Today (18th-August-2007), I saw cool tip on CNET TV.

Acrobat Reader is really great free program, but with every new release from Adobe it becomes more big (disk size), slow and really hungry for system resources. The main reason for that is adding new features. The problem is that most of user never uses them. As result many programmers start writing on PDF viewers. Some of them are really great, but the main problem with all of them is that they need time to be updated after each new release from Adobe. I found out that many time I can't open some PDFs with 3-td party viewers.

You'll know if you've been doing your job keeping systems in check with this nifty command prompt trick.

By Jeffery Hicks

The Windows CMD prompt is far from obsolete, especially for those of you where PowerShell simply isn't an option. One often overlooked command is SORT. Back in the golden age of command prompt administration, admins used the Sort command to manipulate text files and data sets. Run Sort /? at a command prompt to see usage and syntax. Here are some examples of how you might use it today.

Open a command prompt and type:

Date-time objects give you a sense of a script's performance.

By Jeffery Hicks

In PowerShell I'm often wondering how long a particular script or process took to complete. It's a great way to gauge a script's performance in a non-scientific sort of way. Fortunately, you can do this in PowerShell using Date-time objects. PowerShell is smart enough to be able to subtract two date-time objects. All you need is a beginning time and end time.

In your script or at the console, before you run your lengthy command, run this:

Some files and folders are just too stubborn to delete easily. Try these tips.

By Zubair Alexander

Q: Why am I unable to delete a file or a folder in Windows Explorer? What are some of the common scenarios and solutions?

A: As far as NTFS is concerned, internally it treats folders as a special type of file. Therefore, we will use the term "file" to refer to both files and folders here.

A better way to find and delete files quickly and almost painlessly.

By Jeffery Hicks

Last year, I wrote a "Tip Sheet" column about finding certain files and then deleting them http://tinyurl.com/yvojna . After some further thought and looking at the comments, I realized you deserve an even easier way. There's still work for you to do, but the commands you have to type are reduced with this example.

Use pigs to find truffles and use Netcap to do quick and dirty packet captures. 

By Jeffery Hicks

I know there are many packet-capturing tools, including some terrific open source products. But for real simplicity, and the cost is right, there's the command-line version of Network Monitor, also called Netcap.exe.

Netcap.exe is part of Windows Support Tools. The only other step you have to take to use it is to install the Network Monitor driver and bind it to the network card you'll be capturing.

Documenting your servers can be a PITA. Make a script do it and it becomes less painful.

By Jeffery Hicks

Whenever I build a new server, I like to document the baseline configuration. This comes in handy when troubleshooting a problem later. Having baseline documentation helps me identify what has changed. But I don't spend any time writing things down. I let the server tell me how it is configured by using Msinfo32.exe.

Establish a baseline for performance easily and you'll know just how slow is slow.

By Greg Shields

Here's a simple way to display information in an IE window where HTA scripts might seem like overkill.

By Bob Kelly

When you think of making use of Internet Explorer in your scripts, you probably think of using a hypertext application. HTA scripts are Web documents with script code built in. However, you can actually take advantage of IE in your VBScripts without using HTA. Although you don't have the same interactive options, it can be a nice way to display information (progress, for example) to users outside of the standard console window.

Here's how you can create a bootable USB flash drive.

By Chris Wolf

Chris: I have an 8GB USB thumb drive and I want to make it bootable. Do you know of any utility that I can use to do that?
-- Carlos