Windows Sysadmin stuff

Posted May 1, 2024 Updated Mar 23, 2025

By Ravi Kilnake 4 min read

Generate powershell GUI directly

This is fantastic for those who are coming from bash environment like me to get familiar with powershell.

  
Show-Command Get-Process

Show-Command (e.g. Show-Command Get-Process) will create an UI for any PowerShell command.

Fix all annoying windows issues at once.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
SFC /scannow

Proper Restart

shutdown /r /f /t 0

This (from the command shell) will disable Hibernation and turn off Fast Startup all in one.

powercfg -h off

This module shows user a toast message that their windows is on for long time and requries a hard-restart

https://github.com/Windos/BurntToast

You can increase the FPS limit on RDP from 30hz to 60hz with a simple registry edit on the host machine

To do configure the registry entry, follow these steps:

Start Registry Editor.
Go to the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations
On the Edit menu, select New, and then select DWORD(32-bit) Value.
Type DWMFRAMEINTERVAL, and then press Enter.
Right-click DWMFRAMEINTERVAL, and select Modify.
Select Decimal, type 15 in the Value data box, and then select OK. This sets the maximum frame rate to 60 FPS.
Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

Frame rate mapping

decimal = 60 frames
decimal = 40 frames
decimal = 20 frames
decimal = 4 frames

Reference

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/remote/frame-rate-limited-to-30-fps

Reset Windows Graphics Driver

This key combo causes the Desktop Window Manager to recreate its graphics context and surface

From a discussion with an AMD Radeon driver engineer, it does NOT restart the graphics driver. It does appear to discard the desktop surface buffer and re-create the allocation from DWM (on a healthy system the desktop goes black for a second)

Ctrl+Shift+Windows+B

Any time I’m having issues with my monitors not being detected, screens flashing, etc. this shortcut comes in handy. Can be useful in a myriad of situations. Enjoy!

Windows A C Tiva-tion

https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

Right-click on the Windows start menu and select PowerShell or Terminal (Not CMD).
Copy and paste the code below and press enter
irm https://get.activated.win | iex
You will see the activation options. Follow the on-screen instructions.
That’s all.

Free Imaging solution for windows depolyment

https://aka.ms/mdtdownload https://www.osdcloud.com/ https://fogproject.org/ Open Source

Corporate DNS 101.

Nothing in your network should talk to external DNS except your DNS servers. The firewall should be blocking it since it’s a known way for malware/spyware to exfil data (The malware sends data chucks over the DNS port to avoid detection).

HVEC driver windows

There is an old package by MS for this extension “HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer”.

Paste this in your browser and it will open the MS Store promt to install it:

<ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq>

BGinfo for easy locating the computers in the domain.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/bginfo

Deploying BGInfo with Intune

Get BGInfo from Sysinternals
Run BGInfo, create your template, and save it as bginfo.bgi
Get IntuneWinAppUtil.exe from this GitHub repo
Package the scripts, template, and BGInfo
Add the package to Intune, and deploy it

Creating the .intunewin package

You’ll need an install/uninstall script, which are shown here. Dump these in a folder as install.ps1 and uninstall.ps1 along with your bginfo.bgi templace and BGInfo64.exe. Since this is for labbing, I won’t bother with signing or any of that stuff.

install.ps1

  
New-Item –ItemType Directory –Force –Path "C:\Program Files\BGInfo" | Out-Null
Copy-Item –Path "$PSScriptRoot\Bginfo64.exe" –Destination "C:\Program Files\BGInfo\BGInfo64.exe"
Copy-Item –Path "$PSScriptRoot\bginfo.bgi" –Destination "C:\Program Files\BGInfo\bginfo.bgi"
$Shell = New-Object –ComObject ("WScript.Shell")
$ShortCut = $Shell.CreateShortcut("C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\BGInfo.lnk")
$ShortCut.TargetPath="`"C:\Program Files\BGInfo\BGInfo64.exe`""
$ShortCut.Arguments="`"C:\Program Files\BGInfo\bginfo.bgi`" /timer:0 /silent /nolicprompt"
$ShortCut.IconLocation = "BGInfo64.exe, 0";
$ShortCut.Save()

uninstall.ps1

  
Remove-Item -Path "C:\Program Files\BGInfo" -Recurse -Force -Confirm:$false
Remove-Item -Path "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\BGInfo.lnk" -Force -Confirm:$false
Return 0

The next step is to run intunewinutil.exe -c SOURCE -s bginfo64.exe -o DESTINATION -q.

Once this is done, you’ll have a .intunewin file you can upload as a Win32 application.

Creating the app in Intune

In this deployment I just used the all-devices deployment group, but you can target it at any group you want. I’ve done this on my setup for the virtio-win driver MSI so that it only installs on machines with a quick device.deviceManufacturer -eq “QEMU” rule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFyX8EyTPho

Install command: powershell -ex bypass -file install.ps1

Uninstall command: powershell -ex bypass -file uninstall.ps1

Detection folder: C:\Program Files\BGInfo

Detection file: bginfo.bgi

Commands for powershell for repetative tasks

https://cmd.ms/

Rock solid print management 3rd party tool

http://www.laptechnologies.com/Printers.exe from https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=20903.0 This is very old tool but works flawless