Mesh'ing Live.Sysinternals.com, using Vista Scheduling and Robocopy

Yesterday I blogged about the new live.sysinternals.com site and how it's not only available via URL but also UNC (The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com). And I made a comment that now I wanted a Mesh folder too (some users are just never satisfied... give them an inch... yada, yada... ;)

Well lazy me, I just realized that I can do this myself very easily and simply.

What is the request/need?

• I want auto-sync'ing of the sysinternal tools. This is so I can use them if I'm offline.
• I want to use Mesh so the tools are also on my machines.
• I want it to be easy, simple and automated.

Resolution (v1)

• Use the very cool task scheduling in Vista to robocopy the files from \\live.sysinternals.com\tools to a local folder.
• Mesh that local folder.

Done.

 

Robocopy comes with Vista and is "smart". It won't copy the files if that have not changed, thereby saving bandwidth. It can also be run in a restartable mode and can handle flaky networks well (with auto-retries, etc).

Creating a scheduled task on Vista is easy too... Go to Start, find Task Scheduler, click on Create Basic Task, fill in the when, what and etc.

Here's my task, and the action I used...

It has taken me longer to write this up than it did to have the task created, files copied and my Mesh sync'ed.  :)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com