Windows 8.1 Setup Without Product Key

[Earleen Statham]

believeme I dislike Windows, but is not because I love it somuch that I need to have a windows container. My company heavily relies on Windows, that is not going to be matter of hours/days to move our products to a platform independent env.

If you must deploy a hypervisor, WSL2 or Hyper-V is a mess to deploy on a windows box that is nested in ESXi is a mess, and a real pain to get up and running. Virtualbox with Docker Toolbox maybe a valuable option here is the github.

Good post @rimelek !

Yes, shortly after I made that post I realized that docker toolbox is no longer supported by docker. Therefore I gave in and deployed Hyper-V with WSL2 (not sure if both are needed or not). Here are the instructions and links I followed to get it all done:

I have never used QEMU on Windows. Only on Linux with KVM, but I used UTM on MacOS to install a Linux OS and install Docker. UTM is based on QEMU. It worked but the performance will depend on your machine.

Adding python to the path isn't necessary to execute the script in a command prompt or double clicking in Explorer, only if you want to start an interactive python session or running the script with python yourscript.py

I tried removing .py extension from file.py name and then ran command python file python can understand the code without any extension for single file, but if you use modules then you need to use .py extension. Else you can add .py to path text in enviornment variables and run

assoc .py=Python.File

ftype Python.File=c:\path to \python.exe "%1" %*

Just want to start my mount from login/boot without having a cmd window open. I have the batch file and when using shell:startup, it works and runs when i log in but the cmd window just stays open ready to print a log for me. Want to just get rid of it and mount only

You can create a scheduled task to run it with. If you check "Run whether user is logged on or not", it will run hidden in background (there is a "Hidden" checkbox, but it is only to hide the task from the Task Scheduler user interface).

It is also possible to create a simple launcher script with WScript/VB that you can double click from Explorer, create shortcut for, add to StartUp etc, that will execute rclone normally as current user, but hidden. Simple and easy to use, but could be a bit too "naive", depending on your use case.. Example: Create a plain text file with extension .wsf, e.g. "RcloneMount.wsf", with the following content (edit in your specific rclone command line, of course):

I have a PC where I'm only running one application. I would like to prevent explorer.exe from being loaded on startup. I've read that one could change the registry entry in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" -> Shell"=""but unfortunately that absolutely doesn't work.

I tried manually to terminate explorer.exe, then replace it with an .exe that does nothing. That solution isn't great because in this case the logon cosumes approx 2-3 minutes (even-though without explorer). I guess there is a timeout period set up somewhere and the logon is using that time to find explorer.exe.Don't get me wrong: I do not want to remove explorer.exe from my system, I just want to remove it from the startup (logon) sequence. I know that it is possible as I have already seen it. For maintenance purposes one could manually restart explorer.exe via task manager.

Explorer.exe provides basic Windows and desktop functionality. If you kill it while running, it is restarted a few times, and eventually Windows contuinues operating without it - with nothing on the desktop, and no taskbar. If that's what you want, then make a script to kill Explorer a few times, e.g.,

I am trying to get a cuda 11 dev environment set up on windows. We have MSVC 2019 build tools already for general C++ compilation. Is there any way to get CUDA to compile without a full Visual Studio IDE installed?

You do not need the Visual Studio IDE to program in CUDA. In fact I have been using MSVS Professional and CUDA on Windows for 14 years and have never used the IDE. If you are comfortable with gmake and makefiles, you can build your projects using the same command line tools that the MSVS IDE uses under the hood. For simple CUDA programs, you can just compile with the CUDA compiler driver nvcc from the commandline.

My problem is that the whole rest of the project is built with VS2019 compilers and without the IDE, the CUDA install cannot install the Visual Studio integration scripts. Running the build using Nvcc.exe (through cmake) produces the error " Cannot find compiler cl.exe in path ", which I assume is something relating to the integrations, as it works fine with the full IDE.

The procurement issue is more that the corporate structure that I am beholden to could take an unnecessarily long time to make a licence happen, and I was wondering if there was an easier way to accomplish this with the tools I have available.

To run from the command line, the Visual C/C++ compiler needs to have a bunch of environment variables set up, independent of the use of CUDA. Check whether the build tools include a file vcvarsall.bat. If so, run it with

This will set up necessary environment variables for an x86-64 platform. Depending on what kind of apps you are building you may also need to add additional directories to the INCLUDE and LIB environment variables. Once the environment is set up and you can build Windows command line applications with the Microsoft compiler by invoking cl, you should also be able to successfully run nvcc. Try it standalone before you try via cmake, which may have additional quirky requirements.

I'm running into a frustrating issue where I need to create a Windows 10 bootable USB for my Macbook Pro 2023, but every attempt to use Boot Camp Assistant has ended in errors. This has left me in a bit of a bind, as I'm keen to find an alternative method that bypasses Boot Camp altogether. The goal is to successfully prepare a USB drive with Windows 10 installation files, which I plan to use on a PC. If anyone knows how to do this directly on macOS, avoiding Boot Camp issues, I'd really appreciate a simplified guide or tool suggestions to get this done.

There are many ways and tools can be used to make Windows 10 bootable USB installer on Mac, like rufus, WonderISO or Unetbootin. But for me, I used to installed windows 10 in a VM (vmware i think is what I used) on Mac and then created the USB drive from there. I wish that you had known about this method.

Bootcamp assistant app is removed from Apple Silicon on Mac so you can't create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac with Bootcamp app. I am using WonderISO on my Apple Silicon Mac running the latest macOS Sonoma and it only takes 3 clicks to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on my Mac.

Parallels Desktop, a popular virtualization software for Mac, allows you to run Windows and other operating systems within macOS without needing to reboot. So you can create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac in a Windows virtual machine.

Firstly, you need to have a copy of the Windows 10 ISO file. Microsoft provides this file for free on their website, intended for users who need to install or reinstall Windows. Download this file to your Mac before proceeding to the next steps.

With the Windows 10 ISO file downloaded, the next crucial step is to obtain a USB drive with sufficient storage space. Typically, a drive with at least 8GB of space is recommended. This ensures that there is enough room for the Windows installation files and any additional updates or drivers you might need to include in the bootable media.

Once Parallels Desktop is installed, you can use it to create a new virtual machine using the Windows 10 ISO file. During the setup process, Parallels will ask where you want to install Windows. At this stage, instead of installing it on a virtual disk, you'll choose your USB drive as the installation destination. This process effectively turns your USB drive into bootable Windows 10 installation media.

However, it's important to note that directly creating Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac through Parallels Desktop might not be as straightforward as using dedicated software for making bootable drives. It takes more time and storage space on your Mac.

If you want to create windows 10 bootable USB on Mac without bootcamp, you can try using a different tool called Etcher. Etcher is a free and open-source tool that allows you to create bootable USB drives from ISO files. Here are the steps to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac using Etcher:

It becomes much challenging to create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac as Bootcamp is not available on Apple Silicon Mac. Instead, you can borrow another Intel Mac and use Bootcamp to make a bootable Windows 10 USB on Mac.

Step 1: Open the Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder. Alternatively, use Spotlight search (Cmd + Space) and type "Boot Camp Assistant" to find and open it.

I found a way to install Windows on system without Mac OS system. You will need a USB with a Mac OS system on it. Reason why you will need to format the HD of the mac. With the system off. Turn on the mac. Access the boot up Options menu. Select the USB with the mac os. You will not be loading the Mac Os system. Don't worry. It will load to install the Mac OS system. You click the desktop and select Disk Utility. Choose the hard drive. Select Partition. Select one Partition. Under the Partition window Select Master Boot Record. This will allow you to format the hard drive that is not GUID partition that is for Mac. Once that is done. You are golden. Make sure you have a bootable USB with Windows on it. I used a bootable CD with Windows 7. When selecting the bootable media, it will load windows. You may receive error that unable to use the hard drive. No worries. Select the hard drive, delete and format. and Try again. This should allow you use the hard drive and install windows. No boot camp and no Mac OS on the system. If you need to get drivers. Try using IOBIT Driver Booster. It is free. Or you can view the devices in Device manager to locate the kind of devices that maybe needed to be updated.

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