Open a command prompt If you are on an OS with User Account Control enabled, you need to run the command prompt as an Administrator. Type the following: set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 In the same command prompt window, type: devmgmt.msc Device Manager opens. Select View, Show Hidden Devices Expand the various categories to display orphaned devices. They …
Category Archives: Windows
Quick PowerShell script to query for installed hotfix
This is a quick and dirty PowerShell script to see if the local computer has a particular hotfix installed. It takes one argument; the number of the hotfix. QueryHotfix.ps1: $KB = $args[0] Get-WMIObject -class “Win32_QuickFixEngineering” -namespace “root/CIMV2” | Where { $_.hotfixid -match $KB } Enjoy.
How to uninstall KMS from Windows Server 2003
Easy, just remove it from Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel:
Backing up your Windows profile using Robocopy
Whenever I upgrade the OS on one of my computers or upgrade the computer itself, I always make a manual backup of the data I need to retain. There are many utilities that do this job for you, like User State Migration Tool and Windows Easy Transfer, but none of them give me that warm …
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Displaying the Volume GUID of a volume
The use of letters to identity volumes and partitions in Windows is something we have inherited from MS-DOS. Drive letters are still used today due to their ubiquity and for compatibility. However, the Windows operating system does not depend on them. Instead Windows uses a GUID to identify each volume or partition. (Windows Home Server, …
How to exit explorer.exe gracefully on Windows XP and Windows Vista/7
When you install a piece of software that integrates with the Windows shell, typically explorer.exe, you have to restart your computer to complete the installation. If the installer were to close explorer.exe the user would be left without a usable GUI. However there is a supported way of closing the shell process, perhaps saving you …
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Using WinPE and ImageX to recover from a failed hard drive
The hard drive storing the boot and system volumes of my main home machine failed a couple of weeks ago. The drive first started making strange noises and occasionally the machine would hang or blue screen. The hangs, which usually were recoverable, were accompanied by errors in the system log. Index : 270720 EntryType : …
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What are the security benefits of running a service as the Local System Account as opposed to a user account?
With the release of Windows 2000 products from Microsoft, most prominently Exchange 2000, started running their services under the Local System1 account instead of using a dedicated Active Directory User account, or what is commonly known as a service account2. The reason for this was security. As time passed more and more products adapted this …
Turning on BitLocker on my laptop
So I decided to test BitLocker on my laptop. Here is what happened. First you need to have the correct partition layout; one 1,5 GB unencrypted system partition to store the boot manager and the Boot Configuration Database (BCD). The BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool does this for you, BDPT is documented in KB933246. BDPT did …
‘Remove Exchange Attributes’ á la PowerShell
The extensions to Active Directory Users and Computers for Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 have a task called Remove Exchange Attributes that is accessible from the Exchange Tasks menu. It removes all Exhange related attributes from the objects on which it is run. This is useful when an object is in an inconsistent state, as …
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