WindowsOS

There are 2 places to add or edit windows environmental variable

• User variables [i.e Current user]
• System variables [i.e common to all users]

Problem

There are situations when you want to restore environmental variables, situations may be accidentally you have deleted variables or system crashed or you changed your computer…

We will see different ways we can backup environmental variables for future references

Solution

Method1

Open command prompt, type “SET” and enter
C:\Users\userName>set

this will list all the environmental settings on your machine.

You can even push the result displayed in to a text file
C:\Users\u0146751>set >> c:\envSetttings.txt
This command will help you to write all your environmental settings to a text file envSettings.txt under C:\ drive. [You can provide your own file name and path]

Method2

Backup the environment registry

Open registry – Start | Run | regedit 

Navigate to

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

Click on the Environment folder, and this will list all the system variables set for your machine

to backup, click on File | Export and save as .reg or .txt format

•  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment

This will list all the environment variables set for the current user

to backup, click on File | Export and save as .reg or .txt format

 

To find ipaddress on windows OS, we have a command “ipconfig”

Start | Run | cmd and enter ipconfig

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\myUser>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
 Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : 
 Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : ff10::1139:18de:1aab:aa5e%11
 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.160.10.32
 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.160.10.1

wifi is disconnected, so the result says “media disconnected”

ipconfig will display all ip addresses of the LANs, Virtual box, interfaces etc connected.

For more detailed information inluding ip address

C:\Users\myUser>ipconfig/all

To display only ip address details from the result, then

C:\Users\myUser>ipconfig | findstr /c:Address
 Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :ff10::1139:18de:1aab:aa5e%11
 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :192.160.10.32

This above command will only display the result containing the word “Address”

Reference – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/bb490907.aspx

There are various ways you can open remote desktop in windows OS

Using Run command

Start | Run | mstsc 

then manually enter server or remote machine name and connect with your credentials.

You can click on Options | change the settings as you need  | do Save As | change File Name and location | click on Connect

                                                                                             Image 1

Using Command prompt or bat file

Start | Run | cmd

mstsc [<connection file>]

connection file – specifies the name of an .rdp file

E.g. – C:\Users\user1>mstsc C:\Users\user1\Documents\Default.rdp

Note: the default.rdp is available under C:\Users\user1\Documents\, but you can move to anywhere on your machine.

 

mstsc [/edit “connection file”]

open the .rdp file to edit

E.g – C:\Users\user1>mstsc /edit C:\Users\user1\Documents\Default.rdp

This will pop up the remote desktop dialog as shown in Image 1

 

mstsc [/v:<server:[port]>]

Provide the server name you want to connect

E.g – C:\Users\user1>mstsc /v:196.192.3.2:8880

or C:\Users\user1>mstsc /v:196.192.3.2

or C:\Users\user1>mstsc /v:RemoteHostName

Additional parameters to the above commands as follows

 

/admin – Connects you to the session for administrating the server

 

/f – Starts remote desktop in full screen mode

 

/w:<windth> – opens remote desktop with the width specified

E.g – C:\Users\user1>mstsc /v:196.192.3.2 /w:500

 

/h:<height> – opens remote desktop with the height specified

E.g – C:\Users\user1>mstsc C:\Users\user1\Documents\Default.rdp /h:300

or C:\Users\user1>mstsc C:\RemoteHostName /w:400 /h:300

 

/public – Runs remote desktop in public mode

 

Other parameters are /span, /multimon and /migrate

For the details information, you can enter command as mstsc /?

You can set the values and parameters as you need for the mstsc command and create a bat file, so next time when you need to open the remote desktop, you can double click on the bat file.

 

This 2018 new year, we present you top 5 windows utility tools to effectively use windows OS.

Slick Run

One stop shortcut command line utility for windows, you can create shortcut with keypress keys or words as well, be it for file paths or browser urls.

For more info, refer below

SlickRun – one stop shortcut utility for windows

Screenpresso

Download from here

It’s a screen and video capture utility for windows users.

This doesn’t just create screenshot, but with it’s powerful features you can

Take full page screenshot

• Add annotations
• Embed images
• Crop or resize etc

With video capture, you can

• Record screen
• Convert to different video formats
• Create gifs.

Snipping Tool

One of quick screenshot taking tool comes default with windows OS.

With this tool, you can

• Take a window screenshot
• Take screenshot of a region on screen
• Add highlight and add handwritten text

Stickies Portable

Download from here

As the name, it’s a sticky note making utility for windows OS with rich of features than window’s default sticky note software

• Easy backup restore
• Set title of each note
• Insert links
• Set font, size and color of each note and more…

More features you can found here

SHAREit

You all might aware of ShareIt app on mobile, good news is that you can even install this tool on windows or mac machine and transfer data across devices.

For connectivity across devices, follow ushareit.com/en/help.html

Hope this above utility tools will help you to effectively use windows OS.

There are situations where we need to restart remote servers or machines and we can’t do normal Ctrl+Alt+Del, let’s see how we can perform restart in different ways

Using key press

If you have opened your remote desktop/server from your local windows machine, then on remote server/machine desktop, key press

CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart the remote machine.

Using command prompt

On your local machine, open command prompt [Administrator mode] and enter

C:\Users\MySys>shutdown /r /f /t 0 /m \\<serverName> /c "<anyComment>"

NOTE:

/r        – Shutdown and restart the computer.”

/f        – Force running applications to close without warning the users.

/t xxx   –  Set the time-out period before shutdown to xxx seconds.

The valid range is 0-600, [default is 30]

/m \\computerName – Specify the target computer.

/c “comment” – Comment on the reason for the restart or shutdown.

For more information you can enter command shutdown ?/