Mass local administrator password change tool for Windows servers/desktops

I have been a bad admin for a while and used a single complex password as the local administrator password for a number of my servers. This certainly isn't best practice and has been on my cleanup list for a long time.

I wrote a simple vb script that utilizes the famous pstools pspasswd utility, it's fairly dirty but it gets the job done.

The script reads the computer names from a file, picks a random 20 character password, changes the local administrator password with pspasswd and then logs the passwords to a CSV called "passwords.csv".

Syntax: cscript changepass.vbs <computernamelist.txt>

You can download the package from my Github

AMD ULPS (Ultra Low Power State) disable tool

Anyone that has troubleshooted problems with AMD/ATI graphics card crossfire configurations will probably know about Ultra Low Power State (ULPS). ULPS is a sleep state that lowers the frequencies and voltages of non-primary cards in an attempt to save power. The downside of ULPS is that is can cause performance loss and some crossfire instability.

ULPS is controlled via a registry value named "EnableULPS" located under the "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video" key, it can be disabled by setting the value to 0 or enabled with 1. As there are often multiple EnableULPS values in the registry for different cards and even older graphics cards that were previously in the system, it can be a tedious task to manually make the changes.

This is a simple tool written in the AutoIT scripting language, it searches the HKLM\System key and changes all EnableULPS to either 0/1 as defined by user input.

You can download the binary here (or source if you are interested) from my Github.

GTLcontrol code update v2.0 online

You might have seen the control software I put up for Gigabyte Tweak Launcher (GTL) about a month back. At the competitive end of overclocking the ability to dynamically control the clock speed is priceless, it can be the difference between those last 10 points you need to take the world record. GTLcontrol provides this functionality to any motherboard that supports Gigabyte's GTL.

I have updated the code base to include a full GUI, hotkeys for bclk/multi up/down adjustments and I've also cleaned up the code to increase the performance a little.

The hotkeys F7/F8 are used for multi up/down and F10/F11 are now used for bclk up/down. This allows low end Gigabyte boards to be used just like the uber high end Z77X-UP7.

Also to support the GUI functionality is a new F5 hotkey to "show" the GUI if you have hidden it. I suggest turning the GUI off once you have your settings right, as then GTLcontrol will use less memory and impact your benchmark less. I have done extensive testing with it off and on and found no efficiency loss, but better to be safe than sorry. Please note that if you do turn the GUI off, you need to manually turn it back on by setting "gui=1" in the gtlcontrol.ini file.

Remember when you make any changes to save and then hit reload, this will activate the changes.

Feel free to take this code and do whatever you want with it, please email me any changes as I would like to check them out.

You can download the full version from here or the source code from my github.

Enjoy!

Gigabyte Tweak Launcher hotkey control tool

Overclockers everywhere rejoiced when Gigabyte released their Gigabyte Tweak Launcher (GTL) software that is capable of adjusting the multiplier, voltages and bus speeds. GTL is super lightweight and perfect for competitive overclocking but unfortunately is has one small downfall, it doesn't support hotkeys. Hotkeys can be an essential part of taking that world record, clocking a higher frequency for one part of a test, then lowering the frequency for a heavy CPU based test.

With the help of the lightweight autoit scripting language I have put together a small script capable of passing commands to GTL via hotkeys, my gtlcontrol script works as follows.

How to use GTLCONTROL

1. Download gtlcontrol.exe and gtlcontrol.ini from my github repositories.

2. Make sure Gigabyte Tweak Launcher is installed.

3. Edit gtlcontrol.ini to set your bclk, voltage and multiplier.

4. There are 3 options for each hotkey "multienable", "voltenable" and "bclkenable".

If you want to enable any of the 3 options set the value to 1, setting the value to 0 disables the respective option.

For example, multienable=1 enables the multiplier. multienable=0 disables the multiplier.

NOTE: Every time you edit gtlcontrol.ini you need to exit and reload gtlcontrol.exe.


5. To use the application, first start Gigabyte Tweak Launcher and then open gtlcontrol.exe. GTL must be running in the background for the hotkey functionality to work.

6. Your hotkeys f1 through to f4 will execute the options you set in gtlcontrol.ini.


NOTES:

The options in the [debug] sections are for debugging, you don't need to touch them.

You may want to disable the teamau splash screen, to do this set title=0

If you don't trust binaries, the source is provided in gtlcontrol.au3 (check out my github), it is written in the autoit scripting language.