Test Layout

I normally focus on troubleshooting with my blog posts, but this one is an exception. I wrote up a section for course manual on BitLocker in Windows 10 that includes a couple of short activities enabling BitLocker. However, I'm concerned that that activities could take an extended period of time. So, this blog post is providing screenshots of what those activities look like. Before I start with the steps, I was pleasantly surprised that I was easily able to get BitLocker going in a VM without doing anything goofy. Once upon a time, to get BitLocker going, we needed to use a virtual floppy to store the startup key. There is now an option to use a password instead. I haven't looked at this in a while and this is probably not a new option. I'm going to guess that Windows 8.1 at least probably had the same. There are three nice things about a startup password for BitLocker: You don't need a TPM in your computer to make it work. Many computers don't have a TPM so that re...

Normally when you create a user account in Windows 10, the first thing asked is How will this person sign in?" This identifies whether  the account is a local account or a Microsoft account. Today as I was developing some course material for user accounts in Windows 10, this screen was missing from my laptop. Instead, it went directly in to asking for account information for a local user account. After much searching around, I finally figured out that my laptop had no network connectivity. I had just installed a Windows Insider build and the new build killed WiFi on my laptop. Once the WiFi connectivity was restored the new account wizard behaved as expected. I expect you would see the same behaviour in Windows 8.1 when disconnected from the network.

I got a comment back from a technical editor today that I didn't need quotes around the path in a CD command at the command prompt. I was surprised because the path included spaces. However, after testing, it's true! In the past I would have done: cd "folder1\foldername with spaces" However, this version (without quotes) works just as well: cd folder1\foldername with spaces Since it worked in Windows 10, I tried out Windows 8.1. It works in Windows 8.1 too. It's funny the little things you learn sometimes.

After doing some experimenting, I have determined the following about secure time in Windows 10: Secure time is updated when the computer goes to sleep or is shut down. This makes sense and I believe it is used to ensure that Windows has a reasonable time change and protect against irrational time sources. So, you want to compare time on startup against when it was last shut down. The registry keys use UTC time. When I read the time in SecureTimeEstimated and apply the correct time zone, then it matches the time the computer was put to sleep or shut down. SecureTimeEstimated seems to be the time of shutdown or going to sleep. SecureTimeHigh is one hour later than SecureTimeEstimated. SecureTimeLow is one hour earlier than SecureTimeEstimated. To view these values yourself you can use the following PowerShell code: [datetime]$(Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\SecureTimeLimits).SecureTimeEstimated [datetime]$(Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet...

Windows 10 has a new feature for time synchronization called secure time. The problem is that I haven't been able to find any documentation on it. What secure time seems to do is prevent significant time changes that are considered unreasonable. I believe it's new because there is no documentation at this time and because the registry keys for it don't exist in Windows 8.1, but do in Windows 10. Here is the problem I ran into with secure time..... As part of course development, we have a base image of Windows 10 with Office 2016 installed. We use this base as a starting point for differencing drives in course VMs, but this would also apply to an image you deploy to new workstations. This issue occurred even with just the base drive deployed. When I had a VM using the base drive, it would run fine for about half an hour and then the time would reset back to December 3rd. This is approximately when the base drive was created. Time in the VM would then bounce back and forth be...

I'm doing some experimentation with Windows 10 deployment and attempted to run Sysprep. When I ran it, I got the following error: Sysprep was not able to validate your Windows installation. Review the log file at %WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\Panther\setupact.log for details. After resolving the issue, use Sysprep to validate your installation again. When I read the log file, I found this: Package 9E2F88E3.Twitter_4.3.3.0_x86__wgeqdkkx372wm was installed for a user, but not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image. So, apparently the Twitter app that is included by default is causing my issue. I did some research and found references to other packages causing the same issue if Windows 10 communicates with the Internet. The VM I'm using does have Internet connectivity. To remove the app, I ran the following command. Note that you can use wildcards in PackageName for Get-AppxPackage, such as *twitter*. Get-AppxPackage PackageName | Rem...