Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21
This started out ad a post to make things easier for my mentally brother, but then I figured it makes it so much easier for myself as well: getting rid of the evern returning Windows nag screens. Not just the ones after logon during initial Windows install that get back about every other Windows 20H update (thank god they stepped away from 19## version numbering that felt so, ehm, last millennium), but also the various “suggestions” in start menu, on the taskbar and elsewhere.
I understand that basically giving Windows 10 and 11 for free to many Windows 7/8 licensed machines or Windows-preinstalled machines induces Microsoft to see Windows as an advertising environment, but hey: many users can do without these distractions.
It is hard to solve, as even the underlying registry settings seem to be reset every once in a while, and solving it globally is not an option: the settings are a per-user one. Which means you need to run script early during every Windows logon to overwrite these settings.
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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Registry Files, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Tagged: 48 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/20
I thought I had long gone blogged about the .URL file extension as it has been in Windows for some 25 years now to point to URLs, but I didn’t.
So here are two links on them:
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, 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 2025/06/19
Many web-sites and password managers have a strength indicator built-in.
This is a really good example (with open source JavaScript code!) of one: [Wayback/Archive] zxcvbn: Low-Budget Password Strength Estimation | USENIX
Be aware though that it stores a plain text file named passwords.txt on your system (this seems to confuse some users, especially when their password is in it).
Homans password behaviour does not change much over time, so this half hour 2016 presentation on it is still current: [Wayback/Archive] USENIX Security ’16 – zxcvbn: Low-Budget Password Strength Estimation – YouTube for which you can download:
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Posted in Chrome, Development, Edge, Firefox, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Safari, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/05
For non-Windows systems, I have used TeamViewer in the past and when they started being obnoxious reverted mostly to VNC derived alternatives. For Windows, I’d usually combined VPN with Remote Desktop.
Recently, I found out that during my first rectum cancer year (and for others, the first COVID-19 year), the development of RustDesk – which can be self-hosted – started as an open source project on [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – rustdesk/rustdesk: An open-source remote desktop application designed for self-hosting, as an alternative to TeamViewer. with their first commit being [Wayback/Archive] Initial commit · wabarc/wayback@650ea87 · GitHub.
I got pointed to this in [Wayback/Archive] Your Remote Desktop SUCKS!! Try this instead (FREE + Open Source) – YouTube.
One of the main things to figure out is how reliably RustDesk does firewall hole punching*.
Another personal interest is to learn more about Rust and Dart, the main programming languages in which RustDesk is written.
Here are some links:
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Posted in Development, Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Rust, Screen sharing, Software Development, TeamViewer, VNC/Virtual_Network_Computing, Windows | Tagged: 594 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/02
Quite a while ago, Chrome moved from a structure based on “Current Session“, “Current Tabs“, “Last Session” and “Last Tabs” into “Session_#################” and “Tabs_#################” stored in a “Sessions” folder (and similar migrations for other state and configuration files).
The numbers in the “Session_*” and “Tabs_*” files are time stamps of those sessions, for instance one needs to figure out what the “13310808970819630” in “Session_13310808970819630” and “Session_13310808970819630” means.
Lot’s of web-pages with tips and tricks around the old structures are still around, often surfacing high in Google Search results.
I was interested in a particular trick to export Google Chrome browsing history and had a hard time figuring out the easiest solution.
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Posted in Apple, Batch-Files, Chrome, Chrome, Database Development, Development, Google, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, NirSoft, Polyglot, Power User, Scripting, SQLite, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged: define | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/30
More on the reason why I learned a few SQLite things soon, but for my link and documentation archive, below is what I learned.
Most commands use the database file C:\temp\History which has no extension as that is how I got the file in the first place (spoiler: it’s a Chrome browser History from one of my user profiles).
Let’s get started:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Console (command prompt window), Database Development, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development, SQL, SQLite | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 