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Batch Script – Zip/Compress Files Without Calling Any Third-Party Applications

While writing another batch script the last several days, I found out that you cannot zip or compress files or folders natively from the command line without having additional third-party software or PowerShell. After a while of scouring the forums, I came up with this pure batch solution that uses VB script.

Basically, from this chunk of code in a single batch file, we can both generate the VB script, zip up whatever files we want, and then just delete the VB script when we’re done. Within the batch file, we can just call on the VB script using “CScript” and it works pretty much like any other function in any other programming language.
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Batch Script – Get User’s SID One-Liner

While researching a way to try and send files to a user’s Recycle Bin from a batch script, I came across this one liner either at StackExchange or SuperUser forums somewhere. FYI, there is no way natively to send something to the trash without using a VB script or some third party utility. Yes you can physically move the files into the C:\$Recycle.Bin\<UsersSID> folder, but the files will not show up in Explorer and won’t be removed when you empty the trash that way.
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Windows Terminal Server – Three Ways to Disable AVG Tray Icon via Group Policy

I scoured the internet forever and a day to find a way to disable the AVG tray icon in a Windows Terminal Server environment because as with most people, even though to make any major changes in the AVG settings it does require an admin password, I didn’t want my users to be able to toy around in there even, let alone run a bunch of malicious scans and slow the server down for everybody or gain access to view our AVG Business license key. I even contacted AVG technical support and they didn’t have a solution to my problem and I find it extremely hard to believe that I am the only person out there in the world facing this issue.

Well, today I finally figured out a way to disable the AVG tray icon via Group Policy using Software Restriction Policies. By creating a rule to prevent the running of the “avgui.exe” process, you can essentially disable the tray icon. As long as you have your group policies structured so that your users OU get a different group policy than say the admins OU, then the admins can still get into AVG, run any scans, or change any settings inside AVG. I guess I should mention that you could use this for any OU for that matter that you didn’t want to have access to the AVG UI, it’s not just limited to Remote Desktop Servers. Pretty sweet!
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Windows 8.1 – Disable IPv6 Components

While trying to troubleshoot some issues with a user’s flaky VPN connection (they could get connected but couldn’t ping anything on the company network), my first guesses were that it was either a routing issue and that IPv6 might be the culprit or that it could be an MTU issue. In searching for the answers on how to disable IPv6, I had stumbled across a blog article that, while seemingly helpful at the time, had some misleading information on it that caused some rather undesirable results. It gave me an incorrect registry value setting of “0xffffffff” that actually caused Windows to take an extra five seconds to boot.
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Windows Explorer – Cannot Read From the Source File or Disk

Sometimes when users on a Mac manipulate files on a Windows network share, files get left with missing attributes where there is no security tab in the properties, you cannot take ownership of the files nor can you delete them and you get an error message that states “Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.”.
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Windows Update Error 8024402C – Bypass WSUS for VPN Computers Joined to the Domain

For remote teleworkers who have computers joined to a domain running Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), to overcome Windows Update error 8024402C, via the registry, you will need to force the computer to bypass your WSUS server by setting the “UseWUServer” DWORD value from “1” to “0” and then restart the computer.
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