Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Bypass Windows 11 hardware check – new install and upgrade

Monday, January 15th, 2024

Hope this links sticks around.

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

 

Win 10, 11 clean drive overwrite files with 0s

Monday, January 15th, 2024

To clear everything on a hard drive by writing zeros 3 times on all bytes. Approx 1 hour per 350 gb, but probably a lot longer? (Note: you will never get anything back after this)

  • Open cmd as administrator
  • Type: diskpart
  • Type: list disk
  • Note the number of the disk you are trying to wipe clean
  • Type: select disk [number]
  • Double check the disk number because this is going to be irreversible
  • Type: clean all

To securely overwrite the free space on your hard drive (where old files can be recovered) and never be able to recover them:

  • Open cmd as administrator. The following command cleans the c: drive
  • Type: cipher /w:c:

/W Removes data from available unused disk space on the entire
volume. If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored.
The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume. If it
is a mount point or points to a directory in another volume, the
data on that volume will be removed.

End

Restore wrong icons on desktop Win10?-11

Sunday, January 7th, 2024

When desktop icons have gone all screwy run this in regular cmd prompt

ie4uinit.exe -show
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db"
DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*"
shutdown /r /f /t 00

Warning — that last line will immediately reboot the system. You have to use it though because you shut down explorer.ext

cmd line Change password and prevent password change

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023
I changed the password to "username" + the number 1 to get in
then:

wmic UserAccount where Name="Username" set PasswordExpires=False
then put password back with:
net user "username" password

Windows 10/11 EFI ESP partition – too many

Saturday, August 5th, 2023

I was using AEOMI backup to restore and it kept putting a new EFI partition on each time rather than overwriting the existing one or just keeping the existing one.

https://woshub.com/how-to-rebuild-bcd-file-in-windows-10/

Also

https://superuser.com/questions/1399789/how-do-i-find-out-which-efi-system-partition-is-in-use-by-windows-10

  • open a command prompt with admin privileges (approve UAC if demanded)
  • start diskpart -> diskpart
  • select your disk with efi partions -> sel disk 1 (if disk 1 is the correct disk)
  • list your available partitions -> list part
  • if partition 2 that is the efi partition -> sel part 2
  • detail part
    Partition 2
    Type    : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
    Hidden  : Yes
    Required: No
    Attrib  : 0X8000000000000000
    Offset in Bytes: 524288000
    

Now when the Required: property is set to No, you know that is the EFI partition you can delete. The other EFI partition will have the Required: property set to Yes. Do not delete that partition.

more info about the Required property, scroll to: gpt attributes on this page.

Edit:

to change the windows boot device (efi partition) use the following command:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=a:

*where a: is the assigned drive letter for your new efi partition

Thanks to @mbrownnyc for looking up this information bcdedit Device Setting