Windows 7 : Working with the Command-Line Tools (part 3) - Working with System Management Tools

Working with System Management Tools

System management is one of those catch-all terms that encompasses a wide range of tasks, from simple adjustments such as changing the system date and time to more complex tweaks such as modifying the Registry. Windows 7’s command-line system management tools also enable you to monitor system performance, shut down or restart the computer, and even modify the huge Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface. Table 4 lists the system management command-line tools that apply to Windows 7.

The next few sections take more detailed looks at five of these command-line tools: REG, SYSTEMINFO, TYPEPERF, and WHOAMI.

REG: Working with Registry Keys and Settings

That’s the easiest and safest way to make Registry changes. However, there may be some settings that you change quite often. In such cases, it can become burdensome to be frequently launching the Registry Editor and changing the settings. A better idea is to create a shortcut or batch file that uses the REG command-line tool to make your Registry changes for you.

REG actually consists of 11 subcommands, each of which enables you to perform different Registry tasks:

I won’t go through all of these commands. Instead, I’ll focus on the three most common Registry tasks: viewing, adding, and modifying Registry data.

To view the current value of the Registry setting, you use the REG QUERY command:

REG QUERY KeyName [/V SettingName | /VE] [/C] [/D] [/E] [/F data] [/K | [/S] [/SE separator] [/T type] [/Z]

					  

For example, if you want to know the current value of the RegisteredOwner setting in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, run the following command:

reg query "hklm\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion" registeredowner

					  

reg query hklm /f "Windows Defender" /s

To add a key or setting to the Registry, use the REG ADD command:

REG ADD KeyName [/V SettingName | /VE] [/D data] [/F | [/S separator] [/T type]

					  

For example, the following command adds a key named MySettings to the HKCU root key:

reg add hkcu\MySettings

Here’s another example that adds a setting named CurrentProject to the new MySettings key and sets the value of the new setting to Win7 Unleashed:

reg add hkcu\MySettings /v CurrentProject /d "Win7 Unleashed"

If you want to make changes to an existing setting, run REG ADD on the setting. For example, to change the HKCU\MySettings\CurrentProject setting to Windows 7 Unleashed, you run the following command:

reg add hkcu\MySettings /v CurrentProject /d "Windows 7 Unleashed"

Windows 7 responds with the following prompt:

Value CurrentProject exists, overwrite (Yes/No)?

To change the existing value, press Y and press Enter.

SYSTEMINFO: Returning System Configuration Data

If you want to get information about various aspects of your computer, a good place to start is the SYSTEMINFO command-line tool, which displays data about the following aspects of your system:

• The operating system name, version, and configuration type

• The registered owner and organization

• The original install date

• The system boot time

• The computer manufacturer, make, and model

• The system processors

• The BIOS version

• The total and available physical memory

• The paging file’s maximum size, available size, in-use value, and location

• The installed hotfixes

• The network interface card data, such as the name, connection, DHCP status, and IP address (or addresses)

You can see all this data (and more), as well as control the output, by running SYSTEMINFO with the following syntax:

SYSTEMINFO [/S computer] [/U [domain]\username] [/P password] [/FO format] [/NH]

					  

The output of SYSTEMINFO is quite long, so pipe it through the MORE command to see the output one screen at a time:

systeminfo | more

If you want to examine the output in another program or import the results into Excel or Access, redirect the output to a file and use the appropriate format. For example, Excel can read .csv files, so you can redirect the SYSTEMINFO output to a .csv file while using csv as the output format:

systeminfo /fo csv > systeminfo.csv

TYPEPERF: Monitoring Performance

TYPEPERF [counter1 [counter2 ...]] [-CF file] [-O file] [-F format] [-SI interval] [-SC samples] [-Q [object]] [-QX [object]] [-CONFIG file] [-S computer]

					  

The official syntax of a counter path looks like this:

[\\Computer]\Object([Parent/][Instance][#Index])\Counter

In practice, however, you rarely use the Computer, Parent, and Index parts of the path, so most counter paths use one of the following two formats:

\Object\Counter
\Object(Instance)\Counter

For example, here’s the path for the Memory object’s Available MBytes counter:

\Memory\Available MBytes

Here’s a TYPEPERF command that displays five samples of this counter:

typeperf "\Memory\Available Mbytes" -sc 5

Similarly, here’s the path for the Processor object’s % Processor Time counter, using the first processor instance:

\Processor(0)\% Processor Time

Here’s a TYPEPERF command that displays 10 samples of this counter every 3 seconds, and saves the results to a file named ProcessorTime.txt:

typeperf "\Processor(0)\% Processor Time" -sc 10 -si 3 -o ProcessorTime.txt

To use the -CONFIG parameter with TYPEPERF, you need to create a text file that stores the command line parameters you want to use. This configuration file consists of a series of parameter/value pairs that use the following general format:

[Parameter]
Value

Here, Parameter is text that specifies a TYPEPERF parameter—such as F for the -F parameter and S for the -S parameter. Use C to specify one or more counter paths—and Value is the value you want to assign to the parameter.

For example, consider the following command:

typeperf "\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Idle Time" -si 5 -sc 10 -o idletime.txt

To run the same command using the -CONFIG parameter, you first need to create a file with the following text:

[c]
\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Idle Time
[si]
5
[sc]
10
[o]
idletime.txt

If this file is named IdleTimeCounter.txt, you can run it at any time with the following command (assuming IdleTimeCounter.txt resides in the current folder):

typeperf -config IdleTimeCounter.txt

WHOAMI: Getting Information About the Current User

The WHOAMI command gives you information about the user who is currently logged on to the computer:

WHOAMI [/UPN | /FQDN | LOGONID] [/USER | /GROUPS | /PRIV] [/ALL] [/FO Format]

					  

You probably won’t use this command often on the Windows 7 computer because you’ll almost always be logged on as administrator. However, WHOAMI is useful when you’re working on a client computer and you’re not sure who is currently logged on.

For example, the following command redirects the current user’s SID, username, groups, and privileges to a file named whoami.txt using the list format:

whoami /all /fo list > whoami.txt