Management Features New To Windows Vista - Command-line Tools

Command-line Tools

Several new command-line tools are included in Windows Vista. Several existing tools have also been updated and some of the tools from the Windows Resource Kit are now built-in into the operating system.

• auditpol — Configure, create, back up and restore audit policies on any computer in the organization from the command line with verbose logging. Replaces auditusr.exe.
• bcdedit — Create, delete, and reorder the bootloader (boot.ini is no longer used).
• bitsadmin — BITS administration utility.
• chglogon — Enable or disable session logins.
• chgport — List or change COM port mappings for DOS application compatibility.
• chgusr — Change install mode.
• choice — Allows users to select one item from a list of choices and returns the index of the selected choice.
• clip — Redirects output of command line tools to the Windows clipboard. This text output can then be pasted into other programs.
• cmdkey — Creates, displays, and deletes stored user names and passwords from Credentials Manager.
• diskpart — Expanded to support hard disks with the GUID Partition Table, USB media, and a new "shrink" command has been added which facilitates shrinking a pre-existing NTFS partition.
• diskraid — Launches the Diskraid application.
• dispdiag — Display diagnostics.
• expand — Updated version of expand.exe that allows extracting .MSU files. MSU is a self-contained update format known as a 'Microsoft Update Standalone Installer'. MSU files use Intra-Package Delta (IPD) compression technology. IPD technology reduces the download size of an MSU file but still delivers a self-contained package that contains the updated files.
• forfiles — Selects a file (or set of files) and executes a command on that file. This is helpful for batch jobs.
• icacls — Updated version of cacls. Displays or modifies access control lists (ACLs) and DACLs of files and directories. It can also backup and restore them and set mandatory labels of an object for interaction with Mandatory Integrity Control.
• iscsicli — Microsoft iSCSI Initiator.
• mklink — create, modify and delete junctions, hard links, and symbolic links.
• muiunattend — Multilingual User Interface unattend actions.
• netcfg — WinPE network installer.
• ocsetup — Windows optional component setup.
• pkgmgr — Windows package manager.
• pnpunattend — Audit system, unattended online driver install.
• pnputil — Microsoft PnP Utility.
• query — Query {Process|Session|TermServer|User}
• quser — Display information about users logged on to the system.
• robocopy — the next version of xcopy with additional features. Compared to the freely available TechNet Magazine version, (XP026), the Windows Vista version additionally supports /EFSRAW switch to copy encrypted files without decrypting them and /SL switch to copy symbolic links instead of their target.
• rpcping — Pings a server using RPC.
• setx — Creates or modifies environment variables in the user or system environment. Can set variables based on arguments, registry keys or file input.
• sxstrace — WinSxS tracing utility.
• takeown — Allows administrators to take ownership of a file for which access is denied.
• timeout — Accepts a timeout parameter to wait for the specified time period (in seconds) or until any key is pressed. It also accepts a parameter to ignore the key press.
• tracerpt — Microsoft TraceRpt.
• waitfor — Sends, or waits for, a signal on a system. When /S is not specified, the signal will be broadcasted to all the systems in a domain. If /S is specified, then the signal will be sent only to the specified system.
• wbadmin — Backup command-line tool.
• wecutil — Windows Event collector utility.
• wevtutil — Windows Event command line utility.
• where — Displays the location of files that match the search pattern. By default, the search is done along the current directory and in the paths specified by the PATH environment variable.
• whoami — Can be used to get user name and group information along with the respective Security Identifiers (SID), privileges, logon identifier (logon ID) for the current user (access token) on the local system. i.e. the current logged on user. If no switch is specified, the tool displays the user name in NTLM format (domain\username).
• winrm.cmd — Windows Remote Management command line utility.
• winrs — Windows Remote Shell (WinRS) allows establishing secure Windows Remote Management sessions to multiple remote computers from a single console.
• winsat — Windows System Assessment Tool command line.

Services for UNIX has been renamed Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications, and is included with the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. Network File System (NFSv3) client support is also included. However, the utilities and SDK are required to be downloaded separately. Also, the server components from the SFU product line (namely Server for NFS, User Name Mapping, Server for NIS, Password Synchronization etc.) are not included.