Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/12
Needed this for some Windows 11 Virtual Machine experiments of Windows 11 on Apple Silicon ARM under VMware Fusion to see how well the Intel x64 emulation on ARM provided by Apple Rosetta or/and Microsoft Windows actually works: [Wayback/Archive] What is the best way to get Windows 11 Pro Key for cheap ? : bootcamp
At the time of writing (especially the “/Archive]” versions of the links below under “Queries” show remarkably cheap licenses):
Wondering what these will do during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In the meantime: reset timer galore (:
TL;DR from most links below on activating Windows 11 on ARM under VMware Fusion: it should work, but back in the experimental days (around 2021-2022) it sometimes failed.
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/25
A while ago, ejecting a CompactFlash card on Windows 10 failed with the dreaded message “The action can’t be completed because the file is open in COM Surrogate.”
I was in a hurry, and it was a long time since I bumped into a similar message, so I simply rebooted as I knew that for certainly would fix it.
Next time, these links will help me find which dllhost.exe process to kill:
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/19
Interesting strategy that driver vendors use to prevent their drivers to be installed when newer versions are installed [Wayback/Archive] You thought Windows drivers from 2006 were old, wait’ll you see the Intel drivers from 1968! – The Old New Thing
Or in other words: with this mechanism drivers can be a generic alternative to be installed when no more specific or newer driver is available.
Via [Wayback/Archive] ⚜ 8-bit Hero (aka Sven) ⚜ on Twitter: “Wow, Intel has been writing windows divers for a long time! Had no idea.”
Related
Intel Drivers dated 1970 shown by [Wayback/Archive] Kevlin Henney (@KevlinHenney) in his Keynote streamed at around the 1200 second mark: [Wayback/Archive] KotlinConf’23 – Effectenbeurszaal Day 2 – YouTube.
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Java Platform, Kotlin, Power User, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/13
The Scoop repository lists this first time Scoop install command at [Wayback/Archive] ScoopInstaller/Scoop: A command-line installer for Windows. – installation:
Run the following command from a non-admin PowerShell to install scoop to its default location C:Users<YOUR USERNAME>scoop.
iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex
[Wayback/Archive] ScoopInstaller/Install: 📥 Next-generation Scoop (un)installer is very similar:
Run this command from a non-admin PowerShell to install scoop with default configuration, scoop will be install to C:Users<YOUR USERNAME>scoop.
irm get.scoop.sh | iex
# You can use proxies if you have network trouble in accessing GitHub, e.g.
irm get.scoop.sh -Proxy 'http://<ip:port>' | iex
The Scoop homepage at [Wayback/Archive] Scoop.sh is not much better:
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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scoop, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/07
A few years back this trick was shown to screw up %windir%\system32 [Wayback/Archive] Patrick Doyle on Twitter: “@SwiftOnSecurity @RoseAreaZero Delete any file in three easy steps: > takeown /F "example.ext" > icacls "example.ext" /grant "%USERNAME%":F > del "example.ext"“.
Like [Wayback/Archive] SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) / Twitter (see the long thread further below), I was expecting that Windows would either prevent you from doing this at all, or allow for easy recovery with System File Protection (now Source: Windows File Protection).
That didn’t prevent or recover it back then.
I wonder if that has been changed by now.
From the above Tweet:
Delete any file in three easy steps:
> takeown /F "example.ext"
> icacls "example.ext" /grant "%USERNAME%":F
> del "example.ext"
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Security, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/21
This batch file works for modern Click-to-Run (sometimes called ClickToRun, Click2Run or C2R) based Office installations (note the odd lowercase microsoft shared which indeed is the actual directory name):
if exist "%CommonProgramFiles%\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" (
"%CommonProgramFiles%\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user
) else (
echo could not find the Office Updater
)
This for sure does not work for MSI based Office 2013 and lower (which are updated through Windows Update anyway). Since I only have 2021 online (Click-to-Run) installs and higher to test with: those work fine.
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Office, Office 2021, Office Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/17
More than 10 years ago, I needed a MIME decode for Windows as I was developing some software which implemented S/MIME could sign automatically generated emails and verify incoming ones.
I wrote more about the latter part in Some notes on OpenSSL, S/MIME, email, various RFC standards and their relations.
Now finally the post about what I wanted to schedule for posting back then as well: my question looking for a [Wayback/Archive] MIME decoder for Windows – Super User:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, base64, Development, Encoding, Linux, MIME, Power User, Software Development, Windows, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/09
Some links on the [Wayback/Archive] FILTERXML function – Microsoft Support.
It is only available on Windows (because of the underlying XPath libraries used, I think it is MSXML), and “only” as of Excel 2013, but still can be useful.
Some links below on FILTERXML and related XPath information so I can more easily find their content back.
Notes:
FILTERXML only supports XPath 1.0- The quotes are huge, for one because I don’t use Excel enough to be an expert, but have enough software experience to sometimes want to use complex concepts in Excel. Having all this in one place helps me with that goal.
- You need to ensure your data is either XML in a well-formed document format, or you can translate your data to well-formed XML.
The links and quotes starting with the question that sparked my interest:
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Posted in Development, Excel, Office, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office VBA, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, XML, XML/XSD, XPath | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/08
I could not find a reliable per-user setting that works with just logoff/logon for Windows 11 like I found for Windows 10 in Disabling the Windows 10 and Windows 11 news (and weather) feeds.
So (for now?) there is only a global Globally which needs admin rights and a logoff/logon sequence:
:: requires admin
reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh" /v "AllowNewsAndInterests" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
echo logoff/logon to apply the change, or restart Explorer
Via:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/31
Forgot to schedule this one when I saw it two weeks ago: [Wayback/Archive] Sweep the Strait.
Apart from demonstrating that Trump never had a plan, does not and will not have a plan, it is cool to see Minesweeper developed in JavaScript, HTML and CSS mapped with some geodata onto a real map of the Strait of Hormuz.
Cool idea!
It has a function Windows 3.x UI with functional menu (Game -> New Game; Help -> How to Play)
At first, I thought the original developer is this:
However, in fact the developer is:
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Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Opinions, OS/2, Power User, Retrocomputing, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development, Windows, Windows 3.11 | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 