tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137771702024-03-11T02:35:50.916-05:00grand stream dreamsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1612125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-133991502989364132021-01-23T11:03:00.001-06:002021-01-23T11:03:08.797-06:00Still Here…Still Fighting the Good Fights<p>“Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting oneself in grave danger in order to complete the mission. Even though I did not become all those things, and unless my predisposition, in its youngest years, already had me leaning towards them, the interest that was there still shaped my philosophies. To this day I honor risk and sacrifice for the good of others - my views on life and love are heavily influenced by this.” <br />― Criss Jami, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/48697422">Healology</a></p> <p><iframe height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSYQdoYdk9c" frameborder="0" width="560" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"> </iframe></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-4892852129873177702018-11-24T19:35:00.001-06:002018-11-24T19:35:55.284-06:00Current Browser Extensions: Vivaldi, Firefox, and Chromium<p>Wow.</p><p>As best I can tell it was over three years ago that I last posted a roundup of the Add-On extensions I was using.</p><p>Firefox as at version 40.0.3 (x32 bits).</p><p>Vivaldi was still a “technical preview” release at version 1.0.258.3 and totally amazed me with “tab tiling.” I cannot image going through a natural disaster or other scale event without using tab-tiling in Vivaldi.</p><p>Here I am during the January 2018 Great-Houston-Ice-Crisis monitoring multiple weather and traffic events in Vivaldi using the <a href="https://help.vivaldi.com/guide/key-features/split-screen/">split-screen tab-tiling feature</a>. </p><p><img width="644" height="364" title="_2018-01-16_08-14-36" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="_2018-01-16_08-14-36" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fsJs_Fut0g0/W_n8eWmQoiI/AAAAAAAACIU/bZUNjF1rJX4si7q1DZD5nfBO_PVX3enEwCHMYCw/_2018-01-16_08-14-36%255B4%255D?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Yes Virginia, that’s five open browser windows on a single page. Four blocked with a fifth on the far right side fully extended top-to-bottom.</p><p>And no, I’m not counting my <a href="https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity">SwiftOnSecurity</a> Twitter-feed window on the far-left because that is not a “browser window” but actually running in a Vivaldi “<a href="https://help.vivaldi.com/article/web-panels/">web-panel</a>” from the side-bar. I can collapse and extend it as needed to check that particular media feed. </p><p>If you look closely, this tab (with five web-pages) is just one of four <a href="https://help.vivaldi.com/guide/key-features/creating-tab-stacks/">“stacked” tab sets</a> each with their own multiple sets of related browser pages.</p><p>Vivaldi lets you do some crazy stuff – all built in without the need for more extensions – to maximize your browsing efficiency.</p><p>That’s why the only “product” link badge I run on my Grand Stream Dreams blog is Vivaldi’s; and I do so proudly.</p><p>So here is my current web-browser line-up:</p><p><a href="https://vivaldi.com/">Vivaldi</a> - If there is a crisis or massive multi-stream op-center monitoring work to do I go Vivaldi without question. Current (<a href="https://vivaldi.com/blog/snapshots/">snapshots line</a>) version 2.2.1373.4 (Official Build) (32-bit)</p><p><a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/">Firefox</a> - If there is blogging or RSS-feed wrangling – I still go to Firefox (due to my custom system integrations with the <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/omea/download/">Omea RSS Reader</a>. Current version 63.0.3 (64-bit)</p><p><a href="https://chromium.woolyss.com/">Chromium</a> - If there is deep-web exploration work needed – I use a stripped down version of Chromium. Current version 72.0.3620.0 (Developer Build) (64-bit)</p><p>And here are my Extensions/Add-ons for each of them:</p><p><strong><u>Vivaldi Extensions</u></strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghdmnkfdbncmnmlkkglmnnhagajbm">Create Link</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/editthiscookie/fngmhnnpilhplaeedifhccceomclgfbg">EditThisCookie</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm">uBlock Origin</a> - Chrome Web Store</li></ul><p>Yep. That’s correct. Just three extensions. Vivaldi (by default) provides all the other heavy-lifting that I need – natively!</p><p><strong><u>Firefox Extensions</u></strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-webext/">Clean Links</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/">NoScript</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pure-url/">Pure URL</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tineye-reverse-image-search/">TinEye Reverse Image Search</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/">uBlock Origin</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-link-text-webextension/">Copy Link Text</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/text-linky-tool/">Text Linky Tool</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li><li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkmarks-web-ext/">Checkmarks</a> – Firefox Add-ons</li></ul><p>Quite a lot more, but mostly because of the needs to support my RSS/blogging process flow (stop laughing! I know there hasn’t been much GSD blogging of late, but, “Reasons!”.</p><p><strong><u>Chrome/Chromium Extensions</u></strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghdmnkfdbncmnmlkkglmnnhagajbm">Create Link</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/editthiscookie/fngmhnnpilhplaeedifhccceomclgfbg">EditThisCookie</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-opt-out/fllaojicojecljbmefodhfapmkghcbnh">Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google)</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-manager/giccehglhacakcfemddmfhdkahamfcmd">Privacy Manager</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sexy-undo-close-tab/bcennaiejdjpomgmmohhpgnjlmpcjmbg">Sexy Undo Close Tab</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tineye-reverse-image-sear/haebnnbpedcbhciplfhjjkbafijpncjl">TinEye Reverse Image Search</a> - Chrome Web Store</li><li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm">uBlock Origin - Chrome Web Store</a></li></ul><p>More extension use here than with Vivaldi even though Vivaldi is <a href="https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-different-from-chrome/">built on Chromium</a>.</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-34881145898785685812018-11-23T16:27:00.001-06:002018-11-23T16:27:09.574-06:00Fix: Windows 8.1/10 Black Screen with Cursor at boot<p>After upgrading my home laptop systems to Win 10 I began to notice a trend; every couple of times I tried booting the system I would be presented with a black screen and a blinking cursor…but no Windows 10 load.</p><p>Fortunately, powering the system off and then back on would allow the Win 10 OS to load OK.</p><p>It was an annoyance and signal that something was wrong, but nothing that this workaround wouldn’t address.</p><p>Then we upgraded our laptops at work to Windows 10 and started noticing the same behavior.</p><p>And our Surface Pro 3 users also occasionally complained about similar behavior.</p><p>After careful troubleshooting and searching the Internet, I fixed this particular problem on all our platforms by disabling “Fast Startup” in the power settings.</p><p>I’m not 100% why it seems to impact mobile platforms rather than desktops, but I suspect the fact that it involves loading the system from a specially saved/crafted “Fast Startup” hibernation state, if some hardware gets removed or not-detected between power-states – for example USB devices or the dock-station - it might cause the wake-up process to hang. </p><p>To fix this particular problem first go into the “classic” Control Panel for Windows, and into the Power Options applet.</p><p>On the left-hand side, select “Choose what the power button does”</p><p>Near the top of the loaded page to the right, select the “Change settings that are currently unavailable” (note you may have to confirm a UAC prompt and provide admin-level credentials).</p><p>Once you do that, more options will appear below.</p><p>Uncheck the “Turn on fast startup (recommended)” checkbox.</p><p>Select “Save changes”.</p><p>That fixed my laptop issues at home, and by pushing this out to our systems as a standard configuration setting, it fixed the issues at work too.</p><p>More technical resources:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/fix-windows-10-black-screen-with-cursor-error/#s2">Windows 10 Black Screen with Cursor [SOLVED]</a> - Driver Easy</li><li><a href="https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fast-startup">How to disable Windows 10 fast startup (and why you'd want to)</a> - Windows Central</li><li><a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/243901/the-pros-and-cons-of-windows-10s-fast-startup-mode/">The Pros and Cons of Windows 10’s “Fast Startup” Mode</a> – The How To Geek</li><li><a href="https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-shut-down-windows-10-properly-3633021/">How to Shut Down Windows 10 Properly: Fast Start-up Explained</a> - Tech Advisor</li><li><a href="https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1031533/">How to disable Fast startup in Windows 10 OS</a> – Official Support | ASUS USA</li><li><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/kernel/distinguishing-fast-startup-from-wake-from-hibernation">Distinguishing Fast Startup from Wake-from-Hibernation</a> - Microsoft Docs</li><li><a href="https://www.petri.com/how-to-disable-windows-10-fast-startup-and-why-you-might-want-to">What Is Windows 10 Fast Startup And How to Disable It</a> – Petri</li><li><a href="https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html">Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10 | Tutorials</a> – Windows Ten Forums</li><li><a href="https://blog.thesysadmins.co.uk/group-policy-preferences-1-deploying-registry-settings.html">Group Policy Preferences - 1. Deploying Registry Settings</a> - The Sysadmins</li></ul><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-22866411470502954142018-11-23T15:59:00.001-06:002018-11-23T15:59:51.978-06:00HP C6280 All in one Ink System Failure & other travails<p>Almost two years ago our HP C6280 “All In One” inkjet printer suddenly decided to toss up a mysterious error code and refused to print.</p><p>Swapping out ink cartridges did nothing.</p><p>Turning it off and on did nothing.</p><p>I was running a two-prong approach to resolution; dig deep in the Googles and research a replacement unit.</p><p>Finally I stumbled on this tip.</p><p><a href="http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/posts/59117">HP C6280 All in one Ink System Failure</a> – FixYourOwnPrinter</p><p>Following the steps of combo-button pushes documented on that page resulted in a restored-to-operation HP C6280. Since performing those steps I’ve not had that particular error problem come up since!</p><p>Here’s a slightly cleaned up version of those steps. <em><font color="#ff0000">YMMV try at your own risk</font></em>.</p><p>Follow the below steps on the front panel of the All-in-One printer: (Note: you may want to read the comments on that page above as well.)</p><blockquote><p>A. Press and Hold the “Print Photos” & “Red Eye Removal” buttons. Release both buttons. Display should say “Enter Special Key Combo”</p><p>B. - Press and release in sequence “Red Eye Removal”, “Print Photos”, “Red Eye Removal” <br>(display says "enter special key combo")</p><p>1. Press and release in sequence “Red Eye Removal”, “Print Photos”, “Red Eye Removal” <br>(display may show a message like “support COxxFN0723BR”</p><p>2. Press and release the right arrow button until the display says “System Configuration Menu.</p><p>3. Press and release the “OK” button.</p><p>4. Display should say “Hardware failure status”. If not there already, Arrow Key over to “Hardware failure status.</p><p>5. Press and release the “OK” button. </p><p>6. Display should say “Hardware failure status: Clear. Press OK to clear”. </p><p>7. Press and release the “OK” Button. Message changes to “Hardware failure status Cleared. Press Cancel to continue”.</p><p>8. Press and release the “CANCEL” button as many times as necessary, so that, either the “Welcome to Photosmart Express” screen appears, or, the “Ink System Failure” screen appears. PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO PRINT AT THIS STAGE.</p><p>9. Using the Power Button, turn the unit OFF and unplug the power cable from back of the printer and wall outlet.</p><p>10. Wait 30 seconds for the power to get discharged and then plug the power cable into the wall outlet first and then into the back of the printer.</p><p>11. Turn the unit on. The printer may display message “USE POWER BUTTON TO SHUTDOWN THE PRINTER” followed by “PRESS OK TO CONTINUE”. Press OK. </p><p>12. If the printer has already initialized, then go to the next step. If not, the printer will start the “ONE TIME INK INITIALIZATION PROCESS”. Allow this process to complete and do not interrupt. Once the initialization process is complete, the printer will print out a Diagnostic Page. </p><p>13. To verify printer functionality print a SELF TEST PAGE. <br></p></blockquote><p>FYI: The TinyApps bloggist also posted some tips with working with other HP Officejet hardware: <a href="https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/201703040700_reset_hp_officejet.html">Resetting an HP OfficeJet 5740</a></p><p>Then about six months ago the C6280 started experiencing paper-tray feed issues. I tried a number of things and sometimes could get the paper to barely feed but usually not. I checked/cleaned the rollers, looked for jammed bits of paper, did everything but a full tear-down.</p><p>I gave up for a while and started researching new printers again, and put a note on it to not try printing as it wasn’t feeding.</p><p>Lavie came in one day while I was away and needed to print. She worked on it as well but also gave up.</p><p>Finally one Saturday I really, really needed to print something and didn’t want to run out to find somewhere to print from or pick up a new printer so I made a final attempt at troubleshooting.</p><p>When I lifted it up off the small side-table it sat on I noticed a small bit of plastic beneath. Hmmm. Hadn’t seen that before.</p><p>It was 1/2 of a geared wheel that seemed to be made out of a black nylon plastic. That couldn’t be good.</p><p>With the aid of a flashlight, I inspected the gear mechanisms and drive shafts. After a patient review I eventually found a drive shaft with a matching 1/2 gear piece that engages other gears. It seems that this drive shaft powers the paper pick-up rollers from the paper-tray. Somehow it had broken in two and this was keeping the paper from picking up.</p><p>With nothing else to loose, I use a combo of super-glue gel, long needle-nose pliers, and a ton of patience to re-glue the two gear halves back together while aligned and engaged carefully with the drive gear wheel above it.</p><p>I let it set for several days to make sure the glue cured properly and then with fingers-crossed, loaded the paper tray back up and sent an print job through. </p><p>It fed and printed just fine…and has held fine many printing jobs later after all these months.</p><p>It was a miracle that that 1/2 piece of small broken wheel didn’t get lost or drop into the carpet with all of our earlier troubleshooting.</p><p>So if you still have an old HP C6280 here’s proof you can keep it limping along after all this time.</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-11396365905214773362018-11-23T15:17:00.001-06:002018-11-23T15:17:03.458-06:00Win 10 Laptop Storage Space-Drain Solved!<p>A lifetime ago (back in July) I was struggling to understand why my Win 10 workplace laptop’s hard-drive was running out of storage space.</p><p><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2018/07/quickpost-powershell-scripts-and-win-10.html">grand stream dreams: QuickPost: PowerShell Scripts and Win 10 Helps</a></p><p>Despite my best efforts the 500 GB HDD had gotten down to about 60 GB – 80 GB of free space despite some pretty severe Windows space-hog/temp-file cleaning work.</p><p>That post detailed a number of PowerShell scripts I was using to try to find out the source of the space usage.</p><p>Reminder – because this was a work-laptop, my use of the normal third-party storage analysis tools I would rely on was verboten.</p><p>After several weeks of running modified versions of many of these scripts I was nowhere closer to finding the issue. I had lots of data, but the results suggested that the file or folder where the space eating usage had happened was off-limits to typical admin-level scripting runs.</p><p>Just before giving up and planning for a system reimage, I had an epiphany; Windows 10 comes with a built-in Storage Sense platform to let you understand (at a very high-level) space usage of your local drives in a categorized manner!</p><p><a href="https://www.thewindowsclub.com/storage-sense-windows-10">How to manage Disk Space & Storage using Windows 10 Settings</a> – The Windows Club</p><p>Go into Settings (the gear icon in Win 10), select “System”, on the left side-bar select “Storage”, then click on one of the local system drives at the top you want to explore under the “Storage” section.</p><p>Let it run for a moment and it will then give you a report of storage use.</p><p>In my case it was immediately apparent that the “System & reserved” section was where the maximum file-usage was occurring; way more than a baseline Win 10 laptop in our enterprise.</p><p>You can click on any section and dive deeper into that.</p><p>That revealed that I had over 250 GB of files related to “System Restore”.</p><p>This was an interesting find as our Group Policy turns off System Restore. A visual check of all the options and settings under “Manage system restore” confirmed these were all disabled…so what was there and how did it get there?</p><p>VSSAdmin to the rescue!</p><p>I opened an administrator-elevated CMD window and ran the following command:</p><pre>vssadmin list shadows</pre><p>That revealed one “orphaned” shadow copy file created quite some time before I actually noticed the space drain. A check of our operations logs for that timeframe couldn’t find any obvious actions or infrastructure routines that should have created it. So how it was triggered remains a mystery.</p><p>With the shadow copy ID known now I next ran this, using the actual ID # I found for that argument variable:</p><pre>vssadmin delete shadows /Shadow={shadow copy ID}</pre><p>It ran for quite a while, but then returned back to the blinking prompt cursor.</p><p>Another “vssadmin list shadows” confirmed it was gone, and a look at the local drive properties showed my space usage was back to a normal level with lots of free space available again.</p><p>Mischief managed!</p><p>More resources:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkQmDxSyOoY">Windows 10 Storage and how to view disk space and how it is used</a> (YouTube) – Learn Windows 10 and Computers</li><li><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/vssadmin">Vssadmin - </a>Microsoft Docs</li><li><a href="https://ss64.com/nt/vssadmin.html">VSSADMIN</a> - Windows CMD - SS64.com</li><li><a href="https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/166102-shadow-copies-delete.html">Shadow Copies – Delete</a> - Windows 7 Help Forums</li><li><a href="https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/selectively-delete-system-restore-points/">How to Delete Individual System Restore Points in Windows?</a> – WinHelp Online</li><li><a href="https://danblee.com/diskshadow-vssadmins-best-friend/">Diskshadow, VSSAdmin’s best friend</a> - danblee.com</li><li><a href="https://www.eventsentry.com/sysadmintools">SysAdmin Tools</a> – EventSentry – This free collection of command-line and GUI tools is offered by EventSentry. Its got a big collection of specialized utilities that well-supplements the on-board tools. While I couldn’t have used them at work, the “datahog” cmd tool looked especially handy and cool.</li></ul><p>Cheers!</p><p>Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-10689213562386739932018-10-12T11:19:00.001-05:002018-11-17T10:59:11.809-06:00QuickPost: Removing Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Agent without the password<p>Not too long ago one of the ministry departments of the church-house needed a computer set up in their room to help manage things.</p><p>We had an older Dell laptop that was a beater, but was a business class device that still retained more than adequate performance.</p><p>It took me the better part of a weekend to bring the Win 7 Pro OS back up to a <a href="http://www.wsusoffline.net/">fully patched and updated state</a> and clean a lot of older/abandoned applications off.</p><p>One of my last tasks was to remove the long-expired Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Agent off the system.</p><p><img width="644" height="386" title="add-remove" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="add-remove" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKBDfQ6KJQIA5tyG2wRsefFgbcObykWOF0cgnxBD6-7jcefoJL9diso2rTWAgS3pLoPjAaP872qGT4YurSRcGf9H3qOyQrrtvziqr6mnFGgvTRELEr9-Nsj6a3uuear5ery1I2/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Before the uninstaller can complete, you must provide an administrator-set password (as a security feature). Unfortunately, the admin who set it had long-since left the congregation and no documentation was left as to what it could be.</p><p><img width="515" height="403" title="password" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="password" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Aa_EaDt-Ufirz5coj7b1jghXj2S3A79cZI9i3B0YbylUBjYG7cR1tPhVnwLEnD-ZF84NG7tMC9PVdLjT6NOkZ5tCPTpWZErkdf-8aoFu6aKBDNjzKDV9jMEBEZFfBd6w9nEA/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Bother.</p><p>Luckily, PowerBiz Solutions “down-under” had a promising tip:</p><p><a href="http://blog.powerbiz.net.au/fixes/how-to-uninstall-trend-micros-worry-free-business-security-client-agent-without-the-password/">How to uninstall Trend Micro’s Worry Free Business Security client agent without the password</a> - PowerBiz Solutions</p><p>Note: The referenced link back to Trend Micro’s solutions page is now “404” but PowerBiz’s post provided a good start: (<em><font color="#9b00d3">Update:</font></em> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120116130756/http://esupport.trendmicro.com/solution/en-us/1036275.aspx">Archived Trend Mircro solutions page via Wayback Machine</a> – hat-tip to <a href="https://tinyapps.org/blog/">TinyApps</a> bloggist!)</p><blockquote><p>Basically, it involves setting the registry key “Allow Uninstall” to 1.<br>For WFBS versions 5.x and 6.x, this key is located here – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Misc<br><strong>For WFBS versions 7.x, this key can be found here – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\UniClient\1600\Misc</strong></p></blockquote><p>In my particular case, the version appeared to be 7.x.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWqVsJfRNz6jvpiL2U4i-aRbnOOEIHcsufCSiXCKatVUxsyOVLN62bllhV_Y59_NNLsl_EolCpTfyIHXugaG3E73usoJRnCafEwhcJmfmi9o0z-cloyWuvICWdAW48SE_B_RFi/s1600-h/version%255B4%255D"><img width="484" height="505" title="version" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="version" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R3SA6RKbAcs/W8DKIpiQdVI/AAAAAAAACHw/dWODrCM_F4MYtG5rMS9y0hZ3uZzAAfugQCHMYCw/version_thumb%255B2%255D?imgmax=800" border="0"></a></p><p>A quick look in the Registry found the “AllowUninstall” key.</p><p><img width="644" height="374" title="Capture-reg" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="Capture-reg" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gFD-291CIB8/W8DJdPVoXyI/AAAAAAAACHE/1N3jH9pEz9MgA5IltdBsnARqXxT7G8NuQCHMYCw/Capture-reg%255B4%255D?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>…which I then changed to the needed “1” value.</p><p><img width="644" height="447" title="Capture-regchange" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="Capture-regchange" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-b95MphNbGsQ/W8DJdukDeQI/AAAAAAAACHI/sDPWMdtrCfo-W6mwdHidGeMRXTaxkbjawCHMYCw/Capture-regchange%255B4%255D?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Once set, I was then able to go back and run the uninstaller without any password prompt.</p><p><img width="518" height="402" title="success" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="success" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9agHBXSoQbM/W8DKJVmbJtI/AAAAAAAACH0/ywPM_gbQGzk-GvW51BBUZo_hZ_8D9FGMQCHMYCw/success%255B5%255D?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p><img width="511" height="403" title="Done" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="Done" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2JLQCNoQzbN6PXiOjBjDLjPej4ETWMe0ua-7vw9Ydof3cex4IJ6HhqL_1yDQh76DZQZTrncEHjICS4vpVZPjuLIlBIIDqr4rPrkiRoUynn5OgZ5qVqDtsmz9EQGszm4g4YzqD/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Success and done!</p><p>I then followed it up with a <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5201">Microsoft Security Essentials</a> installation that went on without issue and will provide sufficient real-time protection and current signature updates for AV/AM protection.</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-30953597597339416632018-07-29T15:18:00.001-05:002018-07-29T15:20:02.215-05:00QuickPost: PowerShell Scripts and Win 10 Helps<p>Since having a system migrated to Windows 10, I’ve noticed a trend of the hard-drive getting significantly fuller now. I’ve done all the standard post-migration cleanups. I cleared over 40 GB of old software packages off the system and was feeling pretty good. The next day all my space-gains were lost and I was back at 100 GB of free space where I started.</p><p>I suspect there is some caching activity going on in the background and that it running off a quota that keeps me returning to the magical 100 GB free of a 500 GB drive.</p><p>Normally, I’d just run one of these tools to identify the space/file hogs and start cleaning up. I’ve ordered these in my general preference; though I like them all for slightly different things they bring to the table on a space-hunt.</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/index.html">SpaceSniffer</a> – freeware – Uderzo Software</li><li><a href="https://www.jam-software.de/treesize_free/">TreeSize Free</a> – freeware – JAM Software</li><li><a href="https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/">WizTree</a> – freeware – Antibody Software</li><li><a href="http://www.mindgems.com/products/Folder-Size/Folder-Size-Screenshots.htm">Folder Size</a> – freeware – MindGems</li><li><a href="http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/">SequoiaView</a> – freeware – Technische Universiteit Eindhoven</li><li><a href="https://windirstat.net/">WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics</a> – open source</li><li><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/du">Disk Usage</a> - Windows Sysinternals</li></ul><p>However in this case I cannot use any third-party tools and must stick with using Microsoft OS-based solutions only.</p><p>So that led me to find a script I could use in PowerShell.</p><p>I’ve divided them into file-size analyzers and folder-size analyzers.</p><p>I found it is relatively easy to hunt down singular files on your system in PowerShell that are the largest. However, what happens if you have a bunch-load of very small files? Individually they may never float to the top, however in aggregate, they could add up to a lot of space usage.</p><p>I’ve listed these as well in my order of preference.</p><p>Note: They all seemed to run fine on my Win 10 systems in PowerShell ISE – though tweaking was needed for each one to target specific folders and/or report outputs – depending on the script.</p><p>PowerShell File-Hog Hunters</p><ul><li><a href="http://blog.danskingdom.com/find-largest-or-smallest-files-in-a-directory-or-drive-with-powershell/">Find Largest (Or Smallest) Files In A Directory Or Drive With PowerShell</a> - Daniel Schroeder's (aka deadlydog) Programming Blog<br><br>Daniel’s script is totally brilliant. Not only is it a “one-liner” but it generates a beautiful table for output that can be sorted by column and filtered by criteria. I did note that the calculated file-size value didn’t seem to be accurate but haven’t figured out why that was. Daniel also has some tips in the comments and a link to <a href="http://blog.danskingdom.com/powershell-2-0-vs-3-0-syntax-differences-and-more/">this page</a> in case you want to modify the script from a file-size hunt to a folder-size hunt.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/124410-how-to-make-a-report-of-largest-files-on-a-file-share">How to make a report of largest files on a file share</a> – Michael (Netwrix) on Spiceworks – This was nice because it generated a very sweet CSV file to be opened in Excel.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://code.adonline.id.au/script-to-list-files-by-type-and-size-export-to-excel/">Script to list files by type and size, export to Excel</a> - Adam Dimech's Coding Blog – Another nice script that exports to a designated CSV file.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2011/03/05/use-powershell-to-explore-disk-utilization-on-your-computer/">Use PowerShell to Explore Disk Utilization on Your Computer</a> – Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog – Not only is this a very handy script, the Scripting Guy walks you through what the script actually does.<br><br></li><li><a href="http://orangescripts.blogspot.com/2010/09/powershell-find-top-10-large-files-in.html">Find top 10 large files in a disk</a> - VBScript and Powershell Scripts: Powershell bog. Simple.<br><br></li><li><a href="http://robwillis.info/2014/07/powershell-script-find-the-25-largest-files-and-list-folder-sizes-for-any-drive/">PowerShell Script: Find the 25 largest files and list folder sizes for any drive</a> - RobWillis.info – This one is much more advanced and outputs a lot of information to the console for the report. It can also generate output to a TXT file. Definitely cool stuff.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28924358/Powershell-Script-List-Top-50-Largest-Files.html">Powershell Script List Top 50 Largest Files</a> – This is another very simple script but does the job. The comments have a few tweaks you can add to output to a file or change size to MB.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-LargestFiles-Whats-the-aea159c9">Script Get-LargestFiles - What's the biggest space hogs on my disk?</a> – This one is also pretty helpful.</li></ul><p>PowerShell Folder-Hog Hunters</p><ul><li><a href="https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Disk-Usage-Analyser-e4b05c1d">TechNet Disk Usage Analyser</a> – simulates the Sysinternals Disk Usage tool.<br><br></li><li><a href="https://superuser.com/questions/304212/how-to-find-biggest-folders-by-number-of-files-in-windows">How to find biggest folders (by number of files) in Windows</a> - Super User<br><br></li><li><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2012/05/25/getting-directory-sizes-in-powershell/">Getting Directory Sizes in PowerShell</a> – Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog. Spend some time in the comments for additional tweaks to the script.</li></ul><p>If you do export output to CSV and don’t “pre-format” the bytes output to MB, here is a tip on a custom formatting rule in Excel you can use to make it more readable.</p><p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1533811/how-can-i-format-bytes-a-cell-in-excel-as-kb-mb-gb-etc">formatting - How can I format bytes a cell in Excel as KB, MB, GB etc?</a> - Stack Overflow</p><p>I’ve not loaded Ubuntu on Windows to have a Bash console, but in looking for tools, I came across this that looked pretty neat: <a href="https://trevorsullivan.net/2016/05/31/ncdu-identify-large-files-windows-10/">ncdu: Identify Large Files on Windows 10 - Trevor Sullivan</a></p><p>Finally, on Win 7 I used a pretty small set of common keyboard shortcut to navigate my way around the system. In Windows 10, I’m finding a desire to expand my quick-access key combo skills. Here are some good resources:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=48716">Download Shortcut keys for Windows 10</a> - Official Microsoft Download Center</li><li><a href="https://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Windows-Shortcuts-101-The-Ultimate-Keyboard-Shortcut-Guide2.pdf">Windows Shortcuts 101/ The Ultimate Keyboard Shortcut Guide</a> – (direct PDF file link) – MakeUseOf blog</li><li><a href="https://www.groovypost.com/howto/windows-10-keyboard-shortcuts/">Complete List of Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts and Run Commands</a> – gPost</li><li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows-10/end-user-readiness">Windows 10 end user readiness</a> – Microsoft guides, tutorials, and other resources.</li><li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/itshowcase/windows10deployment?wt.mc_id=bmkg_itsc#plan">New tools to help drive Windows 10 adoption</a> – Microsoft guides, tutorials, and other resources. For readiness and user communications, technical references and documentation, and post-deployment support helps.</li><ul><li>Note: at the bottom of that page there is a tiny link to download the full suite of <a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/5/C/F5C35380-4C26-43E5-84D8-6CFA8C00D7EF/Windows_10_Deployment.zip">Windows 10 deployment resources</a>. (ZIP)</li></ul></ul><p>If I’ve missed a useful script or you have any tips for hunting for space/file hogs using only “on-board” native Windows 10 OS tools, please drop a comment!</p><p>I expect I’ll be adding to the list of links in this post too as I uncover more PowerShell scripts that could be useful. As I post this, I think I am overlooking one or two others that I found useful</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-60970867474164183842018-05-26T13:25:00.001-05:002018-05-26T13:27:06.350-05:00Windows Defender Security Center Health Report detail missing<p>Right now I am running Windows 10 Home x64 OS build version 1803 (aka April Update).</p><p>There are a few nutty things that I have observed over the past few week. Though the update itself went on smoothly with no issues.</p><p>Recently I noticed that the Windows Defender Security icon in the system tray has started to display an error indicator.</p><p><img width="449" height="45" title="yrl10gkv.tda" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="yrl10gkv.tda" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CIgD9qfoQo8/Wwmmi6Oy-BI/AAAAAAAACEk/1CZwpjiY14I5PL6c4jg0oKwotPTFPPhxwCHMYCw/yrl10gkv.tda5?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Normally that means I need to run a “Quick Scan”, however in this build, that also brings up the Windows Defender Security Center that has a Health report.</p><p>The error was caused by a Device driver with one recommendation showing to clear.</p><p><img width="533" height="466" title="jszxn15f.ghb" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="jszxn15f.ghb" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B0uW_Y_lCho/WwmmjGJ8I0I/AAAAAAAACEo/VzE1OJu6cdI6zKo95gnhuUOdMIi6wiBDwCHMYCw/jszxn15f.ghb6?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Selecting the down-arrow to expand however resulted in nothing seen.</p><p><img width="522" height="365" title="ug1efk2x.52p" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="ug1efk2x.52p" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4VeGoFxc23cv4fFtmNzfNPKkr-VwPCbl5zRFhTAzBXmE61dWZbA6hGcnEyeBsN-k_dyD7EpyNGLuLW6CM-0PzLqzguZcO0UiJenDPKyy22EdlTofGYsuGzHsoSFnAF3J4mhUb/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Reboots did not clear the issue.</p><p>The non-display of items in the Health report page appears to be a fairly common issue with a number of suggested fixes.</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-health-report-not-available-issue-windows-defender-security-center">How to fix 'Health report not available' issue on Windows Defender Security Center</a> - Windows Central</li><li><a href="https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_security/device-performance-and-health-no-reports/ee4782f1-7b9f-4f74-8219-81d0506ca783">Device Performance and Health - No Reports</a> - Microsoft Community</li><li><a href="https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware-winpc/windows-10-device-performance-and-health/09da7ce5-ee47-483c-9a41-2f785aa92927">Windows 10 Device Performance and Health incorrectly reporting driver</a> - Microsoft Community</li><li><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/654fee/defender_health_report_device_driver/">Defender Health report, device driver recommendation</a> - Windows10</li><li><a href="https://superuser.com/questions/1195303/windows-10-creators-update-ignore-specific-performance-health-recommendati">Windows 10 Creators Update - Ignore specific "performance & health" recommendations?</a> - Super User</li><li><a href="https://www.pcworld.com/article/3120305/windows/how-to-turn-off-windows-defenders-enhanced-notifications-in-windows-10.html">How to turn off Windows Defender's enhanced notifications in Windows 10</a> – PCWorld</li></ul><p>There were a number of different ways I could approach tackling this issue, but here is the way I cleared the problem that most people may find more informative.</p><p>I pressed the “Windows” key and then the “R” key to bring up the Run box.</p><p>I then typed “perfmon /report” and clicked “OK”. (more <a href="http://www.thewindowsclub.com/generate-system-health-report-windows-7-8-perfmon">here</a>).</p><p><img width="403" height="210" title="imkqfah4.kut" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="imkqfah4.kut" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UCroyLfwfvk/Wwmmj0lQwBI/AAAAAAAACEw/YWw1Y7MvVuIRx4MgNXXiAVcDHqv5WeRAACHMYCw/imkqfah4.kut5?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>After a minute or two the same Health report was generated but in greater detail via the Resource and Performance Monitor.</p><p>Looking in the Warnings/Error section, it was immediately obvious to me that the driver issue was related to the “Virtual CloneDrive” application I have installed.</p><p>(Note: I ignored the Photosmart printer error because my printer was offline.)</p><p><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-FPPSyCuqlqk/WwmmkAZ_agI/AAAAAAAACE0/Pf1aoY-t648HoSbulARyIir29heAusLlACHMYCw/s1600-h/pnkjpbe3.i0x4"><img width="519" height="484" title="pnkjpbe3.i0x" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="pnkjpbe3.i0x" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0fTbYKPTP0RPywyAj9qthVb0HF2ZYcA2dnyx846HEtkUU6JiOO1exNNnQW8HIm46Aks9WAG_lRQ0VI10Z8Fw0cId6NiJ0y5f-0TqVeNvh-eDHcO49kvzxN-bufsgWkvMQzc_/?imgmax=800" border="0"></a></p><p>I have used <a href="https://www.elby.ch/en/products/vcd.html">Virtual CloneDrive</a> from Elaborate Bytes for a very long time with great results. It allows me to mount a wide range of “image” files such a ISO, BIN, and IMG types (among others) as a virtual drive letter for quick content access. It is free and says it is Win 10 compatible. However it hasn’t been updated for some time.</p><p>I next checked my Device Manager properties and confirmed that the device driver was in error.</p><p><img width="566" height="594" title="wt43h0is.f2s" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="wt43h0is.f2s" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dYTSRnTGF5E/WwmmkkIMewI/AAAAAAAACE8/3QEvK813AVoMf3tF4jZVde-ulmVs6I7BgCHMYCw/wt43h0is.f2s5?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Rather than go about trying to fix this particular issue, I just uninstalled Virtual CloneDrive from my system. This cleared the error in the Device Manager view.</p><p><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qrPpK9ILv9Q/Wwmm-D1eheI/AAAAAAAACFo/U0w3GqCZtCs4N5r55TamLXYf40ym9qeMACHMYCw/s1600-h/amyb333v.lj1%255B6%255D"><img width="554" height="256" title="amyb333v.lj1" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="amyb333v.lj1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKf5nuM7Y39mTNy-LaGpulR4gS_cJwUsrZnIg5__JsoaHlyHPGuTV2eh1Eum_5e96iob9ORfQ9GiBxbrnJjSKDNbGlOroPzGGZxtcYnWbaQ1WTaFd3TdTGAc4Mto7TsKA5bEW_/?imgmax=800" border="0"></a></p><p>Checking the Windows Defender Security Center Health report found the error now cleared.</p><p><img width="578" height="484" title="lmyu5lhm.a53" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="lmyu5lhm.a53" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbx3o0kLTnWMf-EbSW83tULMB6h3F5sBCcUd_cwgJdHZWrwNRpLCxdHVQRaNGMXcmpL58mA4SO_8IFfjDHfgXJpyNrkaZ_Qw4s4FJOytb2EEN5DbQZcEJjG0TaA167infC8Otb/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>…and the Windows Defender system icon restored to a normal health state.</p><p><img width="449" height="48" title="f2lkwy1s.k1u" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="f2lkwy1s.k1u" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LQFjHhtcSlY/WwmmlXr_z8I/AAAAAAAACFI/CD840qD0Mcgn-n-BUVSPFSny3Fxq_DBgwCHMYCw/f2lkwy1s.k1u5?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Takeaway: if you want really detailed breakdown of issues found in the Health Report, run a “perfmon /report” session to collect your system state details then get troubleshooting!</p><p>Additional notes:</p><p>Because I was already using the incredible (and in many ways more fully-featured) <a href="http://pismotec.com/pfm/ap/">Pismo File Mount Audit Package</a> application from Pismo Technic Inc. to mount most of my ISO image files anyway, I just updated that one to the latest version available and didn’t bother to reinstall Virtual CloneDrive.</p><p>I also have these applications as well on my system so I’m not missing anything when I need to mount a particular image file:</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk">ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver</a> – LTR-Data</li><li><a href="https://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html">OSFMount</a></li><li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/">ImDisk Toolkit</a> (via SourceForge)</li></ul><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-57393743623403713562017-03-18T16:44:00.001-05:002017-03-18T17:22:59.938-05:00Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) 5.5/5.52 Uninstall Error 2738<p>I’ve been taking the layered “defense in depth” approach on my home systems for some time.</p><p>Including using (concurrently)…</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/safety/pc-security/microsoft-security-essentials.aspx">Microsoft Security Essentials</a></li><li><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/jj653751">Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit - EMET</a></li><li><a href="https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/">Malwarebytes</a></li><li><a href="https://www.foolishit.com/cryptoprevent-malware-prevention/">CryptoPrevent Malware Prevention</a> – Foolish IT</li><li><a href="https://www.malwarebytes.com/antiexploit/">Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit</a></li></ul><p>Last night something started to go wrong with the process and the wheels came off the wagon.</p><p>Here’s how I got them back on.</p><p>I am running the Premium (lifetime subscription) version of Malwarebytes. Some time ago they came out with a new 3.0 version release. I’ve been reading the reviews throughout the rollout and have waited to do the upgrade. Once nice feature is it now includes the full version of their awesome Anti-Exploit program at no cost to Premium subscribers; something I was using the limited/free version for but couldn’t protect my Chromium-based Vivaldi browser sessions with as the free version didn’t allow setting of custom protections.</p><p>As I said, all the bits had been running fine together although – to be fair – Malwarebytes does warn users of EMET during installation that it has compatibility issues and recommends removal of EMET. If disregarded, the installation will continue fine.</p><p>Thursday night, my Malwarebytes 2.0 version final got auto-triggered to offer me the eligible upgrade to the 3.0 version.</p><p>I said OK and let it install. Installation seemed to go fine. No errors.</p><p>However last night, I went to launch Microsoft Excel and EMET went crazy and blocked it from running due to a perceived exploit. That hasn’t ever happened before and I was very confident my system hadn’t been actually exploited. I tried both Excel 2007 and 2010 versions that I have and both got the same reaction by EMET. I then tried Word and it also caused EMET alerts and binary blockage. Hmm.</p><p>Well, maybe something in the new Malwarebytes 3.0 was causing a compatibility issue with EMET finally.</p><p>So I went to uninstall EMET. Only I had two versions.</p><p><img width="644" height="157" title="Programs and Features_2017-03-18_15-13-08" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="Programs and Features_2017-03-18_15-13-08" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dEPUNClZd7g/WM2qT-iQ31I/AAAAAAAACDw/4Vrt-l1x9QM/Programs%252520and%252520Features_2017-03-18_15-13-08%25255B5%25255D.png?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Not sure how that happened. EMET 5.52 was supposed to allow for in-place upgrade of EMET over a prior version. Didn’t recall getting an error before.</p><p>So I went to uninstall EMET 5.5 and got this:</p><p><img width="358" height="154" title="EMET 5.5_2017-03-18_15-13-43" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="EMET 5.5_2017-03-18_15-13-43" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--y7Xi1d1pZo/WM2qUFZOQdI/AAAAAAAACD0/TZPZG9zA1qI/EMET%2525205.5_2017-03-18_15-13-43%25255B5%25255D.png?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>Same result trying to uninstall EMET 5.52</p><p>I tried repairs, changes, etc. to both EMET applications. I still had the original MSI installers for them both but even re-downloaded them from Microsoft. None seemed successful. Note the dates in the “Installed On” column were yesterday’s so something in the processes I did worked, but it wouldn’t let me uninstall them; continuing to present that same “error code is 2738” message.</p><p>Since using Excel/Word were critical last night, I worked around the problem up removing all the EMET setting protections for the Microsoft Office suite application binaries. That let me run them without being blocked.</p><p>I figured that would be enough, but this afternoon I went to open a PDF with Adobe Reader – and EMET blocked it too from launching due to some kind of perceived exploit.</p><p>EMET had to finally go and I had to punch through that error code.</p><p>I ended up in a Microsoft forum where others with previous versions of EMET had encountered the same error but it seemed on installations – not uninstall activity.</p><p><a href="https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/security/en-US/home?searchTerm=2738">Technet forums – Security</a> (EMET forum search for “2738”)</p><p>Looking through them many seemed to share a common thread with a previous anti-virus product taking over, corrupting, or locking down a VBScript dll process.</p><p>Well, perhaps my Malwarebytes and/or CrytoPrevent protections were keeping the vbscript.dll service from being accessed or running?</p><p>So I removed my CryptoPrevent protections and disabled my MalwareBytes application.</p><p>Nope. Same error.</p><p>I did some more digging on a wider net and the more I read about other non-security applications having a <br>“2738” error on installation, I became convinced it was all related.</p><p>So after reading multiple posts I was confident to do the deeper work needed to try to fix this issue.</p><p>Using <a href="http://registry-finder.com/">Registry Finder</a> (under an elevated Administrator session) I searched my registry for the string {B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}.</p><p>It came up 12 times, all in the expected locations, except I did have a single odd-string out under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER location. I was pretty sure that was my problem.</p><p>[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}]</p><p>All the rest were under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, or HKEY_USERS.</p><p>I exported the registry key first (just in case) then I deleted it.</p><p>I then opened up CMD (under an elevated Administrator session) and ran the following commands (note my system is a Windows 7 Home x64 OS):</p><ul><li><b>cd %windir%\syswow64</b><enter></li><li><strong>regsvr32 vbscript.dll</strong> <enter></li></ul><p><img width="644" height="327" title="cjj1w2zq.gps" style="display: inline; background-image: none;" alt="cjj1w2zq.gps" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Q7WhJHRO9QNRreBYA1EraGbp7bppHEnmntK9wxJ8mSu6a8ZeM7vBcdB7QkX7TmsNhmK_srNhTnDcnVjBmRZsKzWRxdH0BvV5CCqjsX36m5M1d_TAfRmuVHnE5sbiuKWOla1O/?imgmax=800" border="0"></p><p>I then went back and attempted to remove EMET 5.5 and it uninstalled with no more error 2738 codes.</p><p>I then followed by removing EMET 5.52 and it came off just fine as well with no errors.</p><p>I wrapped things up by re-applying my default CryptoPrevent and MalwareBytes protections states again.</p><p>Done.</p><p>Again, the trick was to remove the Registry entry <em>just </em>under the HKCU location where it was found present, then re-register the vbscript.dll component properly.</p><p>Later while preparing for this post I did find this EMET-related forum post that basically walks one through the same steps for an earlier version of EMET on a x32 bit based version of Windows 7. If you try to follow that and have an x64 bit version of Windows, you will need to adjust accordingly.</p><p><a href="https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/virtualization/en-US/30c9f250-5fb5-4a55-aefc-79072b916872/emet-300-installation-fails-on-win7-pro-32bit-error-code-2738?forum=emet">EMET 3.0.0 Installation fails on Win7 Pro 32Bit - Error Code 2738</a> – Microsoft TechNet</p><p>Additional resources and guides for addressing the Error Code 2738 problem:</p><ul><li><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/949140/when-i-run-a-script-in-windows-script,-i-receive-an-error-message-library-not-registered"><a href="http://www.jakeludington.com/windows_7/20091115_error_2738_could_not_access_vbscript_run_time_for_custom_action.html">Error 2738. Could not access VBScript run time for custom action.</a> - Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle</li><li><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/heaths/2007/05/31/windows-installer-errors-2738-and-2739-with-script-custom-actions/">Windows Installer Errors 2738 and 2739 with Script Custom Actions</a> - Setup & Install by Heath Stewart</li></ul><p>The key to understanding why this works (and where the problem lies is explained nicely in Heath’s above post:</p><blockquote><p>As <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekelly/archive/2007/04/22/problem-installing-form-fill-add-in-for-windows-live-toolbar.aspx">some</a> <a href="http://sygko.net/blog/?p=5">people</a> have found, re-registering the runtime libraries <em>vbscript.dll</em> and <em>jscript.dll</em> will fix the errors, but that isn’t always the solution. <p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">As a security measure, Windows Installer will not load script engines registered in HKEY_CURRENT_USER</font>. As a user-writable store, a normal user could get an <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa369519.aspx">elevated install</a> to run their library masking as a <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/script56/html/4c750627-6797-4857-9f5e-e5f54371f83c.asp">script engine</a> if the custom action was not explicitly attributed with msidbCustomActionTypeNoImpersonate (0x0800). This is an elevation of privileges attack; thus, Windows Installer returns error message 2738 or 2739 for custom actions <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa368241.aspx">type 6</a> and <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa368098.aspx">type 5</a>, respectively, and returns <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/aa368542.aspx">Windows error</a> 1603, ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE. </p></blockquote><p>Because – somehow – vbscript.dll <em>did</em> get itself registered under my HKEY_CURRENT_USER location, the EMET MSI uninstaller script could not execute. Only by pulling it out, then re-registering it in the correct location automatically, would the removal process complete.</p><ul><li><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/astebner/2007/06/07/link-to-information-about-msi-script-based-custom-action-error-codes-2738-and-2739/">Link to information about MSI script-based custom action error codes 2738 and 2739</a> – Aaron Stebner's WebLog</li><li><a href="http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/07/error-2738-installation-could-not-access-vbscript-run-time-for-custom-action.html">Error 2738 Installation, could not access VBScript run time for custom action</a> - Up and Ready</li><li><a href="https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Installation-fails-with-message-Error-2738-Could-not-access-VBScript-run-time-for-custom-action-s.html">Installation fails with message Error 2738. Could not access VBScript run time for custom action.</a> - AutoCAD | Autodesk Knowledge Network</li><li><a href="https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/emet-35-installation-failure-error-code-2738/4f3a6519-95ee-424b-be51-534967d5ea75">EMET 3.5 Installation Failure: Error Code 2738.</a> - Microsoft Community</li><li><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/949140/when-i-run-a-script-in-windows-script,-i-receive-an-error-message-library-not-registered">When I run a script in Windows Script, I receive an error message: "Library not registered"</a> – Microsoft Support</li></ul><p>Final thoughts.</p><p>I only removed EMET from this particular system as it exhibited the crazy mitigation interceptions for Microsoft Office immediately after upgrading to MalwareBytes 3.0 Premium.</p><p>On my other Windows 7 Ultimate system, I am still running EMET (5.52 only) along with the protections noted in the top of this post. The only difference is that I’m using the free version of Malwarebytes 2.0 on it (without real-time protections). So until an issue appears, I’m keeping EMET on that system.</p><p>Lavie still is running Windows 8.1 on her laptop with a similar configuration. Lesson learned is that I will first remove EMET before upgrading her MBAM Premium version from 2.0 to 3.0.</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-26449205242540107472016-09-30T16:44:00.001-05:002017-01-12T20:30:49.820-06:00Fix EasyWorship 2009 issues with new SongSelect site<p>We continue to use an older version (EasyWorship 2009) of <a href="https://www.easyworship.com/">EasyWorship</a> for our church service projection screen management.</p> <p>We’ve tried the newer EasyWorship 6 release – and it does have a lot of very attractive features – however the process and projection flow just doesn’t fit us as well as the older EasyWorship 2009 layout.</p> <p>Anyway…EasyWorship has a plug-in like feature that allows you to sign into the <a href="https://songselect.ccli.com/">SongSelect</a> service with your associated account and easily import song lyrics directly into your EasyWorship song database.</p> <p>Recently SongSelect updated their website design and it created several problems within the EasyWorship 2009 program.</p> <p>First, the SongSelect webpage was “broken” in rendering within EasyWorship 2009</p> <p><img title="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Pre-Fix" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Pre-Fix" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8HtAHmVkW_o/V-7cn_rq_gI/AAAAAAAACCw/nmguxnZh8oE/EWorship%2525202009%252520SongSelect%252520Window%252520-%252520Pre-Fix%25255B4%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="644" height="341"></p> <p>It may be hard to see but that banner area is all whacked out and the Sign In link didn’t work well at all.</p> <p>Secondly, one could go to the SongSelect Classic page using the offered URL in that broken banner area and log in,</p> <p><img title="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Pre-Fix - SS Classic" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Pre-Fix - SS Classic" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--klo5-6emzs/V-7coFusLxI/AAAAAAAACC0/FRtbHCLJvW0/EWorship%2525202009%252520SongSelect%252520Window%252520-%252520Pre-Fix%252520-%252520SS%252520Classic%25255B4%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="644" height="341"></p> <p>However while you could then log in normally, when we went to try to import song lyrics the “Import” button remained grayed out while using this “classic” login method. </p> <p>Our workaround was to download the lyric as a text file, then copy/paste it into a new song record in the database. This was less than ideal as you missed out a lot of the “meta-data” for the song item and had to manually put all that in as well.</p> <p>I did some searching and found this helpful fix in the EasyWorship support forums.</p> <p><a href="http://throwback.easyworship.com/support/solutions/articles/6000140719-songselect-webpage-fix-for-easyworship-2009">SongSelect Webpage Fix for EasyWorship 2009 : EasyWorship Legacy</a> <em><font color="#d16349">(URL change updated 2017-01-12)</font></em></p> <p>Basically, you download an IE Fix patch from them for your Windows OS version and run it. It unpacks the EXE file to a temporary location, executes a batch file, and then applies a REG key fix to your Windows Registry to fix the issue.</p> <p>In case you are curious, the fix just applies one of these registry tweaks depending on your OS (32 or 64 bit).</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>For x32 bit Windows OS:</strong></p> <p>Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00</p> <p>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]<br>"easyworship.exe"=dword:00000000</p> <p><strong>For x64 bit Windows OS:</strong></p> <p>Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00</p> <p>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]<br>"easyworship.exe"=dword:00000000</p></blockquote> <p>Once that was done, EasyWorship 2009 then displayed the new SongSelect website page correctly (compare to before as seen above):</p> <p><img title="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Post-Fix 1" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Post-Fix 1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUiTuIKRNGg2BuuMHImW4gTlrHuwh4y7LNv_Qq7-96mVIhYxdmaIZUQ6_L2dWycjNjOa_C0hjZm_HelQ1CLgopEj5GPML2XeG4g_UpikQugjcOX-iD-a_doNf2Yr0S2dbjMQBX/?imgmax=800" width="644" height="341"></p> <p>And the sign-in page displayed properly.</p> <p><img title="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Post-Fix 2" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="EWorship 2009 SongSelect Window - Post-Fix 2" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nhnnvhsmZls/V-7cohRKKMI/AAAAAAAACC8/1XsglfZB7SI/EWorship%2525202009%252520SongSelect%252520Window%252520-%252520Post-Fix%2525202%25255B4%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="644" height="342"></p> <p>After logging in this way and selecting a song’s lyrics we found that the EasyWorship application’s “Import” button worked again for full and normal song lyric importation.</p> <p><strong><u>Bonus Easy Worship 2009 notes:</u></strong></p> <p>While working this issue, I found that our installed version of EasyWorship 2009 is at 1.4 but there is a later version 1.9 that is available to fix some issues.</p> <p>The upgrade process is very easy.</p> <p><a href="http://forums.easyworship.com/viewtopic.php?t=10634">Upgrade 2009 1.4 to 1.9 Procedure?</a> - EasyWorship Community</p> <ol> <li>Download the full EasyWorship 2009 v1.9 setup installer file <li>Be sure EasyWorship is closed out on your system. <li>Run the setup file you downloaded; resulting in an installation over your existing version. <li>Done. (no license or registration information is requested or needs to be re-entered)</li></ol> <p>More information about the version 1.9 build change notes here in case you are curious: <a href="https://is.easyworship.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10531">EasyWorship Community • View topic - EasyWorship 2009 Build 1.9 Now Available!</a></p> <ul> <li><a href="http://throwback.easyworship.com/support/solutions/articles/6000022269-easyworship-2009-software-download-reinstall-only-">EasyWorship 2009 Software Download (Reinstall Only)</a> - EasyWorship Legacy <em><font color="#d16349">(URL change updated 2017-01-12)</font></em> <li><a href="http://throwback.easyworship.com/support/solutions/6000048336">EasyWorship 2009 : EasyWorship Legacy</a> - More EasyWorship 2009 resource patches and downloads <em><font color="#d16349">(URL change updated 2017-01-12)</font></em> <li><a href="https://www.easyworship.com/downloads/ew_builds/">EasyWorship 2009 build archives</a> – EasyWorship</li></ul> <p>If you have to reinstall EasyWorship 2009, there is some information you want to capture first from your currently registered/working software:</p> <p><a href="http://throwback.easyworship.com/support/solutions/articles/6000016726-reinstalling-easyworship-2007-and-2009">Reinstalling EasyWorship 2007 and 2009</a> - EasyWorship Legacy <em><font color="#d16349">(URL change updated 2017-01-12)</font></em></p> <blockquote> <p>Locate Your Registration Information <p>If you do not have your registration info, you can get this info from the old computer.<br>Your Registration Information consists of the following: <ol> <li>Name <li>Phone Number <li>Serial Number</li></ol> <p>To locate this information on the old computer open EasyWorship. Go to the main menu and select Help>About EasyWorship. The church name and serial number will be shown at the bottom.</p> <p>To locate the phone number, select Register on the left side of the About window. </p></blockquote> <p>See also: <a href="http://throwback.easyworship.com/support/solutions/articles/6000015434-backup-and-transfer-your-database-ew-2009-">Backup and Transfer Your Database (EW 2009)</a> - EasyWorship Legacy <em><font color="#d16349">(URL change updated 2017-01-12)</font></em></p> <p>I hope anyone still using this older verison of EasyWorship 2009 like us finds this information helpful.</p> <p>Cheers!</p> <p>Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-78999360938930297162016-09-30T15:51:00.001-05:002016-09-30T15:51:02.156-05:00Prepping a USB stick to play music files in a Camry<p>A while back little bro adopted a new Toyota Camry.</p> <p>One of the features it comes with is the ability to play music off a USB stick..</p> <p>So he grabbed a very nice Lexar brand USB 3.0 64 GB USB stick while at a local office-supply store and copied his music files to it.</p> <p>Unfortunately it didn’t play. His old USB 2.0 1 GB stick worked fine in the vehicle.</p> <p>He thought it might be a bad stick (or that the sound system didn’t support USB 3.0) and was getting ready to return it to the store but I asked him a few questions.</p> <p>First he confirmed it was NTFS formatted. That’s pretty common on many newer USB 3.0 sticks I’ve seen lately. I suggested he might want to try formatting at FAT32.</p> <blockquote> <p>Note: Per the <a href="http://www.toyota.com/owners/resources/owners-manuals/camry/2017">2017 Toyota Camry Owners Manual</a> (page 272) this requirement was later confirmed: file system format needed to be FAT 16/32. Other important points are that the USB device can only have 8 levels of folder heirachy, a maximum of 3000 folders, a maximum of 9999 files, and a maximum of 255 files per folder. Files must be in MP3, WMA, or AAC format.</p></blockquote> <p>The next problem was that his Windows 10 system would only offer to format the device in exFAT.</p> <p>So I had him go CMDo and run DISKPART.</p> <ul> <li>DISKPART>list disk</li> <li>DISKPART>select disk # <em><font color="#cccccc"><—picked # that represented USB stick on his system</font></em></li> <li>DISKPART>clean</li> <li>DISKPART>create partition primary</li> <li>DISKPART>active</li> <li>DISKPART>assign letter = E</li> <li>DISKPART>format fs=fat32</li> <li>DISKPART>exit</li></ul> <p>Only that netted him an error during the formatting process that the volume was too big.</p> <p>Then I remembered a GUI utility from Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd that I used a long time ago.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.htm">FAT32 Format (GUI Version)</a> – Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd.</li></ul> <p>It is free and can format FAT32 volumes beyond the normal 32 GB size limit that is sometimes encountered. It never let me down in the past.</p> <p>He downloaded the tool, ran it as an admin, selected his USB drive, kept the defaut allocation unit size, and did a quick format on the 64 GB USB device. Done.</p> <p>He tested and the USB stick (and media files) were now recognized with no issues by the sound system.</p> <p>Mischief managed.</p> <p>This seems to be a common issue many Toyota owners run into with newer/larger USB sticks so I thought I would drop a post for posterity.</p> <p>Cheers!</p> <p>Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-65914296564282175582016-09-05T11:17:00.001-05:002016-09-05T11:17:14.390-05:00Valca Windows KeyFinder Utilities<p>Last night I was culling my collection of Windows key-finding utilities. There were some that had gone “404” and others that didn’t seem stable (or effectively work at all) on newer Windows 7/10 systems.</p> <p>Many were collected back in the days of Windows XP so I decided to pick through them and dump the oldest ones and add some new ones.</p> <p>This morning I saw that the TinyApps.org bloggist was hard at work on his own list!</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://tinyapps.org/blog/windows/201609040715_recover_and_identify_product_key.html">Recover Windows product key from BIOS / UEFI</a> – TinyApps.org blog</li></ul> <p>Possibly we are being confronted with similar troublehsooting and service issues?</p> <p>Here is my list and there are some similarities (as presented in semi-alphabetical order). </p> <p>Some of these recover more than just the Windows OS key. </p> <p>Some have not been updated in a while and may not work effectively on Win 7/8/8.1/10.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://jalapenosoftware.com/">Jalapeño License Keyfinder</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.klinzmann.name/licensecrawler.htm">LicenseCrawler</a> - Martin Klinzmann</li> <li><a href="https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/">Magical Jelly Bean</a> – Note I don’t use this one as often as it typically makes anti-virus software go nuts as a PUP.</li> <li><a href="http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html">ProduKey</a> – NirSoft</li> <li><a href="http://davehope.co.uk/projects/product-key-finder/">Product Key Finder</a> - Dave Hope</li> <li><a href="http://keit.co/p/recall/">recALL</a></li> <li><a href="http://korben.info/rockxp">RockXP</a> – Korben - Note I also don’t use this one as often as it typically makes anti-virus software go nuts as a PUP.</li> <li><a href="http://rweverything.com/">RWEverything</a> - Read & Write Everything</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/Superfly-Inc/ShowKeyPlus/releases">ShowKeyPlus</a> - GitHub</li> <li><a href="http://www.sterjosoft.com/key-finder.html">SterJo Key Finder</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.winkeyfinder.com/">Win Keyfinder 2.0 / 1.75</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.lazesoft.com/lazesoft-windows-key-finder.html">Windows Key Finder</a> – Lazesoft</li> <li><a href="https://neosmart.net/OemKey/">Windows OEM Product Key Tool</a> - NeoSmart Technologies</li> <li><a href="http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/utility/winproductkey/">Windows Product Key Viewer</a> – RJL Software</li></ul> <p>Then there is there is the manual method using CMD or PowerShell for most Win 10 / 8 / 8.1 systems.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/617124/use-command-prompt-or-powershell-to-find-windows-product-key/">Use Command Prompt or PowerShell to find Windows Product Key</a> - Microsoft Windows Mini-Guides – BleepingComputer</li></ul> <p>I tend to prefer ProduKey, ShowKeyPlus, and Windows OEM Product Key Tool as my primary tools.</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-73127897944356372412016-09-05T10:29:00.001-05:002016-09-05T10:43:10.057-05:00Lenovo Y50 Hard Drive Replacement and Windows 10<p>About a month ago I was asked by a family at the church-house if I could give them some advice about their son’s two-year-old Lenovo <a href="http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50/">Y50 laptop</a>. <p>Apparently the hard-drive had failed and time was short before he headed off to college out of state. <p>They had purchased a new 1 TB Western Digital laptop drive similar to the one in it but despite good effort had been unable to get Windows 10 reloaded on the device. They suspected more was wrong with the system and wanted to confirm before picking up a new laptop before he shipped out. Basically, they said the BIOS detected the HDD but they could not get Windows 10 reloaded on the laptop. <p>I asked them to let me look at the system along with the bits and pieces and then I would let them know. <p>So, armed with my various troubleshooting tool kits and USB sticks I sat down in our sound-booth with it and ran a quick assessment. <p>I’m more of a Dell-guy and hadn’t had much experience with the Lenovo line. As such, getting into the BIOS took a bit of research. <p>The trick was something called the “NOVO” button. <ul> <li><a href="http://www.gearhack.com/Forums/DisplayComments.php?file=Computer/Notebook/How_to_Enter_the_Lenovo_Y50_BIOS">How to Enter the Lenovo Y50 BIOS</a> – Gearhack.com Forums <li><a href="https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/HT062552">Introduction to NOVO button</a> - Idea laptops - Lenovo Support (US)assessment <li><a href="https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht104064">How to enter BIOS setup from Windows 10 System</a> - Idea Notebooks/Desktops - Lenovo Support (US) <li><a href="http://www.infralib.com/2015/03/lenovo-bios-key/">Lenovo BIOS Key</a> – InfraLib – nice list of all the ways (as of 2015) to get into BIOS on different Lenovo systems.</li></ul> <p>I booted into the BIOS (on the Y50 using the NOVO button to the immediate left of the power button) and checked a few things. <p>I was able to confirm the BIOS was picking up the new HDD. <p>I look under the boot tab options and saw that it was set to EUFI. <p>I changed it temporarily to “Legacy” and saved. I needed it that way for the next step to work more smoothly in my troubleshooting assessment. <p>I attached one of my <a href="http://www.easy2boot.com/">custom</a> USB sticks that I can use to boot a system and load/run an OS (Windows/Linux/Whatever) directly from the USB stick and not off the local HDD. <p>I then hit the NOVO button again and selected to boot from my USB stick. That allowed me to load a WinPE build and run some commands to… <ol> <li>confirm that I could see the new HDD, <li>confirm that it was a 1 TB drive, <li>rebuild the drive partition configuration (MBR type) and make it bootable, and then <li>formatted it as NTFS using DiskPart from a command prompt window.</li></ol> <p> 1. Diskpart<br> 2. > select disk 0<br> 3. > clean<br> 4. > create partition primary<br> 5. > active<br> 6. > assign letter = C<br> 7. > exit <blockquote> <p>Followed up by a final <p><em>format C: /fs:ntfs /q /y</em></p></blockquote> <p>It worked perfectly. That confirmed the laptop recognized the drive while running under a Windows OS and it was working as expected. Now I needed to get the Win 10 OS loaded on the hard drive. </p> <p>I shut it down and rebooted it again with the NOVO button. I went back in to the boot options tab and set it back to UEFI, saved the changes and rebooted. <p>This time I had swapped USB sticks and now used a Windows 10 Installation Media USB that I had previously built when I was working on my own laptops a while back. <p>The Win 10 lnstaller loaded and the setup wizard started. <p><em>Only I had forgotten that the HDD was still configured as MBR with my pre-testing.</em> <p>Win 10 and UEFI BIOS support enabled didn’t like each other and the wizard refused to continue with the installation. So at that point in the installation options I had to just delete the MBR partition I had made so Win 10 could automagically create the partition again as a GPT type which it required. <p>It did and then the rest was just watching Win 10 install, reboot a few times, creating a local user account, and dumping on the OS updates. <p>Because it had Win 10 on before, it automatically loaded the license key from BIOS storage and activated Win 10 once fully installed and after I connected it to the Internet. <p>Done. The Y50 was a sharp looking (and running) laptop and I was impressed during my short service time with it. <p>Note: I had planned on looking at the failed hard-drive to see if any data could be recovered and ported back over onto the new drive, but they said that wasn’t needed and would just go with a fresh-start. I left it to them to follow up with any remaining software application reinstalls as well. <p>I didn’t kick off the new Win 10 "Anniversary Edition" build update release since this was to be just a short “assessment” service but told them that it should eventually auto update in a week or so. I also let them know they could force it on early by heading over to <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12387/windows-10-update-history">this Microsoft site page</a> and following the instructions. <p>And I advised them to keep these link handy as well. <ul> <li><a href="http://www.windowscentral.com/windows10-anniversary-update-common-problems-how-fix">Windows 10 Anniversary Update common problems and how to fix them</a> - Windows Central <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/248177/whats-new-in-windows-10s-anniversary-update/">What’s New in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update</a> – How-To Geek blogassessment</li></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <ul></ul> <p>The family didn’t have to shell out for a new laptop and all was well. <p>Cheers. <p>Claus Valca <p> <p><u>Additional reference notes:</u> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/175649/what-you-need-to-know-about-using-uefi-instead-of-the-bios/">What You Need to Know About Using UEFI Instead of the BIOS</a> – How-To Geek blog <li><a href="http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/186875-uefi-unified-extensible-firmware-interface-install-windows-7-a.html">UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with</a> - Windows 7 Help Forums <li><a href="http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/17058-secure-boot-enable-disable-uefi.html">Secure Boot - Enable or Disable in UEFI</a> – Windows 8 Forums <li><a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/configure-uefigpt-based-hard-drive-partitions">UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions</a> – Microsoft Hardware Dev Center <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/">What’s the Difference Between GPT and MBR When Partitioning a Drive?</a> - How-To Geek blog <li><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825686.aspx">Sample: Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions by Using Windows PE and DiskPart</a> – Microsoft TechNet <li><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725671(v=ws.11).aspx">Change a Master Boot Record Disk into a GUID Partition Table Disk</a> – Microsoft TechNet <li><a href="http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2034007/laptop-booting-bootable-usb-drive-solved.html#16722644">My laptop is not booting from a bootable USB drive [SOLVED] [Solved]</a> – TomsGuide - Laptop Tech Support Forum <li><a href="https://tinyapps.org/blog/windows/201609040700_dell_venue_boot_usb.html">Booting Dell Venue 10 Pro 5055 from USB device</a> – TinyApps.org <li><a href="http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-create-windows-10-installation-disk-or-bootable-usb/">How To Create Windows 10 Installation Disk Or Bootable USB</a> – Make Use Of blog <li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10">Windows 10 Media Creation Tool</a> – Microsoft Software Download <li><a href="http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html">UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows</a> – WIndows 8 Forums</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-77560124468236766642016-06-25T21:38:00.001-05:002016-06-25T21:38:18.125-05:00A Perfect Father’s Day – 2016 edition<p>This past Father’s Day, dear little Alvis and her husband invited me over to their place for some hang-out time.</p> <p>We watched some great Copa América soccer matches.</p> <p>We wrestled with their “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=snoodle&hl=en&tbm=isch&q=schnauzer+poodle+mix#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=schnoodle+schnauzer+poodle+mix">schnoodle</a>” (schnauzer poodle mix) Molly.</p> <p>We ate spicy chicken and I wolfed down red-beans and rice.</p> <p>We laughed and then hunkered down when a ferocious storm blew through dumping rain by the bucketfuls, tossing lighting, drumming up thunder. And killing the power for about 30 minutes.</p> <p>It was perfect!</p> <p>Along the way I couldn’t help but be a dad and do some fixing of Alvis’s laptop.</p> <p>See about a week or two prior, her husband had been using it when suddenly it died right in the middle of some work.</p> <p>Alvis tried some pretty good troubleshooting but couldn’t make headway. It seemed to sort-of boot but would just display a black screen and power off.</p> <p>To make matters more challenging, the kids reported that Microsoft had foisted a stealty/scammy Windows 10 upgrade on them. It was running Windows 7 just fine, but did a Windows 10 upgrade they didn’t ask for or want anyway. Classy.</p> <p>However, they were good sports and adjusted. It seemed the Windows 10 upgrade went ok and the laptop survived the experience intact.</p> <p>Was it a Windows 10 upgrade black-screen problem related to the upgrade? Was it a bad system board or power-source issue? Bad display? That snoodle can get rough at times though I didn’t see any teeth-marks on the lid.</p> <p>In the worst case scenario, I was prepared to do a data-recovery and then port Alvis’s files onto her external USB drive so she could still work with her data on another laptop if her’s was dead.</p> <p>I made sure the device was on the AC power cord and tried to boot it with a bootable USB stick first. Nothing.</p> <p>I removed the stick and tried a power cycle again.</p> <p>Miraculously, it sprang to life this time – for a moment. Enough to partially display a Windows 10 boot loading routine and for me to see an exasperated and amazed look on Alvis’s face that it was working for me – before the screen went black again and nothing.</p> <p>Hmmm.</p> <p>I pulled the battery out of the laptop and removed the AC cord plug.</p> <p>I pulled a Leatherman Micra multitool out of my pocket and removed the bottom laptop access cover.</p> <p>Alvis said she had started to do that earlier but stopped since she was afraid she would loose the tiny screws.</p> <p>I was proud she had considered that (exploring under the access cover) and explained that the lid screws were “captive” and probably wouldn’t come out – though I did keep my eye closely on the schnoodle. </p> <p>I pulled out the single DIMM of RAM, then firmly reseated it and clipped it back in.</p> <p>The access cover was snapped back in place and screwed down, the battery returned to the bay, and the A/C power connected.</p> <p>It booted right up normally and ran like nothing had happened. Fixed just like that.</p> <p>After offering to roll her laptop back to Windows 7 (declined by Alvis) she did say that the thing that frustrated them them most was the “new” Start button and menu.</p> <p>I downloaded and installed <a href="http://www.classicshell.net/">Classic Shell</a> and after a bit of tweaking had the Windows 10 start menu tamed into a format Alvis was familiar with again.</p> <p>Mischief managed – for now!</p> <p>A right-perfect Father’s Day and I was still able to be handy and useful.</p> <p>Thank you Alvis! </p> <p>You are the best daugher a father could ever hope to have. I’m so proud of you.</p> <p>Dad</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-88151441798977338302016-06-25T21:04:00.001-05:002016-06-25T21:04:34.443-05:00Time for a larger laptop hard-drive?<p>I’ve got two laptops that are near and dear to me; Tatiana and Alister.</p> <p><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2010/09/dell-named-tatiana.html">Tatiana</a> is my main personal laptop – it’s a Dell Studio 15 (1558) notebook running an i7 core, a 500 GB drive, and 8 GB of system RAM.</p> <p><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2014/11/alister-joins-tatiana.html">Alister</a> is my hot-rod racer – it’s a hand-me-down Dell XPS L702X laptop also running an i7 core, one 250 GB SSD drive (system/boot) and a 2nd 500 GB HDD in the 2nd bay. It has 16 GB of system RAM.</p> <p>So here is my quandary.</p> <p>I really, really love the boot speed and performance of the <a href="http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/us/html/about/SSD840EVO.html">Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250 GB</a> SSD drive. Once you go SSD it’s very difficult to consider a traditional spinning platter HHD.</p> <p>However the prices for larger storage capacity on a SSD are still pretty high.</p> <p>I’ve almost filled up the 250 GB SSD in Alister. Luckily I’ve been able to migrate more files and apps to the 2nd HDD drive and am fine for now.</p> <p>For Tatiana, all those music and video files, utilities and applicaiton installs are taking their toll and the 500 GB drive in it is almost filled up too. And unfortunately, I don’t have a 2nd drive bay space on that laptop.</p> <p>My gut tells me I will do better in the long run if I pick up some nice 1TB traditional HDD’s for both laptops.</p> <p>If I go with a speedy 7200 RPM drive with a big and fast cache I would still come out ok. I could easily pick up 2-3 of those drives for less than the price of a single 500GB SSD drive (when I honestly want a 1TB SSD size). Though I could probably find a budget SSD drive, I’m spoiled with the Samsung EVO line right now and it would be hard to walk away from.</p> <p>Thoughts? </p> <p>Any recommendations for a solid, fast, and dependable 1TB or larger 2.5 inch internal HDD for a laptop?</p> <p>If I rolled Alister back to a 1 TB HDD for the system drive, I’d likely pass the SSD drive in it now over to Lavie and upgrade her older Dell laptop with it. She doesn’t need near the storage space and the faster boots would make her happy. It would be an easy-peasy performance upgrade for her system.</p> <p>More SSD links to ponder…</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2014/12/ssd-care-quickpost.html">SSD Care – Quickpost – </a>GSD blog post</li> <li><a href="http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-ssds/?#runnerup">The Best SSDs</a> - The Wirecutter</li> <li><a href="http://betanews.com/2016/06/02/failed-ssd-data-loss/">Expect to lose data when your SSD fails</a> – BetaNews</li> <li><a href="http://betanews.com/2016/06/03/patriot-spark-ssd/">Patriot 'Spark' 512GB SSD will only cost $105!</a> – BetaNews</li> <li><a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/move-windows-hdd-ssd-improve-performance/">How to Move Windows from HDD to SSD to Improve Performance</a> – MakeUseOf blog</li> <li><a href="https://helgeklein.com/blog/2016/06/lenovo-yoga-900-ssd-upgrade-clean-windows-installation/?PageSpeed=noscript">Lenovo Yoga 900: SSD Upgrade & Clean Windows Installation</a> - Helge Klein</li></ul> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-3359281106591150212016-06-25T20:35:00.001-05:002016-06-25T20:35:42.199-05:00File under “You think they would have learned by now”<p>Seriously?</p> <p>Remember these GSD blog posts from a year ago or so?</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-cleanup-in-seafood.html"><font style="font-weight: normal">Lenovo Superfish – Cleanup in Seafood Isle Needed!</font></a></li> <li><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/noodling-down-in-bayou-for-superfish.html"><font style="font-weight: normal">Noodling down in the Bayou for Superfish-like SSL Shenanigans</font></a></li> <li><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/11/same-bread-brought-to-you-by-dell.html"><font style="font-weight: normal">Same Bread; brought to you by Dell</font></a></li> <li><a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/08/so-thats-how-it-works-windows-platform.html"><font style="font-weight: normal">So that’s how it works: Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT)</font></a></li></ul> <p>I guess you can’t keep a crappy “helpful app updater” down when it is an exploitable “feature” to help consumer’s out.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://duo.com/blog/out-of-box-exploitation-a-security-analysis-of-oem-updaters">Out-of-Box Exploitation: A Security Analysis of OEM Updaters</a> - Duo Security</li> <li><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2016/05/31/oem-updaters-put-pcs-at-risk/">OEM Updaters put PCs at risk</a> - gHacks Tech News</li> <li><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-begs-users-to-uninstall-accelerator-app-in-the-name-of-security/#ftag=RSSbaffb68">Lenovo begs users to uninstall Accelerator app in the name of security</a> - ZDNet</li> <li><a href="https://threatpost.com/lenovo-tells-users-to-uninstall-vulnerable-updater/118436/">Lenovo Tells Users to Uninstall Vulnerable Updater - </a>Kaspersky Labs Threat Post blog</li> <li><a href="https://threatpost.com/bloatware-insecurity-continues-to-haunt-consumer-business-laptops/118356/">Bloatware Insecurity Continues to Haunt Consumer, Business Laptops</a> - Kaspersky Labs Threat Post blog</li> <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/how-pc-makers-make-you-vulnerable-to-man-in-the-middle-attacks-out-of-the-box/">Out-of-the-box exploitation possible on PCs from top 5 OEMs</a> - Ars Technica</li> <li><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/06/hijacking_the_p.html">Hijacking the PC Update Process</a> - Schneier on Security</li></ul> <p>Constant Vigilance!</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-89412501656821521372016-06-25T20:27:00.001-05:002016-06-25T20:27:33.251-05:00Now showing on the small screen – Ransomware!<p>Must read for all you IOT fans…</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/flocker-ransomware-crosses-smart-tv/">FLocker Mobile Ransomware Crosses to Smart TV</a> - TrendLabs Security Intelligence Blog</li></ul> <p>Next targets; your smart-refrigerator, your smart-washer/dryer, your smart-car, and your smart thermostat.</p> <p>And you thought it was bad-enough fighting with your spouse over the room temperature?</p> <p>Pay bitcoins now or your whole home (and heating/cooling bill) will be held hostage!</p> <p>Sheesh…</p> <p>IOT lovers beware!</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-50868739884454102372016-06-25T20:18:00.001-05:002016-06-25T20:18:49.364-05:00Windows Service Triggers<p>I was troubleshooting some issues with WSUS server updating firing off on some Surface Pro tablets the other week.</p> <p>In doing so, it seemed the root cause was that the Windows Update Service was set to not run full time or Automatically but rather manually and based on service trigger starts.</p> <p>Hmmm. Time to learn me some facts about Windows service triggers.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd405513(v=vs.85).aspx">Service Trigger Events (Windows)</a> – Windows Dev Center</li> <ul> <li>“A service can register to be started or stopped when a trigger event occurs. This eliminates the need for services to start when the system starts, or for services to poll or actively wait for an event; a service can start when it is needed, instead of starting automatically whether or not there is work to do. “</li></ul> <li><a href="http://serverfault.com/questions/599099/windows-service-trigger-start-difference-manual-vs-automatic">Windows service trigger start - difference manual vs automatic?</a> - Server Fault</li> <li><a href="http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/50140/Windows-7-Trigger-Start-Service">Windows 7 Trigger Start Service</a> – CodeProject – good article that goes into service triggers even if you don’t need the code tips that are also on the page.</li> <li><a href="http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-services-regedit.html">Using the registry editor to change the service state</a> – Smallvoid.com</li> <li><a href="http://www.verboon.info/2010/03/windows-7-service-triggers/">Windows 7 Service Triggers</a> – Anything about IT</li> <li><a href="http://michlstechblog.info/blog/windows-remove-trigger-to-start-or-stop-a-service/">Windows: Remove a trigger from a service (Prevent the DNS Client (dnscache) from stopping)</a> - Michls Tech Blog</li> <li><a href="http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/ServiceTriggerEditor/sc.html">Using SC to manage Service Triggers on Windows 8/2012/7/2008 R2</a> – Core Technologies Consulting</li> <li><a href="http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/ServiceTriggerEditor/">Service Trigger Editor</a> - A free utility to manage Service Triggers – Core Technologies Consulting</li></ul> <p>Now we know!</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-28615862788460436402016-06-25T20:09:00.001-05:002016-06-25T20:09:59.153-05:00Yep, it broke things…MS16-072 (that’s by design folks!)<p> </p><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zYY6Q4nRTS4?rel=0" frameborder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Let it be said, let it be applied, so be it now broken, so be it now removed. </p> <p>Thus sayeth the sysadmin.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/MS16-072">Microsoft Security Bulletin MS16-072 – Important</a> – Microsoft Security TechCenter</li> <li><a href="http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2016/06/caution-ms16-072-may-break-group-policies/">Updated - MS16-072 may break your User Group Policies "by-design"</a> – Group Policy Central</li> <li><a href="http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2016/06/broken-gpo-ms16-072/">How to fix broken GPO because of MS16-072</a> – Group Policy Central</li> <li><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2016/06/17/ms16-072-may-break-group-policy-configurations/">MS16-072 may break Group Policy configurations</a> - gHacks Tech News</li> <li><a href="http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2016/06/official-microsoft-guidance-ms16-072-breaking-security-patch/">Official Microsoft Guidance for MS16-072 Breaking Security Patch</a> – Group Policy Central</li> <li><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askds/2016/06/22/deploying-group-policy-security-update-ms16-072-kb3163622/">Deploying Group Policy Security Update MS16-072 \ KB3163622</a> - Ask the Directory Services Team</li></ul> <p>Now let’s go fix it…well, you know…</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-44772423455351849202016-06-25T20:00:00.001-05:002016-06-25T20:00:57.089-05:00More EMail Client Thoughts…<p>When I posted <a href="http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2016/05/wrestling-with-outlook-troubleshooting.html">Wrestling with Outlook Troubleshooting </a>I was in the middle of helping an older church-member sort out his email client issues.</p> <p>He had suddenly lost the ability to send emails in his Outlook client that was also using the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8a31fbf4-f4bf-4751-954b-5b36d80ec375">Outlook Hotmail Connector (64-bit)</a>. I fiddled around troubleshooting it for a weekend, but in the end had to punt and just reconfigured Outlook to tie into his hotmail & outlook.com email accounts via an manual IMAP configuraiton. </p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/olc-hotmail/setting-outlookcom-imap-account/">Setting up an Outlook.com IMAP account</a> – Slipstick Systems</li></ul> <p>I also set them up in Thunderbird as well to confirm it wasn’t an “account” issue. Both worked fine so I returned the laptop and encouraged him to try both and settle on one he was most comfortable with.</p> <p>Only the next week he reported more email problems. This time, he couldn’t delete his emails.</p> <p>That’s an issue I haven’t had before in either Outlook or Thunderbird.</p> <p>Long story made short the emails were deleting – but it took a while due to the synchronization delay between the local account and the server.</p> <p>What do I mean?</p> <p>So the gentleman wanted the email client to “reflect” what was on the remote email server account, rather than downloading a copy of the contents to a local file store on the laptop. Had we set it up that way, then the email “deletion” would have been immediate – at least in terms of what he was seeing in the client itself.</p> <p>Because we were not using the Outlook “Connector” plug-in, there was a lag between when he deleted an email and when the normal sync-time would trigger a re-sync of the “local” seen email contents.</p> <p>So I would select an email message in the email client, hit “delete”, then…nothing for a while. It just stayed there.</p> <p>If we were logged into the web-mail account directly in a web-browser session (rather than an email client application) the message delete was immediate. So it wasn’t a problem with the account.</p> <p>However, back on the email client, if I hit “send/receive” right after deleting the message, the folders would re-sync and the email would “delete/disappear”.</p> <p>Once this delayed delete was understood, I could tweak some of the settings, but I didn’t want to re-poll the mail server every few seconds/minutes!</p> <p>Thunderbird seemed to be the fastest with “deleting” the message on it’s own with Outlook taking the longest. The gentleman was OK with Thunderbird but I wasn’t getting a vibe from him that he loved it either.</p> <p>In the end I found a compromise in Windows Essentials Live Mail. It mimicked Outlook pretty well and had very intuitive control icons on the Ribbon. And it seemed to sync not quite as fast as Thunderbird, but much faster than Outlook.</p> <p>My father-in-law loves Thunderbird – and I like going with it first since it is the one I use at home and am most familiar with it’s setup and operation for support needs. Dad still uses Outlook 2003 as that is what he was used to from his pre-retirement days. It’s all a matter of personal preference.</p> <p>IMAP configuration worked great – though it does come with drawbacks when using with Microsoft mail server accounts – the greatest of which is that online contacts and calendars will not sync. In this case that didn’t matter as the gentleman didn’t use those features of his web-mail accounts.</p> <p>Were I to do it again, I’d work my way down through these other free email clients until we found a winner that he liked:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/">Thunderbird</a> - Mozilla</li> <li><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17779/download-windows-essentials">Windows Essentials – Windows Live Mail</a> – Microsoft</li> <ul> <li><a href="http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/wiki/livemail-email/windows-live-mail-and-outlook-mail/6edb5ba6-f9f2-40fd-80a1-fc23cc6fbfe0">Windows Live Mail and Outlook Mail</a> - Microsoft Community – additional tips on setting up WLM to use IMAP connections due to the Microsoft changes killing the DeltaSync protocol that made it so seamless in the past. This is what I ended up doing and it worked perfectly.</li></ul> <li><a href="http://www.emclient.com/">eM Client</a> – beautiful email client that should make WLM users feel right at home as Microsoft drops support of the Windows Live Essentials software packages. Free version of eM Client supports up to two email accounts. eM Client PRO ($) supports unlimited numbers of email clients.</li> <li><a href="https://www.getmailbird.com/#">Mailbird 2.0</a> – a more “modern” chromed email client in both free (Lite version) and $ versions.</li> <li><a href="http://inky.com/">Inky</a> – free basic version and $ for subscription based version that has more features and IMAP support.</li> <li><a href="http://www.pmail.com/downloads.htm">Pegasus Mail</a> – free (dontation ware) email client that reminds me a bit of the Outlook Express application for some reason. Fully featured and not restricted, its a solid choice.</li> <li>Shortcut URL on desktop – Seriously I’ve done this from time to time. If a user has an issue with an email client and the email service provides web-mail, I just make a shortcut from their web-brower to the desktop, label it “My Email” and that’s it. The user goes right to their web-mail inbox and with Gmail, Outlook.com, and other email providers having highly improved and slick web-mail interfaces—an argument could be made “why bother with an email client at all?”</li></ul> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-26501481407398045952016-06-25T19:19:00.001-05:002016-06-25T19:19:07.669-05:00Telenet Clients<p>This week I was working with a network team-member to pilot some changes that will lock our network switches down more tightly.</p> <p>I’m used to using <a href="http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/putty_portable">PuTTY Portable</a> or <a href="http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/kitty-portable">KiTTY Portable</a> which are simply portable versions of <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">PuTTY</a> and <a href="http://www.9bis.net/kitty/">KiTTY</a> and seem hands-down better than Microsoft’s Hyperterminal that got left behind when Windows 7 came out (although it can run just fine on WIn 7 if you copied the snagged binaries over).</p> <p>However, the network admin I was working with requested we use the terminal Poderosa.</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/poderosaproject/">poderosaproject (Poderosa Project)</a> · GitHub</li> <li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/poderosa/">Poderosa download</a> - SourceForge.net</li></ul> <p>Apparently Poderosa has been out for a very long time and I’m just now finding out about it.</p> <p>What makes it very nice – aside from the beautiful GUI – is the “tabbed” nature of the application so you can have multiple sessions running and organized very similarly to browser tabs.</p> <p>It felt very natural and easy to use and is pretty light and fully portable.</p> <p>Like other telnet clients you can change the back color, text color, and font for improved legibility. The buffer size can be adjusted to allow capture of more of the session content, and copy/paste support feels more natural (IMHO).</p> <p>GSD Bonus:</p> <p>Don’t forget these great Cisco reference sites:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://packetlife.net/library/cheat-sheets/">Cheat Sheets</a> - PacketLife.net</li> <li><a href="http://www.ciscozine.com/">CiscoZine</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.petri.co.il/csc_basics_of_cisco_switch_administration_01.htm">Basics of Cisco Switch Administration - Part 1</a> – TechRepublic</li> <li><a href="http://www.petri.co.il/csc_basics_of_cisco_switch_administration_02.htm">Basics of Cisco Switch Administration - Part 2 – </a>TechRepublic</li> <li><a href="http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ccna-study-guide/basic-switch-configuration-guide-with-examples.html">Basic Switch Configuration Guide with Examples</a> – ComputerNetworkingNotes.com</li> <li><a href="http://computernetworkingnotes.com/cisco/ccna-study-guide/">CCNA Study Guide</a> – ComputerNetworkingNotes.com</li> <li><a href="http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2181836">Cisco Networking Academy's Introduction to Basic Switching Concepts and Configuration</a> – Cisco</li></ul> <p>Cheers.</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-19010990504933726742016-06-25T18:51:00.001-05:002016-06-25T18:51:11.980-05:00Unpacking Inno Installers<p>Some – but not all – applications that come packaged as “installers” can actually be run “portable” without needing to do the full install.</p> <p>There are degrees of portability when attempting this. Some applications are truly portable in that they don’t write extra files to the Windows Registry or ProgramData locations but either use their own “local” ini/config files or helper portability wrappers to retain settings and option selections (if available).</p> <p>Others will run after being unpacked, but may still write settings and changes into the Windows Registry and other system locations.</p> <p>All that to say, that a common installation packer I encounter is Inno.</p> <p>Normally, I just run <a href="http://legroom.net/software/uniextract">Universal Extractor</a> where I have <a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2015/06/innounp-update-tip-updated.html">updated the dated inno unpacker</a> binary with the latest one from <a href="http://innounp.sourceforge.net/">innounp</a> to be sure that I can unpack those built with the latest versions.</p> <p>Or you can try out the newer project <a href="https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2/releases">UniExtract2</a> which the author is trying to create an updated and feature enhanced version of Universal Extractor. It’s very nice too though you still may end up having to manually update innounp when a new version comes out.</p> <p>Anyway, if that is too much overhead, you might want to try one of these Inno-focused unpacker utilites.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://fec.usermd.net/innoex/">InnoEx</a> – GUI based extractor. see the <a href="http://fec.usermd.net/innoex-help-tips/">Help/tips</a> for more ideas.</li> <li><a href="http://www.havysoft.cl/innoextractor.html">InnoExtractor</a> – HavySoft</li> <li><a href="http://constexpr.org/innoextract/">innoextract</a> – supports multiple platforms like Windows, Mac OS X, and multiple Linux flavors</li> <li> - A tool to unpack installers created by Inno Setup</li></ul> <p>Of course if your CLI-fu is strong, you could just keep it old-school and use <a href="http://innounp.sourceforge.net/">innounp</a> directly from the command line and be done with it.</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-63109922399907653992016-06-25T18:34:00.001-05:002016-06-25T18:34:33.557-05:00Supplemental Spell Checking in OLW with tinySpell<p>The biggest feature I am missing in <a href="http://openlivewriter.org/">Open Live Writer</a> is the lack of “real-time” spell checking when running it on a Windows 7 system.</p> <p>My “fix” at the time of this post - <a href="https://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2016/02/open-live-writer-we-will-eventually-get.html">Open Live Writer – we will (eventually) get through this – </a>was to compose my post, copy/paste it into a session of Notepad++ where a spell check plugin was configured, and then correct any spelling issues back in the original post.</p> <p>It worked but felt very clumsy.</p> <p>So a few weeks ago I found a more streamlined solution.</p> <ol> <li>Download the free version of <a href="http://tinyspell.numerit.com/">tinySpell</a> – a free (and portable) spell checker.</li> <li>Launch tinySpell.</li> <li>Launch Open Live Writer.</li> <li>Compose post and fix spelling errors on-the-fly while composing as notified by tinySpell.</li></ol> <p>Done.</p> <p>tinySpell comes in both <a href="http://tinyspell.numerit.com/#download">installed</a> or <a href="http://tinyspell.numerit.com/#portable">portable</a> versions and there is also a tinySpell+ version as well for $ if you need more of the advanced features it offers.</p> <p>You can easily add additional words into a custom dictionary. Set the application to run at system startup if desired. Make an audible beep if a spelling error is detected, and change the font size and color of the spelling tip notification.</p> <p>tinySpell has restored my blogging confidence in using Open Live Writer as it continues through the development process.</p> <p>Cheers!</p> <p>--Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-75353761590982359252016-05-30T18:00:00.001-05:002016-05-30T18:00:10.179-05:00Windows “Service Pack”, Slipstreaming, ISO files, misc.<p>Wow. Big thanks to Lavie for being patient with me while I hammered out all these blog posts.</p> <p>I’ve still got quite a lot more, but it has been a very productive – non-productive day off.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/windows-7-now-has-a-service-pack-2-but-dont-call-it-that/">Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)</a> - Ars Technica</li> <li><a href="http://betanews.com/2016/05/17/windows-7-convenience-rollup/">Microsoft brings Windows 7 fully up-to-date with new convenience rollup package, simplifies future updates for Win 7 and 8.1</a> – BetaNews</li> <li><a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/05/17/simplifying-updates-for-windows-7-and-8-1/">Simplifying updates for Windows 7 and 8.1</a> - Windows for IT Pros</li> <li><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2016/05/17/microsoft-updating-windows-7-8-1-easier/">Microsoft wants to make Windows 7 and 8.1 updating easier</a> - gHacks Tech News</li> <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/255540/the-last-windows-7-iso-youll-ever-need-how-to-slipstream-the-convenience-rollup/?PageSpeed=noscript">The Last Windows 7 ISO You’ll Ever Need: How to Slipstream the Convenience Rollup</a> – How-To Geek blog</li> <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/255435/how-to-update-windows-7-all-at-once-with-microsofts-convenience-rollup/?PageSpeed=noscript">How to Update Windows 7 All at Once with Microsoft’s Convenience Rollup</a> – How-To Geek blog</li> <li><a href="https://tinyapps.org/docs/win7aio.html">Slipstream Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup into a universal x86/x64 installer</a> – Tinyapps.org blog</li> <li><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2016/05/22/windows-iso-downloader/">Windows ISO Downloader review</a> - gHacks Tech News</li> <li><a href="http://www.nextofwindows.com/download-microsoft-security-updates-in-iso-format">Download Microsoft Security Updates in ISO Format</a> - Next of Windows</li> <li><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/913086">Security updates are available on ISO-9660 DVD5 image files</a> - Microsoft Download Center</li> <li><a href="http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-create-unattended-windows-10-usb-or-iso/">How To Create Unattended Windows 10 USB or ISO</a> – Into Windows</li> <li><a href="http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to-build-a-windows-10-based-winpe-usb-bootable-drive">How To Build A Windows 10-based WinPE USB Bootable Drive</a> - Next of Windows</li></ul> <p>Cheers!</p> <p>Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13777170.post-38313348782254032582016-05-30T17:53:00.001-05:002016-05-30T17:53:04.962-05:00Linux Linkfest<p>Again, some of this is old, some is not.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/04/ubuntu-16-04-download-new-features">Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Is Now Available to Download</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/04/see-whats-new-ubuntu-16-04-flavors-screenshot">See What's New in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Flavors</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://itsfoss.com/things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu-16-04/">Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04</a> – It’s F.O.S.S.</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/04/ubuntu-16-04-deb-software-install-error">Can't Install Third-Party Apps on Ubuntu 16.04? You're Not Alone</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/251647/ubuntu-16.04-makes-ubuntu-exciting-again/?PageSpeed=noscript">Ubuntu 16.04 Makes Ubuntu Exciting Again</a> – How-To Geek blog</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/02/numix-is-the-best-cinnamon-theme">Your Favorite Cinnamon Theme — Revealed!</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/02/5-best-cinnamon-desktop-themes">The 5 Best Cinnamon Desktop Themes (As Chosen By You)</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/04/how-to-install-cinnamon-3-0-on-ubuntu">Cinnamon 3.0 Is Released, Here's How To Install it On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://itsfoss.com/cinnamon-3-0-released/">Cinnamon 3.0 Released</a> – It’s F.O.S.S.</li> <li><a href="http://itsfoss.com/best-linux-desktop-environments/">7 Best Linux Desktop Environments For Linux</a> – It’s F.O.S.S.</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/05/linux-mint-y-theme-default-18">Linux Mint 18 Is Getting a Brand New Look</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/05/linux-mint-drops-multimedia-codecs">Linux Mint Drops Multimedia Codecs From Install ISO</a> - OMG! Ubuntu!</li> <li><a href="https://windowsserveressentials.com/2016/05/12/configuring-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-dashboard-display/">Configuring a Raspberry Pi as a Dashboard display</a> - Title (Required)</li> <li><a href="https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-linux.aspx">Free Linux Malware Scanner</a> - Lightweight Agent for Linux Malware Detection and Removal - Sophos AV Tools</li> <li><a href="http://www.apricityos.com/">Apricity OS</a> (described and consumed via TinyApps blog post “<a href="https://tinyapps.org/blog/nix/201604030700_apricityos.html">A lickable Linux distro</a>”) maybe my favorite of the three…</li> <ul> <li><a href="https://apricityos.com/">Apricity OS</a></li> <li><a href="http://apricityos.com/forum">Apricity Forum</a></li> <li><a href="http://apricityos.com/blog/">Apricity OS blog</a></li></ul></ul> <p>Note: I spent Sunday watching the Indy 500 and NASCAR races all day and reinstalled Apricity OS from scratch because it crashed out in the middle of a Update session. Despite my best noobie efforts and troubleshooting, I was unable to get it going.</p> <p>When launching the “Update Manager” I would get a “Failed to synchronize any databases” error.</p> <p>I tried this fix metioned in the Apricity forum - <a href="http://apricityos.com/forum/discussion/490/lost-my-upgrade-ability">Lost my upgrade ability</a> … along with some others but nothing could get it restored. Took me a short matter of time to reinstall a fresh load of Apricity and all is well now.</p> <p>Cheers,</p> <p>Claus Valca</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0