Category: Microsoft Windows
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End of Days
In the IT field there are a number of different names for it. CompTIA seems to use two terms: End of Life (EOL) denotes that a product is no longer available for purchase, and End of Service Life (EOSL) means that it is no longer supported by the vendor. Microsoft uses the term End of…
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Changing the Date
I was asked by a friend the other day to help them to change the metadata on an NTFS file. I made sure that they were not trying to break any laws, and then I found this PowerShell cmdlet for them: $(get-item ‘.\filename.ext’).CreationTime=$(Get-Date “04/28/2025”) Of course, they were not very technical so I found a…
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New Notepad?
When preparing to publish this article, it came as no surprise to me that Notepad, long a feature in Microsoft Windows, was not listed as a blog Category. After all, it’s like writing an article about the carpets in the back seat of your car… who cares, right? They are there, you try to clean…
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Disabling IPv6 with PowerShell
Let me preface this piece by saying that I usually do not disable IPv6. There are advantages to leaving it on (even if you think you are not using it) which I will not go into here. With that said, I was building a server for a lab environment recently, and IPv6 was interfering with…
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Errors Unknown and Unknowable
Every so often I encounter a problem that needs to be escalated. This one had a lot of us scratching our heads for a couple of weeks. It is a French server, but in simple terms: When trying to run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard to connect the Exchange Server to Exchange Online, we ran into…
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Importing PowerShell Modules When You Cannot Install PowerShell Modules.
**Note: This article is written around a single PowerShell module (ExchangeOnlineManagement). However, the steps will work for any PowerShell module. Have at it! –MDG PS C:\> Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement PackageManagement\Install-Package : No match was found for the specified search criteria and module name ‘ExchangeOnlineManagement’. Try Get-PSRepository to see all available registered module repositories. At C:\program…
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PowerShell From Afar
“Hey Mitch, I always hear you talk about running PowerShell against remote computers. How do I do that?” There are several different ways to do this, depending on what exactly you want to do. Preparation We cannot simply create a machine and start working on it remotely. We have to enable remote management by first…
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Windows 11
**DISCLOSURE: While I am contracted to Microsoft Corporation, I am not an employee. The articles that I write are not meant to represent the company, nor are they meant to represent me as an employee or spokesman for the company. As has always been the case, all articles on this website represent me and nobody…
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The End of an Era: Internet Explorer is going away
In 1995 I got my first Internet-connected computer – a Gateway laptop with an 80386 CPU and a 14,400 baud modem. It changed my world in a number of ways: I had not had my own computer since leaving Canada two years earlier; It was my first portable computer – I loved not having to…
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Change the Way You Change Text
I remember when I first discovered the mail merge feature… it amazed the twelve-year-old me that I could write a letter once, and then AppleWorks would address that letter to the several hundred people in my database. I was thrilled with it. Last week, I was working with a client who moved a server. No…
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PowerISO: Doing it right
If you would have asked me in the late 1990s when CDs (remember CD-RW?) were starting to replace floppy drives as the primary storage method for desktop PCs and servers if we were ever going to see a day when they were obsolete, the short-sighted young adult that I was would likely have said no. …
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Drivers? Drive Me!
By now, it is likely that I do not need to explain to you that a hardware driver is a piece of software that allows your computer (through the operating system) to communicate with a hardware component. You know that, right? Good. You are ready to install a new operating system on your computer. You do…
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PowerShell: A Colourful Experience
One of the topics I inject into every one of my classes (and frankly, most of my customer conversations) is how to do whatever we are doing in PowerShell. Scripting is one of the ways I make my life easier, and I recommend my students and customers use the knowledge I share to make their…
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Windows 7 End of Life and Extended Support
When Microsoft released Windows 7 in October, 2009 the vast majority of users (both corporate and home) were still running Windows XP. While they had released Windows Vista three years earlier, it was never widely accepted. The improvements over the then six-year-old operating system were revolutionary, especially for the vast majority of users who eschewed…
The World According to Mitch 