Category Archives: Windows

Windows: Prevent auto-registering of your device in Azure (Workplace Join)

In Windows 10 and Windows 11, when you log into an app (e.g. Teams) with your Microsoft Online account, you might get a pop-up: Stay signed in to all your apps You will have a big OK button to accept this or a small link saying "No, sign in to this app only". If you click on the OK button, all Apps that use a Microsoft Online account will now be logged in with the account. In addition, Windows tries to do a Workplace Join to Azure. So in most cases, clicking OK does more bad than good. To prevent Read more [...]

Windows 11: Bring back the Classic Context Menus

Windows 11 brings a new version of the context menus (the ones that appear when you right-click on a folder, for example). They contain less items, so this can be quite annoying. If you want to bring back the behaviour from Windows 10, do either of the following: Open the Command Prompt (admin) and run the “reg add “HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32″ /f /ve” command Open the Registry in the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID” Read more [...]

Windows Server 2022: The October 2023 Update installs and adds the Azure ARC Setup to auto start

With security update KB5031364 from October 10, 2023 for Windows Server 2022, Microsoft also installs the Azure ARC Setup and adds it to auto start. This means that on the server, you will now see the Azure ARC Setup in the system tray. Most server administrators do not like this silent adding of unneeded features. To get rid of this, you can use the following Powershell (as admin) command: Remove-WindowsFeature AzureArcSetup This needs a restart of the server. What is Azure ARC? This Read more [...]

Microsoft Edge: How to disable the "Download Microsoft Edge mobile app" pop-up

Starting a month ago, I occasionally get the following pop-up in Edge: Download Microsoft Edge mobile app Take your AI-powered copilot for the web on the go! This is not a pop-up coming from a web site, but a built-in pop up from the browser itself. So how can this and similar pop-ups from Microsoft be permanently disabled in Edge? Here you go: In the browser bar, type edge://flags. This will present a list with browser experimental options. Type Show feature and workflow recommendations Read more [...]

Windows PKI CA: "The certificate has invalid policy"

When you try to issue a new certificate on a Windows client, this might not work and you get the following error: The certificate has invalid policy. 0x800b0113 (CERT_E_INVALID_POLICY) The root cause of this is that the issuing CA has restricted the issuance policies you can use. If you have created a certificate template that uses a policy that is not allowed, you will get that error message. There is a quick and dirty method to get rid of this error (but it also makes your CA a bit more Read more [...]

Windows: USB stick not recognized after formatting with Linux

I had recently created a bootable USB disk for a Linux distro. After I did not use that anymore, I wanted to format it in my Windows 10 machine. But it was not recognized anymore. No drive letter, not visible in File Explorer. In "Disk Management" it was visible, but I could not format it there either. Using command line tool "Diskpart" did not help either as the "clean" command ended with an "Access Denied" error. In the end, the folloing sequence of commands helped me in "Diskpart": list Read more [...]

Windows CA Server: Trust relationship to the Domain Failed

When a client or a server that is joined to a Windows Domain loses the trust relationship to its object in Active Directory, you normally get this error message, when you try to login: The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed What you then normally do is to un-join the computer from the domain and join it again. The problem with with a Windows CA (Certificate Authority) Server is that you cannot un-join it from the domain. So that would mean you have to Read more [...]

Windows: Delete Folder with a trailing Space Character

Recently, I had the problem that a Robocopy script created folder with a space character at the end on the Windows NTFS file system. So for example

"FolderName "

In File Explorer, I could not delete the folder, the error message said "Object does not exist". Also renaming the folder was not possible.

The onyl solution was to go to a CMD box and issue the command

rd /s "\\?\D:\bad\folder\path "

Just answer "y* when you are asked if you really want to delete the folder.

Windows Server: How to Force a Solid Background Color

To avoid the typical picture on the background of your desktop, use the following procedure to force a solid blue color as background: Start the Group Policy Editor: gpedit.msc Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Desktop > Desktop Open Desktop Wallpaper Enable it and set the Wallpaper Name to: C:\Windows\Web\Screen\img105.jpg Click on OK to save the changes While you could also just right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize and set a Read more [...]