SolutionBase: Free PsTools make life easier for Windows admins

by Guest Contributor | May 14, 2004 7:00:00 AM

Tags: Scott Lowe MCSE

Takeaway: One of the biggest drawbacks of administering Windows systems is that so many admin tasks must be done using the GUI. See how Sysinternals' PsTools can help change that with a free download.

In many ways, Linux/UNIX administrators have it good. They have long-tested utilities built into their operating systems that make administration much easier. With command line utilities to kill processes, granularly list processes, and do a whole host of other important tasks, Linux/UNIX admins can easily and quickly manage and troubleshoot problems with processes, users, and the system without ever having to touch a mouse. Sure, you can avoid the mouse in Windows, if you really want to memorize a bunch of key combinations, but it's not as easy as simply remembering a command (or even customizing your own commands) to do a common task.

However, Sysinternals has come up with a solution that helps even the field a little bit for Windows admins. Sysinternals provides freeware Windows utilities, collectively called PsTools, that provide twelve indispensable utilities, including psinfo, which lists a slew of details about the current system, and pskill, which kills processes quickly and easily from the command line.

What about the resource kit?
At first glance, you might wonder why Sysinternals bothered to write a kill utility given the fact that there is a perfectly good version available in various Windows resource kits. The beauty of Sysinternals' version of kill—along with most of its other utilities—is that, unlike the resource kit version, the SysInternals version of kill can terminate processes on both the local computer as well as remote computers. This assumes, of course, that you have a valid administrative username and password for the remote system.

The complete list
The complete list of utilities included in PsTools version 2.01, as of this writing, is shown in Table A, along with the versions of Windows that each of the tools will work on.


Usage
All of the PsTools utilities use a fairly common syntax. Of course, there are some differences among them since they serve different functions, but all of them include at least a few common optional parameters:

• \\computer – This is the name of the target system. If this parameter is omitted, the utility will run against the local machine.
• -u username – Certain functions require administrative rights on a remote machine. Use this parameter to provide a username that has the appropriate rights.
• -p password – This is used for the password for the user specified in the -u parameter.

These utilities can accept multiple remote computer names in the event that you want to run a tool against multiple machines. This can be particularly useful, for example, if you want to run PsInfo on a number of machines to check for the installation of specific hot fixes.

For more specific information on usage for each command, use the <command name> -? command to look at the help file.

Examples
Here are a couple of examples to give you an idea as to how PsTools can help you in your daily work.

The psgetsid utility will provide the SID for the current machine or for the currently logged-in user. This example shows psgetsid retrieving the security identifier for the local machine.

The next example runs on the same machine, but this time, I have specified a user account. This will make psgetsid report the SID for that particular user account, assuming it exists.

Finally, this example shows the output from the psinfo –h command. The -h parameter forces psinfo to look for the installed hot fixes on the target machine. This can make it a little easier to determine where patches have been applied and where they are missing.

Summary
Since Sysinternals gives them away for free, and since PsTools provide extremely valuable tasks that can make life easier for almost every Windows administrator, it makes sense for Windows admins to give them a try. If nothing else, you won't be so jealous of Linux/UNIX admins and all their command-line tools anymore.

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