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 ‘Windows’ Category

How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/16

Adapted from [Archive.is] How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? – Stack Overflow, presuming that code is on the PATH:

  1. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows with git installed:
    code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 echo code --install-extension
  2. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows without git installed:
    code --list-extensions | % { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or, as I think, more clearly (see also [WayBack] syntax – What does “%” (percent) do in PowerShell? – Stack Overflow):

    code --list-extensions | foreach { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or even more explanatory:

    code --list-extensions | ForEach-Object { "code --install-extension $_" }
  3. From the command-line interface on Windows as a plain cmd.exe command:
    @for /f %l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %l
  4. On Windows as a plain cmd.exe batch file (in a .bat/.cmd script):
    @for /f %%l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %%l
  5. The above two on Windows can also be done using PowerShell:
    PowerShell -Command "code --list-extensions | % { """""code --install-extension $_""""" }"

    Note that here too, the % can be expanded into foreach or ForEach-Object for clarity.

All of the above prepend “code --install-extension ” (note the trailing space) before each installed Visual Studio Code extension.

They all give you a list like this which you can execute on any machine having Visual Studio Code installed and its code on the PATH, and a working internet connection:

code --install-extension DavidAnson.vscode-markdownlint
code --install-extension ms-vscode.powershell
code --install-extension yzhang.markdown-all-in-onex

(This is about the minimum install for me to edit markdown documents and do useful things with PowerShell).

Of course you can pipe these to a text-file script to execute them later on.

The double-quote escaping is based on [Wayback/Archive.is] How to escape PowerShell double quotes from a .bat file – Stack Overflow:

you need to escape the " on the command line, inside a double quoted string. From my testing, the only thing that seems to work is quadruple double quotes """" inside the quoted parameter:

powershell.exe -command "echo '""""X""""'"

Via: [Archive.is] how to save your visual studio code extension list – Google Search

--jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, bash, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Console (command prompt window), Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux, xargs | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on (temporarily) using CIFS/SMBv1 with Windows 10

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/13

Warning: only do this in a well confined network because of the SMBv1 has serious security implications!

Temporarily allowing SMBv1 makes it easier to transfer files from/to ancient Windows XP (virtual) machines.

Sometimes you need those to support hardware for which more modern drivers or support do not exist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Chocolatey on Windows 7: “You must provide a value expression on the right-hand side of the ‘-‘ operator.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/08

One of the places explaining a more and more frequent error on Windows 7 installations is [Wayback/Archive.is] “You must provide a value expression on the right-hand side of the ‘-‘ operator.” · Issue #29 · shiftkey/chocolatey-beyondcompare:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Leave a Comment »

Wake-on-LAN from a Windows machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/02

Before digging into Wake-on-LAN on Windows machines, I’ll interlude with basically the canonical wakonlan available on many non Windows machines

On Linux and BSD machines, there is the Perl script wakeonlan (steadily at version 0.41) at [Wayback/Archive.is] jpoliv/wakeonlan: Perl script for waking up computers via Wake-On-LAN magic packets (script: [Wayback/Archive.is] wakeonlan/wakeonlan at master · jpoliv/wakeonlan) with this help:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, Perl, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

PDF24 Creator – Wikipedia

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/30

Just in case I ever need more features than the built-in PDF creator in Windows: PDF24 Creator – Wikipedia

PDF24 is free for commercial use and offers these features that the Windows built-in PDF support lacks:

  • Merge multiple PDF into one file
  • Rotating, extracting, inserting pages
  • Integrated preview for PDF editing
  • PDF encryption, decryption and signing
  • Change PDF information (author, title, etc.)
  • Compress and shrink PDF files
  • Add a watermark or stamp a PDF file
  • Combine pages with a digital paper
  • Convert to and from PDF
  • Multiple PDF printers for different purposes since 7.7.0
  • Full featured and lightweight PDF reader since version 8.7.0
  • Tesseract OCR engine since version 8.8.0
  • Blackening of PDF files since version 10.0.0

Via [Wayback/Archive.is] Software-update: doPDF 10.8.127 – Computer – Downloads – Tweakers (which mentions it does not need GhostScript)

–jeroen

Posted in PDF, Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Windows: shutdown or reboot while preserving most of the running apps has been possible since…

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/26

Vista!

Shutting down or rebooting Windows allowing existing applications to reopen

Windows Vista introduced the /g switch in shutdown.exe and was unchanged in Windows 7:

    /g         Shutdown and restart the computer. After the system is
               rebooted, restart any registered applications.

I never noticed it until Windows 10 which began actively use it when applying system updates: then suddenly many of the previously running applications would reopen during startup.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Windows 8.1: default Windows Explorer to open “This PC” instead of “Libraries” without duplicating the taskbar icon

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/20

Every now and then you revisit old Windows versions. It seems a fact of life.

If course those lack more recent features, one of which is the default View with which Windows Explorer starts.

In Windows 10 you can switch it between “This PC” and “Quick Access”. Not so with Windows 8.1.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »

Converting an existing XP machine to a VMware ESXi  Virtual Machine and having boot issues?

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/02

A while ago I wrote about Stop 0x0000007B after converting an existing XP machine to a Virtual Machine (ESXi, Hyper-V, or other).

After this, the machine still had boot issues (a grey or black screen after boot, unless booted via Grub from a rescue CD).

The solution in retrospect was simple, but I only figured out after the fact what the solution had done.

Of course this gave me a facepalm moment, as back in the days, this was exactly the warning I gave everyone when installing Windows XP on ESXi anyway: use a SCSI buslogic based virtual disk, not an IDE or SATA virtual disk.

The reason is that Windows XP does not like the IDE/SATA disk that VMware provides. Windows Vista and up are less of a problem.

This is indeed what my practical solution did:

  • VMware Converter 4.x creates a VM with an IDE/SATA disk (as it cannot talk to the more recent ESXi versions at all because of API changes)
  • VMware Converter 6.x creates a VM with a buslogic SCSI base disk (and it can create it directly on your ESXi rig, though it will use a directory in the root of your data store, even if you prefer it somewhere deeper in the directory tree)

References:

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, Power User, SAS/SATA, SCSI, Virtualization, VMware, VMware Converter, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

virtualization – Convert a hard-drive into a VMWare machine – Server Fault

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/29

Sometimes machines die without one having had the chance of doing a proper bootable file-system backup instead of a file-by-file-backup.

You can still P2V these machines (convert them from physical to virtual), but it is a lot more pain as you have to try to grab any installation keys for them and create a compatible virtual machine configuration by hand like I did in P2V of an existing XP machine to Hyper-V to have an emergency fallback when retiring old XP physical machines.

The below linked answer (with steps) uses Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (now back in the hands of Veritas again as Backup Exec) to make part of this process towards VMware ESXi less tedious: [Wayback] virtualization – Convert a hard-drive into a VMWare machine – Server Fault (thanks [Wayback] Mark Booth and [Wayback] Dave M)

Doing this might require you to find old Windows XP media. Those are in the Internet Archive (often slower, but has the file hashes too) and The Eye (much faster from where I live in Europe); Internet Archive examples are for English, though other languages are present as well:

Got the Internet Archive tip from [Wayback/Archive.is] Where can I download an official Windows XP ISO? I have a license key if that helps? : windows, found the correct filename there, then downloaded the [Wayback] The Eye.

–jeroen

Posted in Hyper-V, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Cleaning up Google Drive (for instance when a rogue supplier decides to fill your Windows Documents folder) and preventing TomTom HOME to use too much information

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/12

The below links helped me clean the Google Drive of a friend that grew way too large because TomTom HOME decided to put 100 gigabyte of data in the Documents folder instead of the local AppData folder (yup, this is a follow-up of Windows applications: storing your data in the correct place (Roaming, Local, LocalLow, not Documents)).

The trick with extensions to exclude is you have to add exclusions before syncing. Which is a kind of catch-22 or chicken and egg problem.

In case of the friend I helped we made a backup of the TomTom HOME data, then applied the exclusions and restored the data.

For TomTom HOME in order not to fill your Google Drive, but still allow backing up your Documents folder, these are extensions you might want to exclude (roughly in descending order of space) where you have to mind not storing any of these extensions in other subfolders of your Documents folder.:

  • .zip
  • .cab
  • .toc
  • .tmp
  • .meta
  • .sat
  • .tlv
  • .ttd
  • .dat
  • .vif
  • .chk
  • .bin
  • .rex
  • .lde
  • .gpr
  • .dbl
  • .so
  • .ov2

The problem with this? Google Backup and Sync does not allow that many exclusion extensions.

–jeroen

Posted in Google, GoogleBackupAndSync, GoogleDrive, Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »