Windows – rsn

Change Themes from the Command Line

You can change the Windows theme from the command line easily enough with ThemeTool. Scripting it out so the PCs you manage isn’t much more difficult. Getting ThemeTool is probably the most challenging part.

WinDBG and BSOD/Crash Dumps

App crashes and BSODs are some of the hardest issues to diagnose. Enabling user-mode crash dumps for all apps will capture application crash information. Then you can use some Microsoft tools to potentially make the analysis a little easier. Comprehending the analysis is outside of the scope of this post but here’s a quick how-to to read it.

Print Job Killer for Domain Printers

Here’s another quick utility I authored: PrintJobKill. It’s pretty simple tool in scope: it queries all the servers/PCs in a domain that host a printer, lists the current jobs in each and allows deletion of a selected job.

Target a window to scroll by hovering over it

One of the features I like from X11 is the ability to target a window for whatever content manipulation by simply hovering over it. It is rare, though, that I need anything more than just the ability to scroll.

Automatically enable / disable the IE proxy

It’s rather annoying that enabling and disabling the proxy is no less than a half dozen clicks on the average Windows PC. Many of my clients have laptops and most of them are only just savvy enough to not put their passwords on a sticky note on the palm rests. I needed it to be simpler.

SCCM can uninstall per user software!

I couldn’t find any one who had ever done a per user software uninstall quite right. When I started researching it, I found articles that had me delete files and folders and not actually touch the MSI database or run any actual uninstaller. I needed something better.