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When combined with Ctrl or Alt: RDP Shift Key Gets Stuck (via: davidbond.net)

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When using Windows RDP you have the risk of a Shift key getting stuck.

This happens when press Ctrl and Shift. Make sure you release Shift first, otherwise Shift gets stuck.

Same with Alt and Shift: you have to release the Shift key first.

This is not a problem when using the OS X Remote Desktop application 8.x from Microsoft: only the Windows MSTSC.exe applications included in Windows 7 and higher suffer from this when you connect to Windows 7 and higher (including connecting from Windows to Windows Server and from Windows Server to Windows).

It does not happen with the MSTSC.exe in Windows 2000/XP and Windows Server 2003/2003 R2.

Results

Here are the important results:

  • Press Shift and Control (either order) -> Release Shift -> Release Control: Normal state
  • Press Shift and Control (either order) -> Release Control -> Release Shift: Problem state 

Conclusion

RDP has a bug whereby the shift state incorrectly remains in the “pressed” state if, after pressing Shift+Control, the Control key is released first.

Bug reference

Bug is with Microsoft: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedback/details/766863/rdp-shift-key-gets-stuck

And the comments there:

You have described the exact same problem that I am having, only in my case it’s with RDP between two Win7 machines. […]

I have been using RDP for years without problems, until about 2 or 3 weeks ago when it suddenly starting going wrong.

Too bad the connect issue requires logon: I have no idea if this is ever going to be fixed.

–jeroen

via: davidbond.net: RDP Shift Key Gets Stuck.

Edit: some comments on G+

made in Delphi :)
Happens to me sometimes when connecting from Win7 to XP+.
Seems closely relatedhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/978829 in older OSs.
Frequently beaten by “Securing remote connection…” delay http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2915774

Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Debugging problems with the network proxy (via: The Chromium Projects)

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In this case, another tool didn’t obtain the right Proxy settings.

Chrome to the rescue as chrome://net-internals/#proxy shows you the system proxy settings:

When browsers are experiencing network problems, generally the first thing to test is your network proxy settings. Misconfigured settings, or misbehaving settings, can have a profound impact on your network traffic possibly resulting in pages not loading at all.

Main take aways: chrome://net-internals/#proxy

Since then, I created this small batch file:

reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" | findstr proxy

And this one to edit the settings:

"C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe" shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL inetcpl.cpl,,4

It will open the same Window that your Control Panel or Internet Explorer uses to manage connection and proxy settings.
From there click the “LAN Settings” button to edit the proxy configuration.

–jeroen

via: Debugging problems with the network proxy – The Chromium Projects.


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows-Http-Proxy

From batch file or shortcut: start Windows Update (via: Windows 7 Help Forums)

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Call either of these from a batch file or Windows shortcut to end up at the Windows Updace screen in the Control Panel:

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler wuapp.exe
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{36eef7db-88ad-4e81-ad49-0e313f0c35f8}

Notes:

  • I’ve tested this in Windows 7, 8.x and 9 and it works fine in all these.
  • unlike Control Printers calling Control Updates does not work.

–jeroen

via: Windows Update Shortcut – Create in Windows 7 – Windows 7 Help Forums.


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Error 13EC when installing The .NET Framework 4.5.2 means you need to free more disk space. 3GB that is.

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About a year and a half ago, I wrote:

My conclusion is that various Microsoft updates now require 3 gigabytes of disk space.

This seems to be the case with the .NET Framework 4.5.1 KB 2858725 update, and probably more future updates. I tried installing the KB 2858725 update with slightly less than 3 gigabytes of space (and after the 3 gigabyte reserve.tmp appeared), and I was still getting error 13EC. But with slightly more than 3 gigabyte the update would install.

That is quite difficult when you run loads of VMs on SSDs: they usually don’t have an awful lot of disk space left.

The same issue holds for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 for Windows 7 x64-based Systems (KB2901983) which got released earlier this week:

Error 13EC during .NET framework 4.5.2 installation

Error 13EC during .NET framework 4.5.2 installation

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 for Windows 7 x64-based Systems (KB2901983)

Installation date: ‎5/‎21/‎2015 12:53 PM

Installation status: Failed

Error details: Code 13EC      Get help with this error

Update type: Recommended

The Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 is a highly compatible, in-place update to the .NET Framework 4, 4.5 and 4.5.1. By using the .NET Framework 4.5.2 together with the C# or Visual Basic programming languages, you can write Windows Store apps. The .NET Framework 4.5.2 delivers better performance, reliability, and security than previous versions. After you install this update, you may have to restart your computer.

More information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2901983

Help and Support: http://support.microsoft.com

It directs to “WindowsUpdate_000013EC” “WindowsUpdate_dt000″ which of course does not give meaningful results in the top hits (:

The uncool thing is that KB2901983 only mentions one requirement: a potential system restart. Nowhere it lists a 3 gigabyte free disk space limit.

And no, I’m not really surprised that the help didn’t improve. Just frustrated.

–jeroen

via Error 13EC when installing The .NET Framework 4.5.1 means you need to free more disk space. 3GB that is. « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista

Windows < 8: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows if they contain %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA%.

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Older Windows versions than 8.x will not correctly expand %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA% in environment variables: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows..

This even happens when the registry storage of the environment variables are marked as REG_EXPAND_SZ under these keys:

Basically there are four categories of Windows versions:

  • For Windows 10.x this is fixed.
  • For Windows 8.x and Windows Server 2012 R2, there are updates in KB2919355.
  • For Windows 7.x and Windows Server 2008 R2, there is a hotfix.
  • For older Windows versions, there is no solution.

–jeroen

via: User variables are not resolved correctly in Windows.


Filed under: Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista

Saving MMC files as MSC and prevent the “save console settings” dialog.

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Two tricks when creating MSC files that contain the snap-in configuration of the MMC (Management Console).

Normally you do this once:

  1. Start MMC
  2. Add some snap-ins
  3. Save your configuration as an MSC file

And then when you need that particular configuration, each time:

  1. Open the MSC file
  2. Perform some actions
  3. Close the MMC
  4. Answer No to this question:

---------------------------
Microsoft Management Console
---------------------------
Save console settings to [filename].msc?
---------------------------
Yes No Cancel
---------------------------

The trick around this last question is:

  1. Open the “File” menu.
  2. Choose the “Options” sub-menu.
  3. Change the “Console mode” from “Author mode” to any of the “User mode values”

Now MMC will not bug you asking to save again.

What this trick does is actually the reverse of what I found in The Administration Console in Win7 x64:

  1. Open the MSC file in a text editor that understands Unicode.
  2. Change changing the value of the ProgramMode attribute from "Author" to "UserSDI" .
  3. Save the MSC file.

This is the mapping table of ProgramMode values to the UI:

  • User=User mode – full access
  • UserMDI=User mode – limited access, multiple window
  • UserSDI=User mode – limited access, single window (this is the default for many *.msc files shipping with Windows).

Note that if the MSC file is still in Author mode, you can even customize the MSC file further:

  • Change the Icon from the “File” menu, choose the “Options” sub-menu, then click the “Change Icon” button and choose a new icon (optionally from a separate Exe file).

–jeroen

via: The Administration Console in Win7 x64

 


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

logparser – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Thanks to Sebastian Gingter for pointing me at Logparser:

Logparser […] powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. The results of the input query can be custom-formatted in text based output, or they can be persisted to more specialty targets like SQL, SYSLOG, or a chart.

Common use:

$ logparser [options] [SQL expression]

–jeroen

via logparser – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Filed under: Development, IIS, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Translating non-English error messages into English

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For a long time, I’ve persuading people to install English versions of their operating systems (especially on server side) at least for some parts of their environment.

The main reason is that searching for English error messages gives you a much bigger chance of finding the cause than non-English ones.

I’m still standing by that recommendation, but life has become a bit easier because of these two sites that offer quite good translations of Windows Error messages in many languages to English:

I like the latter a bit more because of the overview, but the former more because of the catalog.

The way I landed there was because of a search for “Cannot SetData on a frozen OLE data object” which I bumped into for one of my C# .NET projects.

–jeroen


Filed under: .NET, C#, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista

Batch file to open a specific TCP port in Windows 7 / 2008 Server and up

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Resolving “Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to bitbucket.org:443”

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A while ago, I had this error on BitBucket:

Running git.exe with arguments "fetch --prune" failed with return code 128 and error output: "fatal: unable to access 'https://%account%@bitbucket.org/%user%/%repository%.git/': Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to bitbucket.org:443

A quick search for “Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to bitbucket.org:443” pointed me to a comment by Ludwik Trammer on an answer by Jordfräs:

I resolved the issue by upgrading from git 1.8 to git 2.0.

Which reminded me this was a Windows system, where there is no package manager that verifies how far your non-system software is behind.

One day, I will write a script that finds out about the git version history and inform me of major/minor versions I’ve skipped.

Some notes for that:

Probably I will need to do something similar for Mercurial/hg in the future as well.

–jeroen

via: git – Unknown SSL protocol error in connection – Stack Overflow


Filed under: Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows: Some links around SeBatchLogonRight (Logon as Batch job)

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Figuring out Windows Registry Permissions: AccessCheck

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I had to verify the rights on some parts of the registry were the same for a lot of machines. So I used AccessChk by SysInternals.

If there were difference, my plan was to use REGINI to fix them.

It appears that AccessCheck does not show the permissions for objects within the specified path, not for the path itself.

As I observed that

accesschk -k hklm\software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell

does not reveal results.

But

accesschk -k hklm\software\Microsoft\Windows

shows:

HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
  R  BUILTIN\Users
  RW BUILTIN\Power Users
  RW BUILTIN\Administrators
  RW NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows\ITStorage
  R  BUILTIN\Users
  RW BUILTIN\Power Users
  RW BUILTIN\Administrators
  RW NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  RW NT AUTHORITY\TERMINAL SERVER USER
HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
  R  BUILTIN\Users
  RW BUILTIN\Power Users
  RW BUILTIN\Administrators
  RW NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  RW NT AUTHORITY\TERMINAL SERVER USER
HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting
  R  BUILTIN\Users
  RW BUILTIN\Power Users
  RW BUILTIN\Administrators
  RW NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
  RW NT AUTHORITY\TERMINAL SERVER USER

In the end the permissions were the same: the differences were in the local group memberships of domain groups. That was already covered in Command Line Kung Fu: Episode #43: Users & Groups.

So setting registry rights needs to wait a while.

–jeroen

via:


Filed under: Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Improve Word performance with tables

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Apart from the obvious “use less tables” and “break tables apart”, these can also help big time:

  1. Run %WinDir%\System32\SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe
  2. Choose “Ajust for best performance” (it will disable all visual enhancements)
  3. Re-enable “Smooth edges of screen fonts” (it will make it easier to set bold and italic apart in Word)

If it is still too slow, I might look into these:

–jeroen


Filed under: Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Office, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Word

findstr as alternative for recursive grep search

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Usually I use the old Borland grep.exe that still ships with Delphi. Too bad it is 16-bit app which does not recognise Unicode.

FindStr does. Though much slower and with limited regular expression capabilities, can do recursive searches too:

findstr /spin /c:"string to find" *.*

The /spin is a shortcut for these case insensitive command-line options (the full list of possible options is below):

  /S         Searches for matching files in the current directory and all
             subdirectories.
  /I         Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
  /N         Prints the line number before each line that matches.
  /P         Skip files with non-printable characters.

Sometimes I leave out the /P to include binary files.

–jeroen

via:

findstr /? help output:

Searches for strings in files.

FINDSTR [/B] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/I] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P] [/F:file]
        [/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes] [/OFF[LINE]]
        strings [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]]

  /B         Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line.
  /E         Matches pattern if at the end of a line.
  /L         Uses search strings literally.
  /R         Uses search strings as regular expressions.
  /S         Searches for matching files in the current directory and all
             subdirectories.
  /I         Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
  /X         Prints lines that match exactly.
  /V         Prints only lines that do not contain a match.
  /N         Prints the line number before each line that matches.
  /M         Prints only the filename if a file contains a match.
  /O         Prints character offset before each matching line.
  /P         Skip files with non-printable characters.
  /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
  /A:attr    Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?"
  /F:file    Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console).
  /C:string  Uses specified string as a literal search string.
  /G:file    Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console).
  /D:dir     Search a semicolon delimited list of directories
  strings    Text to be searched for.
  [drive:][path]filename
             Specifies a file or files to search.

Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed
with /C.  For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello" or
"there" in file x.y.  'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for
"hello there" in file x.y.

Regular expression quick reference:
  .        Wildcard: any character
  *        Repeat: zero or more occurrences of previous character or class
  ^        Line position: beginning of line
  $        Line position: end of line
  [class]  Character class: any one character in set
  [^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set
  [x-y]    Range: any characters within the specified range
  \x       Escape: literal use of metacharacter x
  \    Word position: end of word

For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online Command
Reference.

Filed under: Batch-Files, Development, Power User, RegEx, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows NT, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

ntrights – grant/revoke Logon As Batch Job rights

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Sometimes you want to run a batch file from a Task Scheduler task. For that, the user under which the task runs needs to Logon as a batch job right. If it hasn’t, you get this nice error message:

“This task requires that the user account specified has log on as batch job rights”.

Despite being part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools, you can still use ntrights in more modern Windows versions to grant or revoke this right.

As ntrights uses a hard to remember SeBatchLogonRight name for it and I tend to forget the ntrights syntax, I wrote two batch files to grant or revoke the Logon as Batch Job rights for the specified user:

Later I found out you can also do the same from C# or PowerShell, see: Set Logon as batch job rights to User by Powershell, C# and CMD.

Note that for domain users, not only the local policies apply, but also the domain policies might apply. So often it is easier to great a local user with virtually no rights (heck, not even in a group) as a bootstrap. See Scheduling a task in Windows Server 2008 R2 – Stack Overflow for more details.

–jeroen

via:


Filed under: Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista

Cool Windows tool of the day: RegJump by SysInternals

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RegJump.exe is really cool, and has already there for more than a year (:

This little command-line applet takes a registry path and makes Regedit open to that path. It accepts root keys in standard (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) and abbreviated form (e.g. HKLM).

usage: regjump <<path>|-c>
-c Copy path from clipboard.
e.g.: regjump HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows

–jeroen

via: RegJump.


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Setting your DTAP environments apart: Push a solid colored background to a Windows Server 2012 or later | Tidbits of Information from Virot

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(Roaming) Profile and Folder Redirection

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The article I quote from is about Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, but still holds for modern Windows Server and Client versions:

After you enable roaming profiles for a couple of users, the first thing that you will probably notice is that logins and log offs become extremely slow for those users. […]

The solution to obscenely long logons and log offs is to use folder redirection. Folder redirection allows you to save portions of the user’s profile in a different location on the network. […]

You can’t redirect every folder in a user’s profile.[…] The folders that you can redirect are:

  • Application Data,
  • Desktop,
  • My Documents, and
  • Start Menu.

[…] I recommend creating a share point on the server to which you can redirect these folders.  […]

To redirect a folder, open the Group Policy Editor and navigate to User Settings | Windows Settings | Folder Redirection. The group policy requires you to redirect each of the four folders separately, but the procedure for doing so is the same for each folder:

  1. Set the folder’s Setting option to “Basic – Redirect Everyone’s Folder To The Same Location”.
  2. Next, select the Create A Folder For Each User Under The Root Path option from the Target Folder Location drop down list.
  3. Finally, enter your root path in the place provided.

–jeroen

via: Profile and Folder Redirection In Windows Server 2003 :: Windows 2003 :: Articles & Tutorials :: WindowsNetworking.com.


Filed under: Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

windows 7 – Available memory differs by several GiB from what is installed – Super User

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Very interesting question and answers: windows 7 – Available memory differs by several GiB from what is installed – Super User.

Basically the missing memory can be due to:

  • Windows licensing limitations
  • Mapping of device memory into virtual memory space (especially on x86 systems)

This affects both server and client versions of Windows. Client versions are more restrictive because of the vast amounts of potentially faulty drivers involved.

Some links (read the full question for details):

–jeroen


Filed under: Power User, SysInternals, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows NT, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Make A Bootable Windows 10 USB Install Stick On Linux With WinUSB Fork ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

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One day I’m going to need this: Make A Bootable Windows 10 USB Install Stick On Linux With WinUSB Fork ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

So I’m glad WinUSB (which hadn’t been maintained for a long time) got forked on github by slaka.

Since my day-to-day unix-like system is OS X, I’d love a good working solution there too which means I probably need to investigate a bit along these lines:

–jeroen

via: Make A Bootable Windows 10 USB Install Stick On Linux With WinUSB Fork WebUpd8 – Google+  / DoorToDoorGeek “Stephen McLaughlin” – Google+

 

 


Filed under: *nix, Apple, BSD, Linux, OS X, OS X El Capitan, OS X Maverick, OSX Yosemite, Power User, Ubunto, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP
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