How to erase all data on laptop on windows 11?
Hi all, I just bought a new Surface Pro and it is time to sell my old laptop (ThinkPad T480S) that is currently running Windows 11 23H2. For data security matter, I want to ease all data on laptop with Windows 11 before selling. In fact, there are a few import files and photos saved on this laptop. I want to make sure all data will be deleted permanently and no way to recover the data when the laptop was moved to another's hand. Kindly let me know if it is possible.
Disabling PIN-based login on Entra-joined PCs
Hi guys. Yesterday I took two machines off the domain and Entra joined them. The goal was 1) remove their access to domain resources 2) have tenant users login to the machine and get enriched tokens every time. this works as desired. The problem is every user gets prompted to set a pin. these are both shared secondary/tertiary PC's - there is no point to having a 6 digit PIN on them. I thought the new Authentication Methods tools had controls for this, but apparently not. A script was run to change certain related Reg Keys (by my onsite tech) but this had no change on reboot. textreg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork" /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /freg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork" /v DisablePostLogonProvisioning /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork Enabled key was set to 0, and DisablePostLogonProvisioning was set to 1. These are from various help threads I found here and other resources. Unfortunately, they do not work. Not sure what to do here. I've read there are InTune controls for this - but I don't really have the time to work out WindowsPC ennrollment profiles for 2 machines. The site has InTune, but only for iOS mobile management. Thoughts?
Windows Defender Service Crashing with 0xc0000374 on Windows 11 24H2 Lenovo X13 Laptops
Environment: Devices: Lenovo ThinkPad X13 laptops OS: Windows 11 24H2 Management: Microsoft Intune/Entra ID managed Started: Approximately 1 month ago Symptoms: Intermittent system freezing - devices become unresponsive requiring hard reboot Windows Defender service stops and cannot be restarted manually Event Viewer errors: Event ID 7031 (Service Control Manager): "The Microsoft Defender Antivirus Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 7 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Restart the service." Application Error Event ID 1000: MsMpEng.exe crashing with exception code 0xc0000374 (heap corruption) Pattern: Issue affects devices from only 1 of multiple Intune/Defender tenants we manage Not all X13 laptops affected - only random subset Other tenants with identical hardware models not experiencing issues Started approximately 1 month ago across multiple devices Current Status: MsMpEng.exe keeps crashing repeatedly Real-time protection cannot stay running Service recovery attempts fail Has anyone else experienced this specific error on 24H2? Any known issues with recent Defender platform/definition updates causing heap corruption?
How to force Windows 11 to reuse the former Recovery Partition?
Before migrating from Windows 10 to Windows 11 I had decrypted my BitLocker-encrypted C:-partition - just to be on the safe side if anything goes wrong during the migration. Now, after the successful migration to Windows 11 I wanted to re-encrypt that partition. When I started BitLocker it explained that it would first need to create a recovery partition. When I clicked OK it declared it would now first shrink my C:-drive to create space for that partition and then create a new recovery environment on it. However, I already do have a recovery partition at the end of my current system drive (at least it is labeled as Recovery Partition, its size is 1000MB/1GB). Why does Windows 11 try create me yet another recovery partiation and does not reuse that existing one? I don't want end up having two recovery partitions one of which is useless. Would I first have to delete that existing recovery partition, then add it to the (i.e. grow the existing) C:-drive partition such that this process can then shrink it again in order to recreate a new recovery partition? Is there no shortcut to force this process to simply re-use the existing recovery partition?
smart card (yubikey ) lock every 60 seconds
Hello, we have some strange problem after upgrade to win 11 24h2. When we connect to remote destop using password everything is ok but when we use first time yubikey it works fine to but when we close remote desktop connection using "X" close button and connect again to this session then remote desktop i locking (WIN + L) every 60 secons. We are obsering this behavior only in office (LAN), when we connect via VPN everything is ok. Can You advise where is the problem ? When we use mstsc.exe with remoteguard switch then everything is ok even in office (LAN)
Updating from Win11 Home to Win11 Pro - Device not registered online
I have recently updated my laptop from Win11 Home to Win11 Pro. The newly installed Win11 Pro showed Win11 activation as active. The laptop (with a new name) showed up in the device list in Win11 Pro under my MS account. However, when I logged in online, the device did not show up in the registered device list under my MS account. ----------- I tried doing the following: Clean Install from downloaded WIN11 ISO from MS. Clean install using Win11 (multi-edition) FAT32 USB using downloaded MediaCreation tool. Also tried with including PID.txt with Win11 Pro product key (purchase). Clean Install from USB created from Win11 ISO from MS. Added PID.txt as well. (all old partitions removed) It's perplexing, as whichever way I installed Win11 Pro, the device won't show up under my MS account device list. already spent 20 hrs in this. I used chatgpt, and it suggested to check CloudExperienceHost Service. I did not find that service in Win11 services. It suggested the OEM Win11 Home (in the firmware) was still affecting the Win11 Pro install, so some Win11 components were still missing (e.g. CloudExperienceHost). Chatgpt suggested changing to NTFS USB, so won't need to use a split swm file set. I haven't tried this way yet. Currently, Windows 11 Pro Version is 25H2 (Build 26200.6584). Thx.
Existing Windows 11 not booting
After buying an extra SSD I decided to dual boot my PC with one SSD being Windows 11 and another being Linux Ubuntu. Recently I decided to get rid of my Linux drive by cleaning it on DISKPART but after doing so now my Windows 11 drive is not booting or showing up on BIOS, I installed another Windows 11 on my previous Linux drive, booted it up and checked the drives, everything is there and showing up but the drive letters are out of place and scrambled. I can't change the original windows 11 drive letter back to C. On Disk Management the old Windows 11 drive doesn't have an EFI partition, that might be the problem but I'm not sure. Could the problem be something else? Any help with this matter would be highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.Video downloads from icloud converting to pdfs in One Drive
When I download videos from icloud they are downloaded as videos but when I move to my One Drive folder they convert...I saw someone somewhere say to use the properties button but the options don't seem to allow me to just keep the files as MP4s as they originally are... (When I download google photos videos they are in heic files and I wish there were a cure for that but maybe it's with Google that I need to change something with. Thanks for any assistance!
Shift + restart doesn't work
Hi folks, Recently updated my windows 11 on my Desktop (usual software update when you press the power button) and since then whenever I try and do a full restart using the Shift + restart, the usual blue screen appears with options "Continue to Win 11/Troubleshoot/Shutdown)". Which is all expected. The issues is when I am on that screen, the events from my USB connected mouse or keyboard aren't recognized. Which means I cannot move from Continue to Win 11 option above to Shutdown option. I cant go back either. So I have to then press the physical Power button on my desktop to shut it down. Is this some bug that has been introduced in the new patch/win update? What are my options, please? The exact version is in the attached screenshot. Thanks
