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.
Support for Windows 10 will end in October 2025
After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or technical support for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.
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Hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.
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Press the power button again to turn on your device.
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On the first sign that Windows has started (for example, some devices show the manufacturer’s logo when restarting) hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.
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Press the power button again to turn on your device.
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When Windows restarts, hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.
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Press the power button again to turn on your device.
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Allow your device to fully restart. You will enter winRE.
Now that you are in winRE, you will follow these steps to take you to safe mode:
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On the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.
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After your device restarts, you'll see a list of options. Select option 5 from the list or press F5 for Safe Mode with Networking.
Folder2Iso is a portable Window and Linux application that creates an ISO from any folder. The root folder can contain sub-folders.
It's a GUI of mkisofs.
Works under Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and Linux.
Folder2Iso is compiled for 32 and 64bit systems.
HDGraph helps you to free disk space : it finds for you the largest folders on your drive.
It's a free tool allowing to graphically display the hard disk space usage : it shows all the directories and subdirectories of the hard drive on a single graph, allowing to see the largest directories at a glance.
Rename files at once. One of the most powerful renamers. And it's freeware.
One For All
Advanced Renamer is a program for renaming multiple files and folders at once. By configuring renaming methods the names can be manipulated in various ways.
It is easy to set up a batch job using multiple methods on a large amount of files. The 14 different methods enables you to change the names, attributes, and timestamps of files in one go. The files can also be copied or moved to new locations based on information in the files.
With Advanced Renamer you can construct new file names by adding, removing, replacing, changing case, or giving the file a brand new name based on known information about the file.
Before performing the operations on the files you can verify that the output will be correct and if you perform the rename and regret it, you can undo the complete batch.
Bypass TPM restrictions and embrace the future.
Others such a RegFind and Pping were popular tools. More information on these tools later...
Copyright © 2011-2012 Intellisoft AG, Switzerland ///
www.intellisoft.ch
pping - parallel ping
Our famous port ping tool written in .NET Core
I want the exact same behavior ping gives me on the console and I wished I just could add a port number to it and it will work.
An A-Z Index of Windows CMD commands.
Former Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer shared some history about one of those finely aged bits: the Format dialogue box, which is still used in fully updated Windows 11 installs to this day when you format a disk using Windows Explorer.
Plummer says he wrote the Format dialog in late 1994, when the team was busy porting the user interface from the consumer-focused Windows 95 (released in mid-1995) to the more-stable but more resource-intensive Windows NT (NT 4.0, released in mid-1996, was the first to use the 95-style UI).
Formatting disks "was just one of those areas where Windows NT was different enough from Windows 95 that we had to come up with some custom UI," wrote Plummer on X, formerly Twitter. Plummer didn't specify what those differences were, but even the early versions of Windows NT could already handle multiple filesystems like FAT and NTFS, whereas Windows 95 mostly used FAT16 for everything.
"I got out a piece of paper and wrote down all the options and choices you could make with respect to formatting a disk, like filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, encryption, and so on," Plummer continued. "Then I busted out [Visual] C++ 2.0 and used the Resource Editor to lay out a simple vertical stack of all the choices you had to make, in the approximate order you had to make. It wasn't elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived. That was some 30 years ago, and the dialog is still my temporary one from that Thursday morning, so be careful about checking in 'temporary' solutions!"
The Windows NT version of the Format dialog is the one that survives today because the consumer and professional versions of Windows began using the NT codebase in the late '90s and early 2000s with the Windows 2000 and Windows XP releases. Plenty has changed since then, but system files like the kernel still have "Windows NT" labels in Windows 11.
Plummer also said the Format tool's 32GB limit for FAT volumes was an arbitrary decision he made that we're still living with among modern Windows versions—FAT32 drives formatted at the command line or using other tools max out between 2TB and 16TB, depending on sector size. It seems quaint, but PC ads from late 1994 advertise hard drives that are, at most, a few hundred megabytes in size, and 3.5-inch 1.44MB floppies and CD-ROM drives were about the best you could do for removable storage. From that vantage point, it would be hard to conceive of fingernail-sized disks that could give you 256GB of storage for $20. //
Red Zero Ars Praetorian
12y
510
"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution." - Attribution Unknown. Having encountered this in the work environment many, many times, I know the truth of this. //
While the flexible security model employed by Windows NT-based systems allows full control over security and file permissions, managing permissions so that users have appropriate access to files, directories and Registry keys can be difficult. There's no built-in way to quickly view user accesses to a tree of directories or keys. AccessEnum gives you a full view of your file system and Registry security settings in seconds, making it the ideal tool for helping you find security holes and lock down permissions where necessary.
Musk's problem was that his laptop was automatically connecting to the local Wi-Fi, which doesn't have a password. If a user can install without connecting to the internet, it is still possible to get Windows 11 up and running without using a Microsoft account. //
On a sacrificial PC, we found that Windows 11 can indeed be installed without a Microsoft account. We used Shift + F10 to drop to a command line at the network connection page and entered OOBE\BYPASSNRO to force a reboot and make the "I don't have internet" option appear. To be fair to Musk, it is quite convoluted.
Running a personal Windows 11 device without a Microsoft account is not a great experience, however. Some elements of the operating system simply do not work, and Microsoft is clearly keen for customers to have an account. If that's not a path you wish to tread, there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there.
In the early days of microcomputers, everyone just invented their own user interfaces, until an Apple-influenced IBM standard brought about harmony. Then, sadly, the world forgot. In 1981, the IBM PC arrived and legitimized microcomputers as business tools, not just home playthings. The PC largely created the industry that the …
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