Reboot Cisco ASA 5505 from ASDM

For some reason I've searched for this multiple times and always end up with little in the way of results. As a way of reminding myself and hopefully helping the next poor soul searching for this here it is:

Tools menu -> System Reload...

Choose to schedule the reload for "Now" and click Schedule.

net send in Windows 7

Need to send a message to a computer on your network? In the days of XP and earlier you could use "net send" to pop up a message, but those days are gone. Luckily I've discovered a simple command to recreate the same effect in Windows 7 (and probably later versions as well). First, if you don't have PsTools installed you're going to want to. Specifically we're going to use PsExec, but having the whole suite is worth doing. After you download and extract it somewhere (why not c:\bin\ ?) you'll need to either open a command prompt in that directory, or add that directory to your path environment variable. Then it's as simple as:

psexec \\computer-name msg * /server:localhost "Your computer will self destruct in 30 seconds!"

Easy as pi! PsExec can also be used to do lots of other interesting things like remotely enable RDP. Take a look at the options for PsExec, as well as msg to get an idea about more possibilities. You'll likely find other useful PsTools too, now that you know about them.

Disclaimer:
Please use your new found power responsibly. I do not officially condone ANY April Fool's pranks or any other nonsense of the sort.

Get the attention of a remote user

I regularly use LogMeIn Rescue to provide remote support for users. Sometimes they stop paying attention while I'm working and when that happens I'll inevitably end up needing to get them to enter a password or otherwise interact with the computer. One nifty trick I use is to repeatedly set their volume using the Windows 7 volume control in the taskbar. The computer will beep each time you click a volume level as a test sound and a few times in a row will typically get someone's attention pretty quickly!

And if that doesn't work, there's always BreadFish