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[On demand] AMA: Windows backup and restore
Now through Friday (12/5) at 12:00 p.m. PST: Get expert tips on backing up Windows 10 settings so you can transition users to Windows 11 seamlessly. Visit https://aka.ms/AMA/BackupRestore to explore Windows Backup for Organizations, now generally available—and to post your questions.
Prune list of
I'm a bit of a hobbyist and often advise people on managing systems, so I frequently install and reinstall Windows on multiple systems. When I install a Windows 11 system and log in with my Microsoft account, I'm presented with a LONG list of past Windows installations from which I can import settings. The vast number of these are just trials I'd rather delete. Is there any way I can prune that list? If there's a way to access the list from my account on the Microsoft website, I don't know it.
Backing up to an external hard disk drive.
Backing up to an external hard disk drive. Windows backup tells me that my target drive has 379.48GB free space: It tells me that my back-up this time will occupy 77.21GB. Yet it tells me that the backup cannot be run because my target disk does not have enough space. What is going on here? Have I misunderstood the measures of size/capacity?
Does the CDN for Microsoft Windows Update seem to be malfunctioning?
I purchased a code signing certificate, but strangely, Windows did not automatically download the missing root certificate. When I tried to manually download the root certificate according to the manual, I found that the CDN seemed to return the wrong certificate and I was unable to establish a secure connection with the website. (At least in Chinese Mainland) https://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/test/authrootstl.cab Can other regions be accessed normally?
Password reset and recovery fail
Hi there, good morning. First i appreciate any ones assistance here, its been a little frustrating. My regular windows account, for purchases, family content etc is "email address removed for privacy reasons". I cant sign in to that one any more. it is under 2fa with a code generator (I have that and the code is fine etc), it has a phone number (i have that!), and email account of course. I tried to enter the password to login to microsoft account - account.microsoft.com - and it gives the error "there have been too many failed login attempts". So i go through the password reset and works fine and i have a new password. I try again straight away and it fails with the same error. I try again for password reset... see above.. So i try for account recovery and go through the form - but i get an email saying because i have 2fa this is ignored and done automatically. However the automatic process does not seem to work - as indicated above. I tried to find a microsoft chat to have a live session, but it says i need to login... so i have logged in with a secondary account. I cant find the live chat sessions though. So i am posting here for any help - if i have the wrong forum i apologize - it was confusing to me about where i should actually make a post... this is making me feel old...lol... thanks DanToo many restarts... why?
Dear fellow users, can anyone tell me why Windows needs to restart twice in a row allmost every two weeks? (Dell precision 5490, Windows 11 Education). My employer forced me to accept a Windows machine after my former laptop (Macbook) got out of order. Updating of the Mac was never a problem, allways succesfull updates in the background. With Windows it's quite the opposite. A simple switch between external screens seems to be prohibited before updating. Quite anoying when in class!Create a hardware inventory with the Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit (often underestimated)!
Dear Microsoft/Windows friends, In this article I want to show you a way how to create a hardware inventory with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP)! Boah, boring! No, absolutely not. Here is the situation I encountered: A new customer needed to inventory all their systems (all members of an Active Directory). Sure, there are many great products that can do this (some are not free though). But would you have thought that the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit could do this as well? And the tool is free of charge! Rock n' Roll! The MAP tool uses WMI for Windows investigation and SSH for Linux. Since there were only Windows systems at the customer, I focus on WMI (I think you can adapt this to SSH very easily). Fortunately, Windows Server (2012 and later) already has WinRM turned on. This is not the case with the Windows client systems, so we first create a GPO before we start with the MAP tool. Navigate to a domain controller and please launch the Active Directory Users and Computers tool. Locate the organizational unit with the client systems. (Unfortunately I can only show you german screenshots here, Sorry) So we know where to link the group policy object. Then start the group policy management. Create a new GPO with the name for example "WinRM Settings". In this GPO I have made the following settings (in the open GPO navigate to the computerconfiguration => Windows-Components). Let's move to the next settings: If your systems are in a workgroup you can use the following in PowerShell (with admin privileges): Set-WSManQuickConfig -Force Now you just need to link the GPO to the correct organizational unit. In order for the GPO to be processed by all systems, I recommend that you wait a day or two. This way there is a chance that all systems have processed the GPO. If your environment is not that big you can use gpupdate /force in a CMD (with admin rights). Now it's time to install the MAP Toolkit (I used a Windows client system which is a member of the domain). You can find the tool via the following link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7826 Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the tool. Double click on the .exe file and simply click through. When you start MAP for the first time, you must specify a name for the database that will be created. Now navigate to "Environment" on the left side and click on "collect inventory data". It starts the wizard and in the following screeshots I show you what I configured. Of course you can adjust all settings for your needs. Very important are the credentials you can specify in the wizard. Make sure that you have enough rights so that the tool can actually collect the information. My point in this example is to give you an idea. Now the assessment starts and afterwards we receive our report. Click "Inventory Result" when the scan is complete. Navigate to the right side and click on "Generate...." and an Excel file will be created. Open this file and you will have a great inventory to work with. Here is a compact (not complete) excerpt from my inventory, which is available as an Excel file. Hope you are as happy with the result as I was? Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope this article was useful. Best regards, Tom WechslerUnable to install Windows 10 ESU due to unknown MDM
I have been trying to get the Windows 10 ESU program enrollment done, but an unable to. It appears that I am connected to some MDM, but I have never to my knowledge done so. Also, there are no options listed in "Accounts-> Work or School." I ran the following in Powershell and got outputs 0 True 0 2, indicating the MDM registration. $t = [AppDomain]::CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly((Get-Random), 1).DefineDynamicModule((Get-Random), $False).DefineType((Get-Random)) $t.DefinePInvokeMethod('IsDeviceRegisteredWithManagement', 'mdmregistration.dll', 22, 1, [Int32], @([Boolean].MakeByRefType(), [IntPtr], [IntPtr]), 1, 3).SetImplementationFlags(128) $t.DefinePInvokeMethod('NetGetJoinInformation', 'wkscli.dll', 22, 1, [Int32], @([IntPtr], [IntPtr].MakeByRefType(), [UInt32].MakeByRefType()), 1, 3).SetImplementationFlags(128) $Win32 = $t.CreateType() $JoinedMDM = $False; $Win32::IsDeviceRegisteredWithManagement([ref]$JoinedMDM, 0, 0); $JoinedMDM $JoinedDomain = 0; $Buf = 0; $Win32::NetGetJoinInformation(0, [ref]$Buf, [ref]$JoinedDomain); $JoinedDomain Thanks for any ideas, Tom
Moved 2.5"ssd from old Intel NUC to new Intel Nuc, can't find docs/pics
So not sure if this is the right place after wading through all the options so here goes: I moved a ssd from my old NUC that was on it's last legs (pwr supply). It was windows 10 and I needed a new system as the hardware was too old to upgrade to WN11 and the pwr supply was on the blink anyways. I installed two brand new SSD's in the new NUC and installed a new version of WN11 on one (Linux mint on the other). I got the new system up running both OS's w/o much trouble (other than my old HP laser printer which is so old that HP doesn't support it anymore). I took the old 2.5" ssd out of the failing nuc and connected it to the new system via usb-c. wn11 recognizes it as drive F but show two identical F drives...? why two F's? I can open it via File explorer but I can't find any of my word docs. Doing a search in the search box with drive F selected, all wn11 does is state : "working on it" and never finds anything (the little spinning circle spins itself senseless) and I finally give up and end the task :) If I boot my Linux ssd, I can find the docs and also pics too. What am I doing wrong? I can find docs using the linux OS but I can't in the OS that they originally were created in (windows/word)Windows 10 21H2 and Windows 11 21H2 both show up as "2009" release
I'm not real sure where to post this, so will try here. I have noticed that for both Windows 10 - 21H2 and Windows 11 - 21H2, the "ReleaseID" value in the Registry is incorrectly shown as "2009". (We are using Windows 10/11 Enterprise.) This is located at this key in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion We rely on inventorying this value to determine which computers have which "Feature Update" installed, and therefore, which computers we still need to update. Has Microsoft migrated away from using this value to indicate which Feature Update is installed? Do we need to change our approach to look at the "DisplayVersion" instead of the "ReleaseID"? Or some other value in the registry? Also, Windows 11 has another issue. In the same registry key location, the "ProductName" value is listed as "Windows 10 Enterprise", which of course is incorrect. Are others seeing these same results with these items? Anyone heard if Microsoft has plans to fix these issues?
