a wandersick's Tech Notes

I came across this top session, 45 Life Hacks in 45 Minutes, from Microsoft Ignite 2018 which I consider to be a gem to Windows enthusiasts. It is packed with useful Windows techniques, many of which are advanced while practical. This blog post merely summarizes the interesting tips from the session as an entry point – to experience the amazingness of the live demos, please go watch the recorded session on YouTube and look for other works by Sami Laiho from whom I learned a lot. 1. Exit Explorer Windows 10/2016 Right-click taskbar > Exit Explorer Windows 8/2012 Press Alt+F4 to bring up shutdown dialog. Next, while holding Ctrl+Shift+Alt, click Cancel 2. Violate a Group Policy which e.g. only allows running IE, but not Command Prompt or others In Task Manager > Run New Task It always open a Command Prompt 3. Redo old commands from history without typing again F7 hotkey History of Command Prompt or PowerShell 4. Tab auto completi...

This is a quick guide on how to resolve an occasional problem that could happen to neglected Sophos UTM firewall with default settings, where updates are automatically downloaded to device, filling up storage after some time. An email alert similar to the below is sent to administrator when it happens: From: Firewall Notification System [[email protected]] Sent: 18 June 2016 11:58 PM To: Administrator [[email protected]] Subject: [SOPHOS][INFO-150] Root partition is filling up - please check Root partition is filling up - please check. Current usage: 86% -- System Uptime      : 362 days 1 hour 2 minutes System Load        : 0.05 System Version     : Sophos UTM 9.210-20 Please refer to the manual for detailed instructions. To solve it, one way is to SSH into Sophos UTM firewall using root login Remove content under Sophos update directory (Main f...

Recently, the ransomware Locky has been gaining local media attention. As I was asked for advice by a friend who is a junior working in the field, I have come up with these 3 things for him to deal with general ransomware in enterprises where infection was reported, such as #3 File recovery , which suggests an approach of restoring shadow copies deleted by malware using Recuva and then recovering the files from shadow copies, since backup may not always be available. Identifying how many users’ PCs are infected Disinfecting malware from PCs File recovery Read on for the details in each of the steps. Image courtesy of Jamie