Welcome to Lan Admin! This is just my little collection of useful tips and utilities that I have collected over the course of the years dealing with computer and network administration. I hope that you will find these pages useful. Please be patient while I am building my library -- it takes quite some time to actually write down all the little details I have running around inside my head. More often than not, when people say "Documentation", we say "What documentation?" Come on you admins out there -- you know it is true.

January 31st, 2003

Look at the Programs page for my IRcptTo component. If you have ever worked with iMail or many other mail servers, you know that some of them will let you append an X-Rcpt-To header to messages so you know WHICH email address, out of a user's many aliases, caused the message to get dumped in their box. Very useful for many reasons, not the least of which is tracking blind carbon copy messages and spam. Anyway, this component adds this capability to Exchange 2000 SP3. Download and unzip, readme file included.

Friday, April 27th, 2002.

I have linked up SPEditor on the Programs page, or you can click here. If you work with Stored Procedures on MS SQL server at all, you should take a look.

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2002.

I have a nice utility for you all that may save some headache. As you may or may not know, Windows 2000, XP, and .NET server don't have the "rdisk" utility from NT4, so it is a bit of a pain to make registry backups. However, I have a nifty utility and batch file that can be scheduled to run overnight. This utility will keep the last seven registry backups on-hand. Restoring the backup just takes a quick trip to the recovery console. Check out the Programs page for more information and the download link.

On another note, I have an update for WeatherDownloader which I will be posting just as soon as I can get to it.

The Batch Registry program is just about done. It has the ability to change the security policies and add account rights.

Lastly, I have also written a program that can print tape bar code labels. You know, the really little ones that go on 8mm tapes? It prints the barcode (with checksum), as well as a human-readable component. Why pay $200 for 2000 labels when you can print 2,500 labels of your own for $40? More info on this coming soon!

Monday, January 14th, 2002.

Just a quick update to let you know what is going on. I will (hopefully) get the chance to write some more documentation and slap that up soon. One I really need to do is 'Securing your IIS box', which I have gone over a number of times. One such box is a rather high target for attacks and so far it has held up well.

Also, I am working on a Batch Registry updating program. In its current form, it lets you put in multiple IP ranges. Once you have all the machines to scan selected, it will go out and hit each one trying to open its registry. (It can also try to log on to the remote box using the local admin account, if you so desire.) Once it opens the remote registry, it performs a list of updates, then closes the connection.
I am in the process of adding the ability to change security policies and add account rights via this updater. When all of that is completed, I hope to be able to release this program to the public.

Saturday, July 21st, 2001.

1. Updated WeatherDownloader and Servicemon, as well as posted the source code for both.

2. Added two new documents to the Articles page.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Windows 2000 WINS
All About Windows 2000 DNS, Sites, and Replication

Tuesday, June 5th, 2001.

1. Added a new program -- WeatherDownloader. It is based on Autodownloader, but has several additonal features. The biggest is that it properly works with both non-authenticated and authenticated proxy servers. It can also parse HTML files to change image paths, strip out headers and footers, and make other replacements. Check it out.

2. New version of ServiceMon. It fixes a few bugs, improves the error handling, and has several interface improvements. I also simplified the log file, and made it easier to tell where the log is being saved. A few other cosmetic enhancements as well. The biggest change is that I have added plugin support! Check this page for more info, or email me if you need help. But you can write a plugin with C++ or VB that can perform other checks on the service, such as to see if it is still responding!

Sunday, May 13th, 2001.

1. Added two programs to the Programs page. AutoDownloader and ServiceMon. Check them out. I am definitely looking for feedback on these two programs.

2. Found a nice program called FireDaemon. If you've ever struggled with srvinstw or srvany to try and get a regular program to run as a service (usually so that it will run w/o anyone logged on), then you will definitely find this much easier. Best part is that the first 100 licenses are free.