In the Fall Creator’s update, one item that flew under many people’s attention was that Samba v1 was disabled, so that Windows 10 won’t map SMB network drives using that version of the protocol.

We had tested build 1709 of Windows 10, aka “Fall’s Creator Update”, and everything seemed good to go. In fact, 1703 was beginning to cause us more than a couple of issues. However, what we had not counted on was that a fresh install would behave differently than an upgrade, and that difference would be intentional.
Continue reading “Windows 10 Won’t Map SMB Network Drives”

Windows 10 is really, really getting on my nerves of late. I booted up this morning so I could use Skype and ended up missing the call because the system was sooooo sssssssllllllloooooooowwwww. Well, after 20 minutes, I just hard shutdown and went to work on doing updates.

But, of course, it cannot be that easy. Again! Windows decides it is the only OS on the system and sets the system to boot to only itself. Mind you, all this is going on while I’m sick and wanting to be just in bed staring up at the ceiling in between coughs and sniffles. So, I could vaguely remember the fix was easy, but I could not remember what it was.

Then, I found “Fix Grub Not Showing For Windows 10 Linux Dual Boot” tucked away in my Instapaper links. It was almost exactly what I needed! However, different systems put their UEFI files in different places (so much for “universal”, huh?), and I wasn’t sure where to put mine when I setup the system, so I know I put it in an odd place, naively thinking I would never need to look again. So, I poked around and found it. The command is:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\mygrub\grubx64.efi

So, I put this on the Windows Desktop for next time, since this seems to be an ongoing thing.
 

How to mount ISO file in Windows 10 after a program changes the file association.

I use 7Zip for most of my compression needs on Windows 10. However, after installing it, it changes many file associations, including .ISO, to itself. Here is how to revert it back so you can mount ISO file in Windows 10 the normal way.

No option to mount .iso file from Windows10

We had a recent spate of Internet Explorer opening multiple tabs to the point of exhausting computer memory, and it seemed exclusively Windows 10 boxes. Turns out that a new “feature” that you didn’t ask for is the cause.

I got a weird call from another tech saying that a user’s Internet Explorer was opening multiple tabs, over and over again, until the system came to a crawl because it was running out of memory. Killing IE, if possible, else a hard reboot seemed the only options.

This was puzzling. It was really weird because it was a new system, so it must’ve been a new record if they downloaded something to cause the behavior. Normally, I would immediately suspect adware, spyware or a rogue toolbar. Turns out that the latter wasn’t so far from the truth. The problem is that a new “feature” of Windows 10 was to add an “Edge” tab to Internet Explorer. Microsoft really wants you to use Edge, and apparently haven’t learned from turning so many people off on trying to force Windows 10 upon them.

I keep wondering what it will take for the corporate world to wake up and move to open source software, where you can, if willing, customize the software all day long and not be held hostage by closed systems like MS Windows.

At any rate, 9/10ths of the time, you can fix the issue by going into Internet options and cleaning up the cache files, resetting Advanced settings and resetting IE completely, in that order. In the remaining cases, removing all temp files for all users with a utility like TFC did the trick.

And, yes, on new machines even.

Sometimes, life happens, and you wind up with a forgotten password in Windows and have to break into the system. The below article was written for Windows l0, but the creation of an administrator account by copying some critical files about 1/3rd of the way down the page works in Windows 7 as well. All you need is a boot USB to enter Windows PE mode (or you can boot into Linux and do the same thing).

Thankfully, the process of recovering your password in Windows 10 is much the same as it has been in Windows 8 and above, albeit with a few slight tweaks. Here’s how you can recover both your Microsoft Live 10 login, as well as the credentials for any other users registered with the local machine.

~ How to Reset Your Forgotten Password in Windows 10

The short of it:

  1. Boot into Windows PE (or Linux).
  2. Navigate to the OS drive (mount it if in Linux and cd to where you mounted it).
  3. Change into the Windows\System32 directory.
  4. Rename Utilman.exe to Utileman.exe.bak.
  5. Copy cmd.exe to Utilman.exe.
  6. Reboot into Windows.
  7. When it comes to the login screen, click on the Accessibility button. This will open a command prompt.
  8. Create a new user. For example: net user John /add
  9. Add new user to local administrator group. For example: net localgroup Administrators John /add
  10. Reboot.
  11. Login as the new user. You now have free reign to enable the built-in Administrator account, or change passwords on local accounts.
  12. Don’t forget to copy the Utilman.exe.bak back to Utilman.exe and cleanup the temporary account.

Turns out, the remote desktop slow problem is a very old problem, and here is a 2007 article explaining its fix.

Remote Desktop slow problem solved Remote Desktop 6.0, the latest version of Microsoft Remote Desktop client, which comes pre-installed microsoft, RDP, Receive Window Auto-Tuning, remote access, Remote Desktop 6.0, Vista, Windows

Source: Remote Desktop slow problem solved

What’s old is new again. I was amazed to get a support ticket the other day where a user with a brand new setup was complaining that remoting into her desktop was slow. I had just finished setting it up from scratch a couple of days before another tech deployed it on her desk. Something told me the answer must be on the machine she was using locally, but I couldn’t figure out how that could be until I read the above article.

TLDR: Use the command: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted

Some scary stuff that affects all versions of Windows since at least XP!

This week there has been a lot of news about a flaw in Windows that could be used by web sites to easily gain access to a visitor’s Windows login name and password. This article explains how this flaw works and how you can prevent it.

Source: Understanding the Windows Credential Leak Flaw and How to Prevent It

It gets aggravating trying to find the right registry keys sometimes. In order to resolve or prevent the error message about being logged in with temporary profile in Windows 7, the following Microsoft solution points to the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList that lists the subkeys of users that have logged in. Be sure to also remove any User folders as well, if they still exist.

I switched on my PC and when I entered my password to log in I was told that I was being logged in with a temporary profile because my real one was unavailable. Logging out and back in again appears

Source: Being logged in to Windows 7 with a temporary profile – Microsoft Community

The How-To Geek posted an excellent overview of slmgr, a tools used to modify and control Windows Licensing:

Windows activation is designed to be as foolproof as possible, so Microsoft’s graphical tools keep it simple. If you want to do something more advanced like remove a product key, force an online activation, or extend the activation timer, you’ll need Slmgr.vbs.

Source: How to Use Slmgr to Change, Remove, or Extend Your Windows License

What do you do, however, if Windows still comes up “Not Genuine” and will no longer rearm? Using a KMS server, this just shouldn’t happen, but in reality it occurs all the time. In the past, we have taken to wiping the machine and starting over, but recently I actually had two recently imaged machines do this!

I found out that in these two cases, I could actually use System Restore to take it back to a previous restore point before things went wrong! Please note that this will not always work, and I really did not expect it to work this time. The only conclusion I can come to is that an update did not properly apply and cause the issue to begin with.

At any rate, it might save someone some time.

Obviously, I had nothing better to do this weekend than to deal with how much Windows 10 endless update cycle sucks.

The endless spiral of death
The endless spiral of death

I keep hearing how “Windows 10 isn’t that bad,” but here is one of my predictions coming true before my very eyes!

The minute I read Microsoft’s pronouncement that you can no longer hide updates, I predicted that someone (not necessarily me, mind you, but so be it) would have a really hard time with this because it would obviously go into a spiral if an update failed. Well, the above screen tells you all.

Now I just need to replace my TV card so I put Linux on this thing. Seriously.