Hyper-V Backup Utility - Update 20.02.14
· β˜• 1 min read
Flexible Hyper-V Backup Utility I’ve spent the past week away from home, and so I’ve been working on refactoring my Hyper-V Backup Utility and adding new features requested by users. Version 20.02.14 β€˜Valentine’ Current known issues: The e-mail report has extra line breaks in Outlook 365, Version 2001. New features: Refactored code. Fully backwards compatible. Added option to use a working directory to stage backups before moving them to final backup location.

Windows 10: 5 Years Later
· β˜• 11 min read
Windows 10 is five years old this year. In ‘old world’ terms, it would be about time for a brand-new release around summer/autumn time but alas, this is no longer the case with the software-as-a-service model. With this year being such a milestone for Windows 10 and with the end of life of Windows 7 – Microsoft’s most popular OS in recent times, I thought it would be good to take a look back and review Windows 10’s progress these past few years.

An explanation and changes ahead for the coming year.
· β˜• 3 min read
Hi all, You might have noticed some changes in the last few months to the site and the content - specifically that some posts go up with passwords on them initially and I want to explain why this is. I’ve decided to start a Patreon and also accept donations from anyone who is willing to “toss a coin to your Tech-Witcher”. One of the rewards to anyone who becomes a patron (at any level) is early access to articles on the site and videos on my new tech focussed YouTube channel.

Team Viewer Silent Install and Configuration
· β˜• 3 min read
In order to make a recent Bash Bunny payload, I needed to investigate how to install and configure Team Viewer without user interaction. This post will go through how I achieved that. My TeamViewer configuration was focussed around setting a personal password (a static password that can be used to access the computer) and installing TeamViewer as a service so the computer can be remotely controlled without a user being active.

Get Started with Windows Update for Business (WUfB)
· β˜• 6 min read
You may have seen the option to use Windows Update for Business and wondering what it brings to the table when compared to WSUS and SCCM. Windows Update for Business (WUfB) is a good way of simplifying and automating the deployment of Windows Updates without using any on-premises infrastructure. The downside is that you do loose some control, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. As I always say, it does depend on your infrastructure and environment though.

App Spotlight: Directory Opus
· β˜• 2 min read
Directory Opus is a file manager – remember those? I haven’t thought about them for years. DOpus (as it’s known for short) has a long history starting on the Commodore Amiga where in later versions it was available as a Workbench (the Amiga’s operating system) replacement. I only used Directory Opus version 4 on the Amiga, but it was a great file manager and was a great tool to have back then.

The New Microsoft Edge - The Microsoft Alternative To Chrome
· β˜• 2 min read
Microsoft have been developing an all new version of their web browser Edge and will release it in early 2020. If you are familiar with the existing Edge browser, it’s the same in name only - the new Microsoft Edge is vastly improved in many ways. The new Edge is now based on Chromium, the same project that Google’s Chrome browser is based on. So, this new version of Edge will share all the compatibility that Chromium based browsers have.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit for the Enthusiast, Home or Small Business
· β˜• 9 min read
This article is directed towards enthusiasts, IT professional’s for small businesses, or anyone who wants to create custom images and doesn’t have volume licensing, an Active Directory domain, or a lot of server infrastructure. I hope this article is useful to you, if it is please consider supporting my work with PayPal. In this walkthrough we’re going to cover: Installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and its dependencies on Windows 10 Home/Pro Edition.

Remove MS Store Apps Utility
· β˜• 6 min read
Customisable Windows 10/11 Microsoft Store App removal utility, previously known as Remove-Win10-Apps Remove MS Store Apps Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. Please report any problems via the β€˜issues’ tab on GitHub. Thanks -Mike Features and Requirements Remove specified apps for the current logged on user. Remove specified apps from the system for all users.

The Tale of the Fail of Google Stadia
· β˜• 3 min read
Disclaimer: This isn’t my personal experience with Stadia as I’ve haven’t tried it myself, either during it’s beta phase or in its current state. xCloud and Stadia comparisons: xCloud currently only streams to phones and tablets running Android and is in a preview phase. Stadia has had a preview phase, which was available as an invite-only beta, using Google Chrome and playing Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and is now a released product and service.

Installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Deploying Windows 10 - From Scratch!
· β˜• 16 min read
If you’ve read my other posts you’ll know that usually I make a post focusing on building a reference image and then another post on deploying that image. This post is very similar but I’m going to streamline things by just covering the installation of MDT, and deploying Windows 10 1909. I have also recently published a video walkthrough covering this. What you’ll need: A server to host the MDT share.

First Impressions with Project xCloud Preview
· β˜• 3 min read
For the last couple of days I’ve been trying out Microsoft’s Project xCloud game streaming service which is currently in preview. You can sign up to try it out yourself here. To get straight to it, the service has worked well for me. There have been some audio glitches, and in some situations - like scrolling around a world map, compression artifacts are very visible, but none of these issues have persisted.

Video Walkthrough: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Deploying Windows 10
· β˜• 1 min read
I’ve made a video walkthrough covering installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and deploying Windows 10. The video follows my previous posts on the subject, but I’ve added some additional useful information to cover silent application installation and I also touch on driver management. I intend to write a post that covers the same subjects as this video, just to bring all the information together in written form. If you find the video useful I would very much appreciate it being shared around, and don’t forget to like etc.