thebackroomtech » XP

Determining when a local Windows account password was last changed

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:33:18 +0000

Our corporate policy requires us to change Windows server local Administrator passwords on a regular basis. We have a script that accomplishes this, and after the change we do a QA check to validate the passwords were actually changed.

To determine when a local account password was last set (administrator, in this example) , run the following command:

net user Administrator | find /i “Password last set”

The result looks like:

Password last set 7/8/2010 11:14 AM

Tested on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Windows 2008.

Note: Just typing net user accountname will provide lots of good details about the user account.

C:\>net user administrator
User name                    Administrator
Full Name
Comment                      Built-in account for administering the computer/domain
User’s comment
Country code                 000 (System Default)
Account active               Yes
Account expires              Never

Password last set            7/8/2010 11:14 AM
Password expires             Never
Password changeable          7/9/2010 11:14 AM
Password required            Yes
User may change password     Yes

Workstations allowed All
Logon script
User profile
Home directory
Last logon 8/3/2010 5:42 PM

Logon hours allowed All

Local Group Memberships *Administrators
Global Group memberships *None
The command completed successfully.

64-bit Windows isn’t displaying files saved in the Office 2007 format when searching for Documents

admin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:53:11 +0000

Brandon has posted the answer to a question that has been driving me mad… why my Office 2007 files, saved in their native formats (.docx, .xlsx, etc) are not displayed when I search for files of type “Document” from my Windows Vista machine.

It appears that the issue is with where 64-bit versions of Windows (XP/2003/Vista) look for information. Brandon goes on to explain:

“This is a known issue with the 64-bit property system, and happens because the 64-bit shell only looks in the 64-bit section of the registry for a set of keys that map file extensions to various “kinds” for filetypes that don’t emit their own “kind” information. Because Office 2007 is a 32-bit application, it registers its kinds in the 32-bit section of the registry, where the shell never sees it.”

Brandon has been kind enough to post a .reg file that will import the Office 2007 file formats into the 64-bit section of the registry, thus allowing these documents to be found.

Reinstalling System Restore on Windows XP

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:25:10 +0000

One of my main network monitoring computers, a Windows XP SP2 machine, has had some major problems with lack of responsiveness this week. I can’t find any traces of malware or corruption, so I decided it was time to perform a System Restore (SR). Unfortunately, the machine froze solid each time the system restore process started.

I used XP’s System Restore diagnostics program to generate log files for troubleshooting. To run the System restore diagnostics, paste the following command, as all one line, into your Run box:

%windir%\system32\restore\srdiag.exe

This will generate a .cab file in your %windir%\system32\restore\ directory, where %windir% is the directory Windows is installed into (typically c:\windows).

Browse to your %windir%\system32\restore\ directory and open up the .cab file with your favorite compression/extraction program, such as UniExtract. You should now be able to view the associated log files.

To make a long story short, I couldn’t find the exact cause of my restoration failure, so I went ahead and just reinstalled System Restore by running the following command, as all one line, in my Windows XP Run box:

rundll32.exe advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %Windir%\Inf\sr.inf

Please note that reinstalling System Restore will remove all existing restore points!

Reinstalling SR did end up fixing my problem, but with no restore points to go back to, I just ended up re-imaging my machine.

If you ever need to manually create a restore point, run the following command, as all one line, from the Windows XP Run box:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Microsoft Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit

admin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:28:08 +0000

A blocking tool is available for organizations that would like to temporarily prevent installation of Service Pack updates through Windows Update. This tool can be used with:

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (valid through March, 2008)
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (valid for 12 months following general availability)
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (valid for 12 months following general availability)

This toolkit contains three components. All of them function primarily to set or clear a specific registry key that is used to detect and block download of Service Packs from Windows Update. You only need to use the component which best serves your organization’s computer management infrastructure.

A Microsoft-signed executable
A script
An ADM template

Supported Operating Systems are Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Read more about the blocker tool in this Technet article.

thebackroomtech » XP

Determining when a local Windows account password was last changed

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