How To Return Remote Desktop View To Full Screen

At times while switching between users or computers, Remote desktop screen tend to set to one user profile desktop resolutions. This might be problem for new users who logged in after that.

To over come this issue and to fit to your screen resolutions, here are the simple steps to do on Windows machine.

1. Just make sure you can see the hidden files on your Windows PC, I guess you know how to do that
2. Close any Remote Desktop connection that is running.
3. Go to your Documents (Start - Documents)
4. Find this file, Default RDP (this file will be hidden format)
5. Delete that file, and then start remote desktop connection now.

Hope this helps for people who will get annoyed with changing remote desktops screen resolutions with multiple user logins!!

How to Copy Files in Command Prompt using xCopy

The Windows Command Prompt can be very powerful once you understand some of the commands. You can get a lot more control with the Command Prompt than you would by copying and pasting in Windows Explorer. Knowing how to make the most out of the copy commands is essential if you're remotely operating a Windows server. It's also great if you want to be more efficient with your own system.

There are different ways to copy files using the Windows Command Prompt. All the commands can copy files from one place to another, but there are several cases where you may want to choose one command over the others.

• XCOPY - The xcopy command allows you to copy files and directory trees. This makes it much more suitable for copying folders. xcopy also has many modifiers which gives advanced users more control over the copying process. xcopy has been deprecated in favor of robocopy, but still works.

Example: C:\>xcopy c:\webshare\AppData\runtime\bin\admin\*.* c:\_backup\backup_20161208\admin /e /i

XCOPY source [destination] [/A | /M] [/D[:date]] [/P] [/S [/E]] [/V] [/W]
                           [/C] [/I] [/Q] [/F] [/L] [/G] [/H] [/R] [/T] [/U]
                           [/K] [/N] [/O] [/X] [/Y] [/-Y] [/Z] [/B] [/J]
                           [/EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...]

  source       Specifies the file(s) to copy.
  destination  Specifies the location and/or name of new files.
  /A           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
               doesn't change the attribute.
  /M           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
               turns off the archive attribute.
  /D:m-d-y     Copies files changed on or after the specified date.
               If no date is given, copies only those files whose
               source time is newer than the destination time.
  /EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...
               Specifies a list of files containing strings.  Each string
               should be in a separate line in the files.  When any of the
               strings match any part of the absolute path of the file to be
               copied, that file will be excluded from being copied.  For
               example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude
               all files underneath the directory obj or all files with the
               .obj extension respectively.
  /P           Prompts you before creating each destination file.
  /S           Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones.
  /E           Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones.
               Same as /S /E. May be used to modify /T.
  /V           Verifies the size of each new file.
  /W           Prompts you to press a key before copying.
  /C           Continues copying even if errors occur.
  /I           If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,
               assumes that destination must be a directory.
  /Q           Does not display file names while copying.
  /F           Displays full source and destination file names while copying.
  /L           Displays files that would be copied.
  /G           Allows the copying of encrypted files to destination that does
               not support encryption.
  /H           Copies hidden and system files also.
  /R           Overwrites read-only files.
  /T           Creates directory structure, but does not copy files. Does not
               include empty directories or subdirectories. /T /E includes
               empty directories and subdirectories.
  /U           Copies only files that already exist in destination.
  /K           Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes.
  /N           Copies using the generated short names.
  /O           Copies file ownership and ACL information.
  /X           Copies file audit settings (implies /O).
  /Y           Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
               existing destination file.
  /-Y          Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
               existing destination file.
  /Z           Copies networked files in restartable mode.
  /B           Copies the Symbolic Link itself versus the target of the link.
  /J           Copies using unbuffered I/O. Recommended for very large files.

The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.
This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line.

How to delete a file or folder with a path too long?

I have come across a situation where I am unable to delete a folder? Interesting right. I tired different ways to delete like how we does in Windows like every time we do. But no luck. After I did some research I found a way to delete file or folder which is too long to delete.

Here is the error message you will get when you try to delete these files or folders “Destination Path Too Long:  The file name(s) would be too long for the destination folder.  You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path. “

Usually windows cannot delete file path greater than 255 characters.

So here is the simple way to delete these folders by doing Map Drive to that location. Here is how we can do using command prompt.

1. Start a command prompt (no admin privileges needed)
2. Use cd to navigate to the folder you want to go (you can use tab to autocomplete names)
3. Type subst Z:  to create the drive letter association. (instead of the . you can also type the entire path)
   C:\>subst Z:  d:\Java.Works\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20140702
4. Now in explorer you have a new letter in your computer. Go to it and do whatever you need to do to like by navigate to the files that have long names. You should now be able to rename/delete/etc them. The reason this works is because the path itself is no longer containing >255 chars
5. Go back to your cmd window and type subst /d Z: to remove the drive like this C:\>subst /d Z:

This worked for me. Hope it works for you as well. Good luck

How To: Delete/Remove Services In Windows

Users can usually uninstall applications from their computers quite easily, however the same cannot be said for Windows services, of course you can disable a service, but the entry for it may still remain.

If you are looking for a way to completely delete a service from Windows here is how we can do this.

Open a command prompt, by going to Start > Run and type in cmd without the quotes and hit the Enter key.

Once a command prompt has opened up, type the command sc delete service name without the quotes

Once a service has been deleted you should see a message saying [SC] DeleteService SUCCESS, this should mean that the service has been deleted, to ensure that, just click on the refresh button in the services.msc window and confirm that the service has been deleted.

Note: You should always delete services in safe mode, just in case it causes you any problem, you may also want to create system restore points, just in case something goes wrong. But If you are a developer and its your own service then you don’t need to do this since you know about your service how it works. 

How Application Pools Works ? (IIS 6.0)

What are Application pools? How it actually Works? The concept of Application Pools has from IIS 6.0. Application pools are used to separate sets of IIS worker processes that share the same configuration and application boundaries. Application pools used to isolate our web application for better security, reliability, and availability and performance and keep running with out impacting each other . The worker process serves as the process boundary that separates each application pool so that when one worker process or application is having an issue or recycles, other applications or worker processes are not affected. One Application Pool can have multiple worker process.

When you run IIS 6.0 in worker process isolation mode, you can separate different Web applications and Web sites into groups known as Application pools. An Application pool is a group of one or more URLs that are served by a worker process or set of worker processes. Any Web directory or virtual directory can be assigned to an application pool. Each application pool is given its own set of server resources. That way, if a Web site crashes, it won’t effect sites in other application pools.

A classic example of this is a Web site with a memory leak. If all of the Web sites hosted on a particular server were to share system resources, and one of the Web sites had a memory leak, it could potentially take memory away from the other hosted sites. If the leaky site were in its own application pool though, the memory leak would not effect any other site because each application pool has its own server resources (including memory).

Main idea behind application pools are
1. Isolation of Different Web Application
2. Individual worker process for different web application
3. More reliably web application
4. Better Performance

For more information check this URL from MSDN.

Hope this is useful

Under standing Local Service, Local System and Network Service?

The main difference between these Local Service, Local System and Network Service mainly relay on the security principals. I have website I need to configure remote connections. When we use SQL Server, so when allowing remote connections and you might think which Service account you should use to run SQL Server.

You should use Local non-system or Service account. If this SQL Server service require to access the network resources you can use a ordinary Domain account.

• Domain User Account
  If the service must interact with network services, access domain resources like file shares or if it uses linked server connections to other computers running SQL Server, you might use a minimally-privileged domain account. Many server-to-server activities can be performed only with a domain user account. This account should be pre-created by domain administration in your environment.
• Local User Account
  If the computer is not part of a domain, a local user account without Windows administrator permissions is recommended.

Following are NOT advised as it grant more privileges than required for running SQL Server Services

• Local System is a very high-privileged built-in account. It has extensive privileges on the local system and acts as the computer on the network. The actual name of the account is "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM".
• The Local Service account is a built-in account that has the same level of access to resources and objects as members of the Users group. This limited access helps safeguard the system if individual services or processes are compromised. Services that run as the Local Service account access network resources as a null session without credentials. Be aware that the Local Service account is not supported for the SQL Server or SQL Server Agent services. The actual name of the account is "NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE".
• The Network Service account is a built-in account that has more access to resources and objects than members of the Users group. Services that run as the Network Service account access network resources by using the credentials of the computer account. The actual name of the account is "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"

Please consider the below recommendations:

• Always run SQL Server services by using the lowest possible user rights.
• Use a specific low-privilege user account or domain account instead of a shared account for SQL Server services.
• Use separate accounts for different SQL Server services.
• Do not grant additional permissions to the SQL Server service account or the service groups

What is Thumbs.db?

The default behavior for many folders in Windows Operating System is to display thumbnail images of the files in the folder. This is primarily true of folders created from digital cameras or filed under the My Videos and My Pictures folders. Thumbs.db is Microsoft's way of caching thumbnail images of any image or movie file in a folder. The idea behind creating a thumbnail cache is to improve the speed of displaying thumbnails the next time you open the folder by caching a set of thumbnails for the image and video files in the folder. If you hadn't seen this file in your folders previously it's likely you didn't have Show hidden files and folders enabled. Deleting the Thumbs.db file simply deletes that cache, which is regenerated the next time you view the folder contents. It is possible to configure Windows to never cache thumbnails.

To turn off thumbnail caching, open Tools > Options in Windows Explorer and click on the View tab. Check the box next to Do not cache thumbnails and click OK.

How to : Windows 2003 Server does not stream FLV videos

When Flash Player movie files that stream external FLV files (Flash videos) are placed on a Microsoft Windows 2003 server and then viewed in a browser, the SWF file plays correctly, but the FLV video does not stream. These files work correctly if tested on other operating systems. The issue affects all FLV files played via Windows 2003 server

SOLUTION

1. On the Windows 2003 server, open the Internet Information Services Manager.
2. Expand the Local Computer Server.
3. Right-click the local computer server and select Properties.
4. Select the MIME Types tab.
5. Click New and enter the following information:
   • Associated Extension box: .FLV
   • MIME Type box:flv-application/octet-stream
6. Click OK.
7. Restart the World Wide Web Publishing service.

Hope this helps.