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

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); [WayBackFirewall 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, [WayBackRumors 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: [WayBackWindows 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.iswindows 10 powershell version – Google Search and [WayBackPowerShell 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: [WayBack0x8024400E 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: [WayBackwindows – 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 »

What is Swapfile.sys and How Do You Delete It?

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/09

Windows 10 (and 8) include a new virtual memory file named swapfile.sys. It’s stored in your system drive, along with the pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys. But why does Windows need both a swap file and a page file?

In summary, the swapfile — swapfile.sys — is currently used for swapping out Microsoft’s new style of app. Microsoft has called these universal apps, Windows Store apps, Metro apps, Modern apps, Windows 8 apps, Windows 8-style UI apps, and other things at various points.

via:

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9 | Leave a Comment »

libssh-delphi will migrate from Mercurial on BitBucket to git on GitHub soon (or finding about “fatal: repository … not found”, “MSVCR120.dll is missing” and “D3DCOMPILER_47.dll is missing” when prepping a fresh VM for a presentation)

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/08

When git on Windows suddenly gives you this when the repository URL opens fine in Chrome:

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>git clone https://bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh2-delphi
Cloning into 'libssh2-delphi'...
remote: Not Found
fatal: repository 'https://bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh2-delphi/' not found

but this worked fine:

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>git clone https://github.com/jpluimers/GExperts.git
Cloning into 'GExperts'...
remote: Counting objects: 12031, done.
remote: Total 12031 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 12031R
Receiving objects: 100% (12031/12031), 9.77 MiB | 1.36 MiB/s, done.

Resolving deltas: 100% (9284/9284), done.

I first thought “huh?”.

Then I remembered: this was a Mercurial repository, but I hardly use Mercurial any more…

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>hg clone https://jeroenp@bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh
2-delphi
destination directory: libssh2-delphi
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 30 changesets with 56 changes to 25 files
updating to branch default
12 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Since I wanted to switch away from bitbucket for a long time anyway, it was time to say goodbye and find out how to make the conversion to git.

A quick search revealed there were many tedious manual ways involving command-lines: [WayBack] Convert Mercurial project to Git – Stack Overflow

But then I found out that github can fully automagically import a Mercurial Repository (of course without the BitBucket attached bells and whistles like issue tracker):

So it is now at github.com/jpluimers/libssh2-delphi with one user still to be mapped at github.com … libssh2-delphi/import/authors: Zeljko Marjanovic. If I ever get in contact with him (I tried over the last 2 years), then I will add him.

For now, I will be in touch with Vadum Lou (a.k.a. https://github.com/pult, full nameVadim V. Lopushansky) who already made another manually copied fork and get his additions integrated.

I might redo the conversion process later on as at least some of his submissions are at least partially in a Mercurial pull request.

Then I need to merge the develop branch into the master branch and prepare a release.

Oh: if it fails to debug in Delphi, then run the EXE alone. You will get an error like this:

---------------------------
SftpClientDemo.exe - System Error
---------------------------
The program can't start because MSVCR120.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I need to document this better in the README.md: the underlying libssh2 DLLs require the Visual Studio 2013 C++ run-time library to be installed. The latest version I could find as of writing is vcredist_x86.exe version 12.0.40649.5 from the Update for Visual C++ 2013 and Visual C++ Redistributable Package at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138367 (download selection) or http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/2/CC2DF5F8-4454-44B4-802D-5EA68D086676/vcredist_x86.exe (direct download).

I need to update If a program you wrote can’t start becuase MSVCR*.dll is missing, then you forgot to ship the Visual C++ runtime… from 2012 on this as well as there are more versions available now than listed there.

Another error I got was the one below when running .NET stuff, but that might be because Windows Update was in progress:

---------------------------
SourceTree.exe - System Error
---------------------------
The program can't start because D3DCOMPILER_47.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Later: yes, that was indeed fixed during Windows update. Apparently, Microsoft has an update installation order issue or a dependency requirement issue where part of .NET depends on that DLL, even though it is not yet present.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Windows 10 auto-logout on <5 minutes of inactivity – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/26

This seems to work on other Windows versions as well: [WayBackWindows 10 auto-logout on <5 minutes of inactivity – Super User

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 | Leave a Comment »