Disk cloning has become a common practice for upgrading to a larger hard disk drive. Drives are cloned to make a similar copy and use the cloned copy and original drive together. Also, many virtualization tools are being used to virtualize the physical hard disk drive. The physical hard drives are virtualized to create virtual hard disk drives, and several virtual machine clones are created with the existing Virtual hard disk drives. As these are identical copies, the chances are that these copies may have identical disk signatures. When you use both disks with identical signatures at the same time, you may run into the Disk Signature Collision problem. //

Admin CMD:

diskpart
list disk 
select disk x
uniqueid disk
uniqueid disk id=4B750CFE-20F6-43C4-A2C7-98166F463722

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With Ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, just drag-and-drop files to the USB drive and boot them directly.
You can copy many files to different folders and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (screenshot).
You can also browse ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files in local disks and directly boot them.
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
Most types of OS supported

Ventoy is a free and open-source tool that can turn any USB into a multiboot device. Once configured, you can drag and drop ISO files onto the drive, and all of them will be available via a boot menu. More importantly, you can continue to use your USB drive as a regular media storage device.
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

Honestly, SB has been security theater from the beginning because it depended on at least three entities the user and/or developers had no control over to certify the chain-of-trust is uncompromised. //

This is why many people in Linux land don't turn on SB. It's causing more trouble than its worth, given how easily it's bypassed on most hardware. And that's why I pointed out about the two conditions for SB to be useful. A) the UEFI options must default to fail to safe - refuse to boot (which most of the time they don't), B) Microsoft nor the OEMs can be part of the chain of trust, it must be entirely local and auditable. Those two conditions are also why it'll never properly function on consumer grade hardware.

Microsoft ended official support for Windows 10 in 2025, but the company may have a harder time than expected putting the operating system out to pasture. After promising a year of optional extended update support, Microsoft has changed its policy, tacking on another year to its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. If you are still clinging to Windows 10, you don’t have to do anything but enjoy that extra year. //

That program was set to end on October 12, 2026, but Microsoft has updated its policy with hardly a whisper, pushing back the end of extended updates to October 12, 2027. The ESU support page was updated with that date, and Microsoft’s blog post on the program has a new editor’s note confirming the change.

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates#cw
• https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/06/24/stay-secure-with-windows-11-copilot-pcs-and-windows-365-before-support-ends-for-windows-10

https://youtu.be/_AwzaZmRNsI?si=U_xxdMVhz9cFyySj

At work we triggered the update using the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\AvailableUpdates set to 0x5944 method; and it honestly went surprisingly well. That said; it's 100% thinkpads and enterprise-line Dells here; and I have the unpleasant suspicion that the 'consumer motherboard that maybe gets an update if AGESA needs to be bumped' segment has some...under-tested DBX update functionality.

We've also had a veritable torrent of WU-delivered UEFI capsule BIOS updates go out; so the OEMs seem to be doing things on their end as well.

Luckily, to the best I've been able to pin anyone down on the question, failure to update just means not being protected according to what secure boot is designed to do, rather than the system just not booting; so we shouldn't have too large an epidemic of random home wintendos just falling over and dying; and realistically home users don't exactly //

just had to check for these in powershell:

$([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI dbdefault).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023')
and
$([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023')$([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023')

depending on which DB we have it stored (let me know if you know any other place). //

This script works pretty well if you don't know how to do it for yourself, or in your corporate environment. https://github.com/anomixer/Update-SecureBootCert

Beginning June 24, three certificates that cryptographically verify that each piece of firmware and software that loads during system boot will expire. The Microsoft-signed certificates are the linchpins of Secure Boot, a Microsoft-designed chain of trust. Secure Boot checks the digital signatures of all firmware that loads during system startup to ensure it originates from a trusted provider, such as the manufacturer of the motherboard the system runs on. //

For those of you that need to do a manual update, and you have the latest firmware, and Microsoft Security Centre states there isn't enough information to update your certificate automatically, you can go here and grab the certificates: Microsoft UEFI Guidance
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-secure-boot-key-creation-and-management-guidance?view=windows-11#14-signature-databases-db-and-dbx

If you need a quick chart explanation of the different files, you can go Here.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/windows-secure-boot-certificate-expiration-and-ca-updates-7ff40d33-95dc-4c3c-8725-a9b95457578e

If you need a certificate not on the guidance page, you can go to:
Microsoft Secure Boot Open Source Repository.
https://github.com/microsoft/secureboot_objects

Is one of your apps or windows hidden off-screen? This is usually a problem for computers that have external monitors attached, but it can also happen due to issues with your settings. No matter the cause, we’ll teach you how to regain your hidden windows in seconds.

Because the kernel session is restored from the disk, your drivers never fully reinitialize after a "shut down." This leads to weird bugs where Bluetooth devices suddenly won't pair, USB devices aren't recognized, or your audio randomly isn't working. When you read the advice "restart your computer to fix the issue," it's because a restart is the only way to guarantee that everything actually starts from a clean slate. Turning the PC off and back on doesn't work like you'd expect, which is an extremely common problem. //

If you want your PC to actually shut down, you can do it with one command. Run PowerShell as administrator and run the following command:

 powercfg /h off

This disables hibernation entirely, which removes Fast Startup as a side effect and frees up any disk space used by the hiberfil.sys file. Every time you click shut down after that, your PC will completely shut down, just like restarting your PC or disconnecting the power.

Alternatively, clicking the Restart button will always work as you'd expect. If you don't care to disable Fast Startup, make sure to actually click Restart instead of clicking Shut Down.

Microsoft knows that these are all issues because PowerToys has fixes for all of them, except they're not fixes that make it into Windows 11.

Microsoft CTO confesses that 30-year-old code from the mid-90s still forms the bedrock of Windows 11 — ancient Win32 API still the backbone, but CTO says it's 'more relevant than ever in 2026' //

As Russinovich eloquently puts it, those of us invested in the computer scene in the 90s “were thinking flying cars and moon stations by the year 2026, not Win32.” The admission that such old software tech is still the "bedrock" of Windows today may be the CTO strategically sharing a cold, hard truth, providing a 'let's be real' moment as part of Microsoft’s latest charm offensive. //

Russinovich highlights that Win32 was also the bedrock for tools like Sysmon and ZoomIt, which he actually wrote back in 1996. These tools are now “more relevant than ever in 2026,” as parts of Windows 11 and PowerToys, respectively, reckons the CTO.

There are three types of file links supported in the NTFS file system: hard links, junctions, and symbolic links. Otherwise known as Reparse Points.

Hard Links can only be created for files. Any changes to that file are instantly visible to applications that access it through the hard links that reference it. Hard links do not support UNC paths (network paths that begin with \). Hard links to a file will not have a shortcut arrow icon on them.

Symbolic Links are soft links that are basically advanced shortcuts. You can create a symbolic link to a local or remote file, folder, or shares path, and that link will appear to be the same as the target source. Symbolic links do support UNC paths (network paths that begin with \). When you open a symbolic link, you will be redirected to the target source. Symbolic links will have a shortcut arrow icon on them.

Junctions (Directory Junction) are soft links that can only be created to a local folder (directory) path. Junction points make it appear as though folder (directory) actually exists at the location of the junction point, and your app won’t know any better. Junction points do not support UNC paths (network paths that begin with \). Junction points will have a shortcut arrow icon on them.

Deleting anything in the link/junction or target (source) folder will delete it in both folders.

Deleting the hard link, symbolic link, or junction point itself will not delete anything in the target (source) folder.

If the modern Settings UI is broken (sometimes seen after feature updates), the classic Date and Time dialog still works.

• Press Win + R, type timedate.cpl and press Enter.

When the Settings UI is unavailable, Windows provides command‑line tools to set or inspect time zone entries.
Key commands:

• Check current time zone: tzutil /g
• List available time zones: tzutil /l
• Set a time zone: tzutil /s "Time Zone Name" (the Windows time zone string, e.g., "Pacific Standard Time").

Originally, Flyby11 was a simple patcher to remove the restrictions stopping you from installing Windows 11 (24H2) on unsupported hardware.
Old PC? No TPM, no Secure Boot, unsupported CPU? Flyby11 let you install Windows 11 anyway.

After helping thousands upgrade, one thing became clear:
Bypassing checks is only half the battle.
We needed a full setup solution — one that respects user choices instead of Microsoft's defaults.

FlyOOBE was the next step:

Skip the fluff
Remove the junk
Take full control from first boot
Because your PC should work for you, not the other way around.
FlyOOBE keeps the original idea alive and pushes it even further.

Sharing is more dependable if every machine on the network has a credential built in credential manager for each of the other networked machines.

1. Open the Credentials Manager from the Windows Control Panel.
2. Go to Windows Credentials.
3. Click Add a Windows credential.
4. In the "Internet or network address" field, enter \ followed by the computer name or IP address of the computer sharing files or printers.
5. Enter the username and password for an administrator account for the machine you are trying to access. For example I network 4 computers. In each computer I created a credential for the other 3.

Note: Even if computers use the same user account name and password, even the same MS account, you still need to create a credential for it.

It must be a password, not a pin. While you can still use a pin to log in, you must restart the device and log into it using a password at least once for this to work.

Don't replace your fleet—revitalize it. Transform your existing PCs and Macs into secure, cloud-first endpoints. Deploy at scale from anywhere, with no complex IT requirements.

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