Some Notes on the Machines

Very interesting:

www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-requirement

This is the Internet DNS name of a Microsoft server. On a Windows operating system, immediately before any and all of a wide variety of things occur, the machine will contact this server for some bandwidth and connectivity tests.

There are often issues with this. If attempt is made and fails, Windows may throw up a popup in the lower-right corner, asking for a mouse-click. Sometimes DNS servers lack this record for some reason, causing odd and unusual troubles. There have been other consequences.

There are ways to turn this off altogether. So far testing has found zero gotchas for shutting it off, it is not clear whether it is essential. The simplest way to do so, is probably to enable this item in local or domain group policy:

Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Internet Communication Management
Internet Communication settings
Turn off Windows Network Connectivity Status Indicator active tests

This works well as of this writing.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = "tls12, tls11, tls"
md -Path $env:temp\edgeinstall -erroraction SilentlyContinue | Out-Null
$Download = join-path $env:temp\edgeinstall MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi
Invoke-WebRequest 'http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2093437'  -OutFile $Download
Start-Process "$Download" -ArgumentList "/quiet"
# placeholder for "enter" autokeyhit

This is a change to a replacement URL, and it will hopefully be a more lasting kind than the previous. The above works for AMD64 Windows; the URL comes from here:

techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/official-download-links-for-microsoft-edge-stable-enterprise/m-p/1082549

and there is support for other platforms on that page.

The overall cause of buildup of orphan shadows in “System Volume Information” folders, is physical storage not being able to keep up with demand.

The best first steps I have, are to run what I sometimes call general cleanup. After that, I run PrivaZer without checking traces in free space, which saves time and does not affect performance results. PrivaZer cleans up an amazing variety of NTFS issues, even new installs often benefit.

And after that, three registry entries. Here’s Powershell code to get them in and engaged.

$NewMaxShadowCopies = 8
$NewMinDiffAreaFileSize = 128

# http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/powershell_registry-powershell_command_line,2-152.html

function setupDWORD {
    param( [string]$regPath, [string]$nameForDWORD, [long]$valueForDWORD )

    ##############
    # Error out if cannot touch the registry area at all
    If ( !(Test-Path $regPath) ) {
        Try {
            New-Item $regPath -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
            }
        Catch {
            Write-Error ("Could not visit or create registry path " + $regPath)
            Return
            }
        }

    #############
    # If an existing registry entry exists, store its value to report later
    Try {
        $oldValueProperty = Get-ItemProperty -Path $regPath -Name $nameForDWORD -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        $oldValue = $oldValueProperty.$nameforDWORD
        }
    Catch {
        $oldValue = ""
        }

    #############
    # Report the changes to make
    Write-Output ("DWORD to write: " + $nameForDWORD)
    Write-Output ("at registry path " + $regPath)
    If ($oldValue -ne "") {
        Write-Output ("Original value is " + $oldValue)
        }
    else {
        Write-Output "No original present."
        }
    Write-Output ("New value is " + $valueforDWORD)

    ############
    # Report no changes to make, set new registry entry, or error out
	If ($oldValue -eq $valueforDWORD) {
		Write-Output "No change to make."
		""
		Return
		}
    Try {
        New-ItemProperty -Path $regPath -Name $nameForDWORD -Value $valueForDWORD -PropertyType DWORD -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue > $null
        }
    Catch {
        Write-Error "Failed!"
        ""
        Return
        }

    "Succeeded!"
    ""
    }

setupDWORD "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Settings" "MaxShadowCopies" $NewMaxShadowCopies

setupDWORD "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VolSnap" "MinDiffAreaFileSize" $NewMinDiffAreaFileSize

setupDWORD 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows' 'DeleteStaleTaskCache' 1

""

"Restarting VSS..."

Restart-Service -Force -Name "VSS"

""

"Complete!"
""

If you can get to an administrative or system shell:

Reset-ComputerMachinePassword -Server DC.domain.local -Credential (Get-Credential)

Run this:

sysdm.cpl

Then go to the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button in the middle under User Profiles.

This works great under 10 also, but is a lot more hidden in 11.

Interesting tool by an interesting community.

www.sysnative.com/forums/downloads/sfcfix/

And they have volunteers to help, with another interesting tool which does fixes as well:

www.sysnative.com/forums/threads/windows-update-forum-posting-instructions.4736/

This one makes sure general settings are likely helpful, and also deals with two common troublemakers:

# General
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-dc 15
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change standby-timeout-dc 120
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-dc 180
powercfg /change disk-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change disk-timeout-dc 60

# Unhides and zeroes hidden "System unattended sleep timeout" which can cause problems
# including, sometimes, automatic unwanted logoff
powercfg -attributes sub_sleep 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 -ATTRIB_HIDE
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 0

# Disable hybrid sleep both AC powered and DC
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0
powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0

# Reapply current power scheme
powercfg -setactive scheme_current

Try the free version here:

www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Try URLs like this, for an ISO of Windows 10 build 1909:

https://archive.org/details/windows-1909

Unfortunately, archive.org lacks the bandwidth for rapid downloads of monsters like those. Here’s a source which can set you up to do it in 10 minutes if your side is fast enough:

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool