Unnecessary display languages can use a huge chunk of disk space. According to Microsoft, “Having too many affects disk space, and can affect performance, especially while updating and servicing Windows.” In my own experience, language packs can take as much as 20-25GB of disk space. There are a lot of resources about installing and removing […]
Articles Tagged: windows
N-central MSP Connect Option Grayed Out
On occasion, the MSP Connect function will cease to exist. No going away note. No mint on the pillow. It’s just gone. The Remote Control button is a lifeless gray: The MSP Connect option is gone from the drop-down menu: All the other functions appear to be working. The CPU and memory usage monitors appear […]
Clean Install of Windows 10
You can perform a “clean” install of Windows 10. Eventually. The basic steps are these: Upgrade your previous Windows install to Windows 10 When the upgrade is complete, run a tool such as ProduKey to find your new Windows 10 key Run the Windows 10 install from media (DVD or USB) When prompted, enter the Windows […]
Disable Web Search in Windows 10
Do you wish Windows 10 would just let you search your stuff without giving you a bunch of useless web results from Bing? Bing? It’s a simple matter to disable web results when you’re searching in Windows 10. Just make the following change: Click the search box or button (pictured below) Click the Settings button […]
Remotely Modifying the Registry Using Regedit
This is one of my favorite tricks. I use this trick when someone’s Adobe suddenly decides to update so aggressively that the computer slows to a crawl. Or when Java keeps prompting to update even though auto updates are disabled. You can easily connect to the machine, make the change and the user never needs […]
Enable Remote Registry Access
By default, Windows does not allow remote access to the registry. To access the registry remotely you’ll first need start the Remote Registry service. There are multiple ways to achieve this; we’ll cover three ways here: Manually start the service (good option when building an image, not so good if the device is already remote) […]
Querying Windows for the IMEI Number on a Local or Remote Computer
This trick should work to get the IMEI number of your WWAN device. This is useful in the event that you don’t want to remove the battery to find the IMEI sticker. Or you already removed the battery and the sticker isn’t there 🙁 Or maybe you just need to get the number from a machine in […]
Killing a Task Remotely in Microsoft Windows
Have you ever wished you could remotely kill a task on a computer? Your wish is about to come true. You’re probably regretting that you didn’t wish for something better. Like wings. This will work on all versions of Microsoft Windows (at least all the supported ones). There are two commands that you will use. TASKLIST […]
Status Errors in Nagios
I seem to have a habit of using overly complicated tools to do simple things. I’m using HylaFAX to deliver the fax for a single number to a single email address (a topic for another time) and now I’m using Nagios to basically ping a single Windows server. Well, it’s not about the destination but […]
Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file…
When trying to update an imaged machine you may get an error that states, “Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup].” The error is pictured below and it has the potential to […]