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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A big oops: “Researcher finds a way to invisibly reverse Windows updates • The Register”

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/07

Keeping an eye on this: [Wayback/Archive] Researcher finds a way to invisibly reverse Windows updates • The Register

--jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

The 2002 “Cruft Force” scale in Aug02: The New Adventures of Verity Stob

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/05

All computers acquire cruft over time, though with the ever increased data storage space capacities, nowadays it usually takes much longer to notice the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics on your computer until it is way too late.

I got reminded of the “Cruft Force” scale in the 2002 DDJ column [Wayback/Archive] “Aug02: The New Adventures of Verity Stob” by [Wayback/Archive] bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺: ‘…”cruft force 9″…’ – Fosstodon

Spent the best part of a day attempting to recover a friend’s Windows 11 machine that had shat itself. Was reminded of the most EXCELLENT description of Windows putrefaction by Verity Stob www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~susan/475/cruft.html “cruft force 9” – in this case, Adobe had deposited a new Adobe Reader install one directory lower apparently every time it had been used (!). There were also 34 numbered Teamviewer binaries getting progressively bigger.

Having known Verity Stob from DDJ (often named “Dr Dobbs”, but officially named “Dr. Dobb’s Journal”) and El Reg (officially named “The Register”). Until recently totally unaware .EXE Magazine had existed, I didn’t know that before DDJ she wrote columns for it nor that DDJ took over after it got renamed to “EXE Magazine”.

Learning new things every day: I love it!

--jeroen

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

CrazyMyra: “After AI took his job as an online assistant, Mr Clippy was obliged to seek work in other sectors…” – beige.party

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/30

I love the new title-text for the 2018 “Clippy” picture at [Wayback/Archive] CrazyMyra: “After AI took his job as an online assistant, Mr Clippy was obliged to seek work in other sectors…” – beige.party

A metal toilet paper holder in a corner od a bathro,with an empty roll, that looks similar to a large paperclip

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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Fun, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, LifeHacker, LLM, Meme, Office, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Figuring out what domains/IPs to whitelist for installing/updating winget sources and packages

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/25

A few years ago I asked for some help figuring out what to whitelist so that winget can update its sources and install packages.

This is how I found out.

The queste started with [Wayback/Archive] Need help trying to figure out what domains/IPs to whitelist for installing packages · Discussion #2304 · microsoft/winget-cli

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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Firewall, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, winget | Leave a Comment »

Installing WhatsApp Desktop from the Console

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/09

Related to WhatsApp Desktop for Mac or PC cannot only chat but also voice and video call: installing WhatsApp from the command-line.

That was easy to do via winget:

c:\temp>winget install -e --id WhatsApp.WhatsApp
Found WhatsApp [WhatsApp.WhatsApp] Version 2.2222.12
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://web.whatsapp.com/desktop/windows/release/x64/WhatsAppSetup.exe
  ██████████████████████████████   145 MB /  145 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Starting package install...
Successfully installed

This was a while ago, so the version number by now is dated, but it is about the command winget install -e --id WhatsApp.WhatsApp

Via:

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, winget | Leave a Comment »

MSI installation error 1603 – Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/01

This happens a lot with apps that auto-update before package manager contain that update: [Wayback/Archive] MSI installation error 1603 – Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

Cause

You may receive this error message if any one of the following conditions is true:

  • Windows Installer is attempting to install an app that is already installed on your PC.
  • The folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to is encrypted.
  • The drive that contains the folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to is accessed as a substitute drive.
  • The SYSTEM account does not have Full Control permissions on the folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to. You notice the error message because the Windows Installer service uses the SYSTEM account to install software.

Query: [Wayback/Archive] Exit code was ‘1603’ – Google Search

--jeroen

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

Thread by @malmoeb on attacks: Visibility is key for eradication

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/06/28

[Wayback/Archive] Thread by @malmoeb on Thread Reader App: Visibility is key for eradication.

The thread is about attacks on networks with Windows machines, but the concept works on all networks.

Start of thread: [Wayback/Archive] Stephan Berger on Twitter: “1/ Visibility is key for eradication 🥷 In a recent IR case, the TA created persistences with #QakBot on almost every system in the network. If only individual systems in the network were forensically examined, one or more infected systems would undoubtedly be missed. 🧵”

The gist is to setup your network monitoring in such a way that you can quickly identify compromised systems based on network traffic patterns.

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Pen Testing, Power User, Security, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Script alternatives to the Windows-L keyboard shortcut (SwitchUser / LockWorkstation)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/23

More than a decade ago I wrote about Programmatic alternatives to Windows-L keyboard shortcut (SwitchUser / LockWorkstation).

Still, I see many scripts invoke rundll32.exe or  to call the [Wayback/Archive] LockWorkStation function (winuser.h) inside user32.dll. Don’t!

The BOOL LockWorkStation()function has a calling convention that is incompatible with rundll32.exe () which will corrupt the call stack likely will lead to random problems as after two decades, this post from Raymond Chen still holds: [Wayback/Archive] What can go wrong when you mismatch the calling convention? – The Old New Thing

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Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, C#, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Security, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »

Windows: DoubleKiller – find and remove duplicate files (Big Bang enterprises)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/03

The build is from 2007, but still works fine on Windows 10 and 11 and perfectly fitted my needs for finding some ~2500 duplicate files that Google Drive made with their “upgrade” from Google Backup and Sync to Google Drive File Sync (where syncing from shared content is sort of possible and impossible at the same time).

Via [Wayback/Archive] Which duplicate files and folders finders exist for Windows? – Super User (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Chris Driver for answering and [Wayback/Archive] Andrija for asking) where I commented [Wayback/Archive]:

Thanks: still works fine in 2022. Download from … is a simple ZIP file which you can extract and just run the executable. No need for complicated installers or admin rights. Matches on (combinations of) name/size/date/CRC32, then intuitive GUI to select the files you don’t want any more, then either delete or move those selected files.

Via

–jeroen

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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »

When Microsoft download URLs time out: check if it other IP addresses for the same host do work fine (it might be a regional Microsoft CDN issue)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/03/28

A while back, early in the Wednesday morning after Patch Tuesday I performed regular updates of all the systems noticing some updates failed because timeouts on the Microsoft download servers.

Note I perform the manual steps on Wednesday as Patch Tuesday as it starts at 10:00 AM PST which is in the evening in Amsterdam. The automated steps are automated and kick in when Microsoft tells the Windows machines to update themselves.

See [Wayback/Archive] Security Update Guide FAQs

Microsoft schedules the release of security updates on “Patch Tuesday,” the second Tuesday of each month at 10:00 AM PST.

Depending on time zone(s) in which the organization operates, IT pros should plan their deployment schedules accordingly. Please note that there are some products that do not follow the Patch Tuesday schedule.

I posted a gist and a Tweet, but didn’t immediately thought of a good resolution so I postponed that until Thursday and found it:

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Posted in C, C++, Development, Power User, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, Visual Studio C++, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

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