Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/26
Penguinistas, rejoice: Tavis Ormandy lets you fuzz Windows
Cool, as they now can fuzz Windows Defender and have Microsoft make it better so all Windows 8+ users can profit from it.
Source: [WayBack] What’s got a vast attack surface and runs on Linux? Windows Defender, of course • The Register
Repository: https://github.com/taviso/loadlibrary
Via: [WayBack] WAT? – DoorToDoorGeek “Stephen McLaughlin” – Google+
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/26
Source:
History repeating itself: [Archive.is] 31607 – C:\nul\nul crashes/BSOD then, now it’s this:
Via:
All versions prior to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 seem vulnerable.
So add $MFT to this list:
The following device names have been known to render a system unstable: CON, NUL, AUX, PRN, CLOCK$, COMx, LPT1, and CONFIG$.
In short, Steven Sheldon created a rust package named nul which broke the complete package manager on Windows:
nul is not a valid name in windows 10, so cargo fails to update the registry, and then aborts whatever it was doing (building, searching, ect.).I think this project should be re-published to crates.io under a new name, something like null-strings perhaps?https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-indexBTW: one of my gripes on learning new languages is that they come with a whole new idiom of their ecosystem: rust, cargo, crates, all sound like being a truck mechanic to me.
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, NTFS, Power User, Security, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Defender, Windows Development, Windows ME, 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 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/15
PatchCleaner just cleaned out 10-20 gigabyte per VM for most of my Windows 7-8.x VMs. After that, the updates still worked fine.
So it indeed does:
Safely remove all orphaned patch and installer files from your windows installer directory in one easy click
–jeroen
Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/patchcleaner/
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/01
Details: Technology Chatting with Jack: SOLVED! – High CPU Usage of Microsoft Security Essentials
TL;DR:
if MsMpEng.exe uses a lot of CPU, it it to it’s own exclusion list.
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/01
In addition to the two methods mentioned at Two Quick Methods for Finding Shared Folders in Windows (use net share or compmgmt.msc) I like this one:
It directly gets you to the “Shared Folders” inside compmgmt.msc
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, 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 Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/04/14
A while ago I had some intermittent network issues resulting in these Windows Update error numbers:
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/03/27
Nice html report of your battery state in Windows 8 and 10 where 14 is the number of days:
powercfg /batteryreport /output "%temp%\battery_report.html" /Duration 14
start "View Report" "%temp%\battery_report.html"
Source: Battery history on Windows 10 (and maybe older versions?) I was wondering if I…
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/01/30
If you use Windows Search (I don’t: I use Everything by VoidTools), your Windows.edb can grow ridiculously large. It is a single file, though it appears to be in two places because there is a symbolic link from C:\Users\All Users to C:\ProgramData :
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb
C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb
This is how to reduce its size:
How to offline defrag the index
- Change the Windows Search service so that it does not automatically start. To do this, run the following command in cmd.exe:
sc config wsearch start= disabled- Run the following command to stop the Windows Search service:
net stop wsearch- Run the following command to perform offline compaction of the Windows.edb file:
esentutl.exe /d %AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb- Run the following command to change the Windows Search service to delayed start:
sc config wsearch start= delayed-auto- Run the following command to start the service:
net start wsearch
Notes:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Projects\SystemIndex\Indexer\CiFiles\ directory:
Windows Update uses the same database structure and is a single file:
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb
This is how I reduced its size:
net stop wuauserv net stop bits esentutl.exe /d C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb net start bits net start wuauserv
Talking about Windows Update: you might also want to Clean Up the WinSxS Folder
–jeroen
Posted in Everything by VoidTools, 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 Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/01/02
Via:
Joe C. Hecht – G+
Windows 7 Disk Images – Is it just me I have noticed that my Windows 7 backup disk images fail when Windows update applies security updates, if the images are more than 2 “Monthly RollUps” old. When I click the update webpage for help, Microsoft the server returnes a “page not found”. Is Microsoft trying to tell me something?
I noticed this as well for VMs that I hardly use (and can be dormant for months): updating them takes forever and I could not find the cause.
The cause seems Microsoft changing the locations for updates, but not having the updater update in the old location any more: [WayBack] Changes to Security Update Links – MSRC.
Solution: manually download the update MSU files for your Windows + architecture combination in a directory, copying a batch file there, then run the batch file.
More details at “Solution to the long search for Windows Updates on a newly installed Windows 8.1, 7 SP1 or Vista SP2”:
Yes, you have to fiddle a bit with the WUAUSERV service, but then everything should work out well.
–jeroen
via: [WayBack] Windows 7 Disk Images – Is it just me I have noticed that my Windows 7 backup…
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/26
Shortly before the “Free Windows 10 Update” deadline I upgraded a bunch of physical and virtual machines each with different configurations providing various challenges.
Back then, I didn’t have time to properly write down notes so I saved a bunch of links. Now I found time to add a few notes below.
Note there are fewer Windows 10 editions (Home/Pro/Enterprise) are different than before so there is a mapping (for instance Windows Ultimate does not map to Windows Enterprise): Windows 10 free upgrade matrix.
It’s much easier, faster and disk-space friendly to install from ISO than waiting for GWX.exe or GWXUI.exe, especially when installing multiple systems in a row.
I don’t use x86 systems any more so I used Win10_1511_2_English_x64.iso which is slightly newer than Win10_1511_1_English_x64.iso and is likely to be outdated by now so get yours through https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10.
If you insist, there is Win10_1511_2_English_x32.iso (note the x64 -> x32 consistency, many people refer to it as x86 though).
Windows 10 does not like to upgrade when you have the Daemon Tools ISO mounting tool installed. But Portable WinCDEmu is fine.
The Windows 10 installer doesn’t suffer from Portable WinCDEmu not mounting after reboot: during the first install step it copies enough to continue without the ISO image mounted after reboot.
Just run the SETUP.EXE in the root of the CD drive.
Some systems do not have optical media any more so you need to create bootable media.
In the past, you used ImageX for that (e.g. Step-by-Step: Basic Windows 7 Deployment for IT Professionals), but as of Windows 8/Server 2008 R2 there is DISM: Apply Images Using DISM.
I used this command-line to copy from H: (the content of the ISO image) to V: (the VHD drive):
dism /apply-image /imagefile:H:\Sources\install.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:V:\
More information at DISM Image Management Command-Line Options and DISM.exe Replaces ImageX.exe – My Thoughts On IT… (you can even use it to backup/restore file-based Windows images).
In the past (think Windows XP and earlier), you had BOOT.INI to choose which one to boot. Now there are msconfig and Boot Configuration Data editors like bcdedit and bcdboot for that:
You cannot update Windows 10 on a “Boot to VHD” based system: it’s one of the limitations in What is not supported for native boot when using VHDs:
There is a cumbersome workaround using Hyper-V which I didn’t use (look for “How do I install the November Update if Windows 10 is running on a VHD using native boot?” in Hands-on with Windows 10: Upgrading, installing and activating in the real world | ZDNet).
These are the steps I used to get it on a VHD (based on the How to install Windows 10 to VHD and create a dual boot system with Win 7/8 video below):
bcdboot V:\WindowsYou can use an existing VHD for DISM in which case you might need to Resize/extend virtual hard disk to get more space under Windows 7/8/10.
If you get an error 0x80041023 during key validation at install time, then retry it later. Often the validation then just works. If it doesn’t, try to Activate Your Windows 10 License via Microsoft Chat Support or phone based activation:
- Press Windows key + X then clickRun, then type: slui.exe 4
- Next press the ‘ENTER’ key
- Select your ‘Country’ from the list.
- Choose the ‘Phone Activation’ option.
- Stay on the phone (do not select/press any options) and wait for a person to help you with activation.
- Explain your problem clearly to the support person.
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 