Disable Network Discovery in Windows 10/11
· ☕ 4 min read
Fully disabling Network Discovery in Windows 10 using Group Policy To properly disable Network Discovery in Windows 10 in a way that the user cannot easily re-enable we must create some firewall rules and prevent some services from running on start-up. We can do both things using Group Policy. Firewall Rules Create a new Group Policy or use an existing one that takes effect on computer objects. Go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

Moving the Site - Update 2021-02-16
· ☕ 1 min read
Update 2021-02-16 Theme changed to add site search. New theme is also more configurable, which I’m happy about. :) Will continue to tweak the site and layout of certain pages that have got garbled in the migration. Update 2021-02-14 Links to old popular articles now have aliases so old links will work. Still working on site-wide search, I may just change the Hugo theme. I’m currently moving the site from WordPress to Hugo with comments provided by Disqus.

Start Menu and Taskbar Customisation
· ☕ 3 min read
For Windows 11 please check out this post It’s been a long while since I last posted about how to customise the Windows 10 Start Menu and Taskbar for new users when deploying images, so it’s time to fix that! The first thing we need to do is setup what we want our Start Menu to look like and export it. Log on to a Windows 10 machine that has all of the software you want to be pinned on the Start Menu layout and customise the Start Menu as you want it.

Prevent Teams From Starting Automatically With No User Login
· ☕ 1 min read
If you are deploying Microsoft Teams but don’t want it to start on login, or force users to login to disable the auto start then you can do it after installation of Teams simply by editing a file. The file is located in the install location of the Teams installer, by default is it here: 1 %programfiles% (x86)\Teams Installer\setup.json The contents of the file should be as follows:

Deploy Windows 10 20H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 20H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Log Manager Utility - Update 20.07.27
· ☕ 1 min read
Flexible clean up and backup of log files Just a small update to add the improved error capturing and reporting that I’ve also put in the Hyper-V Backup Utility. 2020-07-30: Version 20.07.27 Added improved error handling and reporting. Log Manager Utility can also be downloaded from: The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery GitHub See the full documentation available here. If you would like to support me, please check out the link below.

Hyper-V Backup Utility - Update 20.07.13
· ☕ 1 min read
Flexible Hyper-V Backup Utility A substantial update in terms of changes made under the hood, but I’ve also added a few new options requested by users. The biggest change is that errors are now handled properly and reported to the user in a reliable manner. All the changes are summarized below. Version 20.07.13 Added -ShortDate option. This will create backups with only the Year, Month, Day as the file name.

3D Maze Remix - Update v1.4
· ☕ 1 min read
Update v1.4 Download from Itch.io, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux Once again, I’ve updated 3D Maze Remix with some new features that I’ve wanted to put in the game since I started developing it. I don’t consider this project “finished” just yet, as I’d like to improve the AI in the “demo” mode and make it more true to the original 3D Maze screensaver, which has been my aim throughout the entire project.

3D Maze Remix Dev Diary #1
· ☕ 2 min read
I’ve started work on 3D Maze Remix to add some features I’ve been wanting to figure out for a while. As I’m still learning C# and Unity the pretty simple sounding additions take longer than I initially thought. Here’s what I’ve been working on. Adding autonomous movement to the rat entity Making the rat move and not clip through the walls, floor or ceiling meant adding collision to the rat but allowing the player and rat to pass through each other.

Deploy Windows 10 2004 (20H1) Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An essential update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes two issues around booting. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. I will add installation instructions in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 2004 (20H1) Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An essential update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes two issues around booting. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. I will add installation instructions in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Log Manager Utility - Update 20.03.23
· ☕ 1 min read
Flexible clean up and backup of log files A user reported an issue where wildcards would not work with the -LogsPath switch. This was due to me adding incorrect validation to that option. To fix this I have removed the validation and should now accept wildcards as before. Please accept my apologies for this error, it should have been caught during testing but I missed it. I’ll take steps in future to prevent this type of problem from occurring in future.