah, it'll be released pretty soon, I guess."

Touching and inspiring words from a man who once performed a Dramatic Interpretation (for which he received the fish-belly white Participant ribbon) on the history Cheese during a drama competition in 1989.

Windows Remote Commands - Run 'em right from the Free PDQ Inventory

Shane Corellian — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:00:00 GMT

What do you do when you need to run a command on a remote computer?

Using the free PDQ Inventory you can run commands on remote computers all you want. If you've ever used the awesome PSTools then you'll know how important it is to run a good Windows remote command on your networked computers.

Before we begin, it's important to understand what is happening when we use the "Remote Command" feature in PDQ Inventory. When you initiate a Remote Command against a target computer you are actually running that command "locally" on the actual target. The "remote" part comes from the fact that you are defining the command from your PDQ Inventory console. When you actually submit the Remote Command a Windows Service is created on the target computer and that service passes the command you defined to the local CMD.exe process. This means that any command you supply has to exist (or is accessible) on the target system. Let's get started.

To kill a Freecell game on a remote computer you could type:

 taskkill /f /im freecell.exe

Plus, with Remote Command in PDQ Inventory you don't have to limit yourself to running a command on just one computer. If you really want to piss off the freecell players at your company you can select multiple computers or even a PDQ Inventory Collection as your target. The screenshot below shows me killing freecell.exe on all the computers in the "Accounting computers" collection.

The 11 computers in the Collection called "Accounting computers" would then be targets for the Remote Command.

How about wanting to quickly stop and start a service. You can "restart" a service by running two commands on the same command line. In the example below we will stop and start the DNS Client service. This can be handy when a target computer needs its DNS cache updated.

In the command above I simply passed to "net.exe" commands. One to stop the DNS Client service (the service name is dnscache) and one to start it. (Windows doesn't have a native CLI, outside of PowerShell, to "restart" a service). This is a great example, however, of running two commands in sequence. We separate the different commands with a single Ampersand '&'. BTW, you can use two Ampersands '&&' and that will run the next command only if the preceding command finished successfully.

Let's get a little trickier. Since the awesome suite of tools ( I mentioned them earlier) known as PsTools are freely available I highly recommend that you download and use them in your everyday Sys Admin tasks. In this case, let's use the command 'PsService' to actually RESTART a service. This way we wouldn't have to use the two separate net.exe commands (shown above) to stop and then start a service.

In this example I have the PsTools suite available on a file server known as Scranton (for you The Office fans out there...you'll get the reference). The Share name on Scranton is called "Deploy". I just need to type in the full UNC to the PsService.exe command to run it.

\\Scranton\Deploy\Microsoft\PsTools\PsService.exe restart dnscache -accepteula

The arguments that I pass PsService.exe are 1) the service instruction (restart) and 2) the name of the service (dnscache). I also pass the

-accepteula

argument to prevent the End User License Agreement (EULA) window from hanging the entire process.

Note the Credentials field. The user account I am using is Quintana running in the Deadwood domain. In this case, Quintana MUST have the appropriate permissions to access and execute the PsService.exe utility on the remote server (Scranton). Quintana also must (obviously) have Administrator rights on the target computers.

One more note: Any command that you execute from Remote Command cannot have any prompts or windows that must be answered to execute correctly. An example is this:

Let's say you want to copy an updated file called CompanyRules.avi from a network share to the target computer. You intend to use the native 'copy' command in Windows. If the target computer already has an older copy of CompanyRules.avi you will get a prompt asking if you want to overwrite the existing file. This prompt will cause the Remote Command to hang indefinitely since this prompt cannot be answered remotely. To get around this you would need to use the /Y argument.

In the example below you will see that I locally ran two copy commands. The first without the /Y argument. Since CompanyRules.avi already existed I was prompted to confirm that I wanted to proceed. Since I was running this locally I was able to answer 'Y' and proceed. This would have, however, Timed Out using a Remote Command unless I passed the /Y argument. You can see two examples of passing /Y. Once locally and once via Remote Command.

Here is how you would do this via a Remote Command in PDQ Inventory

So there you go. Definitely use the Remote Command feature. It will become essential in your everyday duties. Think of the commands that you commonly need to run and consider using them here. Now, go kill some more Freecell games.

Disable Automatic Updates for Java using PDQ Inventory

Shane Corellian — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:23:00 GMT

One of the first things that most Sys Admins like to do after they deploy Java is to disable the automatic upgrade check. The last thing a sys admin wants is to receive hundreds of calls all asking the same question "I have a window saying that there is a...one minute... Java J-R-E update. Do I have a virus?"

Using PDQ Inventory you can send a remote command to turn off the automatic upgrade check. If you have the Pro mode of PDQ Inventory enabled you can also verify all the systems that do or don't have this setting applied.

The following video shows the steps needed to nail this down. In the first step we create a dynamic collection to display which systems have Java version 6.

Follow along in your own environments and you will get a good idea of how PDQ Inventory can help you get control of your computers.

PDQ Deploy 1.5 Beta 3

Adam Ruth — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce the availability of Beta 3 for PDQ Deploy 1.5. You an get it here and try out the new features and changes.

Schedules can be configured to stop deploying to successful computers, or to computers that have failed a number of times past a certain threashold. This has been one of our most requested features and we're glad to have it available.
Computers will be deployed to in the order that deployments were created. Prior to this beta, it was possible for a deployment to "jump the queue" and deploy to a target before an earlier deployment got the chance to.
Schedules can now be set to always use the "default" user, so that they will change if the default user changes. This setting is now the default.
Allow multiple deployments to the same computer. This will allow more than one user to deploy to the same computer at the same time. This will be expanded in beta 4 to remove the dreaded "Failed to clean-up target directory" error when a prior deployment is still locking files on the target.

Feel ready to give it a go? Download the beta from here and sign up for e-mail updates when new versions are available.

PDQ Inventory 1.0.2 (Beta 2)

Adam Ruth — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce the first beta release of PDQ Inventory 1.0.2. It's available now for download.

There are a couple of larger features that should be highlighted:

Active Directory collections are now available.
For those of you moving from AA Console, this will probably be a welcome addition. Computers that are in Active Directory are automatically placed within these collections, which are themselves automatically generated.
New data grids.
We've moved over to the same data grids which we introduced in the last PDQ Deploy beta. These grids have a number of nice features for filtering and grouping, as well as doing a better job of printing.
Copy and paste of scanners and scan profiles.
Additional options for deleting computers during an AD Sync.
Deleting computers during a sync has always been a bit problemmatic, and now we have 2 deleting options. One option is for when you have a mix of sync'd and manually added computers, and the other for when you have only computers from Active Directory.
Computer tools can now be used from reports.
Not all reports can use computer tools, because each row doesn't resolve down to a single computer, but most reports will work fine.

In addition to these features there are a number of bug fixes. You can get all of the juicy details in the Update Notes.

As always, we hope you enjoy the changes and we look forward to getting your feedback.

Download Latest PDQ Inventory Beta

Send a message to your computers using PDQ Deploy

Shane Corellian — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:14:00 GMT

In my previous blog I discussed how you can use PDQ Inventory to send messages (via msg.exe) to your computers using the Remote Command feature. Today I will show you how you can do the same thing in PDQ Deploy. If you are using the free version of PDQ Deploy then you should probably use a script (a simple batch file will do).

I created a batch file with the following command:

msg * /TIME:%1 %2

The variables (%1 and %2) aren't necessary if you want to just hard code the timeout value (%1) and the message (%2) you want to display. I am using the variables to illustrate that you can use the same script to send many different messages. Othewise you'd have to change the script for each message you want to send. The only caveat to using the variables is that you need to encapsulate the Message part of your MSG command in quotes. The image below is the Installer window showing that I am calling the SendMessage.bat (contents above) and passing in the Timeout (%1) and Message body (%2).

Below you can view a video example of sending this message using the free PDQ Deploy.

In an upcoming article I will demonstrate how to use PDQ Deploy Pro to send a message before or after a deployment. This can be useful when you want to send a "heads up" message to your users that an installation is going to begin or to let them know when an installation is complete.

Need to send a message to your computers? It's easy and free!

Shane Corellian — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:00:00 GMT

We all remember the days of net send, right? It was a handy little tool back in the day. Since net send went away there seems to be a perception that it isn't as easy to send a message to Windows' computers anymore. B.S. If you want to send a message to some or all of your computers you can use the free PDQ Inventory or PDQ Deploy. Today we'll look at how to do this in PDQ Inventory.

Let's say I want to send a message to all of my Windows computers which reminds the users to reboot their computers at the end of their shift. Go ahead and open up your PDQ Inventory console. In the example below I right-click my Online Systems collection (I mean, why try to send a message to a computer that's offline?) and select Tools / Remote Command

In this case I simply type in the following to my command field:

msg * /TIME:120 Please restart your computer before you leave for the day

The splat (*) tells msg.exe to send the message to every session on the target computer. Obviously the /TIME:120 argument tells msg.exe to display the message for 120 seconds or until someone acknowledges the window. Check out the video example below.

We will show you how to do this in PDQ Deploy in our next blog.