PsTools Part 1: Introduction

PsTools is small suite of command-line of applications within the greater Windows Systinternals suite.

Any network admin of more than just a handful of Windows servers should be very familiar with PsTools. If there is any process where you must repeatedly RDP (Yes, I use it as a verb.) into a server, you could probably save yourself some serious time by automating the process in a batch file which refers to one of the utilities within the PsTools suite.

There is no installation for PsTools. You only need to download the ZIP file from Microsoft, and extract the contents into an easy-to-find location such as C:\pstools (my choice). If there is a server or workstation which you wish to use as your base of operations, you should consider adding the path to your PsTools directory into Path Environmental Variable:

(Windows 7) From the start menu, right-click on Computer and choose Properties. Click on Advanced System Settings in the upper-left part of the window that just opened up. Click Environmental Variables. In the bottom section labeled System Variables, scroll down, highlight Path, and click Edit. Click in the box labeled Variable value, and press the End key on your keyboard. Add a semicolon and immediately follow that (no space) with the path to your PsTools applications (i.e. ;C:\PsTools).

Note: To run a command using a PsTools application on a remote computer, you must have the WMI/RPC port (135) open on the remote host.