The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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down1nit: Jan 10, 2004; outlive your enemies

The Zune software 4.0 refresh was magical. Imagine getting chills when an mp3 player runs it's code.

"I wanna be traaaaash"

e: zune snipe, excellent

# ? Dec 12, 2023 18:55

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 05:55

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

down1nit posted:

I remember being thrilled* when Reflect came out. EaseUS had some competition finally. And then EaseUS went full shovelware with nearly all their products. What good engineers they may have had, victims of enshittification. A quick buck was made.

And at the same time, Macrium started gating features that seemed arbitrary (backup scheduling I think). Soon they gated less arbitrary features like cloning and I stopped recommending Reflect. Excellent software though unless it's gotten enshittified somehow.

*when was the last time a bit of software had you "thrilled"?

I paid for Reflect to use it as my general backup software and it's perfectly fine. It's not enshittified at all, and the only times it's ever annoying is when it's actually doing its thing (oh yeah it's the first Monday of the month and you're making a full backup of everything and verifying it okay i guess my computer will be slow for hours, FINE; oh there's an update because an obscure case of the recovery environment's use turned out to be broken and it requires a restart, I GUESS). In other words, it Just Works and Just Does What It Needs To Do.

I don't begrudge people who just want to use the free trial for a quick clone, to be clear, but if people do want to use it for extended use, it's a reasonable buy/good quality.

# ? Dec 12, 2023 19:18

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Thanks Ants posted:

Being able to buy Affinity Photo once every 3-4 years for under �40 when it's on a promotion and be set to make quick lovely photo edits until I feel the need to upgrade to the next release.

With the introduction of https://www.photopea.com I only really need an image editor if I'm worried about uploading images to a remote server.

# ? Dec 13, 2023 08:12

Edmond Dantes: Sep 12, 2007; Reactor: Online
Sensors: Online
Weapons: Online

ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL

I wanted to merge two partitions in the same SSD because I hosed up when I set this rig up and left too little space for the OS partition (bad habit from back when bulldozes/reinstalls were a more common thing), but I've run into the issue where I have a recovery partition between the ones I want to merge:

Is there any way of 'moving' this from Windows itself (if I right click it I get no options, just 'help')? Some googling mentioned disabling the recovery partition then moving it from a linux live usb but wanted to check if there's a way from within W10 itself.

# ? Dec 13, 2023 14:21

HalloKitty: Sep 30, 2005; Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

Edmond Dantes posted:

I wanted to merge two partitions in the same SSD because I hosed up when I set this rig up and left too little space for the OS partition (bad habit from back when bulldozes/reinstalls were a more common thing), but I've run into the issue where I have a recovery partition between the ones I want to merge:

Is there any way of 'moving' this from Windows itself (if I right click it I get no options, just 'help')? Some googling mentioned disabling the recovery partition then moving it from a linux live usb but wanted to check if there's a way from within W10 itself.

There isn't. You can boot to gparted and do it, but you also need to run commands in Windows afterwards to mark it as the recovery partition, iirc. You can also just trash it using diskpart, but maybe you need it for the recovery tools, up to you

# ? Dec 13, 2023 14:57

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

HalloKitty posted:

There isn't. You can boot to gparted and do it, but you also need to run commands in Windows afterwards to mark it as the recovery partition, iirc.

As long as you're just resizing & shuffling the partitions around the drive with gparted it should AFAIK need no extra steps.

Cloning or moving the special windows partitions to a different drive is a different story. That's why everyone says to use Macrium Reflect or other commercial tools rather than gparted for cloning.

# ? Dec 13, 2023 15:32

Edmond Dantes: Sep 12, 2007; Reactor: Online
Sensors: Online
Weapons: Online

ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL

Alright, thanks, I'll give that a try at some point during the weekend (after doing a backup of some stuff on my C drive). Here's hoping I don't wreck anything.

# ? Dec 13, 2023 18:16

Rexxed: May 1, 2010; Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Edmond Dantes posted:

I wanted to merge two partitions in the same SSD because I hosed up when I set this rig up and left too little space for the OS partition (bad habit from back when bulldozes/reinstalls were a more common thing), but I've run into the issue where I have a recovery partition between the ones I want to merge:

Is there any way of 'moving' this from Windows itself (if I right click it I get no options, just 'help')? Some googling mentioned disabling the recovery partition then moving it from a linux live usb but wanted to check if there's a way from within W10 itself.

Not an answer to your question but 1TB SSDs are like 50 bucks now if you wanted to upgrade for more space. You would still want to delete (diskpart) or move (macrium/gparted) the recovery partition if you imaged the other partitions to a new disk to make the OS partition bigger, though.

# ? Dec 13, 2023 18:23

Vile_Nihlist666: Jan 15, 2009; God isn't watching you... but I am!

Edmond Dantes posted:

I wanted to merge two partitions in the same SSD because I hosed up when I set this rig up and left too little space for the OS partition (bad habit from back when bulldozes/reinstalls were a more common thing), but I've run into the issue where I have a recovery partition between the ones I want to merge:

Is there any way of 'moving' this from Windows itself (if I right click it I get no options, just 'help')? Some googling mentioned disabling the recovery partition then moving it from a linux live usb but wanted to check if there's a way from within W10 itself.

1) Powershell as admin

2) diskpart

3) list disk

4) select disk [x]

5) list partition

6) select partition [x]

7) delete partition override

8) exit disk part

9) resize your partition, leave 600mb to 1gb unallocated.

10) Create a windows installer usb or iso

11) perform in place upgrade (select setup as admin)

12) this will create a recovery partition in the unallocated space. Usually. Have had it fail.

13) if it does fail, you get to manually create a recovery partition, which sucks.

14) or live without one, but keep an installer usb periodically up to date.

# ? Dec 18, 2023 03:55

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

whenever I'd hand over a computer to someone I was giving it to, I'd pretty much do the Windows install right then and there, because the initial install has you create an account, and I want them to make the account (and especially set the password) themselves

is there a better way to do this, such that the Windows install is more or less "complete" by the time I turn off the computer at my house, but when I hand it off to the other person and they boot it up for the first time, they're going to get the first-time account set-up?

The other alternative is that I set-up the computer with a generically-named account and a password that I hand off to them on a slip of paper, but given that I'm doing this for people who might not be computer-savvy, they're unlikely to ever change it

# ? Dec 18, 2023 07:19

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

whenever I'd hand over a computer to someone I was giving it to, I'd pretty much do the Windows install right then and there, because the initial install has you create an account, and I want them to make the account (and especially set the password) themselves

is there a better way to do this, such that the Windows install is more or less "complete" by the time I turn off the computer at my house, but when I hand it off to the other person and they boot it up for the first time, they're going to get the first-time account set-up?

The other alternative is that I set-up the computer with a generically-named account and a password that I hand off to them on a slip of paper, but given that I'm doing this for people who might not be computer-savvy, they're unlikely to ever change it

You want to install windows, any drivers, and then run sysprep I believe: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/sysprep--generalize--a-windows-installation?view=windows-11

e: another option that should work and is probably more friendly is to run "reset this PC" in the windows recovery options: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/recovery-options-in-windows-31ce2444-7de3-818c-d626-e3b5a3024da5

Arivia fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Dec 18, 2023

# ? Dec 18, 2023 07:32

Edmond Dantes: Sep 12, 2007; Reactor: Online
Sensors: Online
Weapons: Online

ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL

Edmond Dantes posted:

I wanted to merge two partitions in the same SSD because I hosed up when I set this rig up and left too little space for the OS partition (bad habit from back when bulldozes/reinstalls were a more common thing), but I've run into the issue where I have a recovery partition between the ones I want to merge:

Is there any way of 'moving' this from Windows itself (if I right click it I get no options, just 'help')? Some googling mentioned disabling the recovery partition then moving it from a linux live usb but wanted to check if there's a way from within W10 itself.

Alright, ended up doing it with gparted over the weekend, had a Mint live usb lying around.

I followed this:

code:

In Windows 10: reagentc /disable
In Linux boot CD: Adjust neighboring partition as needed/move recovery partition.
In Windows 10 reagentc /enable

Worked like a charm. Thanks everyone!

# ? Dec 18, 2023 13:45

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

gradenko_2000 posted:

whenever I'd hand over a computer to someone I was giving it to, I'd pretty much do the Windows install right then and there, because the initial install has you create an account, and I want them to make the account (and especially set the password) themselves

is there a better way to do this, such that the Windows install is more or less "complete" by the time I turn off the computer at my house, but when I hand it off to the other person and they boot it up for the first time, they're going to get the first-time account set-up?

The other alternative is that I set-up the computer with a generically-named account and a password that I hand off to them on a slip of paper, but given that I'm doing this for people who might not be computer-savvy, they're unlikely to ever change it

You can just turn off the PC when it gets to the initial setup screen. It'll resume there the next time the PC boots, and all the files are on the drive so it doesn't need the installer stick anymore. For a donation / sell / give to someone I didn't really know situation that's what I'd do. Windows update is pretty good about fetching drivers once they get connected to the internet.

You can also do "reset this PC" as suggested by Arivia, which has some upsides. On a laptop or OEM machine this will keep the OEM drivers and stuff installed. But it has some downsides too:
1. You aren't securely wiping the drive. Up to you how important that is.
2. On a DIY machine it doesn't keep manually installed drivers. So doing something like installing windows, setting up an account to do setup, and then using reset is pointless.

For people I know I still really like to do the install with them, so that I walk through some options. (MS account or not, onedrive or not, drivers via windows update or manual, default browser, various other crap.) MS's full embrace of dark patterns makes me have a real hard time handing a PC to someone I know without that.

I would not do the generic account & password thing, IMO that's worse than the blank machine and MS bullshit.

# ? Dec 18, 2023 16:33

down1nit: Jan 10, 2004; outlive your enemies

Shift+Ctrl+f3 gets you in audit mode so you can check drivers, run updates, install Firefox blah blah. Use this when it's rebooted into the OOBE (setup screen) and it's asking you what username you want to use. When you're done, just do a reboot and it'll act like it's never been touched, asking for a username to use again.

# ? Dec 18, 2023 16:59

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

down1nit posted:

I remember being thrilled* when Reflect came out. EaseUS had some competition finally. And then EaseUS went full shovelware with nearly all their products. What good engineers they may have had, victims of enshittification. A quick buck was made.

And at the same time, Macrium started gating features that seemed arbitrary (backup scheduling I think). Soon they gated less arbitrary features like cloning and I stopped recommending Reflect. Excellent software though unless it's gotten enshittified somehow.

*when was the last time a bit of software had you "thrilled"?

FlashFXP then the creator turned out to be a nonce

# ? Dec 18, 2023 17:02

teethgrinder: Oct 9, 2002

c0burn posted:

FlashFXP then the creator turned out to be a nonce

I had to look up what happened to the creator, and I guess somewhere I'd forgotten what nonce was slang for.

Creator of FlashFXP being convicted of sexually abusing minors is not what I was expecting the reason to be for development having stopped.

# ? Dec 18, 2023 19:20

smoobles: Sep 4, 2014

Is there a script/setting in Windows 10 where I can automatically check "Do this for all current times" when prompted "Are you sure you want to copy this file without its properties?"

I'm moving thousands of files around for a work project and keep having to check this box, it'd save me hours if it happened automatically.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 16:10

Tesseraction: Apr 5, 2009

Sounds like something you can use robocopy (standard Windows command) - run it with /? for help and look for the /COPY option that lets you specify what to copy.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 16:32

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

TeraCopy if you want a gui, robocopy if you want to script it.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 16:35

smoobles: Sep 4, 2014

Cold on a Cob posted:

TeraCopy if you want a gui, robocopy if you want to script it.

THANK YOU! This looks perfect.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 17:02

FunOne: Aug 20, 2000; I am a slimey vat of concentrated stupidity; Fun Shoe

What's the recommended malware removal tool these days? I've got an employee laptop with something on it that WD won't remove.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 22:32

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Nuke and start again. If that's a painful procedure then you need to get buy-in on overhauling your provisioning process.

# ? Dec 20, 2023 22:33

down1nit: Jan 10, 2004; outlive your enemies

Adwcleaner, malwarebytes free, hitman pro

Superantispyware has a poo poo detect rate and name but good startup process management. I use it to disable unknowns.

Edit: Run disk cleanup as admin first. make a new restricted user profile if you can, have the employee use that account.

# ? Dec 21, 2023 04:40

Cyril Sneer: Aug 8, 2004; Life would be simple in the forest except for Cyril Sneer. And his life would be simple except for The Raccoons.

This is something I've been meaning to look into forever. Like a lot of folks, I use PowerPoint frequently for drawing figures/diagrams, annotating images and graphs, etc.., and often not as part of a slide show. I can't help but wonder if there might, in tyool 2023, be a more purpose-suited tool for this?

# ? Dec 22, 2023 20:11

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

Cyril Sneer posted:

This is something I've been meaning to look into forever. Like a lot of folks, I use PowerPoint frequently for drawing figures/diagrams, annotating images and graphs, etc.., and often not as part of a slide show. I can't help but wonder if there might, in tyool 2023, be a more purpose-suited tool for this?

In freeware tools, I've used Dia in the past. It's pretty basic, but you can look for alternatives. The MS Office version of this is Visio.

# ? Dec 22, 2023 20:22

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

There�s Google Draw as well.

# ? Dec 22, 2023 20:51

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

LibreOffice Draw is decent enough.

# ? Dec 22, 2023 21:06

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Cyril Sneer posted:

This is something I've been meaning to look into forever. Like a lot of folks, I use PowerPoint frequently for drawing figures/diagrams, annotating images and graphs, etc.., and often not as part of a slide show. I can't help but wonder if there might, in tyool 2023, be a more purpose-suited tool for this?

You're probably looking mostly for "whiteboard" software.

Miro, Milanote, Mural (all three start with frickin' Ms) are all good for this. There's lots of others as well.

They mostly all have the ability to add images, graphics, whatever and move around freely and annotate them.

Milanote is my favorite and the more elegant of the three. But it's also less full featured than Miro and Mural.

# ? Dec 22, 2023 22:04

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

Computer viking posted:

LibreOffice Draw is decent enough.

# ? Dec 22, 2023 22:32

god please help me: Jul 9, 2018; I LOVE GIVING MY TAX MONEY AND MY PERSONAL INCOME TO UKRAINE, SLAVA

Pardon if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but is there any software that would help me figure out what my computer was doing before it crashes? My computer has been experiencing a lot of worrying crashes lately when it's just idling doing nothing, or just with an internet browser open, and I'd like to know what the cause of it is.

The computer remains powered on, while turning off power to my peripherals like my RGB mouse and keyboard. I have to force restart the crashed PC by holding the power button until it reboots again.

Any recommendations for good crash monitoring software? I'm not sure if the issue is with a recent video driver update, a new Microsoft update, or if my computer can't handle having two monitors all of a sudden.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 03:17

Medullah: Aug 14, 2003; FEAR MY SHARK ROCKET IT REALLY SUCKS AND BLOWS

god please help me posted:

Pardon if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but is there any software that would help me figure out what my computer was doing before it crashes? My computer has been experiencing a lot of worrying crashes lately when it's just idling doing nothing, or just with an internet browser open, and I'd like to know what the cause of it is.

The computer remains powered on, while turning off power to my peripherals like my RGB mouse and keyboard. I have to force restart the crashed PC by holding the power button until it reboots again.

Any recommendations for good crash monitoring software? I'm not sure if the issue is with a recent video driver update, a new Microsoft update, or if my computer can't handle having two monitors all of a sudden.

I would start with the built in Windows Memory Diagnostic (just type it into the start bar)

# ? Dec 23, 2023 03:21

Canine Blues Arooo: Jan 7, 2008; when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with; Grimey Drawer

god please help me posted:

Pardon if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but is there any software that would help me figure out what my computer was doing before it crashes? My computer has been experiencing a lot of worrying crashes lately when it's just idling doing nothing, or just with an internet browser open, and I'd like to know what the cause of it is.

The computer remains powered on, while turning off power to my peripherals like my RGB mouse and keyboard. I have to force restart the crashed PC by holding the power button until it reboots again.

Any recommendations for good crash monitoring software? I'm not sure if the issue is with a recent video driver update, a new Microsoft update, or if my computer can't handle having two monitors all of a sudden.

Depends a lot on the nature of the crash. If it's a BSOD, you can probably get a enough information from it's minidump to start getting close to the issues. If it's just a hard freeze (which is what it seems like you are describing), then it's almost certainly hardware related and should prompt a run of diagnostics on said hardware.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 04:20

Vile_Nihlist666: Jan 15, 2009; God isn't watching you... but I am!

god please help me posted:

Pardon if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but is there any software that would help me figure out what my computer was doing before it crashes? My computer has been experiencing a lot of worrying crashes lately when it's just idling doing nothing, or just with an internet browser open, and I'd like to know what the cause of it is.

The computer remains powered on, while turning off power to my peripherals like my RGB mouse and keyboard. I have to force restart the crashed PC by holding the power button until it reboots again.

Any recommendations for good crash monitoring software? I'm not sure if the issue is with a recent video driver update, a new Microsoft update, or if my computer can't handle having two monitors all of a sudden.

You need to install windbg here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/debugger-download-tools

this will enable you to read memory dumps on crash, so you can figure put what's up. Also pay attention to your Event Viewer and filter by Critical, Error, and Warning in the Application and System viewers.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 04:27

Vile_Nihlist666: Jan 15, 2009; God isn't watching you... but I am!

Also consider installing either smartmontools or crystaldiskinfo, and finally check for faulty drivers and failed updates.

Can also type get-physicaldisk into powershell for a barebones pass/fail health assessment on your drives.

# ? Dec 23, 2023 04:30

god please help me: Jul 9, 2018; I LOVE GIVING MY TAX MONEY AND MY PERSONAL INCOME TO UKRAINE, SLAVA

Thank you for the responses. Unfortunately I was not able find any dump files on my computer, despite it literally crashing a couple of minutes ago. I'm not able to find a %SystemRoot% folder either. I think I may have the same error this person did where it wouldn't write a dump too. I still have no idea what I'm doing.

I did try the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool, and it proceeded fine, but it didn't give me any result once my PC restarted normally. I'm not sure if that's normal or not.

Typing in get-physicaldisk into Powershell says that my SSDs are healthy. Crystaldiskinfo says that they're both healthy again.

I've been looking things up in the Event Viewer, and I just can't find anything in particular that's the cause of the shut down. Of particular note is that there's a log stating that the previous shut down at [twenty minutes before it actually physically rebooted itself] was unexpected, and after the unclean reboot there's a log about how audit events have been dropped by the transport, which I assume is the computer saying that it wasn't able to create a dump file.

I'm tempted to blame this on an update to windows version 23H2, or if I got dust in my PC or not, but god knows. If it's a power supply issue, I've also turned off my second monitor to see if that may stop the crashes.

# ? Dec 24, 2023 06:49

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

god please help me posted:

Thank you for the responses. Unfortunately I was not able find any dump files on my computer, despite it literally crashing a couple of minutes ago. I'm not able to find a %SystemRoot% folder either. I think I may have the same error this person did where it wouldn't write a dump too. I still have no idea what I'm doing.

I did try the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool, and it proceeded fine, but it didn't give me any result once my PC restarted normally. I'm not sure if that's normal or not.

Typing in get-physicaldisk into Powershell says that my SSDs are healthy. Crystaldiskinfo says that they're both healthy again.

I've been looking things up in the Event Viewer, and I just can't find anything in particular that's the cause of the shut down. Of particular note is that there's a log stating that the previous shut down at [twenty minutes before it actually physically rebooted itself] was unexpected, and after the unclean reboot there's a log about how audit events have been dropped by the transport, which I assume is the computer saying that it wasn't able to create a dump file.

I'm tempted to blame this on an update to windows version 23H2, or if I got dust in my PC or not, but god knows. If it's a power supply issue, I've also turned off my second monitor to see if that may stop the crashes.

If you're not getting dumps because of an error, there should be something about that in the event log, as there was in that example. He was getting

quote:

Error 4/11/2022 10:59:54 AM volmgr 161 None Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.

and if you aren't seeing something about dump file creation failing, I'd first check under Advanced Systems Settings -> Startup and Recovery (well, that's where it is on my Win10 system) to make sure that "Write Debugging Information" has a memory dump option selected.

# ? Dec 24, 2023 06:56

god please help me: Jul 9, 2018; I LOVE GIVING MY TAX MONEY AND MY PERSONAL INCOME TO UKRAINE, SLAVA

The only settings I changed were turning into a complete memory dump, and trying to configure the dump file location to c:\, and then c:\Windows, and then finally that since none of them were creating .dmp files.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Dec 24, 2023 07:22

down1nit: Jan 10, 2004; outlive your enemies

Windows doesn't know it crashed. That usually is hardware related.

A deliberate, thorough cleaning is seldom a bad thing for any electronics, starting there may be a pretty good idea you have.

# ? Dec 24, 2023 09:37

Blue Footed Booby: Oct 4, 2006; got those happy feet

down1nit posted:

Windows doesn't know it crashed. That usually is hardware related.

A deliberate, thorough cleaning is seldom a bad thing for any electronics, starting there may be a pretty good idea you have.

And also goons lol

# ? Dec 24, 2023 16:26

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 05:55

down1nit: Jan 10, 2004; outlive your enemies

I was gonna shower later

# ? Dec 24, 2023 18:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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