The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

    20140508-Delphi-2007--Project-Options--Cannot-Edit-Application-Title-HelpFile-Icon-Theming20140430-Fiddler-Filter-Actions-Button-Run-Filterset-now20140424-VMware-Fusion-6.0.3.-no-reclaimable
    More Photos

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,854 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

bolkedebruin/rdpgw: Remote Desktop Gateway in Go for deploying on Linux/BSD/Kubernetes

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/23

On my list of things to try: an open source golang implementation of the Remote Desktop Gateway protocol: [Wayback/Archive.is] bolkedebruin/rdpgw: Remote Desktop Gateway in Go for deploying on Linux/BSD/Kubernetes.

[Wayback] [MS-TSGU]: Terminal Services Gateway Server Protocol | Microsoft Docs:

Specifies the Terminal Services Gateway Server Protocol, which is a mechanism to transport data-link layer (L2) frames on a Hypertext Transfer

Via: [Wayback] linux – Create RDP gateway in Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu – Super User

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Development, Go (golang), Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Easiest way to move the C:\MSOCache directory to another drive is to create symbolic link to the new location

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/15

I always forget that, when moving a folder, instead of finding all references to that folder and fixing them, you can create an NTFS symlink from the old location to the new one.

[Wayback] how to move MSOCACHE folder from C-drive to D-drive ?? – Microsoft Community (thanks [Wayback] tgunda numbering and casing updates mine):

There are too much entries in the registry to correct them manually one by one.

An easier and quicker solution is to copy the full MSOCache folder to a new place and to make a soft link to it:
  1. Create a new folder, e.g. F:\MSOCache
  2. Copy everything from C:\MSOCache to the new one.
  3. Rename the old folder  C:\xMSOCache  (Don’t delete it, just in case).
  4. Open a command prompt window in administrator mode.
  5. Write:  mklink /d c:\MSOCache f:\MSOCache
Now there is an MSOCache link at C, pointing to the new place.
If everything is OK, you can delete  C:\xMSOCache

This can be very handy when moving around large software development installations, circumventing a full uninstall/install sequence loosing lots of configuration settings.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, LifeHacker, Office, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

How to build a CD ISO image file from the windows command line? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/07

As I might need this in the future, some highlights from [Wayback] How to build a CD ISO image file from the windows command line? – Stack Overflow:

–jeroen

 

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

wget proxy: set the http_proxy environment variable

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/05

[WayBack] WGET 1.11.4 for Windows (win32) as well as many other tools use the [WayBack] http_proxy envonment variable to specify the http proxy settings.

To set it to a locally running Cntlm proxy, use this syntax:

set http_proxy=http://localhost:3128

–jeroen

Posted in Cntlm, Power User, Windows, Windows-Http-Proxy | Leave a Comment »

Windows 10: remove applications from the uninstall list

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/04

After doing Windows upgrades to Windows 10, every now and then I bump into applications that do not fully uninstall themselves and get stuck on the uninstall list (that you get when running appwiz.cpl or browse to the Control Pannel installed programs list).

[WayBack] How to Manually Remove Programs from the Add/Remove Programs List mentions to inspect registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, but that didn’t include some of the applications.

Then I found [WayBack] Remove entry from Windows 10 Apps & Features – Super User, where the answers mentions two other keys (thanks users [WayBack] Kreiggott and [WayBack] NutCracker):

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Neat!

So I made the below PowerShell script to dump installed programs.

It grabs the list of registry keys containing installed software and their registry values, then empirically filters out most values that are also now shown in AppWiz.cpl.

Like database work, the values can have properties having a value or being null. So it’s SQL like expression galore to do the filtering.

This post is slightly related to Still unsolved since 2015 NetBeans: Bug 251538 – Your Installer is Creating Invalid Data for the NoModify DWORD Key which crashes enumeration of the Uninstall Key in at least PowerShell, where I already did (without documenting) some Uninstall spelunking.

## The collection of registry keys gives Name and Property of each registry key; where Property is compound containing all registry values of that key.
## Get-ItemProperty will get you all the values on which you can filter, including a few special PS* values that allow you to browse back to the registry key.

# x86 installs on x64 hardware: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12199372/get-itemproperty-not-returning-all-properties/12200100#12200100
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys = (@
(Get-Item HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*)) + 
(Get-Item HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*) + 
(Get-Item HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*)
    
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys.GetType().FullName
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-Member
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Out-GridView
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-ItemProperty | Get-Member
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-ItemProperty | Out-GridView
#Return
    
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryNameValues = $nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | 
    Get-ItemProperty |
    Where-Object {
        $_.SystemComponent -ne 1 -and $_.NoRemove -ne 1 -and
        $_.UninstallString -ne "" -and $_.UninstallString -ne $null
    }
# Filters out most things that AppWiz.cpl will leave out as well.
# Might need more fine tuning, but is good enough for now.

# PSPath shows the path to the underlying registry key of each value
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryNameValues |
    Select-Object SystemComponent, NoRemove, DisplayName, DisplayVersion, UninstallString, PSChildName <#, PSPath #> |
    Sort-Object DisplayName |
    Out-GridView
# Need to find a good way to output this in a really wide Format-Table text format.

–jeroen

Posted in CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Terminating a script in PowerShell – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/03

I have the same problem mentioned in the answer to [WayBack] Terminating a script in PowerShell – Stack Overflow: confused by most answers, and keeping to forget what each method means (there is Exit, Return, Break and (if you love exception handling to do simple flow control), Throw.

So here is the full quote of what [WayBack] User New Guy answered:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

NTLM proxy authentication and Dropbox: need to try NTLMAPS and cntlm

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/01

Interesting:

Some corporate networks are behind HTTP proxy servers that use NTLM authentication. Dropbox currently doesn’t support this kind of proxy authentication. However, some users have reported some success using an intermediate proxy, such as [WayBack] NTLMAPS or [WayBack] cntlm, to get Dropbox running on their network.

This article explains steps on various systems to install proxies that support NTLM authentication: [WayBack] Allow Dropbox to Authenticate With a NTLM Proxy Server – The Unofficial Dropbox Wiki.

Need to try these. Maybe they work for Copy.com too (:

Some other links around HTTP Fiddler that might be relevant:     Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Cntlm, Copy.com, DropBox, NTLM, Power User, SocialMedia, Windows, Windows-Http-Proxy | Leave a Comment »

Windows: unblocking SMB/NetBIOS/CIFS/File-and-Printer-sharing traffic from other subnets

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/29

If you enable File and Printer sharing on Windows, by default the firewall only enables it on private networks for the local subnet as remote address (for domain networks, it allows “Any”) as seen on the picture below.

When your network consists of multiple subnets, for instance when it is large, or multiple sites are connected via site-to-site VPN (often called LAN-to-LAN VPN) solutions, then these subnets cannot access each others files or printers.

Realising these default blocks, they are easy to resolve as explained in for instance [WayBack] Windows firewall blocking network shares through VPN server – Server Fault by [WayBack] Brian:

I realize this is almost three years late, but I just spent today fighting with the same problem. I did get it working, so I figured I’d share. Note that I’m using a Windows 7 PC as the file server; other versions might need slightly different configuration.

In the “Windows Firewall with Advance Security”, there are several “File and Printer Sharing” rules:

  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Datagram-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Name-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Session-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In)

(There are additional rules, but I didn’t care about printer sharing. The same changes would apply if you want those.)

File and Printer Sharing appears to default to “Local subnet” only. You’ll need to add the subnet of your VPN clients.

Modify each of those rules as follows:

  1. Open the Properties dialog for the rule.
  2. Navigate to the Scope tab.
  3. In the Remote IP address section, the “These IP addresses” radio button should be selected.
  4. Click “Add…” next to the list of addresses. By default, only “Local subnet” is in the list.
  5. In the “This IP address or subnet:” field, enter the subnet assigned to your VPN clients (this is probably 192.168.1.0/24 in the OP, but if not, it’s the subnet assigned to the VPN adapter on the client side), then click OK.
  6. If you’re also using IPv6, add the VPN client IPv6 subnet as well.

That was enough for me to access file shares over the VPN.

(If you want to do it manually, you need to open TCP ports 139 and 445, and UDP ports 137 and 138, in the file server’s firewall.)

Hopefully I will find some time in the future to automate this using PowerShell, as netsh names are localised do hard to make universal.

These links might help me with that:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Internet protocol suite, Power User, SMB, TCP, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Some Windows 10 updates remove registry values; not sure how widely

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/12

After watching an autologon system not logging on automatically over the past years, the pattern seems to be that at least major, and some less minor Windows updates remove autlogon parts of the registry.

I’m not sure where the boundary between “major” and “less minor” lies (though I suspect “cumulative updates” and larger), nor if more than these values are affected:

  • key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon"
    • value name AutoAdminLogon gets removed or becomes value 0
    • value DefaultUserName gets removed
    • value DefaultPassword gets removed

This means that now after each startup, I need to schedule a task that runs a script setting the values I need depending if a password is needed or not.

The script also needs credentials, so I need to figure out how to properly do that.

I still need to decide between PowerShell or batch file script, as I already have the batch file from How to turn on automatic logon in Windows and automatic logon in Windows 2003.

For my future reference, some more links on things that can get deleted:

Hopefully these links will help me writing the scripts:

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

More on empty files

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/07

TL;DR: Empty files are indeed of size zero, but there is some disk space involved for their meta-data (like name, permission, timestamps)

Some links (via [WayBack] create zero sized file – Google Search):

  • [WayBack] Zero-byte file – Wikipedia
  • [WayBack] filesystems – How can a file size be zero? – Super User (thanks [WayBack] phuclv):

    Filesystems store a lot of information about a file such as file name, file size, creation time, access time, modified time, created user, user and group permissions, fragments, pointer to clusters that store the file, hard/soft links, attributes… Those are called file metadata. Why do you count those metadata into file size when users do not (need to) care about them and don’t know about them? They only really care about the file content

    Moreover each filesystem stores different types of metadata which take different amounts of space on disk. For example POSIX permissions are very different from NTFS permission, and there are also inode numbers in POSIX which do not exist on Windows. Even POSIX filesystems vary a lot, like ext3 with 32-bit block address, ext4 with 48-bit, Btrfs with 64-bit and ZFS with 128-bit address. So how will you count those metadata into file size?

    Take another example with a 100-byte file whose metadata consumes 56 bytes on the current filesystem. We copy the file to another filesystem and now it takes 128 bytes of metadata. However the file contents are exactly the same, the number of bytes in the files are also the same. So displaying file size as 156 bytes on a system but 228 bytes on another is very confusing and counter-intuitive.

  • [WayBack] What is the concept of creating a file with zero bytes in Linux? – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange:

    touch will create an inode, and ls -i or stat will show info about the inode:

    $ touch test
$ ls -i test
28971114 test
$ stat test
  File: ‘test’
  Size: 0           Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
Device: fc01h/64513d    Inode: 28971114    Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/1000)   Gid: ( 1000/1000)
Access: 2017-03-28 17:38:07.221131925 +0200
Modify: 2017-03-28 17:38:07.221131925 +0200
Change: 2017-03-28 17:38:07.221131925 +0200
 Birth: -

    Notice that test uses 0 blocks. To store the data displayed, the inode uses some bytes. Those bytes are stored in the inode table. Look at the ext2 page for an example of an inode structure [WayBack].

Oh and a nice NTFS thing (thanks [WayBack] Paweł Bulwan):

and in case of NTFS, the size of file reported by Windows and most tools is actually the size of the main stream of the file, which we perceive as the content of the file. The file stored on NTFS partition can additionaly have some data stored in alternative data streams, and still have the reported size of 0. It’s a nice filesystem feature to know if you want to have the full picture :)

Related: my really old post command line – create empty text file from a batch file (via: Stack Overflow)

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, btrfs, Development, File-Systems, NTFS, Power User, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »