I am finally catching up on a lot of old email that I wasn’t able to get to, literally thousands of messages. I am quite happy with the number of people who find the tools useful saving them minutes or hours of time and the other comments of thanks we were told by MSFT this or that wasn’t possible but you show how to do it or provide a tool to do it and the other comments of we saved XX thousands of dollars by using your tools instead of buying products from other companies (don’t forget about the tip jar at the top left of the screen at http://blog.joeware.net/).
As for questions… Let me post some quick hit answers that are all that is needed for a large percentage of the emails I am going through.
Q: I need to learn AD and/or something isn’t working right in the tool because <insert some problem here that shows the user is not at all familiar with AD such as incorrect ordering of RDNs in the DN>.
A: There are lots of good books out there, I will initially recommend my book as it has gone through multiple revisions to fix issues and it really does hit things from beginner to advanced. http://amzn.to/2ofDlEN
Q: I love your free tools but <insert some aspect of how I provide the tools that someone doesn’t like for example they have to go to different links to download the tools or they aren’t available in a single zip or the tools display my joeware banner or anything else like that>. When will you get smart and fix it so I don’t have to deal with this? (seriously had multiple emails that ended like that as if people are doing me a favor by using a tool I provide for free and ALLOW them to use)
A: The tools are free, I provide them in the way I do for specific reasons. The fact that they are free and you find them extremely useful and don’t have to pay for them (did I say free) means you can deal with it or you can find something else if there is anything else out there that does what you need. Alternately you could write your own see https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/
Q: I need to learn PowerShell, how do I do that?
A: I don’t really use PowerShell but if you want to learn I recommend the many online resources for the topic.
Q: What is the warranty? I have a problem with the tool and I wrote critical processes that depend on it and I need the tool changed immediately. Or it broke something of mine and I need you to fix it for us now.
A: See warranty – http://www.joeware.net/freetools/warranty.htm
Q: I need the source for tool X for <insert any reason in the universe here>, when can you get that to me?
A: See the FAQ – http://www.joeware.net/faq/index.htm
Q: When I start my computer or run XYX app I see your name/email pop for a second on my screen. What did you put on my machine?
A: Nothing, someone else, probably an admin or application provider is using one of my tools for something. My tools can all be found at http://www.joeware.net/freetools/index.htm and if you didn’t download something from there, you got it from someone other than me.
Q: Your initial image on your website is perverted.
A: No, it really isn’t.
Q: AdFind is broken because I see groups in ADUC that I don’t see in AdFind.
A: It isn’t broken, group enumeration isn’t a single straightforward LDAP query. Get my book and learn about how AD does groups. Also look at using my memberof utility.
I don’t know how you deal with it all 🙂
I at least take solace that some of these are simply misunderstandings, but I’m saddened and dismayed at some of the brazen entitlement.
Seriously though, I need you to send me all your source code by tomorrow or I will cease using your tools 😉