Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Windows 8 and more How Tos
About a week ago we brought on a new client and immediately noticed, as part of our pre-onboarding due diligence, that they had hundreds of old desktops laptops and servers still in their Active Directory. To help clean up their AD and reduce their attack surface, we provided them with Read more…
If you’ve ever taken a snapshot in Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix, or VMware, you will probably notice that the differencing disk it creates grows in size much faster than a normal disk would. One of our clients was struggling to understand why that could be the case so we provided them Read more…
If you are trying to clean up your hard drive storage you may notice the C:\$Windows.~WS folder and wonder what is in it and if it can be deleted. What is C:\$Windows.~WS The C:\$Windows.~WS folder is a hidden directory created by Windows during the upgrade process to a new version Read more…
We recently wrote a brief article on the C:\$Windows.~WS folder noting that, by default, Windows has this this folder hidden so you can’t see it. It is both a hidden and a system folder. If you need to view or delete this folder, you’ll need to enable the option to Read more…
Yesterday we had client with many IP and DNS problems and the screenshot below was taken after we cleaned up about half of them. As you can see, 168.63.129.16 is used both as a DHCP server and as a DNS FORWARDER, and the name shows up as <UNABLE TO RESOLVE>. Read more…
This is an argument I am so very tired of having so I decided to prove it. In about 1998, I recall reading a paper co-written with United States Department of Defense and Microsoft, which explained why adding a single character length to a password was far superior to adding Read more…
We often take on new clients who do not have Windows update configured with a group policy and while it’s quite simple to set up it’s always nice to have some instructions and screenshots so here they are: 1 – Configure Windows Update to Download but Not Install 2. Install Read more…
We needed to replace the hard drive and upgrade the operating system to Windows 11 on an MSI PE Series MS-1795. This step by step tutorial demonstrates how to upgrade the hard drive to an M.2 SSD and how to upgrade to Windows 11 even though it is in on Read more…
A week or so ago we had client of ours ask for an audit of their certificates. This is a small client so initially we provided them with screenshots of all the certificates in the Computer > Certificate > Personal folder. That is where we find 95% of these certificates Read more…
As Windows Server and desktop administrators on thousands of machines we regularly see computers that have their C:\ drive filled with junk, and we have many articles on how to fix that: However one of the fastest easiest ways is simply to delete everyone’s Recycle Bins. Can Recycle Bins Be Read more…
We had a client who wanted us to audit their dozen servers for the status of their certificates. We decided to export all of the core certificate information into a simple .CSV which lets us modify and make it pretty in Excel. Note that we EXCLUDED all certificates that are Read more…
If you look for instructions on how to remove a Microsoft account from your Microsoft office so that things like OneDrive don’t appear in CONNECTED SERVICES, you will likely find instructions that tell you to click the REMOVE button or the SIGN OUT link. The problem is that the REMOVE Read more…
We are always being asked to expand disk and add new disk to VM’s on Azure and there is some confusion around the process. Expanding a disk on an Azure virtual machine (WM) is easy: Here are the two catches: Adding a New Drive to An Azure VM Adding new Read more…
We show you the easiest way to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. If your computer doesn’t meet the CPU and TPM requirements set by Microsoft, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. We’ll walk you through the steps to bypass hardware checks and upgrade your system to Windows 11, even Read more…
If you’ve ever looked at Task Manager on a Windows computer you will notice on the PERFORMANCE tab under CPU in the bottom right hand corner something labeled L1 cache, L2 cache and, L3 cache: To answer the question what is the difference between L1, L2, and L3 cache we Read more…
How to fix “Please Wait If This Message is not Eventually Replaced by the Proper Contents” error when trying to open a PDF. The solution is to download and use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software and we show you how to do that. 0:00 Introduction0:25 Fix Please Wait If Read more…