Why writing is blocked to C:\Program Files, and some other locations.

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It’s the Data Redirection feature that was introduced with Windows Vista, in November 2006.

Data Redirection – beginning with Windows Vista, standard users have restricted access to certain files, folders, and registry keys. When an application is trying to write to these locations, it gets redirected to somewhere else. Most of the time this is transparent to both users and application developers, but sometimes it is not and that lead to some very interesting results.

– Windows Blog: Is Your Application Ready for Windows 7 RTM?

The customer had some issues running SAP Business One.  The cause?  SAP trying to write to a sub-directory under c:\Program Files (x86)\SAP .

References:

“By enabling insecure guest logons, this setting reduces the security of Windows clients”

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WD MyCloudThe initial thought was “it’s another ‘SMB1 is disabled’ causing connectivity problems” problem.

Except it wasn’t.

The issue was that our customer reported that they could no longer connect to their NAS device.

With Windows 10 v1709, Microsoft disabled Guest Access.  In their words:

Cause
This change in default behavior is by design and is recommended by Microsoft for security.
 
A malicious computer that impersonates a legitimate file server could allow users to connect as guests without their knowledge. Microsoft recommends that you do not change this default setting. If a remote device is configured to use guest credentials, an administrator should disable guest access to that remote device and configure correct authentication and authorization.
 
Windows and Windows Server have not enabled guest access or allowed remote users to connect as guest or anonymous users since Windows 2000. Only third-party remote devices might require guest access by default. Microsoft-provided operating systems do not.

– Guest access in SMB2 disabled by default in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server 2016 version 1709

For the small number of end users who will need to connect to a third-party NAS, we’ll probably manage it via exception.

Windows 10 and Office 365 update lists

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The following are sites are where Microsoft list changes to Windows 10 & Office 365

Office 365

Windows 10

VicRoads Driving Test Routes

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Update 2018:
Note that these tests are up to 9 years old.  Use as a guide only.
What is here is what is here.  I don’t have any other testing routes.

(source: Whirlpool “On The Road” forum and Hienz Driving School)

Bundoora (March 2014)

Carlton (2016)
Start of test –> End of test

Dandenong (2010)

Oakleigh South (Sept 2011)

Oakleigh South (Oct 2011)

Oakleigh South (Nov 2011)


View Larger Map

VicRoads Short Drive Test Information Video (2008)

Continue reading →

Not ready for production … ReFS

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So Resilient File System (ReFS) has been for 6 years so it should be stable for use with a backup drive, right?

Nope:
image

In the words of Wikipedia:

“Because ReFS was designed not to fail, if failure does occur, there are no tools provided to repair it”

When it does fail, you might just end up with a 2TB backup drive that you cannot read.

🙁

I found one third-party tool which does work, ReclaiMe.
refs-recovery
Seems to work well.  If I need to pull data off this backup drive, I’ll purchase a license.

The last time my computer was seen on the network …

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was something I wrote about 8 years ago, in Detecting inactive computers in your AD domain.

So it was time to update that*.

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Properties Name, LastLogonTimeStamp | Select-Object -Property Name, CanonicalName, @{ n = "LastLogonDate"; e = { [datetime]::FromFileTime( $_.lastLogonTimestamp ) } } | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation "C:\temp\lastlogontimestamp.csv"

will give you a handy list of computer name and the last time they were seen on the network#.

* The Quest product is no longer free.
# within the last 14 days.

Reference:
PowerShell: Get-ADComputer to retrieve computer last logon date – part 1
Converting LastLogon to DateTime format
Script: LastLogonTimestamp export csv

How I setup my external backup drive.

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VeraCrypt128x128I use VeraCrypt to create a encrypted hard drive.  That way, if I lose the drive, the lucky finder won’t be able to read the data.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Using DiskPart and Clean the drive
  2. Start VeraCrypt and select the VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard
  3. Encrypt a non-system partition/drive
  4. Standard VeraCrypt volume
  5. Select the external hard drive
  6. Create encrypted volume and format it
  7. Select the default encryption options
  8. Volume size is the entire drive
  9. Select the NTFS Filesystem AND the “Quick Format” option
  10. Click format

Using PowerShell to ZIP something.

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powershellI needed to ZIP-up some log files in a number of subdirectories.  In the past, I have used the PKZIP utility.

I couldn’t find my copy of PKZIP Sad smile

“Doesn’t PowerShell have a compress-archive command?”
’Why, yes it does!’

Two commands later:

$files=get-childitem *.log -Recurse
compress-archive $files -DestinationPath c:\data\AllTheLogFiles

I had my AllTheLogFiles.Zip file.

Backup date/time and SyncBackPro

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imageMy backup tool of choice is SyncBackPro.  It’s a quality product at a reasonable price.

One of the things I backup is my Apple iPhone and iTunes folders.  I take a snapshot of these by using the Compression feature, with a custom filename.

You can generate a custom filename this by creating your own variable in the Profile Setup/Variables area.

In the screenshot (about) you can see that I’ve created the Variable Name DATETIMENOW with the Value %YEAR%%MONTH%%DAY%_%HOUR%%MINUTE%%SECOND%

In the screenshot, this translates to 20180717_213656

I then use this in the Profile Setup for the actual backup:
image

As simple as that.