To be an effective administrator you should know about these shortcuts. It will save you a lot of headache. Please comment if you have more…

I call this… path from hell

Problem: Imagine you’re browing to this file in Explorer: C:\Temp\Folder1\Testing\very\long\shortcut\hereismyfile.txt. You need to copy the full path to a script or documentation.

Solution: Just shift+right-click and choose Copy as path.

No more right-click, choose Create shortcut, Properties on that and copy’n’paste the Target path. And no more selecting the path in the top, copy’n’paste and then copy’n’paste just the filename.

I call this… cmd from here

Problem: Again, you’re in that folder and there you have a .bat file or .exe you want to run from cmd from that folder. It takes a long time to open cmd.exe and manually cd to that path (even with Tab for auto-complete or copy’n’paste the path).

Solution: Just click the path bar, write “cmd” and return:

Done! It opens a cmd in that folder:

I call this… Multiple monitors annoyances

Problem: Many Sysadmins run multiple monitors and often need to change Window sizes and often put two windows side-by side (documentation to the right and the RDP windows to the left anyone?). Windows 7 introduced the possibility to drag a window to the left or right border and it would take up half the screen. Great! But what if you have multiple screens but DON’T want to drag the window to the next screen?

Solution: User Windows button and Left, Right, Up, Down to move it around. It will also move it to other screens if you’d like. No need to use your your mouse!

How it looks:

I call this… too many tabs

Problem: During research as a sysadmin I often end up with MANY tabs in Firefox/IE. When I’m finished it takes a long time just clicking the X to close them.

Solution: Ctrl+w will close tabs. You can close 20 tabs in seconds.

I call this… too much effort to mark in cmd

Problem: If you spend a lot of time in cmd you probably do a lot of right-click Mark, select the content and press Return to copy the content. Takes too much time? Yes.

 Solution: Go to Properties of the cmd window and select QuickEdit mode. Now you can select without right-clicking and choosing Mark.

I call this… IESC (Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration) sucks sometimes on servers

I agree that on servers you should not surf the web using IE. That’s why I often keep IEC enabled and don’t bother with adding sites to Trusted Lists. I simply download everything on a management server and transfer whatever I need to the server I’m working with. But sometimes I don’t have a management server or simply must download a file (a binary file, installation file etc) directly to the server. But with IEC and IE Security, that is hell to get that file downloaded. Solution? Use Powershell V3 built-in command to download it:

Invoke-WebRequest http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=324245 -OutFile C:\Temp\whateverfiletodownload.msi

Recognize it from the Linux wget anyone?