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

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Archive for the ‘Windows 8’ Category

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Windows Users like “Window Manager\DWM-3” are virtual users

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/15

Having seen logon failures from user Window Manager\DWM-3 while on a public WiFi network, I did a quick search on [WayBack] “Window Manager\DWM-3” – Google Search.

It appeared somebody trying a dictionary attack on the RDP port of my Windows VM which was on the host Bridged Network (see [Archive.is] Help – VMware Fusion 6 Documentation Center).

This is a virtual user that is part of a series of users that the Desktop Window Manager started using from Windows 8 and up.

The first user always exist, DWM-2 and up are created for new dwm.exe processes (by winlogon.exe) when users start logging on through RDP connections to a Windows machine:

  1. Window Manager\DWM-1
  2. Window Manager\DWM-2
  3. Window Manager\DWM-3
  4. Window Manager\DWM-4

In addition to logging on as a new user, as of Windows 8, these also are created when shutting down and starting up (which Windows fools you by actually doing a kind of hibernate): [Wayback] windows 8 – What is winlogon.exe -SpecialSession? – Super User

Related:

–jeroen

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

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 »

Exiting the Microsoft Narrator

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/24

The keyboard bindings for the Microsoft Narrator changed in Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 and earlier.

Since the below support pages refuse to save in the WayBack machine and Archive.is, I copy-pasted some bits of them.

Related:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | 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 »

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 »

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 »

Fixing “one or more critical volumes is not having enough free space” also known as 0x81000033 during Windows backup

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/02/03

If you get this error:

Backup and Restore failed and you receive the following error message: The backup did not complete successfully. Check your backup: Windows Backup skipped backing up system image because one or more critical volumes is not having enough free space.

then you are dealing with error 0x81000033 which usually means your SYSTEM RESERVED partition is full, but might happen on other volumes you are backing up as well.

Windows tries to trick your mind, as the error actually indicates the disk you make your backup to, but in fact it is about one or more of the disks you are backing up.

Most often, this is the hidden partition SYSTEM RESERVED (sometimes called System Reserved):

The SYSTEM RESERVED partition (~100 megabyte on systems originally installed with Windows < 8 and ~350 megabyte afterwards) contains files relating to boot, recovery and BitLocker drive encryption. You find more information about it here:

The minimum free size for volumes when using Windows backup are these:

  • volumes less than 500 megabytes: 50 megabytes free space
  • between 500 megabytes and 1 gigabytes: 320 megabytes of free space
  • more than 1 gigabytes: at least 1 gigabyte of free space

That was indeed the case on my disk:

Freeing space on the System Reserved volume

A quick search for 0x81000033 reveals space issues usually are about the USN Journal which you can configuring using fsutil.

Even though the documentation doesn’t tell, fsutil accepts not just a drive letter as VolumePath, but also a VolumeName. [WayBack] 1_multipart_xF8FF_3_WolfC07.pdf (Chapter 7 of “Troubleshooting Microsoft Technologies: The Ultimate Administrator’s Repair Manual“) gets that right:

volumepath … specify the path to a logical volume (drive letter, mount path, volume name).

So you do not need a drive letter to disable the USN journal, the volumename suffices.

This volume name is the unique NTFS identification for a volume: [WayBack] NTFS Curiosities (part 2): Volumes, volume names and mount points – Antimail

You can find the volume name inside PowerShell by using Get-Volume | Format-List, then on an administrative command prompt running this:

fsutil usn deletejournal /D \\?\Volume{b41b0670-0000-0000-00e8-0e8004000000}\

In my case this wasn’t enough, so I had to assign a drive letter to see that there was a snapshots directory in the root:

Deleting that directory solved the problem.

Related articles:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

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

How to change the User Account Control (UAC) level in Windows | Digital Citizen

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/11/18

Based on, but much shorter than, [WayBack] How to change the User Account Control (UAC) level in Windows | Digital Citizen which summary is

How to change how UAC prompts are shown in Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. How to disable UAC when you no longer want it turned on.

  1. Run UserAccountControlSettings.exe
  2. Pull the settings up to the highest one
  3. Confirm

–jeroen

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

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