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

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Archive for the ‘Windows 7’ Category

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How to remove (disable or hide) User Accounts on the Windows 10 Login Screen – Make Tech Easier

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/01/11

Works on my systems too (I think it works from Windows XP on) to hide users from the home screen: [WayBack] How to Hide User Accounts on the Windows 10 Login Screen – Make Tech Easier.

Show only the last logged on user, but add a switch-user dialog

Run the below .reg file on your machine, or manually add this key (does not need any value): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\DomainStyleLogon

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\DomainStyleLogon]

Note the empty line at the end of the .reg file: that is by intention.

This will show the last logged-on user on the home screen, but still allows users to perform a switch to other users.

Related: [WayBack] ALWAYS display the last / default user Windows 7 welcome screen

Disable the users on the logon screen from interactive logon

Warning: do NOT disable your administrator user this way!

For why not, see the various users that lost access: [WayBack] Hide User Accounts on Windows 7 Logon – Windows 7 IT Pro > Windows 7 User Interface

  1. use net user on the command prompt to list the usernames and note the username you want to hide from the login screen
  2. run regedit to edit the registry
  3. ensure this registry key exists HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
  4. Under that key, create a new key SpecialAccounts
  5. Under the SpecialAccounts key, create a new key UserList
  6. Under the UserList key, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value with the Value name equal to the username and the Value data to zero (0, which is the default)
  7. Reboot
  8. Observe that user is not on the login window any more.

Example:

If you lost access because of SpecialAccounts

If you would like to unhide the hidden Administrator account on Windows 7:

  1. Boot a Windows 7 Installation DVD or ISO
  2. go to command prompt and type regedit -it
  3. click on HKLM hive and
  4. next navigate File>>Load hive
  5. navigate to C:\Windows\System32\config folder and choose `SOFTWARE` file load it and assign this hive any name for example REM_SOFTWARE
  6. open key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\REM_SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
  7. remove the Administrator account
    • or better way remove the whole key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\REM_SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts

–jeroen

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

How to install Telnet with only one command

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/01

Source: [WayBack] How to install Telnet with only one command:

dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:TelnetClient

–jeroen

Posted in Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

RDP logon while other user is logged on: no way to automate automatic disconnect/logoff

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/10/21

One of the dreaded things when logging on using RDP is that if another user is logged on, you have to first indicate you want to indeed logon (if you don’t, the RDP connection will close after some 15-30 seconds), then wait for their approval time-out before you can logon.

As of writing there is no way around this.

Some links that helped me conclude this:

–jeroen

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

Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death with error 0x7B – twm’s blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/28

[WayBack] Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death with error 0x7B – twm’s blog:

To allow Windows 7 to boot in IDE as well as AHCI mode, I had to enable the following drivers (by setting “Start” to “0” in the registry, there might be other options to do this):

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\intelide
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\pciide
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\iastorV

The first two allow Windows 7 to boot from SATA in IDE mode. The second two allow Windows 7 to boot from SATA in AHCI mode.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9 | Leave a Comment »

ESXi: shrinking a Windows disk

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/04

I had to shrink down a Windows disk of an ESXi based Virtual Machine from 240 Gibibyte to about 140 gigabyte.

In this case, it was Windows 7 on ESXi 6.5, but the actual versions do not really matter.

The only way to decrease ESXi .vmdk files is by fiddling with disk sector counts in the text based .vmdk files (not the binaries .vmdk files!) of a diskname.vmdk / diskname-flat.vmdk text/binary pair. This is described for instance in these two articles:

Notes:

  1. This article presumes you already shrunk your NTFS partition (for instance as described in Consolidating NTFS free space).
  2. If you only have a binary .vmdk file, then you can use vmkfstools to create a text/binary pair for you, for instance by using these commands:
    vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk Windows7.vmdk Windows7.thick.vmdk
    vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk Windows7.vmdk Windows7.thin.vmdk --diskformat thin
  3. You cannot workaround 2. as the --geometry functionality of vmkfstools only displays existing geometry, see

ESXi has .vmdk files that count disk sizes in sectors, but the tooling that ship with Windows to not show partition sizes in sectors, especially not the partition ending sector.

All permutations of tooling like DISKPART, PowerShell, WMIC and terms partition, ending sector, cylinder, head, etc failed me to return built-in tools.

Luckily, “powershell” “partition” “ending sector” found the documentation for [WayBack] Test Disk | File System | Data Management titled “TestDisk Documentation, Release 7.1, Christophe GRENIER” which lead to:

[WayBack] TestDisk Download – CGSecurity

Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.

It is available for many platforms, including Windows x86 (fully featured) and x64 (limited features):

There was also the much more convoluted PowerForensics which is also more difficult to install:

As a check (because the calculations by hand are too cumbersome to trust on a first trey), I also downloaded the ISO image of gparted:

Let’s get started for real!

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Firewall whitelist for Windows Update

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/14

In the end, this list worked on a Fritz!Box, but I still do not know which other subdomains and protocols they silently let pass:

windowsupdate.microsoft.com
*.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
*.update.microsoft.com
*.windowsupdate.com
download.windowsupdate.com
download.microsoft.com
*.download.windowsupdate.com
test.stats.update.microsoft.com
ntservicepack.microsoft.com
update.microsoft.com
*.update.microsoft.com
*.download.microsoft.com
windowsupdate.com
wustat.windows.com
login.live.com
mp.microsoft.com
*.mp.microsoft.com
www.update.microsoft.com
support.microsoft.com
www.msftconnecttest.com

Some source materials:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

hardlink – How can I find hard links on Windows? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/06/08

Cool:

use command:

fsutil hardlink list MyFileName.txt

It lists all hardlinks to file with name MyFileName.txt.

Source: [WayBack] hardlink – How can I find hard links on Windows? – Super User

More information at [WayBack] Fsutil hardlink | Microsoft Docs on

fsutil hardlink create <NewFileName> <ExistingFileName>
fsutil hardlink list <Filename>

–jeroen

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

How to pin either a Shortcut or a Batch file to the new Windows 7, 8 and 10 Taskbar and start menu? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/04/29

This nailed it: way easier than all the alternatives involving VB scripts, registry keys and Group Policy Editors.

  1. Create a shortcut to your batch file.
  2. Get into shortcut property and change target to something like: cmd.exe /C "path-to-your-batch".
  3. Simply drag your new shortcut to the taskbar

Source: [WayBack] How to pin either a Shortcut or a Batch file to the new Windows 7, 8 and 10 Taskbar and start menu? – Super User

The trick is step 2. After that you can modify back your shortcut to just the batch file.

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

OSK: How to turn off auto start On-Screen Keyboard on Windows 7 64 bit? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/04/27

Steps based on [WayBack] How to turn off auto start on-screen-keyboard on Windows 7 64 bit? – Super User.

  1. Turn down the volume of your PC
  2. Run “Control Panel”
  3. Choose “Ease of Access”, then “Ease of Access Center”
  4. Click “Use the computer without a mouse or keyboard”
    • If you forgot the sound settings, and they are at max: the narrative voice will probably deafen you
  5. Uncheck the “use on-screen keyboard” box
  6. Press “Apply” or “OK
  7. Close the “Control Panel”

I got in this situation when I selected the “On-Screen Keyboard” (often abbreviated to OSK; it is serviced by OSK.exe) on the logon screen in the “Ease of Access Center”. After that it would launch after each logon, even after I disabled it on the logon screen.

Back then I needed it because the VM ran on a Mac under Virtual Box which by default not only takes the left Command key, but also messes with some of the other left modifier keys.

The password for a new user I had to logon with needed the modifier keys, so it appears that the logon screen settings during the very first logon get copied to the user profile.

Turning them off on the logon screen does not copy them to the profile again:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Chocolatey and TLS since early 2020

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/03/19

I was upgrading a few older systems that had been off-line for quite a while.

When installing Chocolatey, I bumped into this error:

C:\bin>"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
Exception calling "DownloadString" with "1" argument(s): "The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel."
At line:1 char:1
+ iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocol ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebException

So I tried [WayBack] chocolatey “The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.” – Google Search

Results indicated TLS 1.1 support was removed early February 2020 from Chocolatey because of security reasons, which impacts the installation on older systems:

Note [WayBack] Chocolatey install Error: The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel – Stack Overflow with a temporary workaround for Microsoft Windows Server 2016:

Looks like the security protocol changed:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

–jeroen

Posted in Chocolatey, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »

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