Windows 10 comes with its own baked-in antivirus solution called Windows Defender, and it is enabled by default when setting up a new PC. At the very least, that affords you some basic protection against the many malware threats out in the wild. But did you know there is an added optional layer that can keep your pictures, videos, work documents, and other files safe in the event of a ransomware infection? The caveat is that you have to manually enable ransomware protection in Windows 10.

Or more specifically, a feature called 'Controlled folder access.'

To enable it, type 'Ransomware protection' in the Windows search bar, or take the long way by navigating to Settings > Update & Security, click on Open Windows Security, click on Virus & threat protection, then scroll down and click on Manage ransomware protection.

The Controlled folder access toggle is set to 'off' by default (or at it least it was on my PCs). Turning it on designates specific folders that only trusted apps have permission to access, and you can add folders beyond the ones that are selected by default. There's also a section to grant specific apps permission to access your protected folders, if need be.

The purpose of this post is to detail how to setup Git within the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Git is the source control tool of choice nowadays. It’s distributed style makes it great for working with a remote team but also allows you to work completely offline, which wasn’t an option for previous tools like Subversion or CVS.

This post focuses on setting up Git for command line access and scripting on Windows. There are other options like Git BASH, which I have used in the past, but why settle for a “BASH emulation” when you can use the real thing?

systemreset --factoryreset

When the factory reset process is complete, the initial setup screen will appear as if you’ve just taken it out of the box.

If you’re planning to sell your laptop, performing a factory reset isn’t the only step you need to be aware of. You’ll also want to back up your data, reinstall the operating system, and more—and this applies to more than just your computer. Here’s how to prepare a computer, tablet, or phone before selling it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/171980/how-to-prepare-a-computer-tablet-or-phone-before-selling-it/

If you're afflicted with this bug yourself, you can get some relief by uninstalling KB50000802 until Microsoft comes out with a fixed update, presumably by April's Patch Tuesday.

On a Windows 10 or Windows Server PC version 2004/20H2, click Start --> type "Control Panel" and hit enter --> go to Programs, then Programs and Features. From there, click "View installed updates" on the left-hand pane and uninstall Security Update for Microsoft Windows KB50000802).

For Windows PCs version 1909, the same fix (and problem) is in KB50000808. If you're on version 1809, look for KB50000822. For more technical detail, Dutch tech site winking.be has an excellent overview.

This hill is ubiquitous but surprisingly difficult to locate in reality.

The iconic Windows XP default desktop wallpaper of a sloped green hill beneath a bright blue sky is one of the most viewed photos in the world, but its generic pleasantness has long stumped internet denizens in regards to its real-world location — with some believing it’s not a real photograph.

The editor-in-chief of SFGate recently set out to find the earthly subject of the computer background and discovered it covered in wine grapes, across the street from an alpaca farm and Highway 12 in Sonoma, California.

The photo even has an incredible backstory: Charles O’Rear snapped the now-legendary shot of what is known as “Bliss” hill while driving to see his now-wife on a Friday afternoon in January 1996.

ImageUSB is a free utility which lets you write an image concurrently to multiple USB Flash Drives. Capable of creating exact bit-level copies of USB Flash Drive (UFDs), ImageUSB is an extremely effective tool for the mass duplication of UFDs. ImageUSB also supports writing of an ISO file byte by byte directly to an USB drive (*). ImageUSB can also be used to install OSFClone to a USB Drive for use with PassMark OSForensics™.

Unlike other USB duplication tools, ImageUSB can preserve all unused and slack space during the cloning process, including the Master Boot Record (MBR). ImageUSB can perform flawless mass duplications of all UFD images, including bootable UFDs.

imageUSB includes functionality to Zero a USB Flash Drive. This will replace the contents of the entire drive with 0s. Or alternatively to just Zero the MBR and/or GPT entries that exists on the drive. In addition, imageUSB has the ability to reformat even hard to format drives and reclaim any disk space that may be lost previously.

As the months and years go by, Microsoft keeps steadily moving away from its old model of PC operating systems, which started with buying Seattle Computing Products' 86-DOS, aka Quick and Dirty DOS in July 1981 and renaming it MS-DOS 1.10, toward Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS). //

Back in the ‘80s, compute power lay on mainframes and Unix-powered mini-computers. PCs were a revolution. But in the 2020s, we're going back to a model where all the real computing happens on the cloud, and your device — even if it’s a $1,399 top-of-the-line iPhone 12 Pro Max — is just a glorified VT-102 dumb terminal.

UEFI makes your device more secure and faster than the legacy BIOS, and in this guide, we show you the steps to switch.
Converting MBR to GPT partition style (recommended)

To convert a drive using MBR to GPT on Windows 10, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Update & Security.
3. Click on Recovery.
4. Under the "Advanced startup" section, click the Restart now button.
5. Click the Troubleshoot option.
6. Click on Advanced options.
7. Click the Command Prompt option.
8. Select your administrator account and sign in with your credentials (if applicable).
9. Type the following command to validate that the drive meets the requirements and press Enter:
   mbr2gpt /validate
   • Quick tip: The mbr2gpt.exe is located in the "System32" folder inside the "Windows" folder. If you want to see all the available options, you can use the mbr2gpt /? command.
10. Type the following command to convert the drive from MBR to GPT and press Enter:
    mbr2gpt /convert
11. Click the Close button in the top-right corner of the console.
12. Click the Turn off your PC option.

After you complete the steps, several actions will take place, including validation of the drive and creation of an EFI system partition (ESP). The UEFI boot files and GPT components will be added to the partition. Then the MBR2GPT tool will update the Boot Configuration Data (BCD), and the previous letter will be added to the drive.

How to Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk in Windows 10

GPT (GUID Partition Table) and MBR (Master Boot Record) are two different partition styles that can be used for a disk.

MBR disks use the standard BIOS partition table. GPT disks use unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI).

1. Option One: Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free without Data Loss
2. Option Two: Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk using EaseUS Partition Master Free without Data Loss
3. Option Three: Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk using Disk Management with Data Loss
4. Option Four: Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk Disk using Diskpart command with Data Loss

High CPU usage is a common problem with Window systems which slows down the system. At times, it is due to insufficient RAM, and at other times, due to an interfering program. Rather, if the system is running slow, there’s a high possibility that the disk utilization is high. Here’s how you check it:

UPDATE: Purchasing is now open. https://www.askwoody.com/2020/windows-7-esu-for-2021/

About 3,000 of you purchased the Windows 7 ESU from Harbor Computer Services last year. We offered to make this available to Woody readers after so many IT firms recklessly said that they wouldn’t. My feeling is that while I’d prefer that no one was running Windows 7 anymore, for those that are they need access to updates to retain some degree of security on those systems. We aren’t here to judge. My firm is also an advocate for healthy IT communities and so we agreed to sell the ESU license to all comers even though there’s no money in it for us to speak of. In our regular business, selling stuff is not our thing. We’re a services business.

But thanks to three little workarounds, you can still access the older System Control Panel we all know and love—for now.

Windows 10 users can now integrate the Everything search engine directly into the Windows taskbar using the new 'EverythingToolbar' application.

What if chkdsk already borked your system?
Assuming you’re staring at a system that refuses to start up like it normally would, don’t panic. Or, rather, you’ve probably already been panicking, so it’s good that you’ve gotten most of the stress out of your body already. There is a fix for the issue, even if you can’t get into Windows 10 to address it with any lingering updates. As Microsoft describes:

The device should automatically start up into the Recovery Console after failing to start up a few times.
Select Advanced options.
Select Command Prompt from the list of actions.
Once Command Prompt opens, type: chkdsk /f
Allow chkdsk to complete the scan, this can take a little while. Once it has completed, type: exit
The device should now start up as expected. If it restarts into Recovery Console, select Exit and continue to Windows 10.

Command Prompt will now launch with administrator permissions. To uninstall a program using Command Prompt, you have to use the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) software utility.

At the prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:

wmic

Next, you’ll want a list of the programs installed on your computer. Getting this list is essential because you must provide an accurate product name to successfully execute the uninstall command.

Type the following command to get the list:

product get name
Tip: You can also run wmic commands directly from the standard command line, without running “wmic” and entering the WMIC prompt first. To do so, prepend them with “wmic.” For example, “wmic product get name” works the same as running “wmic,” and then “product get name.“

Find the name of the program you want to uninstall from the list. You can uninstall the program by running this command:

product where name="program name" call uninstall
Just replace program name with the name of the program you want to install. For example, if we want to uninstall the Skype Meetings App, we would type this command:

product where name="Skype Meetings

CloudReady could be the perfect answer for those continuing to stick with, say, Windows 7 PCs – despite Microsoft having stopped delivering free patches since January 15. Importantly, CloudReady still gets patches and fixes just like Chrome OS, served up every six weeks. //

The Home edition is free, does not integrate with Google Admin Console and lacks technical support. The education subscription costs $20 per year per device with one year of technical support, while the enterprise option costs $49 per year per device. The paid-for options include one year of technical support. //

There are two notable catches with switching to CloudReady. After installing it, there's no returning to Windows, so users should make a backup of their files.

Also, after transitioning, accessing a local drive becomes difficult because this Chrome-OS variant relies almost entirely on Google Drive for storage.

Open up a command prompt, and then type in the following:

net use

This will give you a list of the connected drives, including the ones that aren’t actually mapped to a drive letter. To disconnect one of the connections, you can use the following command:

net use /delete \\server\sharename

If you wanted to actually connect to a share without mapping a drive letter, you can do the following:

net use /user:Username \\server\sharename Password

Method 1: Clear Network Saved Credentials Using Control Panel

Open the Control Panel and select Large icons in the View by menu. Click User Accounts.

Click the “Manage your credentials” option at the top left.

Select the Windows Credentials type and you’ll see the list of credentials you have saved for network share, remote desktop connection or mapped drive.

Click one of the entries in the list and expand it, you can then click the Remove option to clear it.
Method 2: Clear Network Saved Credentials Using the Run Command

Press the Windows key + R together to open the Run box. Type the following command and hit Enter.
rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr

You’ll see the Stored Usernames and Passwords window. To remove a saved network credential you can select one of the entries and click Remove.

In 2013, Bill Gates admitted ctrl+alt+del was a mistake and blamed IBM. Here’s the story of how the key combination became famous in the first place. //

In the spring of 1981, David Bradley was part of a select team working from a nondescript office building in Boca Raton, Fla. His task: to help build IBM’s new personal computer. Because Apple and RadioShack were already selling small stand-alone computers, the project (code name: Acorn) was a rush job. Instead of the typical three- to five-year turnaround, Acorn had to be completed in a single year. //

In 2001, hundreds of people packed into the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC. In two decades, the company had moved more than 500 million PCs worldwide. After dinner, industry luminaries, including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, sat down for a panel discussion. But the first question didn’t go to Gates; it went to David Bradley. The programmer, who has always been surprised by how popular those five minutes spent creating ctrl+alt+del made him, was quick to deflect the glory.

“I have to share the credit,” Bradley joked. “I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous.”

Smooth remote desktop, remote scripting, and rich auto-complete to maximize your IT support efficiency.
Remote Desktop

Instantly connect to remote desktops either unattended or by invite. Invites are started from a single-file, portable executable that's easy for customers to download and use.
Notable Features

• Support for Windows and Linux devices
• Unattended and attended access
• Remote scripting for Windows PowerShell, PowerShell Core, Bash, and CMD
• Optional WebRTC for secure peer-to-peer screen transfer on Windows agents, which reduces load on the server
• Drag-and-drop file transfer
• Remote audio streaming (Windows only)
• Bi-directional clipboard sharing
• Integrated chat
• 2-factor authentication

Get Started

Remotely is free and open-source, and there are multiple ways to start using it.

• Download the portable client to try out instant screen sharing
• Create an account on the demo server that we host to try the unattended access and remote scripting
• Install a server package to host a server yourself
• Download and build the source code to host a server yourself