System Admin

Python: Changing Microsoft Office User Initials

A couple of months ago at work, we received a report that a file was locked. The dialog that appeared showed the initials of a user who wasn’t even working for us any more. Thus we discovered an annoying bug that can crop up with Office. Basically, a user is asked by Word or Excel …

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How to Find and List All Running Processes with Python

The other day, I was tasked with finding a way to get a list of all running processes on a Windows XP virtual machine. I was also supposed to include information about how much CPU and memory each process used. Fortunately, this didn’t have to be a remote script, but one that could be run …

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Python: Running Ping, Traceroute and More

Last year I needed to figure out a way to get the following information with Python: get the route table, capture the data from pinging a series of IPs, run tracert and get information about the NIC(s) installed. This all needed to be done on a Windows machine as it was part of a diagnostics …

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Python’s _winreg: Editing the Windows Registry

Python’s standard library is known for including lots of handy modules and packages that can be used without installing anything else. That’s one of the primary reasons that its standard library is called “batteries included” so often. So it should come as no surprise that Python includes a Windows only module for editing the Windows …

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Creating Windows Shortcuts with Python (Part II)

Back when I first wrote about creating shortcuts with Python last month, I kept thinking to myself that I had a 3rd way of doing it. Today, I had to maintain some of my shortcut code and I stumbled upon it once more. I also noticed that my post had received a comment from Tim …

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Using Python to Reduce the Roaming Profile

Roaming Profiles are a blessing and a curse. If the user uses the internet, their browser’s cached files will grow like mad. If the user downloads programs to their desktop or creates large Powerpoint files anywhere in their profile, then they have to be managed whenever the user logs in or out. There are several …

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Enabling Screen Locking with Python

A few months ago, my employer needed to lock down some of our workstations to be compliant with some new software we were installing from another government organization. We needed to force those machines to lock after so many minutes elapsed and we needed to make it such that the user could not change those …

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Lock Down Windows with Python

Almost four years ago, I was tasked with converting a Kixtart script to Python. This particular script was used to lock down Windows XP machines so they could be used as kiosks. Obviously, you don’t need Python to do this. Any programming language that can access the Windows Registry will be able to do this …

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