Practical guides for system administrators — Windows, PowerShell, Active Directory, networking, and infrastructure.
nltest is a command-line utility that communicates directly with the Netlogon service on Windows. It gives system administrators direct access to domain controller discovery, trust relationship inspection, and secure channel management — all from the command line, without opening Active…
The TITLE command changes the title bar text of a Command Prompt window. You probably already know that. But there is more to it — dynamic status updates during script execution, multi-window orchestration with START, and a few non-obvious behaviors…
The dir command lists files and directories in a given path. It is available on every Windows system, works without additional tools or modules, and is reliable in scripts, remote sessions, and recovery environments. For system administrators, it is often…
The attrib command has been part of Windows since the DOS era, but it still solves problems that modern GUI tools handle poorly or not at all. When files go missing after a malware infection, when a script fails silently…
Need to rename files in bulk? Change file extensions quickly? Fix a hundred messy filenames with one line?The ren command is your lightweight, no-nonsense solution — and it’s been quietly rocking the Windows CLI since the MS-DOS days. Let’s give…
Ever wish you could turn a long, annoying folder path into its own drive letter — instantly? Good news: Windows has had a secret command for that since the stone age (aka DOS). It’s called SUBST, and it lets you…
mklink in Windows: symlinks, junctions, and when to use each mklink is a built-in Windows CMD command that creates symbolic links, hard links, and directory junctions — pointers that let the operating system treat one path as if it were…
In the modern DevOps world, CI/CD pipelines are the MVPs behind the scenes — automating builds, running tests, and pushing code to production while you sip your coffee. But what are they really? And why do developers and sysadmins alike…
So you’re on a domain-joined Windows machine, and someone tells you to “just submit the CSR to the CA.” Cool. One problem: You have no idea where the CA is. Or if there’s even one available. 😅 Fear not, fellow…
certutil is a built-in Windows utility primarily used for certificate management, but it also supports Base64 encoding and decoding of files directly from CMD — no additional software required. It has been available on every version of Windows since Vista…
