Dirty Printer solution

Greetings!!

I dont know about you, but we have had some HUGE proplems with HP printers and its universal drivers the last year.  Administering some 500+ HP Printers this means ALOT of time spend on trouble shooting and fixing problems.

The latest issue is the some printers suddently use Raster graphics instead of Vector graphics which means that the time it takes to print a document increases from a few seconds to several minutes, plus a 100kb document infaltes to a 1gb document!!

Unfortunatly this setting is being set into a registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\SY101P01\Default Devmode.  This registry key contains several settings and is unique for each printer.  It is not an option to hardcode anything into this key in this scenario.

I found that when a printer gets the raster setting, the registry key contains the following sequence:  "82 65 83 84 69 82 77 79 68 69".
I saw no other option to make a backup of det default Devmode for each printer when it was in a good condition. 

The following script checks if a printer graphics mode is Raster and if it is the replace the dirty regkey with a healty one.


Function SetDevModeToVector($printer,$printerRegKey)
{
 if(Test-Path ("c:\Mandatory\Print\devmode\$printer"+".txt"))
 {
   Write-Host "Restoring Registry"
   $strdevMode=Get-Content ("c:\Mandatory\Print\devmode\$printer"+".txt")
   # We need to convert the data into an array of [byte]
   [Byte[]]$devModeAry = $strdevmode.split(" ")
   #Write the data into the registry on the remote machine
   $printerRegKey.setvalue("Default Devmode",$devModeAry,"BINARY")
   Write-Host "Done restoring Registry"
  }
 ELSE
 {
   Write-Host ("c:\Mandatory\Print\devmode\$printer"+".txt") + "not found"
 }
}
$fileout = "c:\filnavn.txt"
$fileObj = New-Item -ItemType file $fileout -Force


#Export Printer Dev Mode Settings
$ErrorActionPreference = "silentlycontinue"
$RasterSequenceDEC = "82 65 83 84 69 82 77 79 68 69"
[string]$strByte = ""
$computers=Get-CTX5PrintServers SY $args | %{$_.properties.name}
#$computers = "B3562S99"
foreach($computer in $computers)
{
  Write-Host "Processing $computer"
 $reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey("LocalMachine", $computer)
 $regKey = $reg.OpenSubKey("Software\Microsoft\windows nt\CurrentVersion\Print\printers",$true)
 $printers = $regKey.GetSubKeyNames()
 [Boolean]$restartSpooler=$false
 foreach($printer in $printers)
 {
  $PrinterRegKey= $reg.OpenSubKey("Software\Microsoft\windows nt\CurrentVersion\Print\printers\$printer",$true)
  $devModeAry = $PrinterRegKey.GetValue("Default DevMode")
  foreach($byt in $devModeAry)
  {
   [string]$strByte = $strByte +" "+ $byt
  }
  $strByte = $strByte.substring(1)
  if($strByte -match $RasterSequenceDEC)
  {
    $restartSpooler=$true
   Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Found raster on printer $printer on $computer"
   $tekst="Found raster on printer $printer on $computer"
   Add-Content $fileObj $tekst
   SetDevModeToVector $printer $PrinterRegKey
 
  }
  ELSE
  {
   $strByte | Out-File c:\Mandatory\Print\DevMode\$printer.txt
  }

  $strByte=$null
  $PrinterRegKey.Close()
 }
 $regKey.close()
 $reg.close()
 if($restartSpooler -eq $true)
 {
  Restart-RemoteService -computer $computer -service Spooler
 }
}
This script contains a costumiced commandlet; Restart-RemoteService. This commandlets are a part of a module i wrote, which is loaded on every server in the forest. 

Restart-Remoteservice takes a service and a computer as input and will restart the given service on the given computer.  Easy and simple, not very elegant, but it gets the job done :)

Start, stop and restart services on remote machines

Greetings!

I would like to share a couple of nifty commandlets that i build into out costume module. 
Start-RemoteService, Stop-RemoteService and Restart-RemoteService.

This is particular nice when PrintServer104 is troubeling you and you need to restart spooler.  Easy task, but normally you would either log onto the server and fire up whatever favorite way to stop a service or on a remote server start services.msc and remote connect to a the printserver, find the service and restart it.

With these commandlets it have become faster and easier.  In your favorite prompt (assuming that is a Powershell prompt) type

Restart-RemoteService -computer PrintServer104 -service spooler

You can also just choose to start a searvice by

Start-RemoteService -computer PrintServer104 -service spooler

or stop a service by

Stop-RemoteService -computer PrintServer104 -service spooler

Cut and past these functions into your custom module and save time and frustrations by getting the job done :)

Function Start-RemoteService
{
<#
 .Synopsis
 Send a command to remote server to start a specifik service
           
 .Description
 Send a command to remote server to start a specifik service
           
 .Parameter $Computer
 Computername
 
 .Parameter $service
 Service to restart
 
 .Example
 Start-RemoteService Server01 spoolsv
           
 Description
 -----------
 Will start the service named spoolsv on server Server01
    
 .Notes
 NAME:      Start-RemoteService
 AUTHOR:    Claus Søgaard
#>
 [CmdletBinding()]
 param([string]$strComputer,[String]$strService)
 Process
 {
   $result=(Get-WmiObject -computer $strComputer Win32_Service -Filter "Name='$strService'").InvokeMethod("startService",$null)
  if($result -eq "0")
  {
    Write-Host "Succesfully started $strService"
  }
  ELSE
  {
    Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "Failed to start $service on $strComputer"
  }
 }
}


Function Stop-RemoteService
{
<#
 .Synopsis
 Send a command to remote server to stop a specifik service
           
 .Description
 Send a command to remote server to stop a specifik service
           
 .Parameter $Computer
 Computername
 
 .Parameter $service
 Service to stop
 
 .Example
 Stop-RemoteService Server01 spoolsv
           
 Description
 -----------
 Will stop the service named spoolsv on server Server01
    
 .Notes
 NAME:      Stop-RemoteService
 AUTHOR:    Claus Søgaard
#>
 [CmdletBinding()]
 param([string]$strComputer,[String]$strService)
 Process
 {
   $result=(Get-WmiObject -computer $strComputer Win32_Service -Filter "Name='$strService'").InvokeMethod("stopService",$null)
  if($result -eq "0")
  {
    Write-Host "Succesfully stopped $service on $strComputer"
  }
  ELSE
  {
    Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "Failed in stopping $strService"
  }
 }
}


Function Restart-RemoteService
{
<#
 .Synopsis
 Send a command to remote server to restart a specifik service
           
 .Description
 Send a command to remote server to restart a specifik service
           
 .Parameter $Computer
 Computername
 
 .Parameter $service
 Service to restart
 
 .Example
 Restart-RemoteService Server01 spoolsv
           
 Description
 -----------
 Will restart the service named spoolsv on server Server01
    
 .Notes
 NAME:      Start-RemoteService
 AUTHOR:    Claus Søgaard
#>
 [CmdletBinding()]
 param([Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)][string]$Computer,
       [Parameter(Position=1,Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)][String]$service)
 Process
 {
   Stop-RemoteService $computer $service
  Start-Sleep 1
  Start-RemoteService $computer $service
 }
}

Delete cookies

Hello,
Just had a user calling me telling me that on a specific site where the user needs to log in and specify a location to where his documents are, it shows an invalid path to the old fileserver. 
Ruling out any GPO, i turned to cookies.  Since we never delete any cookies for the users, this one have had thousands og cookies!
I want to find cookies where this site have saved som informations and i just need the job done...

declaring the path to cookies (which is on a fileserver)
$path=\\Fileserver\svprofil$\System\SVJVI\Citrix\H5\cookies

Now get all the cookies
$cookies=Get-ChildItem $path

now find the cookies that contains the specific site$matchCookies=$cookies | Select-String -Pattern "<specific site>"


$matchCookies | gm reveals that

   TypeName: Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MatchInfo
Name         MemberType Definition
----         ---------- ----------
Equals       Method     bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode  Method     int GetHashCode()
GetType      Method     type GetType()
RelativePath Method     string RelativePath(string directory)
ToString     Method     string ToString(), string ToString(string directory)
Context      Property   Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MatchInfoContext Context {get;set;}
Filename     Property   System.String Filename {get;}
IgnoreCase   Property   System.Boolean IgnoreCase {get;set;}
Line         Property   System.String Line {get;set;}
LineNumber   Property   System.Int32 LineNumber {get;set;}
Matches      Property   System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match[] Matches {get;set;}
Path         Property   System.String Path {get;set;}
Pattern      Property   System.String Pattern {get;set;}

in order to remove a file we need the entire path.  We dont have fullname in out members, but we do have filename.  I use the path from before and melt it with the attribute filename.

$cookies | Select-String -Pattern "danskebank" | foreach{"$path\"+$_.filename}
file://fileserver/profileShare$/System/Username/Citrix/H/cookies/BJ9NTMU2.txt
file://fileserver/svprofil$/System/SVJVI/Citrix/H/cookies/MFBOIQR5.txt
file://fileserver/svprofil$/System/SVJVI/Citrix/H/cookies/8VN8Y5A5.txt

now its just to implement remove-item:

$cookies | Select-String -Pattern "danskebank" | foreach{remove-item ("$path\"+$_.filename)}

jobs done :)

Fixing users UserPrincipalName

We have had a scenario where some users lacked the attribute UserPrincipalName. 
To find these users I used:

$users=Get-ADUser -Server <DomainController> -filter * -searchbase "OU=Users,OU=Hosting,DC=<subdomain>,DC=<rootDomain>,DC=dk" | where {$_.userPrincipalName -eq $null}

Now to fix the attribute:

$users | foreach{$_.samaccountname;$_.UserPrincipalName = ($_.samaccountname+"@subdomain.rootdomain.dk");set-aduser -instance $_}

You can question the readability of this, but it gets the job done which is what we want.

Best regards
Claus