Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Windows 8 and more How Tos
We recently told you that there was no way to block the public Microsoft Store but allowing your private corporate Store and while true at the time, is now false. At the recent Microsoft Ignite conference, I tracked down a Store program manager and dug into the problem. He told me this has now been changed so I tested and confirmed the GPO setting works as promised. You can set the Microsoft Windows 10 Store…
There are many programs that will run as both an administrator and as a restricted user. However, when some security programs like Active Directory Sites and Services and Group Policy Management Tool, are run as a standard restricted user they have very little functionality. As a result admins must right click on the relevant shortcut and select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR to force an elevation. This is a pain. To have programs automatically prompt for elevation:…
It is difficult to understand what Microsoft if offering these days. It was hard enough when there was just Office 365 with the E1 E3 and E5 packages but today Microsoft is offering 3 different bundles (Office, Windows & Microsoft) each with their own E1 E3 and E5 sub-bundles. What is Office 365? In simple terms, Office365 is a bundle of software that (for most packages) provides Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and more on the…
At the recent Microsoft Ignite conference in Florida, Microsoft pitched using OneDrive For Business instead of the User State Migration Tool (USMT). This suggestion was largely based on the new ONEDRIVE > MANAGE PROTECTION OF IMPORTANT FOLDERS wizard. Previously you had to manually move your DESKTOP, DOCUMENTS and PICTURES folders to folders under your C:\USERS\<YourName>\ONEDRIVE – <BUSINESS NAME> or come up with an even more creative solution like building Junction Points. This was just not…
UPDATE OCT 18 2018 – You CAN now use a GPO to block the public Microsoft Store but keep your private corporate Store. See our short explanation HERE. After working on setting up a private Microsoft Business Store (businessstore.microsoft.com) I was shocked to find that I could not disable the Public Microsoft Store through any of the settings. I put a few hours into searching and reading but could not even find someone saying it…
We recently sourced many Dell 5490 laptops, tossed the SATA connected spinning disk and replaced them with M.2 PCIe connected Toshiba RC100 SSD’s and all was well for testing. In production however we found that the laptops would periodically blue screen and upon reboot or power up, they would go to a black screen displaying NO BOOT DEVICE FOUND, PRESS F1 F2 OR F5. This is annoying and so after a few weeks of working…
I recently acquired a Dell Inspiron 24″ All In One with a touch screen and added my old Acer T231H 24″ as a second screen. When I touched the Acer, the mouse would move on the Dell… this is not good. Because I was using a beta of Windows 10 (slow ring), I thought that the build of Windows I was using had a problem (just like in the video below, although that is not…
If you need to add a registry entry to a Windows PC most often techs will simply export the key and entries they want and then use the REGEDIT /S command to push that entry onto another PC. For example if you want to disable the Cortana bar (but not Windows Search), you save the following into a file named DISABLE-CORTANA.REG Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search] “AllowCortana”=dword:00000000 Then you simply put that file…
In recent years it has become common for home PC users to use large laptops, considering them more like “small PC’s”. This trend led computer manufacturers to build the laptop computer into the back of a screen and then provide and external keyboard and mouse. This innovation is the “All In One” Computer. All in Ones eliminate many of the cables and mess you get with traditional desktop PC’s. Acer was the first company we…
If you are a Google Chrome user, and 75% of the internet usage is, you have likely found that Google Chrome is shown potentially dozens of times in Windows Task Managers PROCESSES tab. This is quite unexpected for many. Often people think they have a virus or some other malware at work in the background. While this is possible, it is unlikely because Google Chrome naturally opens many Windows background processes for each tab you…
We often talk about editing or creating new registry entries in Windows but we seldom talk about removal. If you want to delete an existing registry entry you simply set the entry value to a hyphen ( – ). For example, we recently needed to delete: HKLM > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Run > InstallWindowsUpdates = DWORD AA To do this we simply set “InstallWindowsUpdates”=- Specifically, the DELUPDATES.REG file looked like: Windows…
Over the years we have produced many instructions on how to add files or add drivers to a .WIM image file, but they are all outdated because they are command line. There is now a free GUI front end for DISM made by Mike Celone. To get DISM GUI to work you need two things: .NET 4.0 which can get from Microsoft HERE in unlikely event you don’t have it already Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) that…
If you are trying to SysPrep a Windows 10 PC and see: Sysprep Failure Unable to Validate Windows Installation and then see in the log: [0x0f0070] SYSPRP RunExternalDlls:An error occurred while running registry sysprep DLLs, halting sysprep execution. dwRet = 0x3cf2 You likely have some Win10 apps that are installed per person. Things like the calculator and paint may be installed by default but they are installed per person and not allowed to be sysprepped. …
If you want to set your modern Windows (Win 10, Server 2016, Server 2019…) to not download and install updates automatically, there is a simple Group Policy Object you can create: GPO To Stop Windows From Automatically Updating: Expand COMPUTER > POLICIES > ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS > WINDOWS COMPONENTS > WINDOWS UPDATE Set CONFIGURE AUTOMATIC UPDATES to ENABLED and select a CONFIGURE AUTOMATIC UPDATING option from the drop down We like #3 AUTO DOWNLOAD AND NOTIFY FOR…