!NSFW

I found out today that HyperTerminal is no longer included in Windows Vista when I wanted to connect to the console port of a switch. You can still get HyperTerminal Personal Edition from Hilgraeve, the company Microsoft licensed the software from or you can use Putty. With Putty you can also have Raw, Telnet, Rlogin, and SSH sessions in addition to Serial. You can download Putty from here.

Generally GBICs have been open so you can use any brand. Cisco equipment won’t accept “just any vendor’s” compatible SFPs. I found this out the hard way last year trying to save some money when I purchased a couple of OEM SFP transceivers from Dell to use in a Cisco switch. Plugging in the SFP module would disable the port. The switch’s firmware supposedly checks the identifying data in the SFP’s internal Flash memory, and if it isn’t built by Cisco, the switch refuses to enable that slot. It’s not only Cisco that does this. Other vendors like Extreme Networks and 3Com are also reported to do the same.

I had to to give in and purchase a $300+ Cisco branded SFP from CDW to use with this switch. Fortunately, there is a way to disable this check in the switch depending on the IOS version installed on the switch.

Issuing the following commands will allow for unsupported SFPs and wont disable the port.

switch(config)#service unsupported-transciever
switch(config)#no errdisable detect cause gbic-invalid


You will be presented with a warning after the first command with something to the effect that if you experience any problems with the switch, Cisco may deny support if the cause is determined to be the ‘unsupported’ SFP.

Windows Administrators can change the power configuration policy from the command line using the powercfg.exe ultility present on all Windows XP/2003 systems.

To list the current policies
POWERCFG /list

To change the active policy
POWERCFG /SETACTIVE "policy_name” (replace policy_name with a real policy name)

The following example sets the “Home/Office Desk” profile to the given values.
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /monitor-timeout-ac 15
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /monitor-timeout-dc 10
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /disk-timeout-ac 20
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /disk-timeout-dc 15
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /standby-timeout-ac 25
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /standby-timeout-dc 20
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /hibernate-timeout-ac 0
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /hibernate-timeout-dc 0
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /processor-throttle-ac ADAPTIVE
POWERCFG /CHANGE "Home/Office Desk" /processor-throttle-dc ADAPTIVE

You can also change profiles being used.
POWERCFG /SETACTIVE "Always On"

To create a new profile
POWERCFG /CREATE "New Policy"
POWERCFG /CHANGE "New Policy" /monitor-timeout-ac 15
POWERCFG /CHANGE "New Policy" /monitor-timeout-dc 10
...
...
POWERCFG /CHANGE "New Policy" /processor-throttle-ac ADAPTIVE
POWERCFG /CHANGE "New Policy" /processor-throttle-dc ADAPTIVE
POWERCFG /SETACTIVE "New Policy"


Links
How to use Powercfg.exe in Windows Server 2003
Powercfg Command-Line Options
Using Powerconfig.exe in a logon script to configure power management settings

WMI scripting can be very useful creating filters to selectively apply Group Policies. It can also be used from the command line to get various bits of information about local or remote hosts.

For example, if you want to find out the version of MS Office installed on your PC, you can use the following:
wmic path Win32_Product WHERE (Caption like "%microsoft office%") get Name, Version

On a remote PC:
wmic /node:remote_pcname path Win32_Product WHERE (Caption like "%microsoft office%") get Name, Version