The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘PowerShell’ Category

Writing a tool that restarts the Google Chat desktop app Window (and hopefully the Google Duo desktop app Window too)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/04

In the past, the Google Hangouts desktop app on Windows would integrate with the system “tray” (actually the notification area) and show you missed chats and calls.

The [Wayback/Archive] Google Chat desktop app does not. It shows missed messages only as a number on the taskbar icon. Even worse: when you close the Window, the taskbar application icon does not show that number any more.

The odd thing is that the Google Duo desktop app does stay active and shows a notification popup on incoming calls. The Google Chat desktop app does not.

So I wanted to restart the Google Chat desktop app automatically when the Window was closed. But there is a catch:

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Posted in .NET, C#, CommandLine, Delphi, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Deploy .NET Framework 3.5 by using Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) instead of Chocolatey and some notes on PowerShell colours

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/07

Since every now and then, like testing software developed with older tools, you need to run older software.

This always works: [Wayback /Archive] Deploy .NET Framework 3.5 by using Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) | Microsoft Learn

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All

Use /All to enable all parent features of the specified feature.

(The /All is needed because software requiring .NET Framework 3.5 also require the parent features).

Notes:

  • Tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11 in 2022.
  • It can take a really long time (more than just a few minutes!) even on fast connections.
  • Installing through Chocolatey with `choco install dotnet3.5 fails on Windows 11 (have not tried on Windows 10) with the classical red on black PowerShell default error theme*:

    ERROR: The term 'wmic' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
    The install of DotNet3.5 was NOT successful.
    Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\DotNet3.5\Tools\ChocolateyInstall.ps1'.

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Posted in .NET, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, C#, Chocolatey, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

Link archive: Windows PSBits/PasswordStealing/NPPSpy at master · gtworek/PSBits

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/12

Simple (but fully working) code for NPLogonNotify(). The function obtains logon data, including cleartext password.

[Wayback/Archive] PSBits/PasswordStealing/NPPSpy at master · gtworek/PSBits has been used in the wild since about 2022 (the code is from 2020).

The code is a ~100 line C file resulting in a DLL exporting the NPGetCaps() and NPLogonNotify() functions.

Background/related:

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Posted in .NET, Blue team, C, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Red team, Scripting, Security, Software Development, Windows Development | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Generate a GUID in Windows 10 (Globally Unique Identifier)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/11/20

A while ago, I needed to generate GUIDs on any Windows console so performed a [Wayback/Archive] generate guid windows terminal – Google Search, found [Wayback/Archive] Generate a GUID in Windows 10 (Globally Unique Identifier) and came up with this generate-guid.bat file:

powershell [guid]::NewGuid()

–jeroen

Posted in CommandLine, Console (command prompt window), Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Downloading a file from the Windows console without first installing a command-line tool

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/09

Note that the below methods likely will cause security warnings if a Windows machine has been properly configured, but in most cases at least one of them works.

  1. using cURL (Widows 10 and up)
    curl --url https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin --output %TEMP%\100MB.bin
  2. using [Wayback/Archive] certutil | Microsoft Docs (at least Windows 7 and up; needs UAC elevation)
    certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin %TEMP%\100MB.bin
  3. using PowerShell (at least Windows Vista and up)
    powershell.exe -Command (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin','%TEMP%\100MB.bin')

I think it works for all versions of curl, certutil, and PowerShell though I did not have anything older than up-to-date Windows 7 (having PowerShell version 3) and recent to test on.

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, cURL, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

Hopefully by now the choco client will be more resilient and informative about Chocolatey maintenance windows (and maybe even about any disruptions mentioned at status.chocolatey.org)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/19

Reminder to check-out of the 2015 issue mentioned in the tweets below has been had any progress.

At the time of tweeting, choco has no notion of [Wayback/Archive] status.chocolatey.org which would be very helpful to point to in case of errors on time-outs on chocolatey server calls especially if it could interrogate and inform of maintenance windows and outages when things fail on the client side.

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Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Shadow IT has entered the chat – got caught running scripts again : sysadmin

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/05

Shadow IT has entered the chat

Many companies have hardly any idea how many scripts are being used by their people to get the chores of day to day work done.

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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

What to do when suddenly some or many .nupkg became zero length and Chocolatey thinks none of them are installed?

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/04

A few years back I suddenly had almost all my .nupkg files that Chocolatey uses to track installed software become zero sized.

So I posted a question at [Wayback/Archive] Need help restoring .nupkg files having zero size · Discussion #2765 · chocolatey/choco which got this answer:

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Posted in Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Kugane/winget: A Winget script to automatically install predefined programs and MS Store apps. Includes automatic update and cleanup job

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/03

For my link archive: [Wayback/Archive] Kugane/winget: A Winget script to automatically install predefined programs and MS Store apps. Includes automatic update and cleanup job

–jeroen

Posted in CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

PoshCode/PowerShellPracticeAndStyle: The Unofficial PowerShell Best Practices and Style Guide

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/31

For my link archive, the source code [Wayback/Archive] PoshCode/PowerShellPracticeAndStyle: The Unofficial PowerShell Best Practices and Style Guide and on-line “book” version that starts with:

[Wayback/Archive] About this Guide – PowerShell Practice and Style

It covers many topics grouped into a Style Guide and Best Practices:

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Posted in Development, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »