Archive for the ‘Windows 10’ 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 2025/05/02
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 2025/04/02
Steps for installing Chocolatey on Windows 11 and up or 10 version 1803 and up.
Since I often install Windows on machines where it is not easy to copy/paste longer install commands my steps are slightly different than the ones on [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | Installing Chocolatey:
- Start a regular command prompt
- Either these two (the options are equivalent, see [Wayback/Archive] curl: transfer a URL | curl Commands | Man Pages | ManKier for
--remote-name and -O):
curl --remote-name https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1
curl -O https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1
Note the cURL pre-installed on Windows 10 since at least 6 years*: release 1803 or insider build 17063 is good enough to download the Chocolatey install script
- Inspect the downloaded
install.ps1 to check if you spot anything you dislike
- Start an elevated (administrator) command prompt
- Start PowerShell
- Execute this command
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
- Execute this command in the folder where you downloaded
install.ps1
- Yup, a custom build of cURL has been pre-installed on Windows 10 and up since more than 6 years:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, cURL, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/31
A few years back I had an error happen a while on one of my Windows machines after a git pull: fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at 'C:/versioned/repository' followed by a few lines with Windows SIDs (Security Identifiers) that I had to map to actual users.
I thought I had it scheduled, but my notes were in a draft post, so when I bumped into it again when upgrading an old virtual machine with new versions I finished it and scheduled it for now.
The first time I got the error was after git for Windows fixed security vulnerability [Wayback/Archive] CVE-2022-24765 and included the quote from [Wayback/Archive] Uncontrolled search for the Git directory in Git for Windows · Advisory · git-for-windows/git:
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Posted in CommandLine, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Source Code Management, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7 | Tagged: 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/17
Having had to use Mimikatz a few times in the past, I was not aware of the history.
So I was glad to find this elaborate article [Wayback/Archive] Mimikatz and password dumps | Ivan’s IT learning blog and the video (embedded after the signature). [Wayback/Archive] How to fix mimikatz null password in Windows 10 | WORKING 2019!!! – YouTube
Besides the history, it also explains why sometimes you only get hashes and other times you do get plain text passwords.
Recommended reading.
--jeroen
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Posted in Power User, Red team, Security, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, 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 »