XS BAP 2.0 Public Beta is Ready!

Posted by Timothy • Topics: Tech Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:30 PM

XS BAP, my Bulk Administration Password tool, has just received a major overhaul and facelift! But it isn't ready for "prime time" just yet. It needs a good public beta testing! For everybody who currently is using XS BAP 1.0, give this update a try. There are numerous new features and XS BAP now takes full advantage of the DotNet Framework 2.0 for better performance and a more slick UI. Post comments in this blog or email me and let me know how this version is holding up. I want to get all the bugs ironed out so I can upload this to download.com. Thank you for your support.

So what exactly does XS BAP do and why do you absolutely NEED it if you are a Windows Admin in a small, medium, or large company? Click here to read this wonderful article in MCP Mag that explains it better than I ever could!

Click here to visit the XS BAP home page. Remember, XS BAP is freeware!

XS BAP 2.0 download links:
- Zip file with setup.exe and msi installer
- MSI installer only

Here is the changelog for version 2.0's new features:

- First release in the 2.0.x code-line. Public beta.
- Converted original project to Dot Net Framework 2.0.
- Fixed many conventions that did not conform to standard Windows usability standards.
- Updated UI to "XP-style."
- Added auto-update feature and also a manual update link in the help menu.
- Added MRU feature.
- Added ability to import from white-space delimited text files.
- Improved error handling.
- Improved speed and reliability of updating/verifying code.
- Added ability to customize random and complex password definitions.
- Added persistent user configurations.
- Added window-state memory (application remembers it's last window size and maximize state).
- Added error reporting service for fatal application errors.
- Added detection capabilities for if user is domain admin or not.
- Changed menu arrangements slightly.
- Added toolbar customization.
- Added "ping" column to tell whether or not a computer is online.
- Added status bar which reports selected rows, last results of operations, and whether or not the saved file is encrypted using NTFS' EFS.
- Improved handling of window resizing for alternate font sizes (although I know I haven't caught them all!).
- Improved computer importing abilities.
- Added an "Edit" menu. Please note that table operations are not undoable!
- Improved clipboard handling for copying and pasting information in the table.
- Added ability to manually set computer status (Updated and Verified status columns)
- Password is no longer revealed by simply selecting the cell. You must now either double-click (to edit) or use the "reveal passwords" toolbar button or menu item.
- Updated icons, but they still suck. Is anybody out there an artist who can improve this for me?? Please?? :-)
- Added shameless donation and Avian Waves music website plugs!
- Data files are 100% backward compatible with XS BAP 1.0.

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Comments (10)

10 comments on article "XS BAP 2.0 Public Beta is Ready!"

T3mpl@r

7/24/2007 6:01 AM

Hi,

I have evaluated XS BAP 2.0 Beta for my organization and it is a wonderful product. Just wanted to know when it is going Live as I do not want to deploy any product in production environment till it goes Live.

Do reply

Thanks...

Timothy

7/24/2007 8:49 AM

Good question. I've been swamped with getting version 2.0 of my more popular application, RD Tabs, ready for RTW. XS BAP has a few really strange outstanding errors that I have yet to figure out, plus I need to write up the documentation before it goes RTW. I'm not sure when that date will be. Overall it's pretty stable. I understand the not wanting to use 'beta' products in production, but to be completely honest, since I'm a one-man freeware shop, the difference between a strong beta and RTW is that the RTW hasn't had the remaining bugs discovered yet. :-) If it's working for you right now, then it's about as safe to production ready as it will get. The outstanding bugs were mainly just UI problems anyway. Thanks for the support!

etcwarrionr

9/20/2007 8:51 PM

Timothy, as you must know that this is a good tool that helps manage a huge risk in most organizations. By making this freeware you are providing a great community service. Having established that you're both nice and clever, you have, no doubt, considered that your software would be able to reach more people if you made it open source. So, I'm curious as to what is holding you back?

Anyway, I'm willing to help you out with documentation if you're interested.

Timothy

9/21/2007 9:20 AM

I'm not too keen on open source only because I like to keep a selfish strict stranglehold on my source code. :-) I have toyed with making it shared source (a la Microsoft's CodePlex site), which is basically open source-ish, but stricter intellectual property and distribution provisions than, say, the GPL.

the XS BAP 2.0 code is confusing and tangled because I wrote XS BAP 1.0 back when I was learning VB.Net and didn't know how to write very clean in that language.

As for documentation help, I'm all for the help! Do you have a CHM making software? I use Help N Doc because it has a free version and it works pretty well.

Gene

7/9/2009 1:32 PM

Timothy,

I was wondering if this password is transmitted encrypted over the net to the named computer or is it sent open text.

Timothy

7/9/2009 1:42 PM

It uses the Windows API, which will use whatever level of security is set up on your network. Behind the scenes are basically just WMI calls.

Mr. H.

4/28/2011 12:56 PM

This tool has a lot of potential. I am enterprise systems administrator and my group manages around 1800 Windows servers. We currently run a "home-brew" script we wrote on-house to go through and change the password for the local administrator accounts on all our servers. We also have a script that will change the local admin account name as well. Recently it was suggested that we find away via script to log-in or some other way which can verify which servers took the new local admin password. I was thinking - perhaps adding such a feature could be useful to other administrators. -Just food for thought. Keep up the good work and don't let this become abandon-ware. Thanks!

Timothy

4/28/2011 3:01 PM

Thanks for the kind words. I do plan on returning to this project eventually because I use it very often myself. I have several ideas in queue: bug fixes, new discovery options, more advanced "online" detection as well as disabling it if you don't want it, new UI (non-datatable based), primary key tied to computer+username and not just computer, if a computer has more than one account you want to control the password for, faster "verify" code, and more.

Adrian Grant

9/27/2011 5:12 PM

Your tool is God sent, as s Systems Administrator I consider this a must have!!!

Jamie

1/19/2012 1:50 PM

This tool is awesome, but I have a problem with it not connecting to some of the pc's on our domain. It detects them being online but when I try to Verify I get Failed and it will not update the password. Has anyone else ran into this?