- Debloater
- Disabling all telemetry and Windows Insider do not work well. Insider's hard requirement is full telemetry.
- Microsoft PowerToys — Collection of a wast selection of poweruser-oriented tweaks.
- QuickLook — Large previews of media files with space bar. Similar to Mac, and
gnome-sushi. [Github] [Windows Store]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\7-Zip\Options]
"CascadedMenu"=dword:00000000
"MenuIcons"=dword:00000001
"ContextMenu"=dword:80000127
Disable Bing search
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001
(set dword to 0 if you want to enable it)
Re-login or kill Search app in taskmanager to apply this change.
tl;dr; it's impossible to create scheduled tasks, that don't open a window, without major hacks, and frequent maintenance. Instead, creating a second, passworded account is prefferred.
- Quickly create a local account: Run:
netplwiz
- Make it admin if you need to by adding it to
Administrators group. If it's not admin, it will likely need Batch foobar
- Hide the user account from login and authenticaiton dialogues:
regedit → Navigate (paste to location bar) to
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon- Create new key (shown as a folder)
SpecialAccounts
- Create new key
UserList
- Full path to later re-enable:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
- New 32-bit Dword, name is the username of the account you created.
- Value:
- Force a keyboard layout — switches to a kb layout every 10s. | Users time and time again find a way to change their keyboard layout. Be it a keyboard shortcut to switch between a selection, an application (looking at you, Source engine with US kb), or Windows deciding it's a good time to add and switch to a localized US layout after an update or something.
AnyDesk is often best adminned/accessed with a Windows device. Here's a short AHK script:
!v::SendRaw, %Clipboard%
Pressing Alt+v will type out the clipboard. This is useful for example the second service, password-protected user. winlogon, the login screen doesn't allow to paste passwords on the login screen.
- EarTrumpet — visualized, and per-app volume controls in the volume slider.
- scoop package manager — a great thing to install a few CLI things without needing WSL. It's portable, even across Windows reinstalls (
~/scoop). Manages path and shortcuts well. Has GUI apps as well.
winget, what's still unusable 2 years later, copied the concept, and is similar to this, but implemented shittier.- The development is somewhat inactive, the core contributor of scoop has forked, and created shovel, „Alternative, more advanced, and user-friendly implementation of windows command-line installer scoop.“
- System Restore Explorer is nice for 'user had no backups and they shot themselves in the foot, and hereby stands a *nix admin'. It's essentially
restic mount for Windows System Restore Points.
- The installer is not available from an 'official source', only stuff like Softnic. jc dug the interwebs and archives and interwebs, to deliver you installsystemrestoreexplorer.msi, hosted here! VirusTotal says it's clean, source URI seemed plausible, and it was used once successfully, with no known side effects to this day.
- AnyDesk is made by former TeamViewerers, and better. It has evolved over the years. It used to be significantly cheaper than TW, yet now it's about the same price.
- Getting a random phone call of 'computer broken, what do' to a session is very straight forward, no confusion (besides 'gonna connect now, click yes-yes-accept-iunderstand-yes', what is justified, especially well done on mobile devices) is impressive.
- Please inform jc if you find any alternatives. Self-hosted preferred.
- RustDesk isn't any good as of 2021-07-04
- TeamViewer is the industry standard.
- It's superior on mobile devices:
- You can't press physical buttons with AD, whereas TW, you can.
- It seems to have better keepalive mechanisms, especially on older samsung devices. Maybe since vendors have whitelisted them?
- Personal version blocks you out of devices, and opens popups, ads.
- You need an account, e-mail verifications, clunky installation, etc. With AD, I'd suggest using keepass as a directory. Though, the paid domain and directory-like 'contact book' is nice as well.
- If you're blocked out of your device for 'Detected Administritave activity', purchasing a licence and activating it is manual, and takes a few days. [source]
- LogMeIn has meh pricing, features, and feel (say compared to AD or even TW)
- TeraCopy — 'forensics-grade' copy-move files on Windows. Useful for getting aronud Windows' restrictions, when you want to do larger transfers. Most often copying files from older installation, from possibly faulty drives.
- Microsoft Sysinternals — Set of utilities aimead at admins, with a focus on debugging. Some of the utilities may be useful for powerusers as well, such as ZoomIt.
- Microsoft Power Automate Desktop — A powerful app to create and record macros with native-extended selectors, etc. Aimed for use by office workers, normies. The interface looks complex, yet it's the kind of thing users come to say 'this empowered me, this is my life and blood!'
- MarbleScroll - Scroll with trackball while holding a button
win+r -> shell:startup
Install:
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
WSL1 files are stored under \\wsl$
Pretty Serial Port names
- Open Edge
- Export data
- Reccommend backups, for free, encrypted with their own secret, yet still get a negative response.
Scavaged from own archives, and of the interwebs.
Source: https://ypcs.fi/howto/2018/12/01/windowsiso/
Use wimlib to make the install.wim file smaller than 4GB that is allowed on fat32
rsync -avh --no-o --no-g --exclude="install.wim" "${ISO}/" "${TARGET}/"
wimlib-imagex split "${ISO}/sources/install.wim" "${TARGET}/sources/install.swm" 250
aka dism