Category: Microsoft

Easy way to Test the Listening Ports on Windows Systems

A nice tool that you can use is Microsoft’s free PortQueryUI. It provides a GUI for the portqry.exe command-line tool, which is installed by default on recent Windows OS versions.

  1. Run portqueryui.exe.
  2. In the Port Query dialog box, enter the destination IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name(FQDN) to query. In this case, you can enter 127.0.0.1 or localhost.
  3. Select Manually input query ports and type 443 in the Ports to query field. (By default, TCP is selected in the Protocol drop-down list).
  4. Click the Query button. The status of port 443 is displayed in the bottom pane of the Port Query dialog box.

Backing Up to Multiple Removable Drives in Windows Server Backup

The Windows Backup wizard wants all targets present at the time of configuration.  Since we only have one dock (and a minimum of two drives), if we try to add additional hard drives to the job, the wizard fails with the error: “The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect” and the backup job is not modified.

 

This can be achieved in simple steps.

Find “Command Prompt” in the start menu and “Run as Administrator” from the right-click menu.

Get the drive ID of the disk we want to add to the job as we’ll need it for the next step:

At the command prompt, type wbadmin get disks

Each drive attached to the system will be listed; so, find the removable disk and copy the long string of numbers (and the brackets) that make up the “Disk Identifier” Copy this to the clipboard

At the command prompt, now type WBADMIN ENABLE BACKUP -addtarget:{PASTE-YOUR-DISK-ID-HERE}

You’ll get a one or a bunch of prompts (depending on if the drive is formatted for backups or not, if existing backups are present on the disk, etc.)

Finally, make sure you answer Y to the question “Do you want to enable scheduled backups with the above settings?”

Now, when you look at the Backup screen, you’ll see multiple targets in the DESTINATION settings, and the Destination Usage drop down will show the drive that’s connected PLUS the disconnected drive.