Some Notes on the Machines

OWTAS sets a number of additional critical and delayed worker threads, plus service work items. The changes are autocalculated according to a combination of RAM and OS bit-width (32 vs. 64). Performance will increase, more so with more RAM. Available as VBS and as PowerShell 3 and up. Future development will be in PowerShell, as part of the windows-tools project.

The tool is designed for Windows 10 down through XP. As of 2017-10-10, it is self-elevating if run non-administratively.

No keys of course, but ISO media indeed, and very helpful for DISM and other fixes:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media

From the extraordinary Mike Hunsinger:

Today I learned something fascinating. You can run linux as a Windows Subsystem w/o using a vm or dual-boot. All you have to do is run PS as admin, execute this:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

reboot when prompted and then you can use the windows store to install just about any Linux distro you want.

This article describes folks running Linux GUI apps talking to Windows-native X Windows. Ponderworthy hasn’t tested this yet, but the following X server looks like a very worthy candidate:

sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/

Get the portable version here:

http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html

1. Unpack it
2. Run Repair_Windows.exe as administrator
3. Click “Jump to Repairs”
4. Click “Open Repairs”
5. Uncheck all of the fixes except “Repair Internet Explorer”
6. Do it, and reboot.

Works very nicely.

1. There are three ways to reset the password if you need to do so:

https://www.mydigitallife.net/reset-and-fix-incorrect-or-wrong-password-for-windows-xp-mode-xpmuser/

2. If you need to transfer an XP mode virtual from one user profile to another, create a blank XP mode on the new user, then copy all of the old files replacing the new. Use the default filenames, don’t change anything. It will work, but you will need to change the password, above.

A registry entry:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v SeparateProcess /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

which can be set up in group policy, under Computer Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry.

Very nice:

https://gist.github.com/Zenexer/ae98c2b80d60fffcc588

This will make any Windows 10 machine run much faster, at the cost of the fancy Cortana query and search component.

1. In REGEDIT, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, Software, Policies, Microsoft, Windows.
2. Create key “Windows Search” no quotes.
3. Create DWORD32 “AllowCortana” no quotes. Make sure the value is zero (0).
4. Create DWORD32 “AllowCortanaAboveLock” no quotes. Make sure the value is zero (0).
5. Create DWORD32 “DisableWebSearch” no quotes. Make sure the value is one (1).
6. Create DWORD32 “ConnectedSearchUseWeb” no quotes. Make sure the value is zero (0).
7. Create DWORD32 “ConnectedSearchUseWebOverMeteredConnections” no quotes. Make sure the value is zero (0).
8. Reboot.

Here is a reset procedure.

net stop wuauserv
cd %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution
ren Download Download.old
net start wuauserv
net stop bits
net start bits
net stop cryptsvc
cd %systemroot%\system32
ren catroot2 catroot2old
net start cryptsvc

The Beard (alias Hunsinger the Mike) reported just now:

I may have just found a heck of a trick. If you run across PC’s who are getting spotty GPO adherence, and possibly unreliable network connection, as well as their network explorer folder in windows only shows a handful of the actual PC’s on the lan. Try this powershell command:

PS U:\> set-service -Name fdPHost -startuptype Automatic
PS U:\> Start-service -name fdPHost

The above fixed a very longstanding unpleasantry we had been working on, where Network Neighborhood would not show up and other items just would not work normally over a VPN. Oddly, it turns out that fdPHost is some sort of omnibus networking control service, set to Manual by default, but which lords it over several different sets of protocols.

It’s probably not to be enabled generally or lightly, there could be potential for major addition of network traffic, and security questions too. But on the other hand, it’s there, it’s normally Manual not disabled, and it fixed!

Mike later found a companion service, FDResPub, which reportedly is responsible for broadcasting the presence of network resources, by a Windows machine serving them to its LAN. Although it too is by default set to Manual, a reference gives its description as “Publishes your computer and resources attached to your computer so they can be discovered over the network. If this service is stopped, network resources will no longer be published and they will not be discovered by other computers on the network.” And it stops sometimes with no known reasons, even on domain controllers. So this one too, at least on real servers, is a help if kept set Automatic.