Some Notes on the Machines

Amazing.

https://www.sandboxie.com/

Chocolatey is a great way to get a huge variety of software into your Windows machine in a very consistent way. Boxstarter uses Chocolatey for large repeated OS and package setups, both virtual and hardware. Boxstarter has a great Windows update method inside. To call it all via Powershell, one can do this (make sure you’re administrative):

$PSCred = Get-Credential
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Force
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
choco install boxstarter -y
choco install boxstarter.chocolatey -y
Install-BoxstarterPackage -PackageName Boxstarter.WindowsUpdate -Credential $PScred

The credential is a local admin to the box, it is there so the updater can run through as many reboots as necessary to get the job done. Please do be aware that this will reboot the machine immediately after setup, and will reboot it repeatedly as needed to get the machine fully up to date. It also installs a public desktop icon called “Boxstarter Shell” which probably will need to be removed.

One can copy all of the above lines into a file, e.g., “winup.ps1”, and then run “.\winup” in an administrative Powershell, it will work very nicely.

https://github.com/billziss-gh/sshfs-win

CLI command:

net use X: \\sshfs\login@hostname.fqdn

Rather good to see:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/smbshare/close-smbopenfile

So we have a terminal server or other multi-user Windows machine, Windows 7/2008R2 or later. We want to pin one or more icons to the taskbar, for all users. We discover that this is not something extremely easy to do :-) We can, at least reasonably easily, set up the same taskbar icon set for all users, thusly:

1. Log into the one machine, and set up the taskbar as you would like it to appear for all.
2. Export the following registry key:
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband]
   to a file named TaskBarPins.REG. Put it in a permanent folder outside of user space, e.g. C:\AutoSettings, it will be imported automatically at every login.
3. Create SetTaskBarPins.VBS in C:\AutoSettings, containing the following text:

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim objShell, ProgramFiles, sRegFile
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
sRegFile = """C:\AutoSettings\SetTaskBarPins.REG"""
objShell.Run "Regedit.exe /s " & sRegFile, 0, True
Set objShell = Nothing

4. Create a shortcut to C:\AutoSettings\SetTaskBarPins.VBS in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp.

The next time any user logs into this machine, nothing will appear to have been changed. But when they log off and then log on after that, their taskbar will be the same as the one you exported.

There is a tool to do the job; but Microsoft has a way to remove everything preinstalled on your new machine and slowing it down:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/348679/how-clean-up-windows-10-with-the-refresh-windows-tool

It does remove everything but Windows, so it is only suitable for completely new machines.

Here’s an overview of some choice web browsers, as of this writing. It’s not comprehensive and not going to be, because there are a huge variety of web sites and related needs, there is quite a lot of new development going on, and related publicity is not coherent (and cannot be in today’s world…). The below are the experiences of this writer only, and he is well aware that reality is far larger than his experience:

1. Firefox. Not the fastest and not stingy in memory, but if you need a particular site to work and you don’t need a Microsoft-only web application, try it, you’ll be most likely to find that it does the job. On the other hand, if you want lots and lots of tabs open and you have 8 gigabytes or less of RAM, or if you want maximum speed, try one of the others below. Firefox is also very compatible with probably the largest majority of plugin-based services, by way of it being the most current official product of the Mozilla codebase. Versions available for every major platform.
2. Brave. This is a relatively new browser whose company is headed by co-founder of the Mozilla project. It is not only an extremely fast, efficient, and reliable browser, the project is also a concerted effort to fix the current worldwide mess by which a very few huge near-monopolies have made web advertising almost worthless except to themselves. Brave uses the Chromium code-base, significantly revised and improved. Versions available for every major platform.
3. Microsoft Edge (as of 2019-04-24) and Microsoft Internet Explorer. As of this writing there are still many web-applications out there which require Microsoft web browsers. Edge ships with Windows 10 as its standard; Internet Explorer also ships though it is slightly hidden and publicly being deprecated. Edge has had its own code-base, really a major revision of Internet Explorer lacking some compatibility; recent Microsoft-only web sites have been Edge-compatible. But recently there was a Microsoft statement announcing an upcoming Windows update, in which the current Edge was to be replaced with a different Edge (an entirely different browser, with the same name…) with a Chromium code-base. It is entirely unclear what this will do to those dependent on Microsoft-only web applications. Obviously we will just have to watch and wait and see. Perhaps Microsoft will make things more complicated with some sort of embedding. We will see.
4. Chromium. Open-source web browser and code base. A very good web browser on Linux. Have not yet found a Windows version that works fully and automatically updates properly, though the Chocolatey system has promise.
5. Google Chrome. Now probably the most commonly used web browser. Chrome is generally slower and more resource-heavy than Chromium and Brave.
6. Vivaldi. This writer has had high hopes for Vivaldi for some time; it’s a highly customizable browser by a large group of mostly former Opera folks, and across-the-board web site compatibility was an original design goal, unlike Opera. Unfortunately, this writer has found its general web-site compatibility lacking versus Brave, Chromium, Chrome, and Firefox. Versions are available for every major platform.

Here’s a good one:

https://www.dmarcanalyzer.com/dmarc/dmarc-record-check/

1. Install normally, using monitor and keyboard. Get the install solid with updates and testing.
2. Switch to a virtual console with Ctrl-Alt-F2 and log in.
3. Run this to turn off X: sudo systemctl isolate multi-user
4. Run this: X -configure
5. A file is created, /root/xorg.conf.new.
6. chdir to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
7. Move /root/xorg.conf.new to this new name at your current location: ./10-monitor.conf
8. Reboot and test. If you change video cards, you may well have to do it again, and you’ll probably need to boot from install media in order to remove the file.

This is usually reported by an alteration of the network mini-icon in the system tray; hover over it and it will claim there is no Internet access. The only solution I know of, is to go into the NIC, and turn off “IPv4 Checksum Offload” or something close. In most cases, this setting is on by default.