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:
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, Perl, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
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 »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/05/26
Vista!
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.
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 »
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.
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
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:
References:
…
did you create a IDE-based VM ?
That will not work – though it is offered as an option. Converter uses a bluff here
…
try again first – use Buslogic when asked for the controller.
If that does not work either try Converter 3.0.3 next
if that still fails post
boot.iniand a screenshot of diskmanagement of the XP-source…
SCSI was the answer.
Thanks.
…
–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 »
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:
The Eye is a website dedicated towards archiving and serving publicly available information. #opendirectory #archive #digitalhistory
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 »
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 »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/05
I’ve written about link rot quite a few times (it even has a category on my blog).
Preventing it is important, as it improves user experience.
For most users this is an unconscious thing when it works and becomes consciously annoying when it fails.
Some user groups are vocal enough to force you to fix link rot after the fact, causing brand reputation damage.
One good example was last year: [Wayback] Users condemn Microsoft for removing KB IDs from some bug documentation | Computerworld.
Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, Internet, link rot, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, Windows, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/01
By sheer luck, Jen Gentleman pointed out that winfile.exe still lives on:
The source is at [Wayback/Archive.is] microsoft/winfile: Original Windows File Manager (winfile) with enhancements, and it looks exactly like the Windows 3.x through Windows NT 4.0 days.
Posted in Apri1st, Fun, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 3.11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows NT | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/30
For my link archive:
If your computer powers up okay, but the Windows XP operating system won’t boot properly, you have some troubleshooting ahead of you. Here’s a look at the likely culprits and what you can do to fix the problem.
[Wayback] 10 things you can do when Windows XP won’t boot – TechRepublic
Via: [Wayback/Archive.is] Product IDs – Lunarsoft Wiki
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 