Windows
Windows 8.1 “Blue” Build 9369 Hyper-V UEFI
I’m finally getting around to posting this, but I discovered a rather nifty new feature in Hyper-V in Windows 8.1. Some of you might recall I put up some pictures on Twitter showcasing new functionality called “Generation 2” Virtual Machines. These new VMs support UEFI to enable fast boot and secure boot functionality in VMs. [...]
Sinofsky is Gone, so here’s a Blast from the Past
I just saw the news about Steven Sinofsky leaving Microsoft, and couldn’t help but notice it cited him not being a team player. This reminded me of a blog post I made back on September 22, 2008. Since that post is no longer online, I figured I would re-publish it now for your viewing pleasure. [...]
How To: Create WDS Discover Image for Windows 8
I usually do all of my windows installs on my network via a WDS (Windows Deployment Services) server, and thus use PXE boot. Recently, however, I have run into a rather unique case that led me to have to create a discover image to find the server to install windows. About a year ago I [...]
Guide: Disable Auto Activation in Windows 8
As some of you may or may not know, Windows 8 brings many changes to the activation system that is used to protect the software from piracy. While effective, most of them just serve to be a royal pain to legitimate users of the software. There is no longer a 30 day grace period before [...]
Change Windows 8 Window Border Size
This is a neat little tip for people who do not like Windows 8’s gargantuan Window borders. In previous versions of Windows (Vista and 7), this was easily accomplished through the advanced appearance options under personalization. Unfortunately, this is gone in Windows 8, leaving a LOT of the customization features of the OS hidden from [...]
Guide: Optimize Windows 8 for the Desktop
One of the biggest complaints about Windows 8 is its usability on the desktop. This was even one of my gripes in the early days. As time went on however, I got more used to the way the new OS worked but I still had some gripes with the way things worked. These gripes included [...]
Windows 8 Tip – How to Back Up Activation
With the imminent release of Windows 8 to technet and MSDN (August 15th for those of you who don’t know yet), one thing that people may want to know is how to backup the activation status on a particular machine. This is very useful as you can use this after a re-install to avoid re-activating [...]
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Tips and Tricks
When Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview 3 days ago, I was one of the first to hit the download servers and install my copy of this shiny new OS. Upon using it for about a day I decided to do something that I haven’t done in 6 years. I decided to write a [...]
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Released
Today is the big day a lot of people have been waiting for. The release of the Windows 8 Consumer preview. The build number of the preview is 8250, and according to Steven Sinofsky, contains over 100,000 changes since the Developer Preview that was handed out at the BUILD conference in September. I have installed [...]