Archive for the ‘Windows 10’ Category
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 »
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:
- Windows image backup – would end up with a “blue” screen indicating Windows 10 had a problem and was trying to collect data
- Paragon HDM
- Migrating the OS to a brand new RAID-1 set
- P2V
- 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:
- Kill disk2vhd after it hung a few hours at the 100% completion mark
- Verify with
- Mark the VHD file as online using diskpart (first atach the vdisk, select disk, then mark it online)
- Verify with chkdsk that the image was in fact without problems
- Detach the VHD file using diskpart
- Copy the VHD file to a HDD that Paragon HDM would recognise
- 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 »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/21
About a year ago, [WayBack] Rumors 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: [WayBack] Windows 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.is] windows 10 powershell version – Google Search and [WayBack] PowerShell 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 »
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 »
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 »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/26
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 »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/05
I often wonder why do they make changing the network location more difficult in each Windows version.
Anyway: for Windows 10, the secpol.msc way still works even though by default you now need to use a command prompt or the Windows-R key-combo to start it as typing it in the “Ask me Anything” search often gets you to bing (the search is too slow to figure out it is available locally even if you’re running a machine with SSD).
So from [WayBack] Top 10: Windows Firewall Netsh Commands (via: Windows Server content from Windows IT Pro), this still works in Windows 10:
a secpol.msc way that is easy:
- Press Win+R, then type
secpol.msc
- Click on “Network List Manager Policies”
- Double-click on your network
- Optionally give your network another name
- Click on “Tab Network Location”
- Set “Location Type” to “Private”
Go back to Network and Sharing Center to check the result.
In Windows 10 there are half a dozen other ways: [WayBack] Network Location – Set to Private or Public in Windows 10 – Windows 10 Tutorials
- Option One: To Change a Network Location in Settings app
- Option Two: To Change a Network Location in Registry Editor
- Option Three: To Change a Network Location Local Security Policy
- Option Four: To Change a Network Location in PowerShell
- Option Five: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection in PowerShell
- Option Six: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection using a VBS file
I like this PowerShell script too via [WayBack] networking – How do I force Windows 10 to see a network as private? – Super User:
## Change NetWorkConnection Category to Private
#Requires -RunasAdministrator
Get-NetConnectionProfile |
Where{ $_.NetWorkCategory -ne 'Private'} |
ForEach {
$_
$_|Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetWorkCategory Private -Confirm
}
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/02
Here’s how you can find out when your domain password will expire.
net user %USERNAME% /domain
It figures this out for the current logon domain (so it doesn’t work cross-domain) but it is a great help, especially when filtering out just the password information:
net user %USERNAME% /domain | findstr "Password"
This can be done in a more complex way with dsquery or adinfo that are tools to query
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/12/29
For shrinking VM disk images, it’s important to consolidate NTFS free space towards the end of the this.
I’ve tried many tools, starting with defrag C: /X (which tries, but doesn’t give good results) and found out these steps give the best results:
- Perform an Ultradefrag full optimisation,
- Perform a MyDefrag
Consolidate free space script on the drive.
If shrinking still fails then:
- Try the Ultradefrag at boot time
- Note you have to install the normal version, as you cannot enable boot time defragmentation from the portable version:
- Verify what kind of file(s) prevent shrinking: they show up in red after the MyDefrag session:
- Zoom in them (they can initially as small as 1 red pixel) by clicking on or near them, repeating the zoom long enough so you can hover over with the mouse and the lower part of the screen shows a filename like
where you cannot find much information about “$badclus:$bad:$data” but appear to be clusters marked as bad on NTFS level using something like chkdsk /B.
- If it was a bad sector like above, then try to resolve it with [WayBack]
ntfsfix which ships with GParted live boot:
- boot a [WayBack] GParted — Live CD/USB/PXE/HD drive,
- run GParted to see the drive path (for instance /dev/sda1)
- start a terminal
- run this command:
ntfsfix -b /dev/sda1
which will give output like this:
Mounting volume... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Checking the alternate boot sector... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
Going to un-mark the bad clusters ($BadClus)... OK
NTFS partition /dev/sda1 was processed successfully.
- boot back into Windows
- on an administrative command prompt run this for the affected drive letter:
chkdsk D: /B
(reboot if needed)
- Shrink the drive using
diskmgmt.msc
If you still cannot shrink, then try [WayBack] http://ftp.raxco.com/pub/download/pd14.0/pd14.0_pro.exe PerfectDisk by Raxco free trial.
Note:
MyDefrag (formerly named JkDefrag) is not maintained any more but the 4.3.1 version in the WayBack machine still works very well as the underlying defragmentation APIs in Windows haven’t changed.
References:
For FAT32:
For GParted / ntfsfix:
PerfectDisk via:
–jeroen
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, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/12/11
schtasks /End [/S <system> [/U <username> [/P [<password>]]]] /TN taskname
[WayBack] End a Running Task
Every now and then you have those Scheduled Tasks consisting of batch files that – despite trying – still ask for user input.
If – even after a reasonable time out – the Task Scheduler still hasn’t killed them, you can kill them by hand with the above schtasks in a snap.
–jeroen
Posted in Console (command prompt window), 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 »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 