Windows 10 Update Tool
Savage Doherty
This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge ofauto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programsare configured to run during system bootup or login, and when you startvarious built-in Windows applications like Internet Explorer, Explorerand media players. These programs and drivers include ones in yourstartup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys.Autoruns reports Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helperobjects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and muchmore. Autoruns goes way beyond other autostart utilities.
Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoomin on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to yoursystem and it has support for looking at the auto-starting imagesconfigured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included inthe download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSVformat, Autorunsc.
Simply run Autoruns and it shows you the currently configuredauto-start applications as well as the full list of Registry and filesystem locations available for auto-start configuration. Autostartlocations displayed by Autoruns include logon entries, Explorer add-ons,Internet Explorer add-ons including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs),Appinit DLLs, image hijacks, boot execute images, Winlogon notificationDLLs, Windows Services and Winsock Layered Service Providers, mediacodecs, and more. Switch tabs to view autostarts from differentcategories.
To view the properties of an executable configured to run automatically,select it and use the Properties menu item or toolbar button. IfProcess Explorer isrunning and there is an active process executing the selected executablethen the Process Explorer menu item in the Entry menu will openthe process properties dialog box for the process executing the selectedimage.
Navigate to the Registry or file system location displayed or theconfiguration of an auto-start item by selecting the item and usingthe Jump to Entry menu item or toolbar button, and navigate tothe location of an autostart image.
The Options menu includes several display filtering options, such asonly showing non-Windows entries, as well as access to a scan optionsdialog from where you can enable signature verification and Virus Totalhash and file submission.
The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The topwindow always shows a list of the currently active processes, includingthe names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed inthe bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: ifit is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected inthe top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'llsee the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded.Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that willquickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLsloaded.
When you configure the path to DBGHELP.DLL and the symbol path uses the symbol server, the location of DBGHELP.DLL also has to contain the SYMSRV.DLL supporting the server paths used. See SymSrv documentation or more information on how to use symbol servers.
The free DigiCert Certificate Utility for Windows is an indispensable tool for administrators and a must-have for anyone that uses SSL Certificates for Websites and servers or Code Signing Certificates for trusted software.
Note: Due to the security problems described in QSB-091, installation of Qubes Windows Tools is currently blocked. Instead, a text file containing a warning is displayed. Currently, it is difficult to estimate the severity of the risks posed by the sources of the Xen drivers used in QWT possibly being compromised, so it was decided not to offer direct QWT installation until this problem could be treated properly. While Windows qubes are, in Qubes, generally not regarded as being very trustworthy, a possible compromise of the Xen drivers used in Qubes Windows Tools might create a risk for Xen or dom0 and thus be dangerous for Qubes itself. If you understand this risk and are willing to take it, you can still install the previous versions of Qubes Windows Tools, using the command
for Qubes R4.2.0, respectively, instead of the command listed in step 1 of the installation described below. This will provide the .iso file to be presented as installation drive to the Windows qube in step 3 of the QWT installation.
If you prefer to download the corresponding .rpm files for manual QWT installation, these are still available from the repositories (version 4.1.68-1 for Qubes R4.1.2 and version 4.1.69-1 for Qubes R4.2.0).
Warning: These older versions of Qubes Windows Tools will be replaced during the next dom0 update by the current dummy version 4.1.70-1. This can be inhibited by appending the line exclude=qubes-windows-tools to the file /etc/dnf/dnf.conf in dom0. But this will also stop any further QWT updates - so be sure to remove this line when - hopefully - a new functional version 4.1.71-1 of Qubes Windows Tools will be made available!!!
What version do you want? I have 9 different versions of the tools. I downloaded them ages ago and put them into my storage for use for whatever version I wanted instead of having to always configure things again and again.
If you're just testing how your app will repsond to ill-behaved networks, you could do worse that fire up a linux box in front of it with Wansim - I know, you wanted something ON the windows box... but probably doing the delayage there is an unfair test, as you've already bypassed a bunch of the stuff that is under test (eg how the OS & hardware handles packet loss).
So recently i have started getting progressively more and more internet issues starting with download and upload speeds being a little unstable and internet occasionally dropping for a second or so. It was manageable for the most part as the worst i saw were browsers feeling a bit slow and sluggish and the internet drops i mentioned before.
Today it became far far worse and despite speedtest.net claiming my download speed is around 800 mbps and upload 38 mbps as i pay for "up to 1gbps" download and "up to 50 mbps" upload both chrome and firefox are still intensely slow and unstable. But this is not why i am making this post as someone from my isp is coming on tuesday and if even then it is still this bad i'l make another post looking for help with that.
I had help setting up this pc from someone including getting rid of a lot of what i was told is bloatware which seemed fine to me as i have heard that this is a bit of an issue with windows 11. But now i am thinking that among what was removed was also the diagnostics tool because when i click on "diagnose network problems" The bellow image is what it tells me.
Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:
- Quickly create screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; you can even capture complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer.
- Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot.
- Export the screenshot in various ways: save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, send Office programs or upload to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa, and others.
This is a tool that has evolved over several years and achieves much more than just debloating a Windows install. I have expanded it to install the programs you select, which is a bigger selection than ninite. The classic debloat is there, but also includes a tweaks section with quality of life features. To round out everything, I have included my recommended settings for Windows update that I use in a variety of businesses. Misuse of this utility can break your install so please be careful and I do not provide any help or assistance should this happen!
There are four main parts of this utility but I can expand this to an infinite number of tabs if expansion is needed and will probably happen in the future. As of the writing of this article there is 4 main parts: install, debloat, features and old panels, and windows updates. Let me breakdown what each part does and what you should use.
Debloating windows is always a moving target and there are many utilities out there. Many of them are too heavy handed in my opinion. This takes a more minimal approach that should not damage your Windows install. At the top there are three buttons Desktop, Laptop, and Minimal. These are curated selections based on my recommendations
Desktop - This is for Desktops DUH, but it will disable features like power throttling and many services will be set to not auto start. This will give your desktop the best performance without any downside.
I must warn you to NOT use all the settings at once, or simple remove everything from the MS Store. Many times this will debloat the install but will BREAK the MS Store or uninstall any games / apps that were installed using it. This is why this option is never selected, but I left it there for those that really want to remove it. I personally do NOT recommend this, but I understand those that want to remove it
Note: This part of the utility can break an install if used carelessly, but it does make a restore point so if you have a lot problems with it, you can use System Restore to rollback the changes or the Undo All option. THIS IS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDE WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AND I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISUSE.
Windows updates set to defaults are crazy. They install and download at weird times and often update far too much. I give 2 options my recommended one that only installs security updates and allowing features updates after they have been proven over 1 year.
WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows.
Note: if you are looking for an alternative for Linux, you are looking for KDirStat (apt-get install kdirstat or apt-get install k4dirstat on Debian-derivatives) or QDirStat and for MacOS X it would be Disk Inventory X or GrandPerspective.