Excel Find Text Formula

=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("My Documents Folder Redirect",A1)),"Yes","No")

This excel formula searches that the formula (A1) "contains" the text "My Documents Folder Redirect". If it does, it puts Yes in the field it's run in. If not, No.

Cool AD Tools and one liners

Cool tools:
http://www.joeware.net/freetools/

One Liners:
http://www.pcman.net/active-directory-command-line-one-liners

invalid pxe server list format - Altiris

I restarted our Altiris server and our PXE services wouldn't come up. Trying to start them resulted in:

File not found

I then checked the path listed in the service and found that, indeed, our PXE files where not in the location that the service was trying to start them in:

F:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE

The missing files were:

PXEService.exe

PXEmtftp.exe

PXEMgr.exe

PXECfgService.exe

They were located here:

F:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE\MasterImages\UpSrv\51

I don't know why it wasn't looking for them in the longer path, but I copied those files to the directory it wanted (\PXE)

I then attempted to start the services and they all started correctly.

Then I attempted to PXE boot one of my VM's. This failed with an error stating:

"invalid pxe server list format"

Attempting to troubleshoot this, I used procmon and saw that it was downloading bstrap.0 successfully then generating the error. I enabled logging for the PXE Server in Altiris and set the logging level for "Errors". I then restarted all the Altiris services. When I restarted the PXE Server service, I got this error message:

E [11:32:26 05/03] (3480): Enter: SetupDHCP(...)

E [11:32:26 05/03] (3480): SetupDHCP: Auto Detect, configure option 60.

(3480)Failed to load Dll Library.

(3480)Failed to load Dll Library.

(3480)Failed to load Dll Library.

(3480)Failed to load Dll Library.

I then fired up Process Monitor and did a file trace while restarting PXE Server. It informed me it could not find the following files:

I then copied those missing DLL's from the F:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE\MasterImages\UpSrv\51 directory to the F:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\PXE directory and restarted the PXE Server Service.

I then attempted to PXE boot my VM and lo and behold, it worked again.

Configure Local Group Policy via the command line

Apply a security policy using an .inf file

[Unicode]Unicode=yes
[Version]signature="$CHICAGO$"
Revision=1
[Profile Description]
Description=profile description
[System Access]
MinimumPasswordAge = 10
MaximumPasswordAge = 30
MinimumPasswordLength = 6
RequireLogonToChangePassword = 0
NewAdministratorName = "NewAdminAccountName"
NewGuestName = "NewGuestAccountName"

Simple to apply from a cmd line

secedit /configure /db %windir%\security\database\localdb.sdb /cfg %systemdrive%\install\local\policy\policyname.inf /verbose

Maya and rendering priorities

I have a small farm of computers at home that I want to use as a render farm. Some of them are used by my family though and starting Maya renderings on them greatly diminishes their usability during that time. What needs to be done is force the priority lower on the rendering app (mayabatch.exe). 3D Studio Max has a script called "serverpriority.ms" that does this and it's essentially one line that, upon startup, sets the priority to low. I've been unable to find one like that for Maya but have found an acceptable workaround.

If you start the Backburner server.exe app as low priority all threads that the apps server.exe starts (like cmdjob and mayabatch.exe) will start in the same priority. Start the server.exe as low and your rendering threads will be low. To start server.exe in a low priority mode via command-line it looks like this:

START "" /LOW "\path\to\server.exe"

Done!