Some Notes on the Machines

Try SMPlayer:

https://www.smplayer.info/en/downloads

For a silent install in Windows, use /S for the EXE installer.

Here is an excellent tool to check if your IP or domain is on a spam blacklist (a.k.a. RBL):

https://www.debouncer.com/

The current download site for MegaRAID (formerly LSI, Avago, et al.) drivers and Storage Manager now appears to be here:

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/raid-controllers/megaraid-sas-9361-8

A Lenovo-supplied method to update drivers, BIOS, and firmware in Windows.

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/tvsu-update

Updates are being distributed to Windows 10 via peer-to-peer methods, in addition to cloud-to-PC. This will be essential to handle the big build files, 4 gigabyte plus, at many sites.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-delivery-optimization

This one is from the amazing Rick Boatright. I saw the ancestor of this thirty-plus years ago in Unix System V, had no idea it had gotten so useful in Microsoft-land. The gist of it is:

• You have a batch file, and want to access something involving a UNC path, something like this: \\SERVER_NAME\share_name\dir1\dir2
• Default logic often involves storage of current location into a variable, CD, resumption of previous, blah, blah, blah.
• But we can do it in one command: pushd \\SERVER_NAME\share_name\dir1\dir2 This does multiple things:
• First, it creates a temporary drive letter for the server and share name. It chooses an available drive letter.
• Secondly, without any further ado, it changes the current working directory of the shell (of the script) to the very location you pointed at.
• So, if you did the pushd above, and if Z: were available, your current working directory suddenly becomes: Z:\dir1\dir2
  where Z: is mapped to \\SERVER_NAME\share_name !!!
• Then when you’re done with it, just put in popd, and Z: goes away and you’re back to the current working directory you had beforehand!

A great tool here:

https://www.niversoft.com/products/xml2nwc/

And another:

http://nwc2musicxml.appspot.com/

Here’s a new one, seems to cover some good ground:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10164/fix-windows-update-errors

A good thing to do, is to do cleanup/improvement steps, and then restart related services:

If you see that Windows built-in search components (any of several, including the Indexer, Cortana, etc.) are using a lot of your disk bandwidth, run this in an administrative Powershell:

Add-AppxPackage -Path “C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml” -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register

It appears to reset or reload Cortana or a big chunk of it, and probably disable “Development Mode” too. One web reference stated that the above has to be run in a newly created local admin profile to work.

Also, if you’re in a former (or, God forbid, current) SBS environment, make sure the SBS client is removed, and make sure GPO isn’t automatically reinstalling it.