Category: Windows Server

Here are the 16 different ways to launch the SETTINGS app in Windows 10: USE THE START BUTTON TO OPEN THE SETTINGS APP Click on the START button, then the cog icon . START BUTTON CONTEXT MENU DIRECTLY Right click on the START button,  select SETTINGS . START BUTTON CONTEXT MENU INDIRECTLY Right click on the START button,  select APPS AND FEATURES then click HOME in the APPS AND FEATURES window . DESKTOP PERSONALIZATION MENU…

If you find a Windows 10 or Office setting is grayed out and there is a THIS SETTING IS MANAGED BY YOUR ORGANIZATION notice (usually in red) there are ways to get around it.  For instance we recently documented Windows Hello PIN ADD Button is Greyed Out – THIS SETTING IS MANAGED BY YOUR ORGANIZATION.  But what if none of the fixes work for you? One thing you can do is to remove ALL policies. …

Click HERE to download our AutoUnattended.xml answer file for Windows 10 1909 (2019H2). WARNING: This answer file will automatically wipe your hard disk clean and setup the required partitions from scratch. This answer file: Wipes the current disk clean and sets up new partitions Sets the PC, Keyboard and User to use US English If you want to change the user to a different region just open the .XML file and change the two <USERLOCALE>…

Microsoft changed the release cycle of Windows products from every two or three years to potentially every week.  This was part of CEO Satya Nadella‘s plan to modernize Microsoft.  The software world had changed to a must faster paced model of releasing new code and new products.  Nadella’s recent history at the time was with Azure cloud. Azure developers release changes constantly to give people the latest bug fixes and newest features.  Neither developers or consumers…

Below is a list of every version of Windows: Name / Description Version Build Number Public Release Windows 10, Version 1909 10 18975 11/5/2019 Windows 10, Version 1903 10 18362 5/21/2019 Windows Server 2008, Service Pack 2, Rollup KB4489887 6 6003 3/19/2019 Windows 10, Version 1809 10 17763 10/2/2018 Windows Server 2019, Version 1809 10 17763 10/2/2018 Windows 10, Version 1803 10 17134 4/30/2018 Windows 10, Version 1709 10 16299 10/17/2017 Windows Server 2016, Version…

If you see a folder named “afterSentDocuments” in your Documents folder it might cause some concern because no human intentionally added that.  It turns out that that folder and files are the ‘honey pot’ for excellent corporate security software named SentinelOne. Click to Enlarge   After talking to a pile of vendors including Microsoft, SentinalOne told me: They’re our Malware/Ransomware decoys! The SentinelOne Agent Installer installs a number of files on the endpoint. Most of…

If you are working on a WordPress site and see a redirect error like: CHROME: This Page Isn’t Working Right Now www.<YourDomain>.com redirected you too many times. ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS FIREFOX: The page isn’t redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. SAFARI: This webpage has a redirect loop The webpage at https://www.<YourDomain>.com has resulted in too many redirects.  Clearing your cookies for…

Diskpart is Microsoft’s disk partitioning command line tool and while it works well, it does not provide some protections from self inflicted wounds.  One common DISKPART command to wipe a disk is CLEAN. CLEAN removes the volumes and partitions along with changing the first letter of every file to a ‘?’.  Files that start with a ‘?’ are not shown in NTFS (i.e. dir command or in Windows Explorer) and the file system knows the…

In 2017 we recorded a video on how to remove partitions through command line. This is especially useful when they are stuck or refuse to be deleted through the DISK MANAGER console because they are protected system partitions. Today we explain how to remove partitions, including protected partitions, and reformat a previously used disk. The following commands work in old school CMD, newer school PowerShell or even the tomorrows school Windows Terminal: Open a command…

Over time you will have a bunch of garbage apps automatically starting up.  Things like Adobe Acrobat icons in your system tray, Google updates, printer software for a printer you don’t own anymore and more can really slow down your PC and make things a visual mess.  There used to be two easy ways to manage these programs: Use TASK MANAGER > STARTUP press CNTL+ALT+DEL and select TASK MANAGER click the STARTUP tab right click…

There are four places that programs startup automatically from: 1: STARTUP FOLDERS AUTOMATIC STARTUP Both of these are in hidden folders so you need to change your view to show Hidden Folders as shown in the screen shot to the right Per User Startup Folder: C:\Users\<USER NAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup Startup Folder for All Users C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp 2: REGISTRY RUN & RUNONCE KEYS HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432NODE\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE Typically we see very little…

There are five ready ways to uninstall software: Using the GUI – Right click on the START BUTTON > APPS AND FEATURES > click the app in question > UNINSTALL Using a build in uninstaller – Go to the folder where the product is installed, look for something like UNINSTALL.EXE then create a shortcut to it, edit the shortcut and add /? to the end.  Double click the shortcut to see the uninstallation switches WMIC…