Skip to content

IT-Admins

a website from a systems administrator for systems administrators
  • Home
  • IT-Admins tool
    • Features
    • Scenarios
    • Screenshots
    • Release notes
    • FAQ
    • Download
    • Online Manual
      • Overview
      • Generic search functions
      • Configuration
      • Domain Users
      • Domain Groups
      • Domain Computers
      • Domain Contacts
      • NTFS ACLs
      • Long Paths
      • Directory compare
      • Search function
  • IT Assets database
    • IT Assets DB Video
    • Features
    • Installation
    • Release Notes
    • Update to the newest version
    • Download
    • Online manual
      • Overview
        • The floating / roaming task execution
      • Using the the sys search
      • Main menu
      • Workstations
      • Monitors
      • Departments
      • Printers
        • Printer models and supplies
        • Toner inventory
      • Incidents
      • Software and licenses
      • LDAP change reporting / synchronization
        • Employees
        • LDAP Groups
      • IP addresses – IPAM
      • DNS management
      • Servers and equipment
        • databases
        • backup reviews
        • Certificate management
        • Webserver Management
      • Vendors and contacts
      • Links and URLs
      • Reminders
      • Purchases
      • Expenses
      • Project management
        • Project tasks
      • Phones and DIDs
      • LDAP compare
      • VMware compare
      • Wiki aka. knowledge base
      • Owner / rights matrix
      • Application users
      • Change Requests
      • Foreign data views
        • RADIUS log example
        • SysLog example
      • System configuration views
        • Sys Config
        • Sys columns
        • Sys Errors
      • MAC address search
      • IT Supplies
      • Notes (applies to many modules)
      • TAGs
      • Checklists
      • History reports / emails
    • Information for developers
  • IT Printer Management
    • Installation
    • Download
    • Online Manual
      • Executing the script
      • Using the Sys-Search
      • Managing printers
      • Reviewing the log
      • User to printer (v2)
      • Computer to printer (v2)
  • IT Search
    • How it works
    • Release Notes
    • Download
    • Installation
    • Online Manual
      • Applying updates
      • Search Providers
      • Configuration
      • Error Log viewer
      • Active Users
      • Monitoring and Statistics
      • Backup and Restore
  • Blog
  • Contact

Blog

Windows Print Server Aliases

January 13, 2021 Florian Rossmark

Windows Print Server Aliases – what is that and why would you even need to think about it? For File-Servers,…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: dns, print, server, windows

Bypassing Windows 10 UAC for Unknown Publishers

December 8, 2020 Florian Rossmark

It happens that some programs alert you in Windows 10 about Publisher: Unknown and expect you to possibly provide administrative…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: security, windows

Make Microsoft TEAMS the default IM application

October 15, 2020 Florian Rossmark

Having multiple applications that act as chat respective IM application but you want Microsoft TEAMS to be the default Instant…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: gpo, office, Office 365, outlook, profile, Teams, windows

Monitor group memberships in Active Directory with PRTG

October 13, 2020 Florian Rossmark

There is at least one group you want to monitor for any membership changes in Active Directory / LDAP –…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: account, active directory, ldap, monitoring, notification, powershell, prtg, script, security

Auditing network users against HR lists etc.

September 25, 2020 Florian Rossmark

Auditing network users against HR lists – a topic that is often overlooked or causes some headache due to e.g.…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg Filed under: active directory, audit, database, Office 365, prtg, security

Monitoring relative printer page counts with PRTG

June 17, 2020 Florian Rossmark

PRTG has many standard sensors, but one I was always missing is a daily page count compare. The standard printer…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: powershell, printer, prtg, script, SNMP

Office 365 licenses and activated features per user

March 24, 2020 Florian Rossmark

Ever wondered which user has what license activated and e.g. which specific feature is activated? Recently I was challenged to…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: active directory, Office 365, powershell, script

PRTG and Cisco ASA VPN monitoring

March 19, 2020 Florian Rossmark

The default PRTG sensor for VPN connections on a Cisco ASA has a limited of 50 users connected, actually less.…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg, Uncategorized Filed under: Cisco, Firewall, monitoring, prtg, SNMP, VPN

Amount of locked out accounts

October 25, 2019 Florian Rossmark

It is a good to know how many of your user accounts are locked out right now… I would go…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: account, active directory, ldap, lockout, powershell, prtg, security

RDS – Fix broken local RDS links in start menu

October 3, 2019 Florian Rossmark

RemoteApp and Desktop Connections are quite powerful. Still, it happens that RDS icons configured through your Windows Remote Desktop Application…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: radc, rds

PRTG and VMware 6.7 vCenter host hardware status

August 8, 2019 Florian Rossmark

The following script was created to bypass an issue in the SOAP API in relation with VMware, hardware vendor drivers…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: hardware, monitoring, powershell, prtg, script, status, vmware

Search the Windows Security Eventlog for a string / text

August 7, 2019 Florian Rossmark

Lately I had to search a lot through logs – as you can tell by all my postings… I just…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: eventlog, powershell, script, security

Active Directory password reset events and group change events

August 1, 2019 Florian Rossmark

The script below uses the security event log on defined DCs within your Active Directory to export events related to…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: active directory, eventlog, ldap, powershell, security

APC InRow A/C error monitoring with PRTG

July 19, 2019 Florian Rossmark

It is rather hard to get valuable alarm monitoring from an APC InRow air conditioning unit. The APC A/C’s are…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: apc, monitoring, powershell, script, SNMP

Summarize SQL server database file size information as a single row

May 21, 2019 Florian Rossmark

The SQL script below will show you the summarized database file size and database log file sizes on the current…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg Filed under: database, monitoring, prtg, sql

Move user Documents and Desktop to OneDrive

April 18, 2019 Florian Rossmark

The PowerShell script below was design to move Documents, Music, Videos, Pictures, Favorites and Desktop to a sub-folder in a…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: migrate, Office 365, onedrive, powershell, profile, script, user

Compare a TRACEROUTE against an expected route

March 6, 2019 Florian Rossmark

Some times it is important to know if a route to a specific target changed. The best way to check…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: ip, powershell, prtg, route, traceroute

Request a DNS based web site directly from an IP address

Florian Rossmark

If you are using multiple web servers and some more advanced DNS configuration like e.g. Round-Robin (and other) to load…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: dns, host, ip, powershell, prtg, url

Using PRTG to monitor manufacturing machines

Florian Rossmark

A few weeks ago Paessler published on their blog an article I was part of that talked about a case…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: manufacturing, monitoring, production, prtg

Find user account lockout events

February 20, 2019 Florian Rossmark

There are various ways and tools to tackle this – in the end it boils down to a few facts…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: account, active directory, domain controller, eventlog, filter, lockout, powershell, windows

Windows Search Index monitoring

Florian Rossmark

While rolling out Windows Search Indexing I bumped in to quite a few issues and things I wanted to monitor.…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: index, powershell, prtg, windows

Setting up Windows Search Index

February 9, 2019 Florian Rossmark

The Windows Search indexing is a solution from Microsoft that will index your file servers and their files full text…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: dfs, index, server, windows

Raspberry PI and Microsoft SQL databases

January 31, 2019 Florian Rossmark

Raspberry PI can read and write on a Microsoft SQL server database. In order to accomplish this you follow the…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: database, python, raspberry, script, sql

Shadow copies aren’t accessible – advanced VSS configuration

January 23, 2019 Florian Rossmark

Most file servers are configured to use the Windows internal shadow copies / VSS to allow administrators or even users…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: prtg, server, shadow copy, vss, windows

Monitor the total amount of sessions on your RDS farm

January 14, 2019 Florian Rossmark

This script is designed for PRTG and will allow you to go through all your RDS hosts and result back…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: powershell, prtg, rds, script, sessions

SNMP was deprecated

December 27, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Microsoft deprecated the SNMP in Windows 2012 (R2). As of Windows 10 1809 respective Windows 2016 this feature is pretty…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell Filed under: DISM, powershell, regedit, security, SNMP, windows

Read the UEFI stored Windows key and activate Windows

December 11, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Ever wanted to read out the UEFI stored Windows key and probably automatically try to activate Windows with a single…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: key, license, powershell, UEFI, windows

VMware alert monitoring with PRTG and PowerShell

December 3, 2018 Florian Rossmark

There is a way to read out and process ALL alerts of your VMware environment using PowerShell and reporting the…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script, Uncategorized Filed under: powershell, prtg, script, vmware

APC network cards – fix logon issues

November 21, 2018 Florian Rossmark

APC network cards – or the NIC of many APC devices like UPS and A/C – possibly even NetBotz (APC…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: apc, solution

Monitor multiple website certificates with a single PRTG sensor

November 9, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Due to a request on the PRTG KB of someone needing a single sensor that monitors multiple URLs for their…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: certificate, powershell, prtg, script, website

Consolidate many line based .CSV files in to a single .CSV with one header line and per file data lines

Florian Rossmark

Summarize a huge amount of files that have line based columns and data in to a single file with the…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script Filed under: script

Secured WinRM SSL session and PowerShell WinRM queries – example with a PRTG sensor for CPU, HDD and RAM

November 8, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Windows Mangement Remote Mangement / WinRM can be configured as HTTPS / encrypted connection instead of using clear text transfer…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: https, powershell, prtg, script, security, ssl, winrm

Excel custom views and Excel files that appear different for various users

November 2, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Excel has a feature called Custom Views (ribbon VIEW / CUSTOM VIEW) that is very little known. This feature actually…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: excel, gpo, office

PRTG 911 call alerts – ShoreTel

October 24, 2018 Florian Rossmark

This is a PRTG 911 calls sensor script that I wrote a long time ago – it seems like there…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script, Uncategorized Filed under: powershell, prtg, shoretel

PowerShell – custom tables or objects

October 5, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Powershell sometimes can be challenging. One of the more confusing things is collecting data and having them in proper formatted…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell Filed under: powershell, table

Read the UEFI stored Windows key and activate Windows

October 4, 2018 Florian Rossmark

The following script will read the UEFI stored Windows licensing key and show it – it then will attempt to…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: powershell, UEFI, windows

SQL Express SQLState 08001 and Error 17

September 10, 2018 Florian Rossmark

One of the challenges especially with SQL Express is that you need to enable some protocols on the network level…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: database, sql

Microsoft RADIUS / NPS SQL logging

September 6, 2018 Florian Rossmark

An issue or question I see again and again – proper RADIUS logging with Microsoft NPS / Network Policy Server.…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: database, logging, radius, server, sql

Updated domain join script including KeePass / Pleasant Password server entries for local admins

Florian Rossmark

Today I post an updated version of the domain-join script I initially posted here. In theory you can just replace…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: active directory, domain, keepass, password, pleasant, powershell, script

How to create an independent backup network

September 4, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Today we look at independent backup networks especially in regards to LTO 7 and VMware ESX hosts. LTO 7 and…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: backup, LTO, network, vmware

WDS respective PXE boot and VMware

August 24, 2018 Florian Rossmark

If you try to PXE boot a VMware guest system that e.g. uses WDS / Windows Deployment Services or similar,…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: pxe, vmware, WDS

Gathering profile information from computer

August 20, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Every now an then you might need to know who logged on and when was the last logon of which…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: computer, powershell, profile, script, windows, wmi

The advantage of DFS and how to set up a working structure

August 16, 2018 Florian Rossmark

File shares are something every IT professional will work with. Many companies have way to complicated and unstructured network file…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: dfs, filesystem, server

Monitor multiple file sizes in one PRTG sensor

August 3, 2018 Florian Rossmark

The following script allows you to monitor multiple file sizes in one PRTG sensor. It expects you to determine the…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg, script Filed under: file size, prtg, sensor, vbscript

Enable SMBv1 on Windows 10 per GPO

Florian Rossmark

SMBv1 is an insecure protocol that you should not use if by any means possible. Windows 10 has SMBv1 disabled…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: gpo, registry, smb, windows 10

Build your own lab environment with VMware

July 31, 2018 Florian Rossmark

If you have a virtual system, like VMware, and a storage device behind it you might be able to mirror…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: nimble, shadow network, snapshot, storage, vmware

Windows 2016 DHCP load balancer and it’s quirks

July 27, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Windows 2016 or probably even 2012 allows you to create a real load balanced / full failover DHCP server configuration,…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell Filed under: cluster, dhcp, failover, server

Monitor user accounts in Active Directory with PRTG

July 19, 2018 Florian Rossmark

The following script will read through your current Active Directory and filter for user accounts with the following specific conditions:…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script, Uncategorized Filed under: active directory, disabled, expired, ldap, powershell, prtg, script, server, users

Inserting tables as pictures

July 16, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Microsoft Office has since a very long time a bug when it comes to copied data from Excel that you…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: copy, excel, helpdesk, office, picture

Office 365/Exchange Public Folders – find out if they are still in use

July 11, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Public Folders in Microsoft Exchange are one of the most challenging parts in Exchange system administrators can face. Microsoft actually…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: Exchange, Office 365, public folder, server

Monitor DFS replication backlog between servers in PRTG

July 10, 2018 Florian Rossmark

One of the challenges with DFS is to monitor the DFS replication backlog. There are various scripts out there to…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script, Uncategorized Filed under: dfs, prtg, replication, server, windows 2012 and newer

Prevent ScreenSaver coming up with a PowerShell script

June 29, 2018 Florian Rossmark

In our daily business, we often have the issue that a GPO enforces a screensaver after a certain amount of…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: powershell, prevent, screensaver, script, security, windows

Automate Outlook signature roll outs while pulling the information from Active Directory / LDAP

June 28, 2018 Florian Rossmark

The Outlook signature script you will find below is a bit more complicated then most other scripts I post, cause…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script Filed under: active directory, outlook, script, signature

Print Server backup script

June 27, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Print servers need to backed up. This is because of two main reasons. One is that users heavily depend on…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script, Uncategorized Filed under: backup, print, server

Automate your SUS clean up

June 26, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Many companies rely on WSUS respective SUS services from Microsoft – aka. Windows Server Update Services as internal source and…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell Filed under: cleanup, database, performance, powershell, script, server, sus

Solution for VSS exceptions with VMware guests / VM tools

June 25, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Today’s blog is about “Solution for VSS exceptions with VMware guests / VM tools” and was initially posted by myself…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Uncategorized Filed under: backup exec, veritas, vmware, windows

Password expiration notifications for end users

June 22, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Today I wanted to share a script with you that allows you to inform your users per email that their…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script Filed under: active directory, expiration, notification, password

Script to remove RemoteApp and Desktop Connections

June 20, 2018 Florian Rossmark

RADC or RemoteApp and Desktop Connections are very powerful in combination with Windows 7 or newer. You actually can have…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script Filed under: cleanup, rds, script

Script based SQL Express backups

June 19, 2018 Florian Rossmark

SQL Express is widely used but has huge downside, there is no SQL Agent available. Even Windows internal databases, especially…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: script Filed under: backup, database, script, server, sql

Join systems to a domain and create KeePass server entries for local admin’s

June 15, 2018 Florian Rossmark

Please note – this script was updated – you find the updated post here. One of the challenges in most…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, script Filed under: active directory, automate, domain join, password

Solarwinds Web Helpdesk – Slack alerts

June 1, 2018 Florian Rossmark

This was originally posted here by myself: https://thwack.solarwinds.com/thread/114863 Solarwinds WebHelpDesk is very powerful, but for those who use Slack as communication…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell Filed under: database, powershell, server, slack

Monitoring Shadow-Copies with PRTG

Florian Rossmark

This was originally posted here by myself: https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/65026-monitor-shadow-copies-age#reply-247626 This is my solution for it – we monitor specific drives we enabled…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: filesystem, powershell, prtg

PRTG – Veritas Backup Exec monitoring

Florian Rossmark

This was originally posted by myself here: https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/58233-symantec-backupexec-monitoring#reply-262024 We monitor backups a little bit more advanced – I thought I should…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg Filed under: backup exec, sql, veritas

Advanced PRTG Slack notifitications

Florian Rossmark

This PRTG slack notification script was originally posted by myself here: https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/66113-how-can-prtg-send-notifications-to-slack#reply-249147 This is our version of the script originally provided…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg Filed under: notification, powershell, prtg, slack

Monitor your projectors and light bulbs with PJLink

Florian Rossmark

Below is a solution rather than a question. Just thought I share it with the rest of the Paessler/PRTG world.…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg Filed under: projector, prtg

SQL Database backup monitoring

Florian Rossmark

The following article was originally posted here by myself: https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/79665-sql-database-backup-monitoring SQL backups and their monitoring is one of the most important…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg, Uncategorized Filed under: backup, database, prtg, script, sql

Auto-Cycle through URLs

Florian Rossmark

Our challenge was to have several Paessler/PRTG MAPs (www.paessler.com) cycling through a TV in the IT room. We did not…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: prtg Filed under: html, javascript, prtg

Using PowerShell for Text-to-Speech

Florian Rossmark

PowerShell can be used for TTS / Text-to-Speech. In this specific example, PowerShell will be used for Paessler/PRTG (www.paessler.com) text-to-speech…

Continue Reading →

Posted in: powershell, prtg, script Filed under: powershell, text to speach

Search this site

Recent blog posts

  • Windows Print Server Aliases January 13, 2021
  • Bypassing Windows 10 UAC for Unknown Publishers December 8, 2020
  • Make Microsoft TEAMS the default IM application October 15, 2020
  • Monitor group memberships in Active Directory with PRTG October 13, 2020
  • Auditing network users against HR lists etc. September 25, 2020
  • Monitoring relative printer page counts with PRTG June 17, 2020
  • Office 365 licenses and activated features per user March 24, 2020
  • PRTG and Cisco ASA VPN monitoring March 19, 2020
  • Amount of locked out accounts October 25, 2019
  • RDS – Fix broken local RDS links in start menu October 3, 2019
  • PRTG and VMware 6.7 vCenter host hardware status August 8, 2019
  • Search the Windows Security Eventlog for a string / text August 7, 2019
  • Active Directory password reset events and group change events August 1, 2019
  • APC InRow A/C error monitoring with PRTG July 19, 2019
  • Summarize SQL server database file size information as a single row May 21, 2019
  • Move user Documents and Desktop to OneDrive April 18, 2019
  • Compare a TRACEROUTE against an expected route March 6, 2019
  • Request a DNS based web site directly from an IP address March 6, 2019
  • Using PRTG to monitor manufacturing machines March 6, 2019
  • Find user account lockout events February 20, 2019

Tags

account active directory apc automate backup backup exec cleanup database dfs dns domain join eventlog excel expiration filesystem gpo html index ip javascript ldap lockout monitoring notification office Office 365 outlook password performance powershell print profile prtg rds script security server slack SNMP sql sus UEFI veritas vmware windows
  • Terms & Conditions
  • SPICEWORKS
  • LOPSA
  • RSS
  • LinkedIn
  • ITML
  • XING
Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2018 Florian Rossmark — Velux WordPress theme by GoDaddy