Note: there’s almost never any reason to change this, as Windows does a good job of choosing the right connection. Still, if you want to tweak it to work differently, this is how you would do it.

How to See the Current Network Card Priority

You’ll need to open up a new command prompt window and type in the following command:

netstat -rn | more

The | more part of the command will make sure that it doesn’t go flying off the screen, requiring you to scroll backwards

At the top of the output you’ll see the Interface List, and the column on the left-hand side shows the metric of the interface. You’ll notice that the loopback interface has the highest priority, followed by my wired Gigabit card, and then my wireless card.

If you’re wondering what all the other cards in the list are about, I’ve got some VPN software loaded, as well as VMware Workstation, all of which create virtual adapters that show up in the list.

How to Change the Network Card Priority

To change the priority, head into Network and Sharing Center and click on the Change adapter settings link on the left-hand side—or you can quickly open the network connections list by typing ncpa.cpl into the Start Menu search box.

Now that we’re in here, choose the network card that you want to change the priority for, right-click it, and choose Properties from the menu.

Now select the Internet Protocol Version 4 item in the list, and click the Properties button.

Now click the Advanced button at the bottom of this window…. getting tired of clicking yet?

And now, finally, we’re at the place where you can make the change. Uncheck the box for Automatic Metric, and then type a number into the Interface Metric textbox. You can consult the list that we found in the command prompt earlier to know what metric to assign—you’ll probably want to assign it something higher than 1, since that’s used for the loopback adapter.

You may want to go ahead and change the priority for your other card as well, just to be sure that it is assigned the proper priority.

Taken from a dead HDD, I used the strong magnet secure a handgun in a good defensive position. The HDD magnet already has mount holes built in.

The Result:

Stay safe.

The System State includes the most important system files for WHS such as the Registry, Startup Files, and Protected System files.

The first thing you’ll want to to is log on to WHS either through the WHS Console, Remote Desktop, or through Advanced Admin Console. Now navigate to Start \ All Programs \ Accessories \ System Tool \ Backup.

The Backup or Restore Wizard launches, but we’re not going to use the Wizard. From here click on the Advanced Mode link instead.

This opens the Backup Utility and in the left pane expand My Computer and check System State.

Now at the bottom of the screen click the Browse button to find a destination to save the backup file.

Note: Don’t back it up to the server’s local drive. Make sure you choose a destination like a shared folder, Flash Drive, or External HD.

As you can see here we have it set to backup to our shared backup folder…now click on Start Backup.

You will get an overview of the backup job and can start it right away or schedule it for a later time.

Now wait while everything is backed up. The amount of time it takes will vary depending on the server configuration. Also keep in mind the file can be large (ours was 627 MB), so make sure you have enough space on the location you’re backing up to.

When the backup is complete you can view a report for detailed information on the backup or close out of the utility.

After we completed the System State backup, we brought the file to one of the PCs on our network and backed up the backup file using Carbonite…having redundant backups is always a good idea!

Backup the Registry Only

If you don’t want to backup the full System State, you can also backup the entire Registry only. Remote into WHS and open the Registry Editor.

Then click on File \ Export…

Now select a location and name for the backup. Under Export range make sure to select All to backup the entire Registry. Or you can go through and backup a Selected branch if you’re only making changes to specific parts of the Registry. When in doubt just backup the entire thing.

Again you’ll want to back it up to a location other than your local server drive. The size of our Registry was around 45 MB, though yours may vary.

Backing up your server’s System State and Registry is a great idea to incorporate into your backup strategy. If something does go wrong, you can easily restore the settings which should help get your server back to where it needs to be.

We recently had one of our computers in the lab take a turn for the worse after trying to do a complete uninstall of Office 2010 beta. It didn’t go the way we had hoped and experienced a hard time getting 2010 or 2007 reinstalled. It also caused some other apps that are associated with Office to error out and act unstable. Rather than spend hours researching Knowledgebase articles and tinkering with the Registry, we turned to restoring the system back to an earlier state with System Restore. In this article we thought we’d remind you about the importance of System Restore, and walk you through the restore process in Windows 7.

Recover from a Restore Point

First type system restore into the search box in the Start menu and hit Enter.

That opens the System Restore wizard and from here you can choose the recommended restore point,which is the most recent one…Or you can choose a different restore point, which for our situation we need to do. Select the radio button next to Choose a different restore point then click Next.

Now you get a list of different restore points and the description of what was taking place when it was created. We tried several attempts to install / uninstall Office 2010 Beta on this machine so there are several of those points listed as you can see. We need something later, so in this instance we want to click on the box next to Show more restore points.

Now scroll through and determine which restore point you want. For example, we know our system started being unstable at the time of trying to get rid of Office 2010…so we’ll pick a restore point that is a couple days before that when everything was working successfully.

When you pick a restore point, another thing you should do is click the button to Scan for affected programs.

The scan will kick off and determine what will be affected by the restore point you choose.

Then it brings up the results. It shows which programs and drivers that will be deleted…And what programs will be restored (though they may not work correctly and need to be reinstalled). This is goo information to know when selecting a point to recover. If some important drivers or programs would be deleted, you might want to try another restore point. Although, you may not always that luxury and will have to go with the one that works.

Confirm the restore pint and click Finish.

Click Yes to the message saying that it can’t be undone until it has completed, or cannot be undone if running it from Safe Mode.

The System Restore process begins…

You’ll see a series of messages display while the process completes and different things are being restored. The amount of time it takes to complete will vary between computers.

After returning from the restart, you’ll have a message advising it was completed successfully and the time and date it was restored to.

Now, your system should be functioning exactly how it was during the time it was restored to. You’ll still have all of your documents, but might be missing a couple of programs that you’ll just need to reinstall again.

Conclusion

Although often overlooked, it’s very important to create and maintain System Restore Points for the overall health of your system. It can make life much easier if something bad happens and you need a quick way to get your machine working again. A lot of times some programs and some Windows Updates will create a Restore Point for you automatically but not always.

I love writing applications and script. I wrote an IP-Blocklist package for the pfsense router. There is no PeerGuardian2 available for freeBSD so I made one.

This package is really sweet because you can upload list URLs and add manual IPs to block. The IPFW adds a drop entry for each IP. A perl script converts the addresses from the URL list to a ipfw friendly command.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

if($#ARGV != 1) {
    print("Usage: $0 <input file> <output file>\n");
    exit(1);
}

my ($line,$title,$iprange,$cidr);
my $i = 30000;

open(INFILE,’<’,$ARGV[0]) or die("Could not open input file $ARGV[0]");
open(OUTFILE,’>>’,$ARGV[1]) or die("Could not open output file $ARGV[1]");

foreach $line (<INFILE>) {
    chomp($line);
    $line =~ s/:((\d{1,3}[-\.]*){8})//;
    $iprange = $1;
    print OUTFILE "#$line\n";
    foreach $cidr (split(/\n/,range($iprange))) {
        print OUTFILE "ipfw -q add 1000 drop ip from any to $cidr\n";     
        #$i++;
        print OUTFILE "ipfw -q add 1001 drop ip from $cidr to any\n";     
        #$i++;
    }
}

close(INFILE);
close(OUTFILE);

sub ntoa {
    return join ".",unpack("CCCC",pack("N",shift));
}
sub aton {
    return unpack ‘N’, pack ‘C4′, split/\./, shift;
}
sub deaggregate {
    my $thirtytwobits = 4294967295;
    my $start = shift;
    my $end = shift;
    my $base = $start;
    my ($step,$output);
    while ($base <= $end) {
        $step = 0;
        while (($base | (1 << $step)) != $base) {
            if (($base | (((~0) & $thirtytwobits) >> (31-$step))) > $end) {
                last;
            }
            $step++;
        }
        if($step == 0) {
            $output .= ntoa($base);
        }else{
            $output .= ntoa($base)."/" .(32-$step);
        }
        $output .= "\n";
        $base += 1 << $step;
    }
    return $output;
}
sub range {
    my ($address,$address2) = split /-/, shift;
    $address = aton($address);
    $address2 = aton($address2);
    return deaggregate($address,$address2);
}

Using this I can process the over 225 thousand line lists in a matter of minutes. The really long lists take more than an hour but it pays off. Now you can block spam, hackers, and bogon addresses.

There are some limits though.

Lists can have any extension BUT if the list is compressed only .gz is supported.
Long lists take a very LONG time to process. A level1 list (225,000 lines) will take over 1h or more
The Firewall entries are lost on several occasions (when config.inc is processed) such as Rebooting, restarting the WebGUI, restarting SSH, etc…

IP-Blocklist

pfsense.org

We recently had one of our computers in the lab take a turn for the worse after trying to do a complete uninstall of Office 2010 beta. It didn’t go the way we had hoped and experienced a hard time getting 2010 or 2007 reinstalled. It also caused some other apps that are associated with Office to error out and act unstable. Rather than spend hours researching Knowledgebase articles and tinkering with the Registry, we turned to restoring the system back to an earlier state with System Restore. In this article we thought we’d remind you about the importance of System Restore, and walk you through the restore process in Windows 7.

Recover from a Restore Point

First type system restore into the search box in the Start menu and hit Enter.

That opens the System Restore wizard and from here you can choose the recommended restore point,which is the most recent one…Or you can choose a different restore point, which for our situation we need to do. Select the radio button next to Choose a different restore point then click Next.

Now you get a list of different restore points and the description of what was taking place when it was created. We tried several attempts to install / uninstall Office 2010 Beta on this machine so there are several of those points listed as you can see. We need something later, so in this instance we want to click on the box next to Show more restore points.

Now scroll through and determine which restore point you want. For example, we know our system started being unstable at the time of trying to get rid of Office 2010…so we’ll pick a restore point that is a couple days before that when everything was working successfully.

When you pick a restore point, another thing you should do is click the button to Scan for affected programs.

The scan will kick off and determine what will be affected by the restore point you choose.

Then it brings up the results. It shows which programs and drivers that will be deleted…And what programs will be restored (though they may not work correctly and need to be reinstalled). This is goo information to know when selecting a point to recover. If some important drivers or programs would be deleted, you might want to try another restore point. Although, you may not always that luxury and will have to go with the one that works.

Confirm the restore pint and click Finish.

Click Yes to the message saying that it can’t be undone until it has completed, or cannot be undone if running it from Safe Mode.

The System Restore process begins…

You’ll see a series of messages display while the process completes and different things are being restored. The amount of time it takes to complete will vary between computers.

After returning from the restart, you’ll have a message advising it was completed successfully and the time and date it was restored to.

Now, your system should be functioning exactly how it was during the time it was restored to. You’ll still have all of your documents, but might be missing a couple of programs that you’ll just need to reinstall again.

Conclusion

Although often overlooked, it’s very important to create and maintain System Restore Points for the overall health of your system. It can make life much easier if something bad happens and you need a quick way to get your machine working again. A lot of times some programs and some Windows Updates will create a Restore Point for you automatically but not always.

Windows Home Server is definitely easy to use – even for the beginning computer geek. One thing they do though, is hide advanced server functions as a way to protect the end user from messing with the wrong thing. Advanced Admin Console is meant for those of us who want an easy way to access the advanced server features and utilities. It gives easy access to controls that are otherwise hidden deep in the server menus, right from the WHS Console, from any computer on the network.

Note: This addin is meant for advanced users who are familiar with server administration. If you start changing the wrong settings you might crash your server. Also we need to let you know it’s in beta but is in constant development.

Advanced Admin Console

Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy the WHSAdminInstaller.msi installer (link below).

Next open WHS Console and click Settings then Add-ins and under Available Add-ins click the available tab. You’ll see the Advanced Admin Console AddIn that we just copied to the Add-Ins folder and click Install.

Then the Installation Succeeded screen will pop up telling you WHS Console will be closed and restarted.

After you’re done with installation, open up the Windows Home Server console and at the top, you’ll notice the Advanced Admin Console button. This gives you access to all of the advanced server functions right from the WHS Console on any machine. Now you won’t need to RDP into the server to do administrative tasks.

Here we take a look at the control panel view in the WHS Console under Advanced Admin Controls. You can easily start accessing different aspects of the server. For instance in this shot we pulled up the Firewall and can begin applying changes.

There will be a series of buttons on the toolbar under the main buttons in the Console.

The following are the locations available…

• Control Panel
• Printers and Faxes
• Administrative Tools
• Start Menu
• My Computer
• Recycle Bin
• My Network Places
• Network Connections
• Show Desktop
• Search
• Command Prompt
• Windows PowerShell
• Task Manager
• Registry Editor

Some of them are listed in the dropdown menu on the right of the toolbar.

You can right-click an open area and select how you want to view and arrange the icons from the context menu. Also you have all of your standard choices that you’d normally have if you were actually on the server.

Access to the server Registry…

An awesome Show Desktop feature that brings you to the server’s desktop so you can easily navigate within the server if you need to.

Here is a look at all of the Administrative Tools with Event Viewer currently pulled up.

Click on the Customize shortcut from the dropdown menu…

And here you can customize what feature shortcuts are displayed, and you can even add your own shortcut if you feel something is missing.

This awesome Addin makes it exceptionally easy to access your server’s advanced controls and functions from any computer on your network. If you’re an advanced computer geek who knows there way around Server 2003, this is a must have Addin that you’ll probably install right away.

Download Advanced Admin Control v0.5.0

Check Out the Developers Site

Install Connector

After you’ve installed Windows Home Server (WHS) you’ve probably noticed a message pop up when you start Windows Media Center (WMC). Just click Ok to that message, you don’t need to set it up right away unless you want to. We know we can set it up from the Start menu at any time.

Here we take a look at installing it on Windows 7 Home Premium. Open the Start menu and click on Windows Media Center Connector as shown here.

The setup wizard starts and you can click Next…

Enter in the password to your WHS…

That was easy! You’re all set…however a restart of the machine is required.

After returning from the reboot, open WMC and in the main menu you’ll see an entry for Home Server that includes TV Archive and Console View.

TV Archive

The TV Archive feature let’s you move recorded TV to your WHS with ease. You can select individual shows or have all of your recorded programs archived to the server.

You can have a compressed copy saved to the server or Public Videos folder as well. You can choose from Original Resolution, 320×240 for Windows Mobile, or 720×480 for the Zune –each in WMV format. The nice benefit to this is you can record your favorite shows and have the original and / or a compressed version stored on the server.

Console View

The other neat feature is Console View. It lets you see different statistic about your server right from the comfort of your couch – or computer, whichever the case may be.

From the Console View you can see:

• Storage
• Drives
• Backup
• Shared Folders
• Media Counts
• Server & Network Health
• Windows Home Server Hardware Information

Now when you go into your Recorded TV folder you’ll see it is pulling the shows from the server. This saves drive space on your local machine, and relieves you of the hassle of manually transferring the files over.

It also works with Media Center in Vista as well…

The Windows Media Center Connector adds additional functionality for managing your recorded TV files. It keeps them off your local machine’s hard drive saving you the hassle of moving them yourself. Also, having the ability to view basic server statistics from the couch is a definite plus too.

Create Home Computer Restore CD

There used to be an ISO stored in the Software folder of WHS that would allow you to create a Restore CD. If you see an image there it’s more than likely outdated. To get the new image head over to the Microsoft site and download restorecd.msi (link below).

By default the image is installed to My Documents in the Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore CD (Dual Boot) folder. However, you point it to any directory on your computer you want to use. Actually you might want to send it to the Software share of WHS.

To burn the image to CD in Windows 7 you can use the built in Disc Image Burner utility.

If you’re using Vista or XP you can use the free utility ISO Recorder to burn the CD. They offer both a 32 & 64 bit version of ISO Recorder.

Once you have the the restore CD created make sure to keep it in a safe place in case you need it to restore one of the machines on your network.

It’s good to have this disc ready in case disaster strikes so you can restore a machine from WHS backups. In the near future we’ll take a look at completely restoring a computer using the Restore CD and a backup from WHS. Backing up your computer data is extremely important and WHS makes it a “set it and forget it” process.

Download The WHS Home Computer Restore CD

Open up Windows Home Server Console from a machine on your network and click on Settings. Then click the Shut Down button.

The Shut Down screen appears and the rest of the console fades in the background. Now you can shutdown or Restart the server.

A message pops up indicating your connection has been lost, and you’ll be able to reconnect after it starts back up.

Windows Home Server is designed so you can accomplish pretty much everything from the Home Server Console, including a Shutdown or Restart.