Windows

Windows portal page.

Links

Windows related pages on this wiki:

• Administration
• Windows 7
  • Windows 7 boot troubleshooting
• Windows 8 (including UEFI boot, EFI partition)

Reference

Technical information

• MSDN — Windows Hardware Design and Development
  Official documentation from Microsoft
  • → Windows Hardware Development → Drivers → Windows Driver Development → Device and Driver Installation
    Include documentation related to driver registry keys, etc.
• Window 7 — Sysprep Technical Reference
  The System Preparation (Sysprep) tool is a technology that you can use with other deployment tools to install Windows® operating systems onto new hardware.
  • Sample sysprep file for Windows 7
  • sysprep guide windows 7
  • The System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) in Microsoft Windows 7

Components

Volume Shadow Copy

Links:

Volume Shadow Copy is a feature introduced since Windows XP, and later improved in Windows Server 2003, and which is designed to create read-only snapshots of the entire volume, mostly for backups. It works at block-level, and saves copies of any block that are modified after the last snapshot has been taken.

VSC can be used for backup purpose (to have consistent copies), and is used by the Windows Restore service (restore points), or bypass windows lock-on-write mechanism (when only read access is needed).

For more information:

• Shadow Copy on Wikipedia
• The Volume Shadow Copy service on MSDN
• How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works
• What you should know about Volume Shadow Copy/System Restore in Windows 7 & Vista (FAQ) (detailed blog)
• Controlling Shadow Copies in Vista (and Windows 7!)
• The Basics of the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

Commands:

• vssadmin create shadow

Software

Google Desktop

Message when uninstalling Google Desktop:

I prefer another product

Lack configurability (which folder to search / not search). Relevance of results low. Many dead entries (eg when files moved), or new files not found. No support for accented character! Only find for whole words. Can't find mistyped search (like Google does on Internet). Some pages are very badly formatted (like the mail thread page, where column widths are ridiculously small). Google on Internet set a very high standard for search engine, and to my opinion Desktop version is not matching expectations. On the positive side, speed search is fast, and overall the system does not seem to suffer of the load (except when indexing Lotus Notes database approx. every morning or so).

Commands

arp

Displays and modifies the IP-to-Physical address translation tables used by address resolution protocol (ARP).

assoc

Displays or modifies file extension associations

netstat

Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections.

(use it to display current open connections, listening ports...)

netstat -ano         #All, numeric, owning process PID
netstat -rn          #Kernel route table, numberic
netstat -p TCP -bv   #Only show TCP connection, print executable and component stack

net

NET [ ACCOUNTS | COMPUTER | CONFIG | CONTINUE | FILE | GROUP | HELP |
      HELPMSG | LOCALGROUP | NAME | PAUSE | PRINT | SEND | SESSION |
      SHARE | START | STATISTICS | STOP | TIME | USE | USER | VIEW ]

nslookup

Lookup DNS server for given domain name

robocopy

                                                                 # Assuming D:\target exists...
robocopy /e C:\source\dir D:\target *.*                          # ... this will copy content of 'dir' into D:\target
robocopy /e C:\source\dir D:\target\dir *.*                      # ... this will create directory D:\target\dir, then copy
robocopy /e /dcopy:T /copyall C:\source\dir D:\target\dir *.*    # ... this will create directory D:\target\dir, then copy

Shell

Start a process in the background (w/o window)

From serverfauult.com:

Create a VBS script start.vbs:

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
WshShell.Run "C:\cygwin64\bin\bash.exe --login -c '/usr/local/bin/borgcronic devil'", 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

If executable path contains space:

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
WshShell.Run """" & "C:\Program Files\space thing\My exec.bat" & """" & " param1 param2", 0
rem WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\Program Files\space thing\My exec.bat" & Chr(34) & " param1 param2", 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

Troubleshooting

Rename/delete a folder that is in use

SeeSuperUser:

• Use *Resource monitor* (resmon.exe). Go to *CPU* tab, and search for the handles associated with directory (using search box).
• Use *Process Explorer*. Press Ctrl-F, and search for the directory name among handles.