I recently opened a remote desktop connection to my home PC running Windows XP Pro. For some reason when I attempted opening firefox I received a message saying the process is already running and needs to first be terminated. So naturally I opened the run box and typed in taskmgr. Unfortunately it wouldn’t show me more than 10 of the 75 active processes. After some quality time with the googler and fumbling around with the windows taskkill utility I was able to terminate firefox with the following command:
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| taskkill /F /IM firefox.exe |
The /F switch tells taskkill to forcefully terminate the process and /IM switch tells taskkill that you are referencing the human-readable name of the executable rather than its PID (process ID).
Sadly, I just learned of this. When you’re a developer with multiple browser windows open, 2 IDEs (Zend and Aptana), NotePad++, Thunderbird, and other stuff running the boot time gets on your nerves. Windows XP boots much quicker and will save your current work session if you go into hibernate instead of completely shutting off your computer. I believe stand-by stores your session in RAM, but this uses much more power, whereas hibernate writes it to disk.
To go into hibernate click Start -> Turn Off Computer, and then hold the shift key. At this point the yellow stand by option will say hibernate. Click this and your system will go into hibernate.
I recently bought a nice little HP laptop and got a really good deal on it too. It has a dual core pentium, 1gb memory, 120 gb hard drive, and everything else I need. However, it did come with Vista, which meant I needed to get php5 working with iis7 and mysql if i wanted to do an development work on it. Luckily I found this great how to http://blondr.blogspot.com/2006/11/set-up-iis-7-w-mysql-and-php-5.html
This is a common problem which leads to a lot of side-effects. I’ve noticed that in some cases the firewall is still somehow running even though you cannot access settings from the control panel or start the service from services.msc. You instead get an error, unfortunately I forgot what the error says. This problem prevents Windows IM, OpenVPN, and other processes that need to access the network from functioning properly since these processes cannot bypass the firewall. Luckily there is an easy solution.
Start > Run > and type netsh winsock restart
You will have to reboot the computer. Once rebooted go into the control panel and turn the firewall OFF.
For the next week I work as a desktop support admin for a web-based software company (until I start my new development job). The recent release of Vista and the widespread use of Windows XP has created a scenario where the support staff must support two operating systems. We had an existing test workstation, but due to space limitations we did not have room for a second vista box. My initial idea for a solution was a dual boot. Unfortunately after investing an hour or two of my day I realized this would not work. I ran into some error where the machine was no longer able to recognize the hard drive. Strange I know. It must have completely whacked out the boot sector. The solution – vmware – and then I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner.
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I frequently forget the steps involved in Sysprepping a box. The easiest way to prepare a machine for imaging with sysprep can be broken into 4 steps.
Step 1. Creating the SysPrep Folder
Step 2. Run SETUPMGR.EXE
Step 3. Customer Software
Step 4. Sealing the Work Station
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Technet gives the following description of this command. “Creates, modifies, and deletes directory objects on computers running Windows Server 2003 operating systems or Windows XP Professional. You can also use Ldifde to extend the schema, export Active Directory user and group information to other applications or services, and populate Active Directory with data from other directory services.”
I typically use this to find out a specific ldap attribute which is useful when I’m writing VB scripts that loop through each user object in active directory and change attributes. This command is run from the windows command line. Here are some examples.
Display ldap attributes for all user objects within active directory:
ldifde -d “cn=Users,DC=3rdleveldomain,DC=2ndleveldomain,DC=com” -f con
Display ldap attributes for a single user object:
ldifde -d “cn=Firstname Lastname,cn=Users,DC=3rdlevel,DC=2ndleveldomain,DC=com” -f con
Further details on this command are available at Microsoft Technet