Archive for the ‘Windows Vista’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/12/29
For shrinking VM disk images, it’s important to consolidate NTFS free space towards the end of the this.
I’ve tried many tools, starting with defrag C: /X (which tries, but doesn’t give good results) and found out these steps give the best results:
- Perform an Ultradefrag full optimisation,
- Perform a MyDefrag
Consolidate free space script on the drive.
If shrinking still fails then:
- Try the Ultradefrag at boot time
- Note you have to install the normal version, as you cannot enable boot time defragmentation from the portable version:
- Verify what kind of file(s) prevent shrinking: they show up in red after the MyDefrag session:
- Zoom in them (they can initially as small as 1 red pixel) by clicking on or near them, repeating the zoom long enough so you can hover over with the mouse and the lower part of the screen shows a filename like
where you cannot find much information about “$badclus:$bad:$data” but appear to be clusters marked as bad on NTFS level using something like chkdsk /B.
- If it was a bad sector like above, then try to resolve it with [WayBack]
ntfsfix which ships with GParted live boot:
- boot a [WayBack] GParted — Live CD/USB/PXE/HD drive,
- run GParted to see the drive path (for instance /dev/sda1)
- start a terminal
- run this command:
ntfsfix -b /dev/sda1
which will give output like this:
Mounting volume... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Checking the alternate boot sector... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
Going to un-mark the bad clusters ($BadClus)... OK
NTFS partition /dev/sda1 was processed successfully.
- boot back into Windows
- on an administrative command prompt run this for the affected drive letter:
chkdsk D: /B
(reboot if needed)
- Shrink the drive using
diskmgmt.msc
If you still cannot shrink, then try [WayBack] http://ftp.raxco.com/pub/download/pd14.0/pd14.0_pro.exe PerfectDisk by Raxco free trial.
Note:
MyDefrag (formerly named JkDefrag) is not maintained any more but the 4.3.1 version in the WayBack machine still works very well as the underlying defragmentation APIs in Windows haven’t changed.
References:
For FAT32:
For GParted / ntfsfix:
PerfectDisk via:
–jeroen
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 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/09/25
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, 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 2017/06/26
Source: The Most Common VPN Error Codes Explained
- VPN Error 800 “Unable to establish connection”
- VPN Error 619 “A connection to the remote computer could not be established”
- VPN Error 51 “Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem”
- VPN Error 412 “The remote peer is no longer responding”
- VPN Error 721 “The remote computer did not respond”
- VPN Error 720 “No PPP control protocols configured”
- VPN Error 691 “Access denied because username and/or password is invalid on the domain”
- VPN Errors 812, 732 and 734 “The connection was prevented because of a policy configured on your RAS/VPN server”
- VPN Error 806 “A connection between your computer and the VPN server has been established but the VPN connection cannot be completed.”
–jeroen
via: Could be useful. – Joe C. Hecht – Google+
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 Vista, Windows XP | 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:
Oh BTW: history repeated itself this year too. With NUL
In short, Steven Sheldon created a rust package named nul which broke the complete package manager on Windows:
BTW: 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
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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 2017/05/19
[Archive.is] Working Windows XP & 7 demos. #FRENCHMAFIA: WannaCry — Decrypting files with WanaKiwi + Demos – Comae Technologies:
TL;DR;
DO NOT REBOOT your infected machines and TRY wanakiwi ASAP*!
*ASAP because prime numbers may be over written in memory after a while.
Via:[WayBack] A French researcher says he’s found a tool that could help some fraction of victims running that older Windows version. Just don’t reboot! WannaCry Ransomware Victims Might Have Some Hope–If They’re on Windows XP | WIRED
–jeroen
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 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:
fsmgmt.msc
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 2017/01/30
Windows Search: Windows.edb
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:
- 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:
Notes:
- I did not perform the last 2 steps as I’ve kept Windows Search disabled.
- If you want to reduce the size of the
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Projects\SystemIndex\Indexer\CiFiles\ directory:
- Before step 1, choose what kind of Windows Search indexing options you want
- Between step 3 and 4, delete the directory
Windows Update: DataStore.edb
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
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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 2016/10/27
Slightly updated the answer the /D Y part will recursively accept taking ownership when directory listing is denied in the permissions:
To fix really broken permissions, the best is to run these two commands one after the other:
takeown /F /D Y "C:\path\to\folder" /R
icacls "C:\path\to\folder" /reset /T
The first one will give you ownership of all the files, however that might not be enough, for example if all the files have the read/write/exec permissions set to “deny”. You own the files but still cannot do anything with them.
In that case, run the second command, which will fix the broken permissions.
via: permissions – recursively change owner windows 7 – Super User
–jeroen
Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, 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 Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/20
I wrote two tiny batch files that would dump the environment variables from the registry.
Various reasons:
- Environment variables can be stored in two contexts: System and User (SET will show them all at once and for instance combine PATH up to 1920 characters).
- Environment variables can be set to auto-expand or not, which you cannot see from a SET command (REG_EXPAND_SZ versus REG_SZ).
show-user-environment-variables.bat:
reg query "HKCU\Environment"
show-system-environment-variables.bat:
reg query "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment"
Filtered results:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, 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 Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/29
Sometimes RDP limits you to 2048 pixels vertical (or 4096 pixels horizontal)
Just found out why on some Windows versions, the RDP sessions form my 4K monitor has some small black bands on top/bottom: older versions of Windows limit their RDP server to 4096 x 2048.
A 4K monitor will not hit the width limit (as 4K cheats: it is usually “just” 3840 pixels wide), but it does hit the height limitation (2160 is slightly more than 2048: you miss 112 pixels that show as two small black bands).
A 5K monitor is worse: it will hit both limits (5K does not cheat: at 5120 × 2880 it is exactly 5*1024 pixels wide) so you miss 124 pixels horizontally and a whopping 832 pixels vertically.
Don’t buy a 5K monitor yet if you do a lot of RDP work to older Windows versions.
The link below has a table listing various Windows versions, but it omits end-of-life versions so I’ve done some testing: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 share the same limitations as Windows Server 2008 most likely because their latest service packs share the same RDP 6.1 version.
I updated this in the table:
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Posted in 4K Monitor, 5K monitor, Displays, Hardware, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, 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 »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 