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

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Microsoft is gestopt met gratis Windows 10-upgrade via toegankelijkheidspagina – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/21

[WayBack] Microsoft is gestopt met gratis Windows 10-upgrade via toegankelijkheidspagina – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers

Licenses: Retail, OEM, ODM, VLK.

[WayBack] Activation in Windows 10 – Windows Help

Notes

  • Microsoft doesn’t keep a record of purchased product software keys.
  • For help finding your product key, see Find your Windows product key.
  • If you don’t have a product key, you can purchase a Windows 10 license after installation finishes. Select the Start  button > Settings  > Update & Security  > Activation . Then select Go to Store to go to the Windows Store, where you can purchase a Windows 10 license.

–jeroen

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

dzComputerInfo: a small tool that shows a window on top of all other windows displaying the computer name and currently logged on user.

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/18

Interesting as bgInfo does not support top most windows or overlay: it only does the Desktop background, and you need to go through hoops to recreate the background on each logon:

Enter dzComputerInfo. It’s a small tool that I wrote the evening after the above incident which does exactly one thing: It shows a window on top of all other windows displaying the computer name and currently logged on user. Since the window is so small and it places itself automatically just above the start button, it does not really become a nuisance.

The tool and the source code is available from sourceforge, if anybody else thinks he has a use for it.

The G+ thread also the interesting comment by Gaurav Kale:

The Classic Shell Start button supports environment variables in its tooltip. So just specify: %username% on %computername% for the Setting called “Button Tooltip”. Then to see the currently logged on user and computer name, you just have to HOVER over the Start button!

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, SysInternals, Windows | Leave a Comment »

When Windows suddenly starts mixing up keys for various applications.

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/14

Since:

  • many people use the left-alt key as it as it is more accessible
  • development tools uses a lot of Alt-Shift based keyboard shortcuts
  • Windows by default has the Left Alt+Shift shortcut enabled to switch language+keyboard layout combinations
  • In most countries, Windows by default has more than one language+keyboard combination installed
  • Windows remembers per application instance which language+keyboard combination is used

every now and then you will get strange characters in only your development tools.

You can change this Windows setting, but be aware that every now and then, various Windows versions will re-enable the Left Alt+Shift even if you have previously disabled it. As of Windows 7 this occurs far less often, but still seems to occur.

Source: Question: Does anyone else have instances in the IDE (Berlin but has happened…

Comments at https://plus.google.com/+JeroenPluimers/posts/ektRa2qW92L

 

Posted in internatiolanization (i18n) and localization (l10), Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Windows Firewall: Block rules take precedence over Allow rules

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/07

Reminder to self for Windows Firewall: Block rules take precedence over Allow rules (see * below as actually it is even more complex); [WayBack] Firewall Rule Properties Page: General Tab has

Firewall rules are evaluated in the following order:

  1. Allow if secure with Override block rules selected in the Customize Allow if Secure Settings dialog box.
  2. Block the connection.
  3. Allow the connection.
  4. Default profile behavior (allow or block as specified on the applicable Profile tab of the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Properties dialog box).

Within each category, rules are evaluated from the most specific to the least specific. A rule that specifies four criteria is selected over a rule that specifies only three criteria.

Which means that this will block TCP port 1024 traffic to bar.exe:

The Block rules are inserted by Windows if you click “Cancel” on a dialog like this (note the lowercase path, despite the application being at C:\Program Files (x86)\Foo\Bar.exe):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Firewall, Infrastructure, Power User, Windows | 1 Comment »

A while ago, Windows 10 started to popup an Edge browser window after reboot without an internet connection

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/21

Does anyone know how to disable Edge popping up with a failed link www.msftconnecttest.com/redirect on machines blocked by a router?

This happens on the PC running Windows 10 Pro N (winver shows 1709 build 16299.371) that is not allowed to do any internet access.

Related: [WayBack] How to Find Out Which Build and Version of Windows 10 You Have | ilicomm

Later:

This seems to be intended as per these links:

TL;DR:

This can happen on Windows 8 and up when Windows thinks there is a partial network connection and a logon to a proxy or captive portal might solve the solution.

Allowing these in the proxy for port 80 solves the issue:

  •  *.msftncsi.com
  • *.msftconnecttest.com

--jeroen

Posted in Captive Portal, Internet, Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Fixing a broken mirrored Intel Matrix RAID-1 machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/20

A while ago I had an Intel Matrix RAID-1 pair of drives that got broken. One of them turned “red” and – since both drives were only a few serial numbers apart – the other was giving issues the moment I tried fiddling with it.

These actions failed:

  1. Windows image backup – would end up with a “blue” screen indicating Windows 10 had a problem and was trying to collect data
  2. Paragon HDM
    1. Migrating the OS to a brand new RAID-1 set
    2. P2V
  3. Disk2vhd would hang at the 100% completion mark

What had succeeded was a regular Windows backup (a non-image one).

This is what I finally did to get it working again:

  1. Kill disk2vhd after it hung a few hours at the 100% completion mark
  2. Verify with
  3. Mark the VHD file as online using diskpart (first atach the vdisk, select disk, then mark it online)
  4. Verify with chkdsk that the image was in fact without problems
  5. Detach the VHD file using diskpart
  6. Copy the VHD file to a HDD that Paragon HDM would recognise
  7. Use Paragon HDM to perform a V2P copy
    • Paragon expects a .VD file, but if you ask it to use all file types, it does recognise that VHD files contain disk images

–jeroen

References:

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

Rumors of Cmd’s death have been greatly exaggerated – but it still pays to switch to PowerShell

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/21

About a year ago, [WayBack] Rumors of Cmd’s death have been greatly exaggerated – Windows Command Line Tools For Developers got published as a response to confusing posts like these:

But I still think it’s a wise idea to switch away from the Cmd and to PowerShell as with PowerShell you get way more consistent language features, far better documentation, truckloads of new features (of which I like the object pipeline and .NET interoperability most) and far fewer quirks.

It’s time as well, as by now, Windows 7 has been EOL for a while, and Windows 8.x is in extended support: [WayBack] Windows lifecycle fact sheet – Windows Help:

Client operating systems  Latest update or service pack  End of mainstream support  End of extended support
  Windows XP  Service Pack 3  April 14, 2009  April 8, 2014
  Windows Vista  Service Pack 2  April 10, 2012  April 11, 2017
  Windows 7*  Service Pack 1  January 13, 2015  January 14, 2020
  Windows 8  Windows 8.1  January 9, 2018  January 10, 2023
Windows 10, released in July 2015**  N/A  October 13, 2020  October 14, 2025

Which means the PowerShell version baseline on supported Windows versions is at least 4.0: [Archive.is] windows 10 powershell version – Google Search and [WayBack] PowerShell versions and their Windows version – 4sysops

PowerShell and Windows versions ^
PowerShell Version Release Date Default Windows Versions
PowerShell 2.0 October 2009 Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2 (**)
PowerShell 3.0 September 2012 Windows 8 Windows Server 2012
PowerShell 4.0 October 2013 Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2
PowerShell 5.0 April 2014 (***) Windows 10

So try PowerShell now. You won’t regret it.

–jeroen

via: [WayBack] Very interesting clear-up post and comments on CMD, command.com, PowerShell in past and future DOS/Windows versions and Unix shells altogether. – Ilya S – Google+

Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »

Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%\_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive does not cope well with Windows logoff/shutdown…

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/19

From a while back, but still not fixed: [WayBack] Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you l… – Daniela Osterhagen – Google+

Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%\_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you log off or shut down Windows.

This is ridiculous. It’s not as if there weren’t any options to let Windows do that cleanup if the program fails.

It is still not fixed:

[WayBack] Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you l… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+

Adrian Meacham:

Still doing it all these years later – only the size of the garbage left behind has changed (Size: 58.4 MB (61,303,879 bytes) Size on disk: 67.7 MB (71,061,504 bytes) 1/3 of which is icons) – why this isn’t committed to Chrome instead of held open in %TEMP% is beyond reasoning +Google Drive

Original forum source: [Archive.is] _MEI folder created at windows start – Google Product Forums

by Martin Friedl 3/17/13

Hi,
I just found out that on windows the google drive tool creates a ‘_MEIxxxxx’ folder on every startup of windows. The xxxxx is a number that differs at every startup. On my PC (with windows 7) this folder is created on ‘C:\’ and has a size of about 35MB. SO with every start of windows google drive occopies 35 additional MB. It looks as the content of the folder is mainly Pyhton-files.

Is there a way to prevent google drive from creating an additional folder with every start of windows?

Best regards
Martin

…

10/21/13
Klint said:
If you exit Google Drive by right-clicking the Google Drive icon in your Windows 7 notification area, and selecting Exit, then Google Drive shuts down properly and correctly deletes the _MEIxxx folder. Unfortunately, it leaves the folder behind if you leave Google Drive running when you log out or shut down. So, yes, it is a bug in Google Drive. It ought to terminate properly when the user logs out.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

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

0x8024400E error with WSUS SP2

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/16

From a note a very long time ago: [WayBack] 0x8024400E error with WSUS SP2

TL;DR:

  1. ensure you have at least KB2938066 installed.
  2. while upgrading WSUS, ensure you reboot the server after each update.

Related: [WayBack] windows – WSUS clients failing to get updates with error 80072EE2 – Server Fault

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Leave a Comment »

Windows 10: Update error 0x8024a112 | Born’s Tech and Windows World

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/13

Had this happen on a Dutch Windows 10 system today, a retry did not work, but a manual reboot solved it [WayBack] Windows 10: Update error 0x8024a112 | Born’s Tech and Windows World.

–jeroen

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

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