Windows Operating Systems Commands

You may probably already known how to get information about your computer using different tools such as System Information . For this post, I thought it would be helpful to share how to view system information directly from the Command Prompt. These are some of the commands that many professionals use on day to day basis. Hope this list is useful.

Ipconfig
Used to get the TCP/IP config values, mainly used to get the IP address of the local machine. It also displays all the IP addresses assigned to that machine.

MSConfig

Used to display windows booting parameters, initial system loading programs info

Ping
Ping is a simple command to test the quality of the network connection between a host and the server. It gives latency and Time to Lift parameter values

Tracert
It gives how many hops each packet takes to reach the given host name

Pathping
Another command somewhat similar to both tracert and ping as this will first list the number of hops between host and the server and then ping every router in between waiting for the response to conclude the connection type.

Net
Used to start, stop or view some network operations

hostname
Displays the Microsoft networking computer name.

Route
Used to manipulate TCP/IP routing information.

Netstat
Get current tcp/ip connection and ports info

Finger
Displays information about the user

Getmac
Used to get the MAC address of the system connected to the network, available in Win7, vista and XP.

cmd

To open another command shell with in cmd shell. Type exit to come out inner shell.

netsh int ip reset all

To quickly reset your NIC back to DHCP with no manual settings,

systeminfo | more

To quickly generate a text summary of your system

netsh trace start capture=yes tracefile=c:\capture.etl

If you need to run a trace without Netmon or Wireshark then run the above command, it will save the trace into capture.etl file

once tracing is completed execute, "netsh trace stop"

netstat -ano 1

Here’s a simple way to see all open network connections, refreshing every second:

shutdown -r -t 0 -m \\localhost or IP address

You can use the shutdown to shutdown or reboot a machine, including your own, in a simple scheduled task

For most of the windows commands you can get help around its usage by appending /? to the command

For example: to get help on how to use hostname command and its parameters type

C:\>hostname /?

Please leave your comments.

How to start blogging?

Blogging is a way of sharing information and a form of online communciation to pass the message to internet users directly. It is a very public activity. Anything that gets posted on the internet stays there forever and helps internet users by bringing a large amount of information together for all to read and use and the same time saves a lot of time because all of the information is right at their fingertips.

Blogging is one of the few activities in business which you should not delegate.  Professional writers may be able to craft press releases, website content and the like but they cannot write your blog entries for you. This is because blogs succeed with human, personality-based touch. It is an easy way to publish fresh content online.

More valuable content means more visitors to your site. It allows anyone self-publish to anyone who can afford a computer and Internet access.  Blogging is becoming a fast and simple way to convey news and other information to others through the Internet.   Recently, there has been much discussion about how libraries may use blogging  to distribute info about library news and events to its users.

It is just more about putting your every day life on the Internet. All kind of people read your blog but they care to respond. To design your blog there are few things you must do is select the templates, custom colors and fonts, drag and drop page elements.  Perhaps the best thing about blogging is that it costs nothing to start.

You can start blogging by going to http://blogspot.com. All you need a google account or else you can create there itself. You can have as many blogs you want and your great content can be easily monetized by placing google adsense ads.

Other popular blogging sites are:

http://www.livejournal.com/

http://www.myspace.com/
http://wordpress.com/
http://www.typepad.com/
http://www.copyblogger.com

Most of the blogging sites allow multiple types of material to be published including pictures, word documents, videos and presentations etc. The owner of the blog possesses the sole ownership of changing the blog depending on their wish.

In addition to writing your own blogs, there are many blogs on the internet has many useful content right from programming to marketing. I will list out top blogs under each category in my next posts.

Please leave your comments

Performance testing using LoadRunner

Performance testing is the smartest manner in which Performance testers may use to evaluate their applications just before it finally enters the market scene. In case you didn't do overall performance testing to a software product and clients experience errors and difficulties using the product, then you will surely face huge problem.

As its title suggest performance testing using LoadRunner is about testing reliability, programs, speed, hardware, networks and efficacy of devices. Maybe you are thinking why performance testing is very significant at all forms of applications.

HP LoadRunner is usually an automated performance and testing product from Hewlett-Packard for examining system behaviour and performance, while generating actual load. HP acquired LoadRunner as part of its acquisition of Mercury Interactive in November 2006.

HP LoadRunner software for Mobile is the industry-standard performance testing solution for services and applications. HP LoadRunner became almost a de facto standard for companies that must ensure high reliability and scalability of applications and for this purpose should have a well-functioning system of testing, which allows to determine in advance how applications will behave under real production conditions.

HP LoadRunner supports popular protocols

Web (HTTP/HTML)
Web Services
Sliverlight
SAPGUI
Oracle NCA
Oracle (2-Tier)
Flex
Citrix
Ajax and many other types of applications

In the last few years I've seen a form of trend where in performance testers use tools like fiddler/yslow/httpwatch for scripting purpose in spite of having fully licensed version of the LoadRunner or other performance tools.

LoadRunner has various components that helps achieving evaluating an application:

VuGen:

VuGen predominately consists of scripting in the VuGen environment. All the scripts that you write / debug / test will be done in VuGen itself with one user. If you want to test with multiple users, you must use controller software.

Controller:

Controller is the heart of HP LoadRunner software. This is the place where you will design how users need to be entered into the system, how long vusers need to run and how vusers will be moving out of the system and various other parameters.

Analysis:

Analysis is a piece of software part of HP Loadrunner which does collecting all the event files, logs and summarize all the results from all the LoadGenerators used in the test and draw nice graphs and reports. Depending what other diagnostic tools you have, analysis provides very useful information.

LoadGenerator:

LoadGenerator or Host referred with the same meaning. It is a software residing on a machine and takes commands from controller software and runs the specified number of users and sends the results back to Controller software. To run GUI Vusers on a remote load generator machine, make sure that the LoadRunner agent is configured to run as a process.