QTTabBar is a Shell-Extension to add Tab functionality to Windows Explorer - folder window.
Besides, QTTabBar provides various features that certainly help you deal with files and folders.

What can it do?

Most of the functionalities are activated when you enable the toolbars offered by QTTabBar in a folder window.

Tab Bar realizes ... the tabbed browsing of folders. Command Bars offer various command buttons including ones added by Plug-Ins. Extra Views show extra folder view in a folder window.

Once you enable them, QTTabBar installs some kind of hooks into the folder window and change the behavior of the Explorer to suit the need of advanced users.

For example, a new tab will be opened by middle-clicking on a folder icon. Preview tooltip is displayed when you point image, text, and movie file by mouse cursor. Do you want to mark an important file? Change the color of the name of it. When you move mouse cursor over folder icons, you'll see a square with blue arrow. Click and access to contents of the folder instantly!

Creating and using a VHD from scratch

Supported or not, new or old, this is everything you need to know.

But there are three things about the end of Windows 10 support that are slightly different from other recent end-of-life dates:

1. A historically short time window between when the operating system was replaced and when security updates stopped.

2. A historically large percentage of the user base still actively uses the fading operating system. //

3. Many Windows 10 PCs can't (officially) be updated to Windows 11 because they don't meet the system requirements. //

All of these factors taken together are setting us up for something we haven't really seen in the Windows ecosystem before: a majority or a large minority of active Internet-connected PCs that will suddenly stop getting security updates, leaving either paid support, a new PC, or a switch to an entirely different operating system as the easiest paths forward.

Now that we're a year out from the end of Windows 10, and because Windows 10 does not appear to be going anywhere, we're publishing a series of articles exploring alternatives to spending money, either on a new PC or on continued Windows 10 updates.

Microsoft will officially end support for its most popular operating system in 2025. Here's what you should do with your Windows 10 PCs that fail Microsoft's Windows 11 compatibility tests before that day arrives. //

Business customers will need to pay dearly to stick with Windows 10. A license for the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program is sold as a subscription. For the first year, the cost is $61. For year two, the price doubles, and it doubles again for year three. The blog post doesn't do the math on those, probably because the total is uncomfortably high. A three-year ESU subscription will cost $61 + $122 + $244, for a total of $427.

In the original announcement of Extended Security Updates last year, a Microsoft spokesperson said that there will be a version of this program for consumers, but the company has yet to provide any additional details.

0patch does not replace executable files or modify them in any way. It corrects them only in memory, which can be done without relaunching them. //

• quickly fix "0days" and unpatched vulnerabilities,
• micropatch end-of-life and unsupported products (such as Office 2010 or Java runtime),
• provide patches for legacy OSes and applications (such as Windows 7, Server 2008 R2),
• patch what’s exploited in the wild,
• fix vulnerable 3rd party components and customized software.

So now we understand the problem. RuntimeBroker.exe crashed (due to heap corruption, according to the call stack in the RuntimeBroker.exe crash dump, shown to the right) and it took more than 15 seconds to upload the crash dump, presumably due to my flaky hotel WiFi. During this time my start menu was inoperable.

This deserves reiterating. My start menu was hung due to the combination of heap corruption and WerFault.exe deciding that it needed to upload the crash dump before releasing the old process so that a new one could be started. //

Klaus Kjærgaard on January 18, 2023 at 7:19 am
I had some of the same issues – just with start menu being too slow. I disabled web search for start menu, and it works, is fast, only finds apps (and other local stuff; documents, folder, settings – but only when you navigate to that specified search target).
Bottomline – turning off web search in start menu = speed

regedit/use at own discretion:
HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
“DisableSearchBoxSuggestions”=dword:00000001 //

Aaron Avery on January 18, 2023 at 11:56 am
Thanks for researching that, Bruce. It’s been quite a while since my start menu was that bad (or even non-functional). I landed on Keypirinha as my configurable third-party launcher of choice and it provides a much better experience for most things. Once in a while I’ll want some control panel (Settings) page that it refuses to find and I go back to the start menu for that. But having it index things like RDP machine names and Putty sessions saves time.

The WSL commands below are listed in a format supported by PowerShell or Windows Command Prompt. To run these commands from a Bash / Linux distribution command line, you must replace wsl with wsl.exe. For a full list of commands, run wsl --help.

But what should you do to fix the problem when you have deleted an administrator account on Windows 10 by mistake? //

1. Click on the Start button to open Start menu.
2. Press the Shift key and hold it.
3. Choose Restart from the Start menu.
4. Wait for the rebooting until you enter the Windows Recovery Environment.
5. Choose Troubleshoot and Advanced Options to see the window shown below.
6. Select Command Prompt and repeat step 4 ~ 8.
7. Type net user administrator /active: yes and hit Enter.
8. Wait for it to complete.
9. Type net localgroup administrators UserName /add (please replace UserName with your current account name) and hit Enter.
10. Create a new user account with administrator rights.
11. Type net user username * /add

For those feeling stuck on older hardware still running windows 10 because of Microsoft’s hardware requirements, be aware that you can upgrade to windows 11 fully legally and without breaking any Microsoft rules.

I did this on a 10 year old I3 machine with 6gb of ram a few months ago. Windows updates automatically continue to run just fine monthly and windows defender updates come through nearly daily just fine also. The only downside I am aware of is that once you upgrade to let’s say windows 23h2, windows will not automatically try to take the machine to windows 24h2 when it comes out. You will need to do that type of upgrade manually using these same instructions. Microsoft is supporting windows 11 sub releases (like win11 23h2) for 2 years after they come out.

My memory is there are 2 requirements to do the upgrade: at least tpm ver 1 and a uefi boot machine (not a master boot machine)

Here is where I got the instructions:
https://dongknows.com/steps-for-windows-11-upgrade-on-unsupported-hardware/

Here are my notes on what I did and where I got good information:
https://lsattle.wordpress.com/2024/09/11/windows-11-upgrading-older-hardware-to-windows-11-and-not-braking-any-rules/
Reply →

Fr00tL00ps
September 12, 2024

Thank you Lynn, Bravo. This is an excellent post and should be pinned to the top so it gets more attention. These resources/links pretty much cover everything you need to know to get Win 11 running on older hardware particularly those on a tight budget who possess a DIY mindset. It is not hard, just follow the instructions.

For context I refuse to replace my Mothers 12 year old Asus N53SV laptop (2nd Gen i5 & 8Gb RAM). It was purchased with Vista and over the years has since had Win 7, Win 10 and currently Win 11 and Office 2007 installed, all with the same product key/s. The only hardware mods it has received is 4Gb extra RAM, an SSD and USB wifi adapter prior to Win 10 fresh install and it has never missed a beat.

Admittedly I am an IT professional and she has very basic needs ie. email, social media and solitaire, but regardless it is still possible. Even paying your local IT technician would be cheaper than purchasing a new machine.

Some other points to consider which aren’t mentioned in your links;

• Win 11 is resource hungry so adding extra RAM would be a benefit.
• Likewise, replace/upgrade OS HDD to an equivalent SSD.
• Disconnect internet cable/wifi connection prior to install. This will force Windows to create a local user account to login rather than signing in with a Microsoft account, which you DO NOT need.
• Once logged in, change two power settings;
  a. create custom power profile and set it to high performance (Microsofts default settings may cause performance issues on older hardware)
  b. disable fast startup. (Caching previous sessions can be a security issue and if you have an SSD there will be negligible gain)
  • Chris Titus Tech’s Windows Utility is an amazing open source tool for home users and it costs nothing. A single Powershell command allows you to; Bulk install/update all your commonly used standard software via Winget. Debloat all your unwanted Microsoft crapware/telemetry/utilities. Tweak many hard to find settings such as Windows updates and repositioning the start button. Watch videos at these links;
    https://christitus.com/windows-tool/
    https://christitus.com/windows-utility-improved/

In Windows Vista or later, you can create a "junction folder"/"Symbolic link" to redirect the contents of one to another.

Simply type:

 mklink /d "c:\data\network docs" "\\server\shareddata\"

You must have Admin privileges when you run CMD.

The Settings app has taken over, but Control Panels aren't going anywhere yet. //

What's incredible about some of the Control Panels at this point is how far back some of their designs go. You're never more than a double-click away from some piece of UI that has been essentially exactly the same since 1996's Windows NT 4.0, when Microsoft's more-stable NT operating system was refreshed with the same user interface as Windows 95 (modern Windows versions descend from NT, and not 95 or 98). The Control Panel idea is even older, dating all the way back to Windows 1.0 in 1985.

You can compress the Windows 10 installation size to use less space, and in this guide, we show you how.

If you are looking how to remove invalid files from your system, you will need to run the del /s command:

 del /s "\\?\<File path>"

This command deletes specified files from the disk. Keep in mind that deleting files from the Windows command line does not send files to the Recycle Bin, that means that the file will be lost. However as it's invalid you shouldn't be worried about it. For example, to delete a file that can't be deleted manually with the name helloworld. and located in the path E:\Our Code World\Workspace, you could use the following command to remove it:

 REM Delete the helloworld. file !
 del /s "\\?\E:\Our Code World\Workspace\helloworld."

Microsoft has confirmed that the venerable Windows Control panel will finally be put out to pasture in favor of a shiny new Settings app. //

Re: cue the wailing
Control panel also lets you do amazingly complicated and advanced things like... opening more than one control panel item at a time!!!

The number of times I've forgotten that Settings is a kids toy, been looking at one part of the settings menu, realised I needed info from elsewhere so separately go to that other area... and then realise that no, you can't do that. It's binned off what you were looking at before and used the existing Settings session/window to open the new thing instead.

Re: cue the wailing
No, about how you can't set multiple IPs on a network adapter using the settings app.

Or change advanced hardware settings like jumbo frames or VLAN tagging.

Or update the drivers of the thing you're looking at.

Re: cue the wailing
It is done using PowerShell 7 only

Re: cue the wailing
Using undocumented commands - which will eventually be documented, but by then they'll be deprecated.

Prank your friends, family and co-workers into believing their workstation has crashed!
Simply follow the instructions below!

When running in kernel mode rather than user mode, security software has full access to a system's hardware and software, which makes it more powerful and flexible; this also means that a bad update like CrowdStrike's can cause a lot more problems.

Recent versions of macOS have deprecated third-party kernel extensions for exactly this reason, one explanation for why Macs weren't taken down by the CrowdStrike update. But past efforts by Microsoft to lock third-party security companies out of the Windows kernel—most recently in the Windows Vista era—have been met with pushback from European Commission regulators. That level of skepticism is warranted, given Microsoft's past (and continuing) record of using Windows' market position to push its own products and services. Any present-day attempt to restrict third-party vendors' access to the Windows kernel would be likely to draw similar scrutiny. //

For context, analytics company Parametrix Insurance estimated the cost of the outage to Fortune 500 companies somewhere in the realm of $5.4 billion.

Not long after Windows PCs and servers at the Australian limb of audit and tax advisory Grant Thornton started BSODing last Friday, senior systems engineer Rob Woltz remembered a small but important fact: When PCs boot, they consider barcode scanners no differently to keyboards.

That knowledge nugget became important as the firm tried to figure out how to respond to the mess CrowdStrike created, which at Grant Thornton Australia threw hundreds of PCs and no fewer than 100 servers into the doomloop that CrowdStrike's shoddy testing software made possible.

All of Grant Thornton's machines were encrypted with Microsoft's BitLocker tool, which meant that recovery upon restart required CrowdStrike's multi-step fix and entry of a 48-character BitLocker key. //

Woltz is pleased that his idea translated into a swift recovery, but also a little regretful he didn't think of using QR codes – they could have encoded sufficient data to automate the entire remediation process.

Try Basic Fixes
Uninstall any third-party antivirus program: Third-party antivirus programs can sometimes interfere with the Windows Security app and prevent it from opening on your Windows 11 PC. To avoid any conflicts, it’s best to disable or uninstall any third-party antivirus program.
Install Windows updates: Updates are crucial for any operating system and Windows is no exception. Aside from new features and security patches, these updates also carry important bug fixes. You can download and install any available updates and see if that resolves the issue.

Is your Windows Defender not turning on? Are you looking for full solutions to get rid of this issue? This post will show you how to repair Windows Defender in Windows 11/10/8/7 so your PC can be protected from viruses.