Archive for the ‘Windows Vista’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/22
I got the below error when booting a Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro, a machine not just supporting supporting UEFI but preferring it, on which I had copied a backed-up disk image, then moved the hidden Recovery partition to the end of the physical disk (to make room to extend either the OS or DATA partitions).
Fixing it lead me to a trip that was on the boundary of software archaeology, so this blog post has a truckload of archived links to information that is still relevant, but for which the original links have long vanished due to link rot or (often worse) part of the historic information got lost because of migration to new tooling forgot to cover important additions (especially in comments).
One thing that I had to unlearn was MBR disk basics, for instance the fact that on GPT disks a partition can be active (they can only be on MBR disks, but despite UEFI supporting both MBT and GPT, GPT disks are way more common and required). The same holds for partitions having a boot flag: that too only applies to MBR disks. For the same reason, bootrec is only useful for MBR disks. More details towards the end of this blog post. CSM (Compatibility Support Module) booting is the UEFI way to simulate BIOS boot for operating systems that do no support UEFI.
Back to the error at hand:
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Posted in Development, History, link rot, Power User, Software Archeology, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows XP, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Tagged: 1 | 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 2024/10/09
Note that the below methods likely will cause security warnings if a Windows machine has been properly configured, but in most cases at least one of them works.
- using cURL (Widows 10 and up)
curl --url https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin --output %TEMP%\100MB.bin
- using [Wayback/Archive]
certutil | Microsoft Docs (at least Windows 7 and up; needs UAC elevation)
certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin %TEMP%\100MB.bin
- using PowerShell (at least Windows Vista and up)
powershell.exe -Command (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin','%TEMP%\100MB.bin')
I think it works for all versions of curl, certutil, and PowerShell though I did not have anything older than up-to-date Windows 7 (having PowerShell version 3) and recent to test on.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, cURL, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/25
This one is cool: [Wayback/Archive] PRANK: Windows XP Updates.
Note that unlike the screenshot below, the actual prank does count the percentage. The actual page does.
You can start this one and various other OSes plus Windows versions and other pranks via [Wayback/Archive] FakeUpdate.net – Windows Update Prank by fediaFedia (at the time of writing Windows 98 install, Windows Vista update, Windows 8 update, Windows 7 update, Mac OS boot, Windows 10 install, Windows 10 update, steam and “fake ransomware”).
It is a cool and relatively harmless way of teaching people to use their lock screen when away from their machine (Windows: Win+L, Mac OS: Ctrl+Shift+Power).
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Posted in Awareness, Fun, Power User, Security, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, 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 2023/06/02
If course you can configure Windows Optional Features using the GUI as for instance explained at [Wayback/Archive] How to manage Windows 10’s many ‘optional features | Windows Central.
However, I prefer command-line management.
About the only post doing the comparison of command-line mangement options I could find about is [Wayback/Archive] Different ways for installing Windows features on the command line – Peter Hahndorf and hopefully will be further updated in the future. It is dated 2015, but has been updated until at least Windows Server Nano.
I added one, and then rewrote the tool-set availability table in the post into this:
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Posted in Communications Development, Development, Internet protocol suite, Microsoft Store, OpenSSH, Power User, SSH, TCP, 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, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/10/20
Last week I found out that I had some Windows ATOM issues before, but this beats them easily was still a draft in stead if in the blog queue.
I got reminded to it by someone asking on Telegram about
“Do I need to use GarbageCollectAtoms in Delphi? I used it in delphi 7, but I dont know what is benefit. 😐”.
The short answer is: yes, if your Delphi application does terminate in a way that the Controls unit cannot cleanly unload (and cannot free the Windows atoms) or leaks Windows atoms in a different way. I have been in that situation and that’s why I wrote the above blog post that got published in 2016.
The longer answer is likely no, both the Windows atom and registered Windows message table share a heap and that registered VCL Windows message leaking bug got fixed some 10 years ago in Delphi XE2, see:
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, 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 2022/10/19
Posted in Development, FortiGate/FortiClient, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Security, Software Development, VPN, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Development, 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 2022/05/26
Vista!
Shutting down or rebooting Windows allowing existing applications to reopen
Windows Vista introduced the /g switch in shutdown.exe and was unchanged in Windows 7:
/g Shutdown and restart the computer. After the system is
rebooted, restart any registered applications.
I never noticed it until Windows 10 which began actively use it when applying system updates: then suddenly many of the previously running applications would reopen during startup.
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, 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 2022/01/03
Great post [WayBack] The Evolution of Windows Search | Windows Search Platform, covering some 3 decades of search:
- 1991 (Cairo with WinFS)
- 1996 (Windows NT 4.0)
- 2000 (Windows 2000)
- 2001 (Windows XP)
- 2007 (Windows Vista)
- 2009 (Windows 7)
- 2012 (Windows 8.x)
- 2015 (Windows 10)
It is part 1 of a series of 4 posts by [WayBack] Brendan Flynn, Author at Windows Search Platform:
- The Evolution of Windows Search 👈 You Are here
- Windows Search Configuration and Settings
- What’s in my index?
- How to make the most of search on Windows
When grabbing them, only the first two parts were available. Part two was about [WayBack] Configuration and Settings | Windows Search Platform with an in depth coverage of both the old style Control Panel applet as the new Windows 10 Settings page.
Via: [Archive.is] Immo Landwerth on Twitter: “If you like Raymond Chen’s The Old New Thing, then you might love this new developer focused blog too. It starts with an interesting history of Windows Search, by @brflynn_ms. Enjoy & subscribe!”
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows NT, Windows Server 2000, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/31
This helped me big time finding failed logon attempts: [WayBack] Event Log Hell (finding user logon & logoff) – Ars Technica OpenForum
Alternatively, you can use the XPath query mechanism included in the Windows 7 event viewer. In the event viewer, select “Filter Current Log…”, choose the XML tab, tick “Edit query manually”, then copy the following to the textbox:
Code:
<QueryList>
<Query Id="0" Path="Security">
<Select Path="Security">*[System[EventID=4624] and EventData[Data[@Name='TargetUserName'] = 'USERNAME']]</Select>
</Query>
</QueryList>
This selects all events from the Security log with EventID 4624 where the EventData contains a Data node with a Name value of TargetUserName that is equal to USERNAME. Remember to replace USERNAME with the name of the user you’re looking for.
If you need to be even more specific, you can use additional XPath querying – have a look at the detail view of an event and select the XML view to see the data that you are querying into.
Thanks user Hamstro!
Notes:
- you need to perform this using
eventvwr.exe running as an elevated process using an Administrative user CUA token.
USERNAME needs to be the name of the user in UPPERCASE.- replacing
TargetUserName with subjectUsername (as suggested by [WayBack] How to Filter Event Logs by Username in Windows 2008 and higher | Windows OS Hub) fails.
- there are more relevant EventID values you might want to filter on (all links have screenshot and XML example of an event):
- blank (empty passwords) can only be used for local logon, so they disable network logon. That can be a useful security strategy.
Related:
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Vista, Windows XP, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 