Windows Administration Commands
Server 2012 and Windows 8 (8.1 and 2012r2 are slightly better) have terrible GUIs. The upshot of this is that I open more and more things from the run box, and do more with the command line, which saves a lot of time. In case you didn't know, you can right click the start-like button in 2012R2 and Windows 8.1, and it gives many useful options, including the run box (if you haven't pinned it to your taskbar already). This list is as much for my own reference as it is for sharing, as I can't seem to remember everything all the time.
| Command | Comment |
| appwiz.cpl | Opens the add/remove programs dialog. Wandering through the gui to get to this is painful... |
| ncpa.cpl | Network connections dialog |
| dsa.msc | Active directory users and computers |
| eventvwr.msc | Windows event viewer |
| useraccountcontrolsettings.exe | UAC settings dialog with the slider bar. Knowing this command has definetly saved me some minutes... |
| shutdown /r /t 0 |
reboots the machine. Specifically, you're invoking shutdown <restart> <time> 0 seconds Have you ever tried to find the shutdown or reboot button on the 2012 gui??? shutdown /s would turn the box off. |
| control smscfgrc |
Configuration manager properties. Useful for running app deployment cycle, machine policy retrieval & evaluation cycle, etc... |
| sc query | find /i "sc" sc \\myhost query | find /i "sc" |
searches services (case insensitive) with sc in the name. "sc query" finds the name, and then we pipe those results to find The second command does the same thing for a remote computer. |
| wmic /node:192.168.1.55 computersystem get name | Run from command prompt retrieves the name of the computer at 192.168.1.55 when nslookup doesn't work |
| set L |
Run from the command prompt. set L finds the domain controller to which you are authenticated to. The set command lists all environment variables, and L finds the ones that start with L. |
| dnsmgmt.msc | opens dns management console |
| dhcpmgmt.msc | opens dhcp management console |
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