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

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Archive for the ‘Windows 11’ Category

Some links on LaunchTM.exe, as I had been unaware Windows can use it to launch TaskMgr.exe

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/04

A while ago I learned that since Windows 8, sometimes it uses LaunchTM.exe (which is not even on Wikipedia) to start TaskMgr.exe.

I could find little information about the why, so here are some links with information on when LaunchTM.exe is used (which is confusing) and what command-line parameters TaskMgr.exe can get (also confusing as the order of parameters matter):

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

Yes, Windows user names can contain spaces

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/02

I forgot what triggered me querying for [Wayback/Archive] can windows user names contain spaces – Google Search.

Boy I was surprised that the answer is yes.

Following that I was totally not surprised that:

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

Windows 10/11: Skip Security Questions When Adding Local User

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/30

Based on [Wayback/Archive] Windows 10/11: Skip Security Questions When Adding Local User, [Wayback/Archive] Remove Security Questions when setting up Local Account in Windows and others:

  • if during initial Windows 10/11 setup you add a user with a password, then it will ask you for 3 security questions
  • if you do not want these 3 security questions:
    1. leave the password blank when adding the user
    2. after first logon, press Ctrl-Alt-Del and change the password from blank to an actual password

Via [Wayback/Archive] windows 10 skip security questions – Google Search.

–jeroen

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

NTFS Sparse Files For Programmers

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/25

Need to check this out some day: cs.exe compiled from [Wayback] sparse.zip which you can download from [Wayback/Archive] NTFS Sparse Files For Programmers

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Posted in C, C++, Development, NTFS, Power User, RoboCopy, Software Development, Visual Studio C++, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

With the newest PowerToys version, the Microsoft teams shows they forgot about their CUA heritage

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/30

The most recent Microsoft Power Toys version binds to Alt + Spacebar which indicates the Windows team has forgotten about the CUA (Common User Access) heritage.

[Wayback/Archive] PowerToys bring fun tweaks to Windows 10 and 11 • The Register

And that tells us something else, too: that none of the Microsoft developers involved in building and releasing this tool are old-style keyboard warriors, because since Windows 1.0 in 1985, Alt+space has been the keystroke to invoke the window-management menu. From Windows 2 onwards, the leftmost button on every Windows title bar even looked like a space bar, to remind you. So to maximize a window, it’s Alt+space, x; to minimize, Alt+space, n; to resize with the keyboard, Alt+space, s, and so on.

Via [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “Stealing Alt+Space for a Power Toy, the Microsoft @Windows team has forgotten about its CUA heritage.”.

--jeroen

Posted in Hardware, IBM SAA CUA, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

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 »

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 »

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 »