WSUS Reset and Re-Authorize

Recently I came across  a customer site where a lot of the machines had stopped receiving updates from WSUS, despite being visible in the WSUS console and having shown as reported in. I decided to write a powershell script to parse all the machines in AD, stop the Windows Update service, delete the SoftwareDistribution folder, …

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A sensible approach to Windows 10 Update Delivery Optimization

Sadly, there has been a lot of scaremongering and bad advice floating around following the release of Windows 10. One of those ‘concerns’ is centered around Microsoft’s new Windows Update Delivery Optimization (WUDO) which is initially designed to help users get faster software updates and in theory is a good idea, being able to handle massive internet traffic of …

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Chrome white screen when using through TeamViewer

I recently had an issue where trying to use chrome over a TeamViewer session resulted in a white screen. This can happen if there is no physical display attached to the computer you are accessing, or if say, the laptop lid is closed. Chrome tries to render using the GPU to a display that doesn’t …

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Windows Environment Variables

Variable Typical value (may vary) %ALLUSERSPROFILE% C:\ProgramData %APPDATA% C:\Users\(username}\AppData\Roaming %CommonProgramFiles% C:\Program Files\Common Files %COMPUTERNAME% {computername} %COMSPEC% C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe %HOMEDRIVE% C: or sometimes D: %HOMEPATH% \Users\{username} %LOCALAPPDATA% C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local %PATH% Varies. Includes C:\Windows\System32\;C:\Windows\ %PATHEXT% .COM; .EXE; .BAT; .CMD; .VBS; .VBE; .JS ; .WSF; .WSH; .MSC %ProgramData% C:\ProgramData %PROGRAMFILES% Directory containing program files, usually C:\Program Files %ProgramFiles(x86)% In 64-bit …

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