Miscellaneous NT Tools

                   Copyright © 1996-1997 Mark Russinovich

                       last updated january 30, 1996

 Miscellaneous NT Tools

    Introduction   Occasionally we write our own support utilities that are
                   pop-corn in size and don't merit their own page, but
                   that other people may be interested in. This list is
                   likely to grow over time.

          NTSync   UNIX provides a standard utility called sync, which can
                   be used to direct the operating system to flush all file
                   system data to disk in order to insure that it is stable
                   and won't be lost in case of a system failure.
                   Otherwise, any modified data present in the cache would
                   be lost. Here is a an NT equivalent that I wrote, called
                   NTSync. Use it whenever you want to know that modified
                   file data is safely stored on your hard drives. This new
                   version, 1.1, lets you flush removable drives such as
                   ZIP drives.

                   Usage: ntsync [-r]

                      -r      Flush removable drives.

                   Download NTSync (13KB)

       Autologon   NT 3.51 and 4.0 provides Registry settings that can be
                   set so that a user is automatically logged in the next
                   time the system would otherwise put up the logon dialog
                   box. However, the Registry values are hidden very deep,
                   and are a pain to configure. This program, Autologon,
                   will do the Registry configuration for you, and allow
                   you to enable and disable auto-logon when you want.

                   Autologon easy enough to use. Just run autolog.exe, fill
                   in the dialog, and hit Enable. To turn off auto-logon,
                   hit Disable. If the DefaultPassword is NULL, autologon
                   will only occur once and then be disabled. Also, if the
                   shift key is held down before the system performs an
                   autologon, the autologon will be disabled for that
                   logon.

                   Download Autologon (8KB)

                   Download Autologon Source (21KB)

        Hostname   Hostname is a very simply utility that takes either an
                   IP address (e.g. 123.456.7.8), or a host name (e.g.
                   ftp.ntinternals.com), and performs a translation into
                   its inverse form. For example, if you pass hostname an
                   IP address, you'll get back a host name, and if you pass
                   it a host name it will give you the corresponding IP
                   address. It runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT.

                   Usage: hostname [IP address, hostname]

                   Download hostname (11KB)

       KBDUS.DLL   If you're like us and you migrated from a UNIX
                   environment, then you're used to having ctrl be where
                   the caps-lock key is on the standard PC keyboard.
                   Unfortunately there is no xmodmap (anX-Windows UNIX
                   utility that lets you swap key mappings around) for NT.
                   However, we've made a version of the U.S. keyboard
                   mapping DLL that makes the caps-lock to control change.
                   To install it, go to your <systemroot>\system32
                   directory and rename the existing KBDUS.DLL to
                   KBDUS.BAK. Then copy the new KBDUS.DLL to that directory
                   and reboot.

                   Download KBDUS.DLL (4KB)

         Strings   Working on NT means that executables and object files
                   will many times have embedded UNICODE strings that you
                   cannot easily see with a standard ASCII strings or grep
                   programs. So we decided to roll our own. Strings just
                   scans the file you pass it for UNICODE (or ASCII)
                   strings of a default length of 3 or more UNICODE (or
                   ASCII) characters. Note that it works under Windows 95
                   as well.

                   Usage: strings [-a] [-nX]

                   Strings takes two optional parameters, as defined below:
                      -a      Scan for ASCII instead of UNICODE

                      -nX     Strings must be a minimum of X characters in
                              length.
                   Download strings (14KB)

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