The Beginning

After working for over 15 years with microcomputers, I have found myself in tough situations. In order to get myself out of them I often ended up writing a small program. This page is a collection of them for anyone to use. Most command line utilities are written in DOS with Windows in mind. I call the DOS Idle interrupt whenever a program waits for an event to occur, and I developed and ran the programs under NT. Also because I used the old Novell 16 Bit SDK from 1994, my programs often run under systems running the Microsoft Client for Netware as well as Client 32. Some Netware 3 programs run against Netware 4/5 servers as well, because of Bindery Emulation mode.

Now

Currently I write Win32 Console applications and NT/2000 Services in C. I have been writing some scripts in VBS as well because Microsoft has now made a script engine almost as powerful as a compiler. While I am a Network Engineer, I also have a BS in Computer Science and enjoy helping people when I can. My latest project has been to write a small NAT service for NT to circumvent a defect in Microsoft ISA Server, in that ISA won't let you NAT hosts to specific external IPs. Checkout my Web Tools page for some useful online tools!

The Listing

General Description Examples _Copy   File:_copy.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS,OS/2 _Copy was written to provide easy Netware Server migrations for OS upgrades and hardware changes. Its ability to copy all file/directory properties including owner, Macintosh resource forks, trustees and all namespaces made it great in its day. Many additional features were added and it soon became a mixture of NCopy and XCopy32. Unusual features include: Skip identical files, Destination Mirroring, Open Files, Exclude Files/Directories, Speed and the Starting Directory option. NTFS Long File Name support is offered as well for source files, but usually xcopy will perform much faster if no Netware is involved. Remember its a DOS app so supporting LFNs at all is amazing! Uses include filling in missing files during multi-day migrations, since _Copy will skip identical files. Since KB/Sec and MB/Min are calculated, Network Bandwidth can easily be verified as well.   Running   Usage Check Compressed   File:_chkcomp.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:DOS with Netware Shell Loaded Used to locates files on a volumes that create console messages: Compressed file VOL:/DIR/FILE.NAME is corrupted and unrecoverable, and the file is left open and locked by the user connection forever. This error has come up a few times in my customer base with no solution from Novell, except to delete the volume and restore from tape. This program has to work from DOS but will save you a lot of time over the alternatives.   Usage Copy to NUL   File:_cp2nul.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS,OS/2 Used to verify files readability and to benchmark local or network disk throughput at a workstation. If repeated scans are made the host server's cache generally has the data and then network bandwidth at the client can be measured as well. Typical values are: 60MB/Min for 10mbit, 300 to 600MB/Min for 100mbit. This program also does KB/Sec which is useful for testing WAN links. I also have used it to search for corrupted files on a disk. Lately I have been using it to catch 100mbit Nic and Driver problems.   Running   Usage CPU Gauge   File:cpugauge.exe   Exe:16 bit VB3   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k Graphically displays the current CPU value for monitoring Netware Server performance. Supports logging to a file as well in CSV format for easy manipulation in Excel. Graphs over time can easily be created for study. Works with Netware 4/5/6 servers.   Running   Usage _Delete   File:_delete.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS File erase with several size, date and Netware options. Originally written to delete all GroupWise Attachments in the PO created by any given user. After a mailbox was deleted the attachments were left in the PO and space was an issue. Later a few more features were added. Also the Netware Owner option is not NDS aware so only users listed in the server's Bindery Context can be specified.   Usage Fileserver DOWN   File:_fdown.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS A workstation utilities to shutdown a Netware Server if the console is hung or locked. I used this often after a LOAD NLM command caused the prompt to never return.   Usage Has Open   File:_hasopen.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS Has Open allows viewing all users of an open file with messaging and disconnect options. I have setup a Shortcut for managers of shared file databases for them to easily find out who is in what files, rather than search at the file server console. See example for a screen shot.   Running   Usage List Users   File:_lu.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS List Users lists of all users with key properties. Very useful for documentation and for 3.x to 4.x migrations. This utility also runs against Netware 4/5 servers, except only the users in the servers Bindery Context are reported.   Running   Usage _Ping   File:_ping.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS,OS/2 Used to view statistics of ping results to a host. Supports payload and interval options as well. Supports logging to a file as well in CSV format for easy manipulation in Excel. Graphs over time can easily be created for study. This DOS exe calls the native ping OS command and then processes the output. I wrote it a long time ago for determining when a UNIX host would freeze.   Running   Usage   Log File Pause   File:_pause.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:DOS Batch Files Used to pause a file with countdown and sound options. Also might work with CMD files, but I wrote it with DOS in mind.   Usage Recover Copy   File:_rcopy.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS Used to read past File I/O Errors like Abort, Retry, Ignore and recover as much data as possible from a file containing bad blocks. The copy starts near the end and then works its way around the file while avoiding previously located problem areas until last. Every block is attempted. The source and destination can be local or network drives. The program works best on DOS for network file recovery, because so many Windows Clients perform Auto Retry when errors occur and never let Recover Copy move past the defective block. If a Netware Server is the source and DOS is not an option, then use the Microsoft Client for Netware instead of Novell's Client 32 Shell. After initial recovery of the file to a stable destination, optional Merging of the last good backup of the file is also available. The merge has been highly successful with fixed record size database files. Multi-user shared access files would also do well. Typical single user files for applications such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and 1-2-3 probably wouldn't do very well with a merge. But it probably wouldn't hurt much since the file contains all zeros for any block it was unable to read anyway. See the Usage example for additional details. Note: _Copy can be told to run _RCopy whenever it finds a file it is unable to copy.   Running   Usage Registry Save/Restore   File:regsave.exe   Exe:16 bit VB3   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k Provides an easy way to performs a complete Snapshot/Restore of the registry. Also the Restore option can place the registry on another partition. The program was written to provide a clean snapshot to restore from while working on Citrix servers. It also was used for moving the registry for Disk to Disk NT Server Migrations. It only supports NT 3.5 and 4.0!   Running   Usage Server Monitor   File:_servmon.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS Displays 6 key values for determining Netware Server performance problems. Supports logging to a file as well in a tab delimited format for easy manipulation in Excel. Graphs over time can easily be created for study. Works with Netware 4/5/6 servers.   Usage   Running   Log File Volume Info   File:_vi.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS Volume Information displays all mounted volumes with detailed information. Also Total Server storage and Backup Estimate is provided. I wrote it because the original Netware 4.0x utilities reported incorrect values for large volumes.   Running   Usage Volume Trustees   File:_vt.exe   Exe:16 bit DOS   OS:Win 9x/NT/2k,DOS Volume Trustees displays a directory tree with all user/group permissions granted. Options include only listing paths that have Trustee Assignemnts set.   Running   Usage

Download

The ZIP file of all the utilities: TheDawsonUtilities.zip