Use PowerShell to quickly deploy a VM
Using virtual machines to test things has become almost a second nature exercise for some folks. Here’s a method to deploy a duplicate of a Hyper-V virtual machine in less than ten seconds with PowerShell.
Are You an IT Old Timer?
I’ve been called graybeard. Old timer. Fossil. Dad. Grandpa. Geezer. I’ve been working in the technology field for over thirty years, so all these descriptors are probably fitting. If you’re not sure you’re an IT old timer, here is a description, and a few definitions for you young people.
String Functions Module
I’ve put together a few string handling functions in a module that I’ve found useful over of the years, and thought I would share them here so that others might find them useful. Attached to this post is a zip file containing the module, which you simple have to extract and attach to your VB6 project. Below is… Read More »
Offline Machine Tracking with PowerShell
Here’s a simple little script that will track which computers are offline, and how long they have been offline. It even sends you a handy email summary.
Protecting Your Computer and Personal Information
In today’s digital age, protecting your computer and personal information is not just wise but essential. Cyber threats such as malware, ransomware, phishing scams, and identity theft are on the rise, making it more crucial than ever to be vigilant. This guide will outline key steps to ensure your digital safety.
Logoff User After Idle
Recently, there was a request for our team to implement a new security requirement for workstations. Specifically, If a user remains logged in, but is idle for a specific period of time, that user should be logged out. After consulting the interwebs for a few minutes, all I could find were hacky solutions using vbscript, PowerShell, task scheduler,… Read More »
Speed Optimization Using Arrays
I was recently given a small programming challenge by a friend, which entailed splitting a text file into multiple text files, based on word length. I got run time down to 11 seconds. Can you do better? The text file in question is a listing of dictionary words, A through Z, containing a total of 234,936 words. The… Read More »
Retrieving System Uptime
As a part of monitoring your environment, you will need to watch the uptime of your systems. There are a couple different ways to do this. The first way, and my preferred way to monitor uptime, is to “watch” a server or workstation from another or many other locations. A simple ping to the device and storing the… Read More »
Get a list of installed software
It’s always good to perform an inventory of workstations you might be responsible for. This doesn’t mean just writing down make, model and serial number. You need a list of software installed on those machines as well. Using VBScript, you can easily get a list of the installed software on a local or remote workstation, along with other… Read More »
Basic CURL with VB6
This is a basic example of how to download the html of a web page with Visual Basic 6, using no ActiveX controls, and only Windows API calls.