In the plethora of new features and improvements in Windows 10 October 20180 Update (aka v1809) here’s one that comes with Task Manager.
You can now view the power usage for each app and also it’s trend.
To do so, follow this steps:
With Windows 10 October 2018 Update (aka v1809), introduced a new way for device drivers to work with the Universal Windows Drivers architecture.
One of the major differences with the new architecture is that streamlines the work for drivers developers which can create a single driver package that can run across different device types, for example, the sam package can run in desktops, laptops or embedded systems.
In this transition, Intel is already making available new drivers called Windows DCH Drivers or Windows Modern Drivers and they’re meant to take use of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and replace the old/legacy drivers.
This is particularly important since the future Windows Core OS will not support Win32 applications natively (they will run in some kind of virtual sandbox).
So, if you want to try the new drivers, follow this steps:
And you’re done, and the new DCH drivers are installed.
If you wan to make sure, just go to Device Manager again and verify that your display adapter driver version is higher than 25.20.100.6444.
Here’s a quick tip for everyone that uses Microsoft Access with dBase queries and it’s getting the error “Could not find installable ISAM” after upgrading to Access 2016.
To solve this you need to install 2 hotfixes for Access 2016:
KB4018338 (Microsoft Catalog)
KB4011143 (Microsoft Catalog)
After installing both updates, restart the machine and you’re done!
Following other Microsoft products, Visual Studio Community it’s all about downloading just what you need to use.
Although this is great for end users, not so good if you’re a sysadmin that need to create installation packages.
So, today for Microsoft Visual Studio Community, here’s what you’ll need to do:
The above command will download ALL the “layouts”, but you may want do download only the necessary files to install for .NET development. So you should take a look at the link below to select just want you want to download/install:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/workload-component-id-vs-community?view=vs-2017#net-desktop-development
As some of you may know, unfortunately isn’t possible to install Wireshark silently with WinPcap.
Well, at least, isn’t possible to do it, just using the Wireshark package alone, although you can install it if you’re running the “normal” user interface.
If you need to create a package to install Wireshark and WinPcap, follow these steps:
Just a little more info.
To install Wireshark silently:
/S runs the installer or uninstaller silently with default values. The silent installer will not install WinPCap.
/desktopicon installation of the desktop icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don’t install, otherwise use default settings. This option can be useful for a silent installer.
/quicklaunchicon installation of the quick launch icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don’t install, otherwise use default settings.
/D sets the default installation directory ($INSTDIR), overriding InstallDir and InstallDirRegKey. It must be the last parameter used in the command line and must not contain any quotes even if the path contains spaces.
/NCRC disables the CRC check. We recommend against using this flag.To install WinPcap silently:
/S runs the installer in silent modeAnd…that’s it!
So it seams Windows Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 10 v1809 are only available through “Features on Demand” directly.
There will be probably a way to download them and install them offline but for the time being here’s the official way to do it:
If you’d like to do it the “geek way” or need a more unattended procedure here’s how:
Here’s the capabilities names you can add:
Hope you enjoy it!
Although it’s easy to blame on Microsoft, maybe the reason why YouTube works so bad using Edge or Firefox isn’t so obvious like “Chrome it’s a better browser”.
In a nice article from WindowsCentral, Daniel Rubino comes with a plausible explanation including quotes from Chris Peterson (technical program manager at Mozilla) and Kyle Pflug from Microsoft.
Read the full article at:
WindowsCentral - Why YouTube is so slow in Microsoft Edge (and how to fix it)
Microsoft has made Windows Admin Center (WAC) v1809 generally available.
This “new” Microsoft tool is a it’s a locally-deployed, browser-based management tool that lets you manage Windows machines, desktops and servers.
Windows Admin Center will in a near to middle future substitute the current Windows Remote Server Administration Tool (RSAT)
Download it here:
Microsoft Windows Admin Center v1809
Here’s a quick tip for unpacking Lenovo drivers:
<packagename>.exe /VERYSILENT /DIR=<packagepath> /Extract=”YES”
Example:
n20ku12w_x64.exe /VERYSILENT /DIR=”D:\Temp\LenovoDriver” /Extract=”YES”
Just a quick link if you need to deploy Micro Focus (formerly Novell) Client.
It’s a nice and detailed website from Micro Focus on how to silently install, generate response files, etc.
Thumbs up to Micro Focus, would love other big companies do the same.
Novell Client - Understanding the Client Install Manager (nciman.exe)
I want to believe that there was a really good reason why Microsoft done this but…well…not figured out exactly why.
In Windows 10, Microsoft introduced a lot of native apps that allows users to install let additional software and one of the great examples is the ability for Microsoft Edge to open PDF files.
Although this is very helpful for a lot of people, in some cases, specially enterprises, this is not the ideal thing, and a some work need to be done first, not to rely on Adobe Acrobat Reader.
That said, if you need to make sure Adobe Acrobat Reader its your users default PDF reader well…there’s some things you’ll need to do.
I’ll use PDF files as an example because this is the most common one nowadays.
Although there’s more than a way to configure file type association, I believe this is the most flexible approach because you can change the configuration in a very easy and centralized way.
What you’ll need:
What you need to do:
And…you’re done.
This will take effect when users logoff/logon again.
Because of the way Windows 10 monitors and analyzes file association hijacking the first time a user tries to open a PDF file, there will be a prompt about it like the one below, this happens only once:
And…that’s it.
This looks more complicated than it is but…for me, the main issue is how a new Windows 10 version can easily break the configuration, which means, another thing for your checklist when moving to a new Windows 10 Feature Update.
Last but not least, here are some other approach or other ways to explain how to configure Windows 10 file type association:
TechNet Blogs - Windows 10 – How to configure file associations for IT Pros?
4SysOps - Default File Associations in Windows 10
MSDN Blogs - Making file type associations enterprise ready
Here’s just a quick tip for something that happened to me yesterday.
For some strange reason, Adobe Reader DC started to show up a black square instead of a mouse pointer when over blank areas in a PDF document.
To solve this…errr…strange behavior do the following:
Now open Adobe Reader DC and your mouse point is back!
Although it doesn’t generate has much hype has Build conference, Microsoft Inspire it’s a very interesting conference where Microsoft partners can get insights about last year and the future and…get inspired by others to develop new solutions and mainly where Microsoft thinks are the key success factors for they’re partners.
Here’s the day one (of three) keynote:
;
Ok ok, Windows 10 v1803 is out for some time, but lots of enterprises still use v1709 or at least are on the deployment phase with this version.
One of the most awkward thing I’ve found on GPOs for Windows 10 it’s the way to hide or disable Windows Settings icons, like I’ve explained on a previous post (FrontSlash Blog - Win10 - GPOs - Hiding pages in Settings app)
But…well…not much to do here.
Because Microsoft implements new features twice a year, also with these new features the Settings app get new icons.
To save you the trouble to search all of them, here’s a nice post from Winaero with ALL the “ms-settings” you can use in your GPO:
Winaero - ms-settings Commans in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ActionCenter\Quick Actions\UnpinnedByDefault
SystemSettings_Connections_Add_VPN
You’ve created you’re perfect golden image, everything installed correctly, all the Microsoft hotfixes are installed, no missing drivers and…after a while you get a popup stating that you need to “download language typing features”…
Just to get things a little bit more frustrating, you’re machines are behind a proxy and cannot download this additional features.
This is a common scenario on enterprises, specially and foremost on enterprises outside U.S.
To strip out Windows from being a large ISO/WIM file, Microsoft decided to add some additional features with an “on-demand” installation. This means that some features that can be activated in the O.S. may need to download they’re source files from the Internet.
This happens if you want to activate .NET Framework 3.5 for example.
Now, to avoid this from happening follow the steps bellow.
Keep in mind that this is an example for enterprises with Microsoft VLS. If not an enterprise, the main difference is that you should find the direct download path on the CBS.log file also.
And..you’re done!
Have you ever opened a *.log file with notepad and wished to have something else that could format everything for you, and that could also automatically show you error lines or warnings?
Than CMTrace it’s the perfect tool for you.
Bundled with SCCM 2012 R2 Toolkit (and also in previous version I believe), you’ll find CMTrace tool that does the job for you.
Download it here:
TechNet - SCCM 2012 R2 Toolkit
Here’s a very nice, although old article, from Michael Niehaus about adding Windows Store for Business Apps directly in MDT.
This is particularly useful if your company is already creating apps and you want them to be loaded directly in your golden image, instead of downloading from Store afterwards.
TechNet - Using the Windows Store for Business with MDT 2013
Here’s a quick tip for unpacking HP SoftPaq drivers:
* "SPxxxxx.exe is the SoftPaq filename to unpack
* "-pdf" is a runtime switch that overrides the build parameters
* "-f" is a runtime switch that overrides the default path set at build time
* "-s" instructs the package to unpack in silent mode, skipping the Welcome, License, and Directory screens
* "-e" instructs the package to extract only, that is, do not run the component installation program.
One example:
SP4242423.exe -pdf -f -e C:\Temp\drivers\
Since Windows 8.1, Microsoft changed the way Trusted Root Certificates List (TRCL) get’s updated.
Now, it uses the Windows Update services to do this, and this can be an issue for some enterprises with machines that don’t have Internet access or if you disabled Windows Update in your environment.
Also, if you want to look at this in a different way, it allows you as a SysAdmin to completely control which certificates are allowed or not in your environment.
So, here’s a quick procedure on how you can update that the TRCL without Windows Update enabled:
And that’s it!
Nowadays,with everything evolving at the speed of light, there’s a lot of initials, acronyms and concepts to catch up.
One of the most recent ones is the Intelligent Edge.
In a very very very resumed and simplified way, Intelligent Edge it’s all about the devices, or IoT devices if you like, that connect to the cloud, and the concept itself it’s to bring “intelligence” to this devices so they don’t need to do everything in the cloud and also the ability to make this devices talk to each other without the need of using the Cloud to do it.
Microsoft just launched recently a video from the series “Explanimators” about this:
Because you may need to create a new source installation of your Microsoft Office and gather all the necessary security updates, here’s a quick tip extract all *.exe Office updates to the Updates sources folder.
This is particularly useful because most of the time you’ll download the updates on *.exe format and has you may know, the automated install will look for *.msp files inside the Updates folder instead.
So, here are the necessary steps to do it:
For this example we’ll use the folder D:\Temp\10\Office where you’ll put all your downloaded *.exe files and you should create also D:\Temp\10\Office\Updates where the files will be extracted.
And you’re done!
Did you ever needed a specific version of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable to run an application?
I had this issue with VMware Horizon Client 4.7.0 that needed some Visual C++ specific versions to be installed. If not, the installer would install them for me but…rebooted the machine without any kind of warning.
So, thanks to a Jags Blog, we can get the direct links to download a bunch of versions of Visual C++ Redistributable!
Here’s the link:
Microsoft Technet Blogs - Jags Blog - Where can I download Visual C++ Redistributables?
Sysinternals it’s one of the best known suite of tools developed since 1996 by Mark Russinovich.
This set of tools will help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose Windows systems and applications.
This new version, available since February 13, 2018 brings updates to:
Download the complete suite here:
Sysinternals Suite 2018_02_13
Sysinternals Suite 2018_02_13 for Nano Server
Although nowadays you could (err…should) configure event viewer (or centralized logging) for your Windows Defender Firewall, here’s a tip for something I’ve noticed when changed the default Windows Defender Firewall location.
When applying a GPO to do this, you must keep in mind that MpsSvc service account is responsible to write down the Windows Firewall log, so, if you change the default location (%windir%\System32\LogFiles\Firewall) you need to give it the right NTFS permissions.
So basically what you need to do:
And…you’re done!
Here’s a quick tip to completely disable Adobe Reader DC automatic updates.
On this examples, we’ll use a registry configuration for Windows x64 machines:
First things first. There are 3 ways to disable automatic updates. You can choose one of them but…I use all 2 just because we never know if Adobe changes they’re mind about it and one of the ways stops working on next Adobe Reader DC release:
bUpdater |
Disables the Updater and removes associated user interface items |
Check | Specifies the default time interval in days to check for updates. |
Mode |
Specifies the Updater’s update mode (manual | automatic) |
Now, for the registry keys (that you can apply using Group Policy Preferences for example) here’s what you need:
bUpdater
Path
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\
Value Name
bUpdater
Value Type and Data
REG_DWORD = 0
Mode
Path
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Adobe\Adobe ARM\Legacy\Reader\{AC76BA86-7AD7-1033-7B44-AC0F074E4100}
Value Name
Mode
Value Type and Data
REG_DWORD = 0
There’s always a gap between Windows 10 Feature Updates launching and the availability of the ISO on VLS but Microsoft made available today through Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center Windows 10 v1803 Enterprise ISO.
So, go ahead and get it! :)
And here are the new admx files for Windows 10 v1803 (April 2018 Update).
Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 10 April 2018 Update (1803)
Furthermore, you can find all you can configure with this admx and previous one’s using this guide:
Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows and Windows Server
With the release of Windows 10 v1803, Microsoft also made available a new version of Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10.
Before install it’s important to read “System Requirements” and “Additional Notes”.
Just to highlight some:
So, go ahead and download the new RSAT for Windows 10 v1803 here:
Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10
