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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows 10’ Category

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Some links on resetting Windows 10 to a different installation language, but keeping the license

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/24

I had a few non English Windows 10 systems that I wanted to keep the license for, but otherwise have a clean Windows 10 English install on.

Some links; hopefully I can later make more notes.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Windows 10: remove applications from the uninstall list

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/04

After doing Windows upgrades to Windows 10, every now and then I bump into applications that do not fully uninstall themselves and get stuck on the uninstall list (that you get when running appwiz.cpl or browse to the Control Pannel installed programs list).

[WayBack] How to Manually Remove Programs from the Add/Remove Programs List mentions to inspect registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, but that didn’t include some of the applications.

Then I found [WayBack] Remove entry from Windows 10 Apps & Features – Super User, where the answers mentions two other keys (thanks users [WayBack] Kreiggott and [WayBack] NutCracker):

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Neat!

So I made the below PowerShell script to dump installed programs.

It grabs the list of registry keys containing installed software and their registry values, then empirically filters out most values that are also now shown in AppWiz.cpl.

Like database work, the values can have properties having a value or being null. So it’s SQL like expression galore to do the filtering.

This post is slightly related to Still unsolved since 2015 NetBeans: Bug 251538 – Your Installer is Creating Invalid Data for the NoModify DWORD Key which crashes enumeration of the Uninstall Key in at least PowerShell, where I already did (without documenting) some Uninstall spelunking.

## The collection of registry keys gives Name and Property of each registry key; where Property is compound containing all registry values of that key.
## Get-ItemProperty will get you all the values on which you can filter, including a few special PS* values that allow you to browse back to the registry key.

# x86 installs on x64 hardware: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12199372/get-itemproperty-not-returning-all-properties/12200100#12200100
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys = (@
(Get-Item HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*)) + 
(Get-Item HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*) + 
(Get-Item HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*)
    
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys.GetType().FullName
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-Member
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Out-GridView
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-ItemProperty | Get-Member
#$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | Get-ItemProperty | Out-GridView
#Return
    
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryNameValues = $nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryKeys | 
    Get-ItemProperty |
    Where-Object {
        $_.SystemComponent -ne 1 -and $_.NoRemove -ne 1 -and
        $_.UninstallString -ne "" -and $_.UninstallString -ne $null
    }
# Filters out most things that AppWiz.cpl will leave out as well.
# Might need more fine tuning, but is good enough for now.

# PSPath shows the path to the underlying registry key of each value
$nonUninstallableSoftwareRegistryNameValues |
    Select-Object SystemComponent, NoRemove, DisplayName, DisplayVersion, UninstallString, PSChildName <#, PSPath #> |
    Sort-Object DisplayName |
    Out-GridView
# Need to find a good way to output this in a really wide Format-Table text format.

–jeroen

Posted in CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Some Windows 10 updates remove registry values; not sure how widely

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/12

After watching an autologon system not logging on automatically over the past years, the pattern seems to be that at least major, and some less minor Windows updates remove autlogon parts of the registry.

I’m not sure where the boundary between “major” and “less minor” lies (though I suspect “cumulative updates” and larger), nor if more than these values are affected:

  • key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon"
    • value name AutoAdminLogon gets removed or becomes value 0
    • value DefaultUserName gets removed
    • value DefaultPassword gets removed

This means that now after each startup, I need to schedule a task that runs a script setting the values I need depending if a password is needed or not.

The script also needs credentials, so I need to figure out how to properly do that.

I still need to decide between PowerShell or batch file script, as I already have the batch file from How to turn on automatic logon in Windows and automatic logon in Windows 2003.

For my future reference, some more links on things that can get deleted:

Hopefully these links will help me writing the scripts:

–jeroen

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

Solved: ‘Answering Yes to “You have an older version of PackageManagement known to cause issues with the PowerShell extension. Would you like to update PackageManagement (You will need to restart the PowerShell extension after)?” hung my Visual Studio Code.…’

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/04

From a while back: [Archive.is] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: ‘Answering Yes to “You have an older version of PackageManagement known to cause issues with the PowerShell extension. Would you like to update PackageManagement (You will need to restart the PowerShell extension after)?” hung my Visual Studio Code.… ‘

After clicking “Yes”, the the only thing visible was this notification that had an ever running “progress bar”:

Notifications - Powershell - Source: Powershell (Extension)

Notifications – Powershell – Source: Powershell (Extension)

The first part of the solution was relatively simple: restart Visual Studio code, then the original notification showed, and after clicking “Yes”, the “Panel” (you can toggle it with Ctrl+J) showed the “Terminal” output (yes, I was working on [Wayback/Archive.is] PowerShell script for sending Wake-on-LAN magic packets to given machine hardware MAC address, more about that later):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Communications Development, Development, Encryption, HTTP, HTTPS/TLS security, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Security, Software Development, TCP, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/30

[WayBack] Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

PowerShell: recovering from corrupt empty *.nupkg files after a disk was accidentally full during update

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/09

When you do a choco upgrade all --yes on a system that – during upgrade – becomes low on disk space, you can end up with a lot of empty .nupkg files.

For those package, Chocolatey will not recognise they are installed any more.

The fix is this:

  1. increase disk space so at least 5 gigabytes is free
  2. split the choco upgrade process so it checks before each upgrade that this diskspace is indeed free
  3. list all choco .nupkg files of length zero ordered from oldest to newest
  4. for each package, delete the .nupkg file if it exists, then force install it with the --force parameter before the --yes parameter like in

    choco install --force --yes chocolatey

  5. when all packages have been done, then choco upgrade --all --yes

I wrote a few PowerShell scripts assisting me in cleaning up the mess.

choco-list-installed.bat

:: https://superuser.com/questions/890251/how-to-list-chocolatey-packages-already-installed-and-newer-version-available-fr
choco list --localonly %*

choco-show-installed-package-names.bat

:: `--limit-output`  does not show Chocolatey version header and count footer.
:: `--id-oonly`      omits the version number, so you only get the package name
choco list --local-only --limit-output --id-only

choco-show-installed-package-names-and-versions.bat

:: `--limit-output`  does not show Chocolatey version header and count footer.
choco list --local-only --limit-output %*

choco-reinstall-empty-nupkg-by-names.ps1

  • [WayBack] Powershell – Finding 0-byte Files | Another computer blog
  • [WayBack] windows – Where is the Chocolatey installation path? – Stack Overflow:

    There is an environment variable set on installation, ChocolateyInstall, which is set to C:\Chocolatey by default in versions of Chocolatey less than 0.9.8.27. After that, this defaults to C:\ProgramData\Chocolatey.

    NOTE: By default, the C:\ProgramData folder on Windows is hidden. You will either need to enable hidden files and folders through Folder Options | View or you can navigate directly to the path shown above by copy/pasting directly into the Windows Explorer address bar.

    In version 0.9.9 of Chocolatey, it actively moves from the old folder location to the new one.

  • [WayBack] string – Powershell concatenate an Environment variable with path – Stack Overflow

    A convenient way to obtain the string value rather than the dictionary entry (which is technically what Get-ChildItem is accessing) is to just use the variable syntax: $Env:USERPROFILE rather than Get-ChildItem Env:USERPROFILE.

    $localpath = "$env:USERPROFILE\some\path"

    …

    Also, the Join-Path cmdlet is a good way to combine two parts of a path.

    $localpath = Join-Path $env:USERPROFILE 'some\path'
<#
https://learningpcs.blogspot.com/2009/12/powershell-finding-0-byte-files.html

Zero length .nupkg files sorted by oldest first.

These are packages that choco will not show and likekly need a forced reinstall.

Choco does remember the version that was installed (so not all the choco config is hosed).

- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28235388/where-is-the-chocolatey-installation-path/28239451#28239451
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41047123/powershell-concatenate-an-environment-variable-with-path/41047343#41047343

/#>
$LibPath = Join-Path $env:ChocolateyInstall 'lib'
$NuPkgExtension = 'nupkg'
$NupkgFilter = "*.$NuPkgExtension"

## Remove the empty .nupkg files for each argument
$args | ForEach-Object {
    $PackageName = $_ 
    Write-Output "Deleting any empty $PackageName.$NuPkgExtension under $LibPath :"

    Get-ChildItem -Path $LibPath -Recurse -Filter $NupkgFilter | Where-Object {
        ($_.Length -eq 0) -and ($_.BaseName -eq $PackageName)
    } | Sort-Object LastWriteTime | ForEach-Object { 
        $PackageFullName = $_.FullName
        Write-Output "Deleting $PackageFullName"
        Remove-Item $PackageFullName
    }
}

## Force install the chocolatey package for each argument
$args | ForEach-Object {
    $PackageName = $_ 
    Write-Output "Installing $PackageName with Chocolatey:"
    choco install --force --yes $PackageName
}

Link lists

Some more links that helped me solve this:

Some links on errors I encountered while recovering from this:

  • Checksum errors like[WayBack] (sysinternals) checksum error · Issue #756 · chocolatey-community/chocolatey-coreteampackages · GitHub are often caused by the chocolatey package downloading the most recent installer despite the package version. Two solutions:
    1. Pass --ignorechecksum to choco --install (see [WayBack] CommandsInstall · chocolatey/choco Wiki · GitHub)
    2. First uninstall using the --force parameter
      [Archive.is] Chocolatey Software | Sysinternals 2019.6.29

      Sysinternals Suite is going to be installed in ‘C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\sysinternals\tools’
      File appears to be downloaded already. Verifying with package checksum to determine if it needs to be redownloaded.
      Error – hashes do not match. Actual value was ‘A510C31C2CC591A16F342E7CBA5DC8409EAF08C9B56729CF132C95C69E196787’.
      Downloading sysinternals
      from ‘https://download.sysinternals.com/files/SysinternalsSuite.zip&#8217;
      Progress: 100% – Completed download of C:\Users\devCrPhoneDebug\AppData\Local\Temp\2\chocolatey\sysinternals\2018.12.27\SysinternalsSuite.zip (23.51 MB).
      Download of SysinternalsSuite.zip (23.51 MB) completed.
      Error – hashes do not match. Actual value was ‘A510C31C2CC591A16F342E7CBA5DC8409EAF08C9B56729CF132C95C69E196787’.
      ERROR: Checksum for ‘C:\Users\devCrPhoneDebug\AppData\Local\Temp\2\chocolatey\sysinternals\2018.12.27\SysinternalsSuite.zip’ did not meet ‘b14466c6bf3be216ea71610a3f455030e791cd5ad1b42a283886194205d176b0’ for checksum type ‘sha256’. Consider passing the actual checksums through with –checksum –checksum64 once you validate the checksums are appropriate. A less secure option is to pass –ignore-checksums if necessary.
      The install of sysinternals was NOT successful.
      Error while running ‘C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\sysinternals\tools\chocolateyInstall.ps1’.
      See log for details.

      Chocolatey installed 0/1 packages. 1 packages failed.
      See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log).

  • Packages that cannot be found at all:[WayBack] “imagemagick not installed. The package was not found with the source(s) listed” – Google Search
    • This means that Chocolatey cannot find a dependency, but will not tell you which one. It also happens during package testing:[WayBack] imagemagick v7.0.9.7 – Failed – Package Tests Results · GitHub
      • Solve this by fixing all other empty .nupkg files first, which will give you an idea on the potential missing dependencies. Retry by forcing reinstall each dependency.
  • Dependencies that cannot be found, which can be caused by more empty .nupkg files. Example: [WayBack] Unable to resolve dependency · Issue #206 · chocolatey/choco · GitHub
    • Solve this by each time a dependency is not found, include on the choco-reinstall-empty-nupkg-by-names.ps1command, then retry.

–jeroen

Posted in Chocolatey, COBOL, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Digging Through Event Log Hell (finding user logon & logoff) – Ars Technica OpenForum

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/31

This helped me big time finding failed logon attempts: [WayBack] Event Log Hell (finding user logon & logoff) – Ars Technica OpenForum

Alternatively, you can use the XPath query mechanism included in the Windows 7 event viewer. In the event viewer, select “Filter Current Log…”, choose the XML tab, tick “Edit query manually”, then copy the following to the textbox:

Code:
<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0" Path="Security">
    <Select Path="Security">*[System[EventID=4624] and EventData[Data[@Name='TargetUserName'] = 'USERNAME']]</Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

This selects all events from the Security log with EventID 4624 where the EventData contains a Data node with a Name value of TargetUserName that is equal to USERNAME. Remember to replace USERNAME with the name of the user you’re looking for.

If you need to be even more specific, you can use additional XPath querying – have a look at the detail view of an event and select the XML view to see the data that you are querying into.

Thanks user Hamstro!

Notes:

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Vista, Windows XP, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »

Windows 10: quickly view Settings -> Printers no matter the installed language

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/23

From Windows 8 on, Microsoft has been pushing more and more stuff to the App UI (sometimes called Immersive User Interface).

By default they are only easily accessible from the search feature from the “Start” button or “Search” pane in the task bar.

This is cumbersome or even problematic when you have to remember the correct terms over many localisations.

In the past you could run this from the command prompt or Windows+R keyboard shortcut “Run” pop-up:

control printers

This does not work however in either of the two:

settings printers

This works from the Windows+R keyboard shortcut “Run” pop-up:

ms-settings:printers

This works from the command prompt:

start ms-settings:printers

The difference is that with control , it will eventually find control.exe on the path, but ms-settings: is the scheme bit of an URI. The start command can handle this, the plain command-line cannot.

What in fact happens is that the URI scheme handler, will have a Windows Service (which runs under NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM) start "C:\Windows\ImmersiveControlPanel\SystemSettings.exe" -ServerName:microsoft.windows.immersivecontrolpanel under your current user.

List of Settings URIs

Next to a List of applications behind the various control panel links – via “Stop user access to control panel”, below is a list of Settings URIs.

The below list is from [WayBack] The list of Settings pages URIs (ms-settings) in Windows 10 , but misses ms-settings:printers.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

The Windows key has no Unicode equivalent, so use ⊞ like Wikipedia and many others do

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/23

lFor Mac keyboard keys, almost all (except the old solid and open Apple logo’s) have a Unicode code point, see for instance the modifier keys from the [WayBack] List of Mac/Apple keyboard symbols · GitHub (the “Alt” column has a solid Apple logo in the bottom right; on non-Mac systems it will look differently as it is in the Unicode private range: [WayBack] Unicode Character ” (U+F8FF): ‘<Private Use, Last>’):

Sym Key Alt
⌃ Control
⌥ Option
⇧ Shift
⌘ Command

These are the code points for the “Sym” column:

Keys on many platforms

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, 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 | 1 Comment »

Windows chocolatey Wireshark install: ensure you install nmap too, so you have a pcap interface for capturing!

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/19

Wireshark is indispensable when doing network communications development or DevOps.

This is my choco-install-network-tools.bat batch file to install Wireshark and the pcap dependency which nmap provides:

choco install --yes nmap
:: wireshark requires a pcap for capturing; nmap comes with npcap which fulfills this dependency
:: see:
:: - https://chocolatey.org/packages/wireshark
:: - https://chocolatey.org/packages/win10pcap
:: - https://chocolatey.org/packages/WinPcap
:: - https://chocolatey.org/packages/nmap
choco install --yes wireshark

Yes, I know: Windows Subsystem for Linux could have an easier installation, but the above:

See:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Communications Development, Development, Internet protocol suite, nmap, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux | Leave a Comment »

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