A retro computing connoisseur has installed and booted Microsoft Windows 3.1X on a Ryzen 9 9900X and RTX 5060 Ti PC system. That’s a 1992 OS working on a bare-metal 2024 Zen5 CPU and 2025 Blackwell GPU. The full story contains a few nuances, but basically, a system and OS separated by over 30 years of huge advances kind of play nicely together. //

This Asus motherboard’s ‘classic BIOS’ functionality doesn’t get in the way of users tinkering with old OSes like Windows 3.1X when the built-in Compatibility Support Module (CSM) is enabled. Moreover, we noticed Omores initially prepared the system using a Windows 95 boot floppy to create the bootable DOS FAT16 partition necessary for setup.

Open the Command Prompt as Administrator and run the Tasklist command; it will show you a list of all the running processes.

To view the processes, type Taskview and hit Enter.

To kill any particular process, use the Taskkill command. For example, to kill Chrome, run the command as:

Taskkill /IM chrome.exe /F

Where /F is used to kill the process forcefully. You can also kill any particular process by using its ID; the tasklist command displays the process ID’s as well. You can see the PID column in the screenshot. To kill any process using its ID, run the command as:

Taskkill /PID 2704 /F

Secure Boot is a feature of UEFI, and it's a requirement for any computer that wants to run a modern version of Windows. It exists to protect us against malware that infects your computer's bootloader. There's a security certificate stored in the UEFI which your computer uses to check the Windows bootloader, to ensure it's legitimately signed by Microsoft, and not an imposter.

So far, so good, but what happens when the certificate in your UEFI expires? Well, we're all about to find out.

There are two ways to run Caddy as a service on Windows: sc.exe or WinSW.

sc.exe

To create the service, run:

sc.exe create caddy start= auto binPath= "YOURPATH\caddy.exe run"

(replace YOURPATH with the actual path to your caddy.exe)

To start:

sc.exe start caddy

To stop:

sc.exe stop caddy

The "out of memory" pop-up says your'e running out of the limit on private committed memory—a type of virtual memory. Not that you're running out of RAM (physical memory). It doesn't matter how much available RAM you have. Having lots of Available RAM does not allow you to exceed the commit limit. The commit limit is the sum of your total RAM (whether in use or not!) plus your current pagefile size.

Conversely, what "uses up" commit limit (which is mostly the creation of process-private virtual address space) does not necessarily use any RAM! But the OS won't allow its creation unless it knows there is some place to store it if it ever needs to. So you can run into the commit limit without using all of your RAM, or even most of your RAM.

If you want to find out what's using committed memory you need to look at Task Manager's "Details" tab and enable the "Commit size" column.

Nor will the total of the "Commit size" columns add up to the "commit charge" (30.1 GB on your machine), because other things contribute to commit charge: Nonpaged and paged pool and some more "subtle" mechanisms like copy-on-write sections, pagefile-backed sections, AWE mappings... but these are usually small compared to process-private v.a.s.)

On that tab, the "Memory (Private working set)" column corresponds to what the "Processes" tab shows for "Memory". This is the RAM currently assigned to each process for its committed virtual address space. The remainder will be in the pagefile. But, again, processes have other types of address space, mostly of the sort called "mapped", and some fraction of that will be in RAM as well. There are other system-wide things created by the OS, not specific to any process, that use up RAM too.

To move the Windows 11 Start menu from the center to the left, right-click on the taskbar, select "Taskbar settings," then under "Taskbar behaviors," change the "Taskbar alignment" from "Center" to "Left." This will shift the Start button and other icons back to the left side of the screen.

Audit Mode is a special Windows setup environment used mainly by IT professionals and manufacturers. Unlike the normal Windows installation that takes you through the OOBE (where you create user accounts, set up privacy options, and connect to Wi-Fi), Audit Mode allows administrators to bypass this process.

Key characteristics of Audit Mode:

• Bypasses OOBE so the system can be configured before end-user access.
• Allows installation of drivers, applications, and updates.
• Enables creating and capturing Windows images for deployment.
• Provides administrator access without creating new user accounts.

You’ll know you are in Audit Mode if:

• You see a System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) window open automatically after login.
• The PC bypasses the OOBE setup process.
• The desktop shows an administrator account with no other user accounts available.

The most straightforward way to exit Audit Mode is by using the built-in Sysprep tool.

1. Boot your PC into Windows 11.
2. When the System Preparation Tool window appears, check the options carefully.
3. Under System Cleanup Action, select:
4. Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE).
5. Check the box Generalize if you want to remove system-specific data (optional, mostly for deployment).
6. Under Shutdown Options, choose Reboot.
7. Click OK.

If the Sysprep window does not appear automatically or you closed it, you can launch it manually through Command Prompt.

1. Press Windows + R, type cmd, and press Enter.
2. In Command Prompt, type the following command and press Enter: C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe /oobe /reboot
3. Windows will reboot into OOBE, where you can set up your account and finish the installation process.

To automatically start a program in Windows 11, you can go to Settings > Apps > Startup and turn on the toggle for the desired app. Alternatively, you can place a shortcut of the program in the Startup folder located at

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\forcerunasinvoker]
@="Run without privilege elevation"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\forcerunasinvoker\command]
@="cmd /min /C \"set __COMPAT_LAYER=RUNASINVOKER && start \"\" \"%1\"\""

Save this text in <name_of_file>.reg and add it to the Windows Registry. (Double-clicking on it should do the trick.)

Afterwards, right-click the app you'd like to run without administrative privileges and select "Run without privilege elevation".

In some cases - small amount 0.1% of programs may ask twice about UAC prompt. //

You can add this to the registry for only the currently signed in user by changing the keys to :

and

Service Control - Create, Start, Stop, Query or Delete any Windows SERVICE. The command options for SC are case sensitive.

Voidtools' Everything is a great File Explorer replacement //

WinDirStat is a tell-all we all need
A cold hard look into the storage //

ShutUp10++ is an absolute must-have
This is where I take control back from Windows //

Autoruns gives you a very deep look under the hood
Autoruns often feels like my secret weapon

There are two important things you must do now: confirm you have Secure Boot enabled and that your system firmware is updated. The Windows System Information tool can show if Secure Boot is enabled. However, any firmware update should come from your PC manufacturer or the platform managing virtual firmware.

If your system is eligible, the update typically happens quietly in the background. You should pay more attention to devices with dual-boot setups or PCs with legacy boot remnants, as they are less likely to get automatic deployment. You may have to navigate to this registry path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot and set the AvailableUpdates registry value to a nonzero value. //

You can view the current certificate on your PC by running this PowerShell command: (Get-AuthenticodeSignature "C:\Windows\Boot\EFI\bootmgfw.efi").SignerCertificate | Format-List Subject,Issuer,NotAfter,Thumbprint

You can run this command on PowerShell, and a non-zero value for AvailableUpdates would confirm your computer is eligible to receive certificate updates: Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot" | Format-List

CursorWrap is a standout utility from the recent PowerToys release (v0.97, to be precise). It turns your linear, multi-screen array into an infinite circle and eliminates the dead ends of your desktop in no time.

1. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run prompt. Type regedit and hit Enter.
2. Navigate to the following registry path:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search
3. Right-click the empty space in the right pane. Select New followed by DWORD (32-bit) Value.
   Set its name to BingSearchEnabled. Set the value to 0.
4. Restart your PC for the changes to take effect.
   And that's it. Your Start menu will now only search locally.

If you're on Windows 11 version 24H2 or newer running the May 2020 Update or later, there's an alternative registry path that you might need to update. Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
Create a DWORD called DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and set its value to 1 using the same steps mentioned above. This disables both web results and search box suggestions in one shot.

These are simple utilities to manipulate Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks (VHD/VHDX) from the command line.

This utility copies files and directory trees while fully preserving all timestamps, and when possible, NTFS compression and encryption attributes.

The primary benefit to using vcopy is that it preserves all timestamps and NTFS compression and encryption attributes, when possible. Normally, copy operations will fail to preserve any of the timestamps on directories and the creation and access timestamps on files. Especially in the case of directory timestamps, this default copy behavior wreaks havoc on people who depend on their files and directory trees having meaningful timestamps.

You can also suppress and strip out certain file attributes from being copied; for example, the read-only attribute when copying files from a CD-ROM.

Additionally, vcopy can compute hashes for files as they are being copied, eliminating the need for a wasteful second read pass.

Notepad2 is a free, open-source text editor created by Florian Balmer. I have been a user of Notepad2 for a few years; it is the primary text editor that I use every day. This page was created as a way for me to share some of my Notepad2 resources.

The HashCheck Shell Extension makes it easy for anyone to calculate and verify checksums and hashes from Windows Explorer. In addition to integrating file checksumming functionality into Windows, HashCheck can also create and verify SFV files (and other forms of checksum files, such as .md5 files). It is fast and efficient, with a very light disk and memory footprint, and it is open-source.

winisoutils - Windows ISO Disc Image Utilities