Category Archives: Windows

Playing with FreeNAS–some issues

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FreeNAS_11-3_square-300x300Some of the issues I’ve stumbled with, on FreeNAS.

pkg was erroring with a “pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/meta.txz: No such file or directory”
This can be fixed by editing the configuration files in /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/, setting toggling the “enabled” parameter to “no” for local.conf and to “yes” for FreeBSD.conf.
Reference: Fix pkg on FreeNAS 11.2

Setting up Windows shares
Good video here from FreeNAS

Improving network file transfers
Set the MTU value in Network/Interfaces to a large value
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Other references:
Samba and ntlm for Windows clients
Using pkg for Binary Package Management
FreeBSD Ports Collection Index

TeamViewer QS not working with Microsoft UAC

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When you use TeamViewer to connect to a remote computer, with Windows Authentication, TeamViewer QS will restart on the remote computer with those credentials.

TeamViewer QuickSupport - Download

Except it was throwing a Microsoft UAC prompt, asking for those Admin credentials, which I’d already entered.

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Except it’s not supposed to do that according to TeamViewer.
(TeamViewer: Is TeamViewer UAC Compatible)

The fix?
Under this Group Policy setting,
User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
we were setting it to “Prompt for credentials”

Changing that to Elevate without prompting resolved that.

Isn’t that a security problem?
Yes and no.
Yes, and I wouldn’t be actually changing that Group Policy setting
No.  What I’d probably do is change the underlying registry key to 0, connect to the client computer, and then change it back to 3 when I was finished.

Further reading:
User Account Control Group Policy and registry key settings
Remote assistance not allowing UAC prompt interaction with the box checked to allow
How User Account Control works (includes information on what each of the different coloured UAC prompts mean)

Microsoft Orca

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imageOrca is a Windows Installer package editor provided as part of the Windows Installer SDK and designed to provide full access to the database tables that compose a Windows Installer package. While Orca provides powerful access to all features of the Windows Installer, it is not intended to replace a full-featured package-authoring environment.
– Microsoft Orca Help File 2005

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One measurement you could use to see how experienced your “Application Packager” is, is to ask “Have you ever used Orca?”.

If the answer is “No”, or “What?”, they might not be as experienced as they claim.

The oldest copy of Orca I have is version 3.1.4000.1830, dated March 2005.

You can read more about Orca here: Microsoft Orca.exe

Working from home challenges–My computer clock is fast.

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Where does Windows get its time fromWe have most of our workforce currently working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of our customers have reported this:

My (Windows 10) computer clock is about 5 minutes fast, which means Skype doesn’t work and I’m early to meetings.  My Android tablet is connected to the same network, and it’s has the correct time.
What’s the cause?

In this case, the underlying cause is that the computer is a Domain Joined workstation.  The workstation is configured to sync it’s time from the Primary Domain Controller (PDC).

And the workstation cannot “see” the PDC when it does a time sync, so the workstation time begins to drift.

One solution would be to set a manualpeerlist up, like this:
w32tm /config /update /manualpeerlist:"pool.ntp.org time.windows.com time.apple.com time.google.com"

Another solution would be doing that via group policy…

References:
Windows Time service tools and settings

USB Type C, USB Type A and Canon scanners–they do not work.

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My (newest) Canon scanner has a USB Type C (USB-C) plug.

The supplied cable is a USB-C to USB Type A cable.

My laptop only has USB-C.
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So I thought, I’ll just use a short USB-A to USB-C adapter:
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Seems like it would work.

Nope.

You can’t go USB-C –> USB-A (adapter) –> USB-C.

The scanner seems to have power and/or timeout issues.

The solution is to either a) use a USB-C –> USB-C cable or b) use a laptop with a USB-A port.

Saturday Link Roundup – Remote Desktop Edition

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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:

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