After a couple of years break, there is the new Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Scott Hanselman.
A must read!
–jeroen
Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Scott Hanselman
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/22
Posted in .NET, Development, Power User, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Link Shell Extension: for hardlinks, junctions, volume mount points, etc.
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/20
Interesting as a complement to fsutil and mklink and FindLinks and Junction: Link Shell Extension and ln.exe.
It allows you to create and maintain “Hardlinks, Junctions , Volume Mountpoints , and Windows7/8’s Symbolic Links, (herein referred to collectively as Links) a folder cloning process” and more.
Note that Link Shell Extensions require NTFS5 or higher (NTFS.sys version 5, which corresponds with NTFS v3.1)
–jeroen
via: Link Shell Extension.
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Error 13EC when installing The .NET Framework 4.5.1 means you need to free more disk space. 3GB that is.
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/15
Recently I had Windows Update giving me a 13EC error when installing KB2858725: The .NET Framework 4.5.1 that got release lated last November on various virtual machine systems.
It appears that a lot more people suffer from the Windows Update 13EC issue, and most of them have to to with .NET 4, .NET 4.5 and .NET 4.5.1.
Running many virtual machine systems on an SSD based host machine, so I’m always pressed with disk space (hence cleaning the various temporary files directories often). I wasn’t glad with Windows 8 update KB 2821895
- taking a very long time to install while using lots of CPU (compressing the C:\Windows\WinSxS folder)
- taking a huge C:\Windows\WinSxS\Reserve.tmp file (the Reserve.tmp is almost 3 gigabyte on my various Windows 8 VMs), but that 3 gigabyte boundary seems to ensure that future upgrades can be installed.
Note there are some Microsoft tips to make the size of the C:\Windows\WinSxS smaller, but those still do not remove the Reserve.tmp file.
My conclusion is that various Microsoft updates now require 3 gigabytes of disk space.
This seems to be the case with the .NET Framework 4.5.1 KB 2858725 update, and probably more future updates. I tried installing the KB 2858725 update with slightly less than 3 gigabytes of space (and after the 3 gigabyte reserve.tmp appeared), and I was still getting error 13EC. But with slightly more than 3 gigabyte the update would install.
Like usual, the Windows Update help on Error 13EC is useless, see the below screenshot.
–jeroen
via: The .NET Framework 4.5.1 and its corresponding language packs are available on Windows Update.
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Tagged: .NET Framework, virtual machine systems, Windows Update | 15 Comments »
Different ways of sleeping/waiting in batch files
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/13
About a year and a half ago, I wrote about a Batch file to “Keep Alive” a CMAK generated VPN connection in Windows 7.
It uses ping to wait a certain amount of time, but it has the drawbacks of
- requiring TCP/IP to be installed (which some headless systems don’t).
- using N+1 as the number of seconds
Since then, I learned that since Windows Vista and up has timeout command that just waits:
timeout /t 600 /nobreak
Two parameters are used:
- /nobreak
does not stop waiting when you press a key - /t #
waits # seconds
(the example is 10 minutes, I use it to regularly run FlushFileCache.exe or FlushMem.exe to empty the Windows file chache and release memory – often more than a gigabyte – back to Windows)
There is also sleep.exe, but that requires the Windows Resource Kit or Windows Server 2000/2003.
–jeroen
via:
- Batch file to “Keep Alive” a CMAK generated VPN connection in Windows 7 « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.
- Sleep command in batch file? – Stack Overflow.
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Tagged: batch file | Leave a Comment »
When your 2nd (touch) screen “clicks” on your 1st (non-touch) screen (Windows 7 tip,via André Mussche – Google+)
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/13
Glad I found back this G+ post by André Mussche:
20130206, 09:12 – Public
TIP: I got a 2nd screen with touch (on Win7), however default when touching the second screen it “clicks” on the main (1st) screen. Using “Tablet PC Settings” I got this switched to the correct 2nd screen.
I had exactly the same problem, and this solved it.
–jeroen
via: André Mussche – Google+ – TIP: I got a 2nd screen with touch (on Win7), however….
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »
Trying fix for Windows 8 high CPU usage of TiWorker.exe (via: bit-tech.net)
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/11
Hopefully this command (ran as administrator) will fix the high CPU usage of TiWorker.exe on one of my Widows 8 machines:
DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
It took almost an hour to run…
This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
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| C:\bin>DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth | |
| Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool | |
| Version: 6.2.9200.16384 | |
| Image Version: 6.2.9200.16384 | |
| [==========================100.0%==========================] | |
| The restore operation completed successfully. The component store corruption was repaired. | |
| The operation completed successfully. |
Thanks to Windows 8: Update KB2821895 sorgt für Probleme – Lösung gefunden! – Dr. Windows.
–jeroen
via: Windows 8 update bug clogs CPUs | bit-tech.net.
See also:
- Yet another refresh of KB3172605 to (again) fix Windows 7 SP1 Windows Update stuck checking for updates – via Super User
- [WayBack] Windows Version Numbers – Version and build numbers of Microsoft Windows
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »
Windows batch files: How to set a variable with the result of a command (via: Stack Overflow)
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/11
One of the easy things in *nix is to set the value of an environment with the output of a command.
Something like this is possible in Windows too, but you have to instruct Windows to keep an empty set of delimiters to capture the full first line.
There is also a small but important difference between Windows and *nix upon command failure: *nix will always return an empty value, but in Windows you must make sure to empty the value first.
Thanks Jesse Dearing for this summary: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Office Communicator 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts – Communicator – Office.com
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/11/29
I wasn’t aware that Office Communicator supported keyboard shortcuts for text formatting in the chat window.
Since I normally use RDP/MSTSC connections to a work machine (the laptop often moves around which means that network connections aren’t
“persistent”), which means that every once in a while a key like Shift, Alt, Ctrl, or Windows hangs.
That’s how I found out why sometimes the font in the chat window changed a bit: most often the font became strike through, which corresponds to Ctrl-T.
Three things that Microsoft should improve here:
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Posted in Communicator, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Windows Vista/7/8 and up: setting the user environment variables as regular user (non-administrator)
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/14
As a non-administrator, as of Windows Vista, you are not allowed to change the environment variables the regular way.
Various people have quoted the official Microsoft way of changing the environment variables as a regular user on Windows Vista and up (including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 and up).
It means going through the account settings doing half a dozen steps or so.
Quickest way however is to put this in a batch file to set/edit those environment variables like PATH:
"C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe" sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables
Whereas for the full sysdm.cpl you need Administrator privileges, you don’t for this specific rundll32 call.
The cool thing is that Windows will automatically merge the user and system environment PATH in this format:
system-PATH;user-PATH
–jeroen
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Test which Java version you have installed
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/11
Java.com has a test page that checks which Java version is installed and accessible through your web-browser:
http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp?detect=jre
–jeroen
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Posted in Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 