Tag Archives: ADSI

How Old is the Admin Password

Here’s a quick one-liner to find out how old the administrator password age (in days) is on a remote machine.

PS C:\> ([adsi]“WinNT://COMPUTERNAME/administrator”).passwordage.value/86400

This requires RPC/DCOM access to the remote computer. Or use PowerShell remoting with Invoke-Command:

invoke-command {
new-object PSObject -property @{
Computername = $env:computername
AdminAge = ([adsi]“WinNT://$env:computername/administrator”).passwordage.value/86400
}
} -ComputerName $computers | Select Computername,AdminAge

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Updating Multi-Valued Active Directory Properties Part 1

Yesterday on Twitter, I got a tweet from @Docsmooth regarding how to update a multivalued property in Active Directory. There are a number of ways to handle this, especially from PowerShell naturally, so I tweeted one way in a series of tweets. But that’s a hard way to learn something, and anyone jumping in the middle of the tweet stream might have been a bit confused. So I thought I’d write up a more formal explanation. Because there are a few ways to handle this situation, I’ll cover each approach in a separate article. Today we’ll look at using ADSI in PowerShell. Continue reading →

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Get Local Admins One-Liner

Working with local users and groups can get a little messy in PowerShell. But I wanted to share a quick one-liner you could use to list all the members of the Administrators group. Continue reading →

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Create New Computer with ADSI

In Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM, I wrote a short chapter on managing directory services. This chapter was written before Microsoft released their Active Directory module so I discussed how to use the ADSI type adapter. Well it turns out we can’t slip anything past our astute readers. Continue reading →

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New Book Project – Reviewers Needed

While at Microsoft TechEd, I signed the paperwork to write a second edition of Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM for SAPIEN Press. It’s hard to believe so much has happened since that book hit the shelves in less than 2 years. The 2nd edition will continue to include coverage of Quest Software’s PowerShell comdlets (naturally updated and expanded where necessary). Almost all of the ADSI content will be dropped and I’ll be explaining how to use the Microsoft ActiveDirectory provider and cmdlets. My goal is to write a book that is really two books in one.

To that end I’ll be in need of some rock-solid and reliable technical reviewers. I need 4-5 people who will have time and resources over the next 4-6 months to read manuscripts, test out code samples and provide constructive feedback. Ideally, a reviewer should be able to run the Quest cmdlets and the Microsoft cmdlets with either a Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller or the Active Directory Management Gateway Service. Please DO NOT use your production environment. You will need to test from a Windows 7 desktop. It would be helpful to have reviewers from a variety of organizations from small 100 user companies to 10,000 plus. Selected reviewers will receive a free printed copy of the final book and a $50 gift card (not to mention my grateful thanks and the admiration of your peers).

If you are interested, send me an email (jhicks@jdhitsolutions.com). Tell me about your PowerShell background, the scope of your Active Directory environment that you can test with and anything else you think I should know. If you are selected, you’ll get an email from me. If you aren’t selected, you’ll go on my list of alternate reviewers should people drop out early in the process.

I’m looking forward to the project and trust you will be as well.

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Updated Domain Password Script

This month’s Mr. Roboto column offers a script you can use with PowerShell to build a domain password report. There were few issues that came up which have since been resolved. You can download the latest version, currently 1.2 at www.jdhitsolutions.com/scripts in the Mr. Roboto section.

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Waynes World of Tips

I’ve blogged in the past about Wayne Martin and his outstanding list of command line tips. These are one line commands, some complex some simple, that you can use to accomplish a wide range of task. The overall number of tips is to 425 and Wayne recently reorganized them into 7 categories to make it easier for people to digest. There’s very little scripting with any of these commands. Most use native or freely available command line tools. But because they are executed from a command line you could incorporate them into a script. I encourage you to check them out.

The single list:

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-command-lines.html

The same commands split into categories:

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-active-directory-command-line.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-dns-dhcp-and-wins-command-line.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-general-command-line-operations.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-vmware-esx-and-vc-command-line.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-windows-mscs-cluster-command.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-windows-printer-command-line.html

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/09/useful-ntfs-and-security-command-line.html

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The Lonely Administrator

Advice, solutions, tips and more for the lonely Windows administrator with too much to do and not enough time.

Tag Archives: ADSI

How Old is the Admin Password

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Updating Multi-Valued Active Directory Properties Part 1

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Get Local Admins One-Liner

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Create New Computer with ADSI

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New Book Project – Reviewers Needed

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Updated Domain Password Script

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Waynes World of Tips

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