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How to disable Windows pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys to temporary or permamently save disk space if space is critically low

Monday, March 28th, 2022

howto-pagefile-hiberfil.sys-remove-reduce-increase-increase-size-windows-logo

Sometimes you have to work with Windows 7 / 8 / 10 PCs  etc. that has a very small partition C:\
drive or othertimes due to whatever the disk got filled up with time and has only few megabytes left
and this totally broke up the windows performance as Windows OS becomes terribly sluggish and even
simple things as opening Internet Browser (Chrome / Firefox / Opera ) or Windows Explorer stones the PC performance.

You might of course try to use something like Spacesniffer tool (a great tool to find lost data space on PC s short description on it is found in my previous article how to
delete temporary Internet Files and Folders to to speed up and free disk space ) or use CCleaner to clean up a bit the pc.
Sometimes this is not enough though or it is not possible to do at all the main
partition disk C:\ is anyhow too much low (only 30-50MB are available on HDD) or the Physical or Virtual Machine containing the OS is filled with important data
and you couldn't risk to remove anything including Internet Temporary files, browsing cookies … whatever.

Lets say you are the fate chosen guy as sysadmin to face this uneasy situation and have no easy
way to add disk space from another present free space partition or could not add a new SATA hard drive
SSD drive, what should you do?
 

The solution wipe off pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys

Usually every Windows installation has a pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys.

  • pagefile.sys – is the default file that is used as a swap file, immediately once the machine runs out of memory. For Unix / Linux users better understanding pagefile.sys is the equivallent of Linux's swap partition. Of course as the pagefile is in a file and not in separate partition the swapping in Windows is perhaps generally worse than in Linux.
  • hiberfil.sys – is used to store data from the machine on machine Hibernation (for those who use the feature)


Pagefile.sys which depending on the configured RAM memory on the OS could takes up up to 5 – 8 GB, there hanging around doing nothing but just occupying space. Thus a temporary workaround that could free you some space even though it will degrade performance and on servers and production machines this is not a good solution on just user machines, where you temporary need to free space any other important task you can free up space
by seriously reducing the preconfigured default size of pagefile.sys (which usually is 1.5 times the active memory on the OS – hence if you have 4GB you would have a 6Gigabytes of pagefile.sys).

Other possibility especially on laptop and movable devices running Win OS is to disable hiberfil.sys, read below how this is done.


The temporary solution here is to simply free space by either reducing the pagefile.sys or completely disabling it


1. Disable pagefile.sys on Windows XP, Windows 7 / 8 / 10 / 11


The GUI interface to disable pagefile across all NT based Windows OS-es is quite similar, the only difference is newer versions of Windows has slightly more options.


1.1 Disable pagefile on Windows XP


Quickest way is to find pagefile.sys settings from GUI menus

1. Computer (My Computer) – right click mouse
2. Properties (System Preperties will appear)
3. Advanced (tab) 
4. Settings
5. Advanced (tab)
6. Change button

windows-xp-pagefile-disable-screenshot

1.2 Disable pagefile on Windows 7

 

advanced-system-settings-control-panel-system-and-security-screenshot

windows-system-properties-screenshot-properties-advanced-change-Virtual-memory-pagefile-screenshot

system-properties-performance-options
 

Once applied you'll be required to reboot the PC

How-to-turn-off-Virtual-Memory-Paging_File-in-Windows-7-restart

 

1.3 Disable Increase / Decrease pagefile.sys on Windows 10 / Win 11
 

open-system-properties-advanced-win10

win10-performance-options-menu-screenshot

configure-virtual-memory-win-10-screenshot


1.4 Make Windows clear pagefile.sys on shutdown

On home PCs it might be useful thing to clear up ( nullify) pagefile.sys on shutdown, that could save you some disk space on every reboot, until file continuously grows to its configured Maximum.

Run

regedit

Modify registry key at location

  

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

windows-clean-up-pagefile-sys-file-on-shutdown-or-reboot-registry-editor-value-screenshot

You can apply the value also via a registry file you can get the Enable Clearpagefile at shutdown here .reg.
 

2. Manipulating pagefile.sys size and file delete from command line with wmic tool 

For scripting purposes you might want to use the wmic pagefile which can do increase / decrase or delete the file without GUI, that is very helpful if you have to admin a Windows Domain (Active Directory)
 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ wmic pagefile /?

PAGEFILE – Virtual memory file swapping management.

HINT: BNF for Alias usage.
(<alias> [WMIObject] | [] | [] ) [].

USAGE:

PAGEFILE ASSOC []
PAGEFILE CREATE <assign list>
PAGEFILE DELETE
PAGEFILE GET [] []
PAGEFILE LIST [] []

 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ wmic pagefile
AllocatedBaseSize  Caption          CurrentUsage  Description      InstallDate                Name             PeakUsage  Status  TempPageFile
4709               C:\pagefile.sys  499           C:\pagefile.sys  20200912061902.938000+180  C:\pagefile.sys  525                FALSE

 

[hipo.WINDOWS-PC] ➤ wmic pagefile list /format:list

AllocatedBaseSize=4709
CurrentUsage=499
Description=C:\pagefile.sys
InstallDate=20200912061902.938000+180
Name=C:\pagefile.sys
PeakUsage=525
Status=
TempPageFile=FALSE

wmic-pagefile-command-line-tool-for-windows-default-output-screenshot

 

  • To change the Initial Size or Maximum Size of Pagefile use:
     

➤ wmic pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=2048,MaximumSize=2048

  • To move the pagefile / change location of pagefile to less occupied disk drive partition (i.e. D:\ drive)

     

     

    Sometimes you might have multiple drives on the PC and some of them might be having multitudes of gigabytes while main drive C:\ could be fully occupied due to initial install bad drive organization, in that case a good work arount to save you space so you can work normally with the server is just to temporary or permanently move pagefile to another drive.

wmic pagefileset where name="D:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=2048,MaximumSize=2048


!! CONSIDER !!! 

That if you have the option to move the pagefile.sys for best performance it is advicable to place the file inside another physical disk, preferrably a Solid State Drive one, SATA disks are too slow and reduced Input / Output disk operations will lead to degraded performance, if there is lack of memory (i.e. pagefile.sys is actively open read and wrote in).
 

  • To delete pagefile.sys 
     

➤ wmic pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" delete

 

If for some reason you prefer to not use wmic but simple del command you can delete pagefile.sys also by:

Removing file default "Hidden" and "system" file attributes – set for security reasons as the file is a system file usually not touched by user. This will save you from "permission denied" errors:
 

➤ attrib -s -h %systemdrive%\pagefile.sys


Delete the file:
 

➤ del /a /q %systemdrive%\pagefile.sys


3. Disable hibernation on Windows 7 / 8 and Win 10 / 11

Disabling hibernation file hiberfil.sys can also free up some space, especially if the hibernation has been actively used before and the file is written with data. Of course, that is more common on notebooks.
Windows hibernation has significantly improved over time though i didn't have very pleasant experience in the past and I prefer to disable it just in case.
 

3.1 Disable Windows 7 / 8 / 10 / 11 hibernation from GUI 

Disable it through:

Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Power Options -> Edit Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings


 like shown in below screenshot:

Windqows-power-options-Advanced-settings-Allow-Hybrid-sleep-option-menu-screenshot

 

3.2 Disable Windows 7 / 8 / 10 / 11 hibernation from command line

Disable hibernation Is done in the same way through the powercfg.exe command, to disable it
if you're cut of disk space and you want to save space from it:

run as Administrator in Command Line Windows (cmd.exe)
 

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

If you later need to switch on hibernation
 

powercfg.exe /hibernate on


disable-hiberfile-windows-screenshot

3.3 Disable Windows hibernation on legacy Windows XP

On XP to disable hibernation open

1. Power Options Properties
2. Select Hibernate. 
3. Select Enable Hibernation to clear the checkbox and disable Hibernation mode. 
4. Select OK to apply the change.

Close the Power Options Properties box. 

enable-disable-hibernate-windows-xp-menu-screenshot

To sum it up

We have learned some basics on Windows swapping and hibernation and i've tried to give some insight on how thiese files if misconfigured could lead to degraded Win OS performance. In any case using SSD as of 2022 to store both files is a best practice for machines that has plenty of memory always try to completely disable / remove the files. It was shown how  to manage pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys across Windows Operating Systems different versions both from GUI and via command line as well as how you can configure pagefile.sys to be cleared up on pc reboot.
 

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How to Create New Windows 10 NTFS Drive partition from new empty ( Unallocated ) space with Windows Disk Management or diskpart command

Thursday, November 18th, 2021

Windows-10-paritioning-with-disk-management-diskmgmt.msc

As mentioned in previous article, I've been setting up a new PC that is a bit old a 11 years old Lenovo ThinkCentre model M90P with 8 GB of Memory, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU         650  @ 3.20GHz   3.19 GHz, Intel Q57 Express Chipset.

After the installation was successful on the new Desktop PC attached SSD, I was curious to see how Windows detects the 521 GB Solid State Drive Samsung  Disk, as well as to assign all the SSD Disk space, so I don't have unused parts of the drive hanging around.

To get the exact type of SSD installed on the Lenovo ThinkCentre, it comes to a simple PowerShell command (note that the PowerShell command has to be executed as Administrator).

 

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Try the new cross-platform PowerShell https://aka.ms/pscore6

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk

Number FriendlyName               SerialNumber   MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage            Size
—— ————               ————   ——— ——- —————– ———— —–            —-
0      SAMSUNG MZ7LN512HAJQ-00000 S3TVNX0MC04330 SSD       True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 476.94 GB


PS C:\Windows\system32>
 

 

PowerShell-Get-PhysicalDisk-command-print-exact-SSD-type-attached-to-a-Windows-computer 

During the Windows installation, I did installed Windows on a 110GB partition that was left behind from my attempt to copy another 120GB ssd drive as, I've described in my previous article.
Cause of that big part of the SAMSUNG MZ7LN512HAJQ-00000 SSD was left unpartitioned ( unallocated ) and respectively the space did not show in Windows, hence to work around this I was supposed to 
create new Windows Drive and format it either in VFAT (FAT32) or NTFS. Through the years when I had to do such an operations I often either booted from some bootCD and did the desired partitioning or if
partitioning had to be done on a LivePC without reboot, I've used Windows Partitioning Software, such as:

  • The Industry Standard Partition Manager ( Acronis Disk Director ) 
     
  • EaseUS Partition Manager


Using a Good partition manager is a great thing if some complicated partitioning operations needs to be done,  however for such a trivial stuff such as mine in that case – Creating a new NTFS filesystem from unallocated space is a bit of nonsense, thus this time I've decided to use the Windows Standard tool for Partitioinng
 

  • Disk Management

To run the tool you need to run Computer Management tool first either by just looking it up in the Search bar near Start menu (Windows 10 flag icon) or by invoking command line start window, by pressing together

Windows Button + R and runnining command:

C:\Users\Emilian> compmgmt.msc

 

From there on navigate to

Storage -> Disk Management

windows-computer-management-screenshot

Go over box Unallocated (365.15 GB) and Press Right Mouse Button and select

-> New Simple Volume

new-simple-volume-screenshot

Next steps are quite self explanatory, had to just follow the New Simple Volme Wizard steps

windows-computer-management-screenshot

windows-computer-management-screenshot-3

windows-computer-management-screenshot-4

I Prefer to use NTFS because it is quicker and kinda of a standard since Windows 8+ onwards, besides that this computer will be used as a simple web browsing station and there is no plans the disk will ever have to be attached to a different OS like UNIX / LInux..However always keep in mind for compitability reasons VFAT Filesystem is usually not a bad idea. 

windows-computer-management-screenshot-5

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/new-ntfs-volume-F-drive-windows-10-screenshot

As you can see the drive is prepared and now accessible from Windows Explorer under Drive F:\. If you wonder why the drive is not D:\, it seems to create the D:\ the unallocated space is supposed to be be on a separate Disk which waas not the case with this PC setup.

After installing the SSD drive and setting the proper partitions another good practice is to use Disk Defragmenter Win tool to optimize the Drives for speed. Another useful feature of disk degragmenter is you can use it to check what kind of hard drive you have installed e.g. SATA or SSD, as well as check if the installed SSD is NVME (Non-Volatile-Memory-Express), e.g. of a faster type.

To run Disk Degrafmenter do  Win key + R
 


C:\Users\Emilian> dfrgui

 

dfrgui-command-screenshot-windows-1

Below is what dfrgui reports on the ThinkCentre after running Disk Optimize for each Drive – (Optimize All) option.

dfrgui-partitions-on-lenovo-thinkcentre-windows-screeshot

Just to show you what you can see with dfrgui, here is the dfrgui screenshot from another PC that has attached both SATA disk and NVME SSD Drive.

dfrgui-command-screenshot-windows-2

 

How to do partitioning from Windows console with diskpart command (useful for scripting)

 

If you're coming from Linux world and you're pretty used to fdisk / cfdisk etc. to do partitioning daily, then you'll be most happy to hear about existence of the diskpart command in Windows, which is a kinda of an equivalent tool.
The tool is perfect for domain administrators which need to do some dynamic partitioning operations on multiple computers at once.

 To use diskpart you need Administrator command prompt, there is much you can do with diskpart, below is how to create another NTFS partition on a secondary

C:\Windows\System32> diskpart

diskpart-win-screenshot-1

DISKPART> list disk

diskpart-win-screenshot-2

DISKPART> select disk 2

diskpart-win-screenshot-3

To clean all the content (e.g. delete everything on hard drive) e.g. all files and directories

!!! BEWARE NOT TO DELETE BY MISTAKE YOUR DATA DON'T BLAME ME IF YOU JUST COPY PASTE IRRESPONSIBLY WITHOUT THINKING.
AFTER ALL IT IS YOUR COMPUTER !!!

DISKPART> clean

 

diskpart-win-screenshot-4

Next lets, create a partition, in below screenshot you can see how to use help and what are the supported partition types in Windows 10 as of year 2021.


/diskpart-help-create-partition-type-screenshot
 

DISKPART> create partition primary

diskpart-win-screenshot-6

To format new assigned primary partition as NTFS

DISKPART> format fs=ntfs

diskpart-win-screenshot-7

Once formatted to assign Drive letter that is the next available free one in order

DISKPART> assign

 

diskpart-win-screenshot-8

If instead of auto assigning a letter to new formatted partition, you would want to assign a specific Drive letter, lets say F:\> as it was in our case with the Graphical Windows Disk Management tool earlier in article.

DISKPART> assign letter=F


Using diskpart it is pretty easy to do much stuff from command line such as formatting a new attached empty unallocated drive, or formatting and setting a desired filesysteem of external attached Hard Drive. Note that the disk list arguments will list any externally attached Supported Storage and you can use disklist similarly to do quick format / repartition / wipe out data or whatever.

Further on just for fun I've run CPUID which is a great Windows freeware tool to report System Information, pretty much like the good old Everest such as exact CPU type, MainBoard, Graphics Card and Mainboard type of the certain hardware you have on running.

cpuid-screenshot-windows-10
 
That's all folks Hope this article, helped you learn something new.

Cheers 😉

 

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Remove “Windows 7 PC is out of Support” annoying reoccuring warning popup alert

Friday, September 10th, 2021

Windows-7-End-of-life-pc-is-out-of-support-removal-rip-win-7

Since January 15th 2020, Windows 7 which reached its End of Life (EOL)  and is no longer Supported. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, and Professional installations will display the message


"Your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

The use of Windows 7, since 2020 is steadily declining but some hard core maniacs, who refuse to be in tune with latest fashion do still roll Windows 7 on dedicated VPS Servers (running on Xen / VMWare etc.).
With the reach of End of Support, people who still run Windows 7 have no longer the usual Operating system provided.

  • No security updates
  • No software updates
  • No tech support

Even though running End of Support system is quite dangerous and you might get hacked easily by autometed bot, still for some custom uses and if the Windows 7 Runs behind a solid firewall it could be considered relatively safe.

Microsoft hence made their Windows (remote controlled system) to have an annoying pop up window with the "YOUR WINDOWS 7 PC IS OUT OF SUPPORT" as shown in below screenshot:

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-annoying-message-screenshot.

For those who don't plan to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10, this message becomes quickly very annoying especially if you happen to access remotely your Windows 7 VPS and use it for simple things as browsing a few news websites or you're a marketer and you use the Windows for accessing Amazon / Ebay from a different country as many Marketers do to access General Webstores emulating access from a remote location. 


Disable "Your Windows 7 PC is out of support" popup alert
 

Luckily it is possible to disable this annoying Your Windows 7 pop-up alert by setting a value key in Windows Registry
DiscontinueEOS to 1.

To do so launch from Administrator command  line cmd.exe prompt (or start it from Windows start menu):

regedit

1. Open Windows Registry Editor and navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify.

 You will need to set the DWORD DiscontinueEOS value to 1 in the Windows Registry
 

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-eosnotify-dword-registry-03-600x366

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontinueEOS-registry-modify

–  In case EOSNotify key is not available, right-click the CurrentVersion key and select New > Key and name it EOSNotify.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-EOSNotify-create-new-key-600x367

2. Right click anywhere in the right pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DiscontinueEOS.

3. Set Value data to 1 and click OK.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-edit-dword-32-bit-value-regedit-screenshot.

4. When the new value has been set, Restart the Windows7 computer / Virtual machine, to make sure registry setting take effect.

windows-7-disable-pc-is-out-of-support-popup-discontninueEOS-reg-dword-0x000000001-600x248

 

To automate the procedure in large environments, you can create a small script using the reg  command load the Registry key or use Windows GPO (Group Policy Object) to enforce the setting across all Active Directory PC members.
 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\EOSNotify]
"DiscontinueEOS"=dword:00000001
custom GPO in Active Directory.

To avoid potential issues using a non supported OS, you should start planning to upgrade your Windows 7 clients to Windows 10.

That's it ! Out of support Windows 7  alert should no longer bug you 🙂

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Disable Windows hibernate on a work notebook or Desktop Gamers PC – Save a lot of Space on Windows C Drive, delete hidefil.sys howto

Thursday, May 18th, 2017

how-to-to-disable-stop-hibernate-windows-8-10-to-save-disk-space-and-get-rid-of-hbierfil.sys-misteriously-occupying-space-improve-windows-performance

Some Windows  laptop / desktop users prefer not to shutdown computers (especially those coming back from Mac OS backgound) at the end of the day but  hibernate instead.

Hibernate is a great thing but historically we know well that in Windows hibernate is working much worser than on Macs and it is common that after multiple hibernates you will face problems with missing  C: drive space is it might be "misteriously" decreasing in a way that the PC performance degrades as the C:hibfile.sys hidden file occupies few 16Gigas or so (the occupied space by hibfile.sys does resemble the installed RAM Memory on the computer, so if your PC has 16Gigas the hibfile.sys will be lets say approximately 15 Gigabytes)

However most users never use hibernate and might never use it for a life time, especially those on a Desktop Windows PCs, I use Windows as a WorkStation as an employee of DXC (the ex Hewlett Packard or Hewlett Packard Enterprise that merged with CSC) but to be honest I've used hibernate function very raraly on the notebook, thus I find the hibernate more or less useless feature, especially because at many times I try to wake-up the PC after hibernate the computer boots but the display stays dark and I have to restart the Computer before I can go back to normal work operations. Of course my Windows 7 hibernation issues might be caused do to the corporate software installed on my PC or because the fact the hard drive is encrypted but nomatter that in my case and I guess in case of many the hibernate function on Windows 7 / 8 / 10 might be totally useless.
 


Few works is Hiberfil.sys File and Why you might want to complete disable / delete it


On Windows 7 / 8 / 10 the hiberfil.sys file is being used to store the PC current state at time of hibernation, so if you have to move from a place to place within an organization / university / office without a charger hibernation is a really nice way to save battery power without later wasting time for additional PC boot (where a lot of power is wasted for Operationg System to load and re-opening the opened Browser etc.

So in short sleeping the PC with Hibernate function does cause the Computer to write into C:hiberfil.sys all data at the moment stored in the PC RAM (Memory), which is being cleared up at time of Computer being in Sleep mode.
Once the computer receives a Wake-up call from the hibernation in order to present with the Desktop at the same state hiberfile.sys stored information is being red and transferred to PC flushable RAM so the RAM memory is again filled with same bits it used to have right before the hibernation was made.

Because hiberfil.sys is a system file it has the hidden attribute and it can only be write / read by a Administrator Win account and usually it is not a good idea to touch it

Some people haven't shutdown Windows for 20-30 days and especially if Windows has disabled updates it happens for some users to use the hibernate function for weeks (re-hibernating and waking up thousand times) for long periods so the effect is the hiberfile.sys might become gigantic and if you take the time to check what is file or directory is wasting all your C:> drive with leys say WinDirStat or SpaceSniffer you will notice the lets say 15Gigas being eaten by Hiberfil.sys.

Disable of hibfile.sys is also a great tip for Gamers desktop PCs as most gamers won't use hibernate function at all.

I. How to Disable Hibernate Mode in Windows 10, 8, 7, or Vista


In order to get rid of the file across Windows 7 / 8 / 10

Open command prompt (as an Administartor, right click on the Command Prompt cmd.exe and choose Run as Administartor) and issue below cmd:

disable-hibernate-on-windows-7-8-10-powercfg-off-screenshot

C:> powercfg -h off
…

If later you decide you need the hibernate function again active on the PC or notebook do issue:

C:> powercfg -h on
…

You’re likely reading this because you noticed a gigantic hiberfil.sys file sitting on your system drive and you’re wondering if you can get rid of it to free up some space. Here’s what that file is and how you can delete it if you want to.

 

II. Disable Hibernate Mode in Windows XP

Hibernate function command is not present on Windows XP so in order to remove it on XP (hope you don't use XP any more and you're not a viction of the resent crypt catastrophic ransomware WannaCry 🙂

disable-hibernate-mode-windows-xp-screenshot

Control Panel -> Power Options

In the Power Options properties window, switch to the “Hibernate” tab and disable the “Enable hibernation” option.

After you disable hibernate mode, restart PC, and manually delete the hiberfil.sys file.

Now enjoy free-ing up few gigabytes of useless wasted C: hard drive space from your PC 🙂

Note: Removing hiberfil.sys is a precious thing to do on old Windows Computers which have been made with a little leys say 40Gigabyte partition drive C: whether with the time due to User profile use and Browsing caches the C: drive has left with leys say 1-2 Gigabyte of free space and the computers overall performance has fallen twice or so.

This post is in memoriam of Chriss Cornell (our generation used to grow with grunge and his music was one of the often listened by me and our generation)

R.I.P: Chriss Cornell (the head of SoundGarden and AudioSlave who passed away yesterday right on the day when we in Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church commemorate the memory of a great-martyr Nicolay Sofijski (Great Martyr Nicolas from Sofia martyred by Turkish Ottomans during year 1555).

I found surprising fact for me  that Chriss Cornell converted to Greek Eastern Orthodox faith under influence of his Greek Wife, below is paste from his Wikipedia page:

"

Chriss Cornell Personal life (Rest in Peace Chris)

Cornell was married to Susan Silver, the manager of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.[123] They had a daughter, Lillian Jean, born in June 2000.[123] He and Silver divorced in 2004.[123] In December 2008, Cornell reported via his official website that he had finally won back his collection of 15 guitars after a four-year court battle with Silver.[124]

He was married to Vicky Karayiannis,[125] a Paris-based American publicist of Greek heritage. The union produced a daughter, Toni, born in September 2004, and a son, Christopher Nicholas, born in December 2005.[126] Cornell converted to the Greek Orthodox Church through her influence.[127]

When asked how Cornell beat all his addictions he stated, "It was a long period of coming to the realization that this way (sober) is better. Going through rehab, honestly, did help … it got me away from just the daily drudgery of depression and either trying to not drink or do drugs or doing them and you know, they give you such a simple message that any idiot can get and it's just over and over, but the bottom line is really, and this is the part that is scary for everyone, the individual kinda has to want it … not kinda, you have to want it and to not do that crap anymore or you will never stop and it will just kill you."[128]

In a 2011 interview,[129] Cornell said the major change with the reformed Soundgarden is a lack of alcohol: "The biggest difference I noticed … and we haven't even really talked about it: There are no bottles of Jack Daniel's around or beers. And we never talked about … it's just not there."


Enjoy!

 

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How to shutdown Windows after 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. X hours with a batch script – Shutdown / Reboot / Logoff Windows with a quick command

Wednesday, August 17th, 2016

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/windows-pc-server-shutdown-after-3-5-hours-howto-shutdown-windows-with-command-batch

I recently wondered how it is possible to shutdown Windows in some prior set time lets say in 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours or 8 hours.

That's handy especially on servers that are being still in preparation install time and you have left some large files copy job (if you're migration files) from Old server environment to a new one
or if you just need to let your home WIndows PC shutdown to save electricity after some time (a very useful example is if you're downloading some 200GB of data which are being estimated to complete in 3 hours but you need to get out and be back home in 2 or 4 days and you don't want to bother connecting remotely to your PC with VNC or teamviewer then just scheduling the PC / server to shutdown in 3 hours with a simple is perfect solution to the task, here is how:

1. Open Command Prompt (E.g. Start menu -> Run and type CMD.EXE)

2. Type in command prompt

 

shutdown -s -t 10800

 

If you by mistake has typed it to shutdown earlier and suddenly you find out your PC needs to be running for a short more time in order to cancel the scheduled Shutdown type:

 

shutdown -a


Shutdown Windows command -s flag has also a possibiltiy to not shutdown but just logoff or if you just need to have the system rebooted a reboot option:
 


options    effect
-l         to log off
-r         to reboot

If you need to shutdown the PC after half an hour use instead the command:

 

shutdown -s -t 1800


shutdown-windows-pc-with-command-in-half-an-hour-screenshot.gif


Half an hour is 1800 seconds for one hour delayed shutdown use 3600 for 3 hours, that would be 3*3600 10800, for 5 hours 5*3600 = 18000 seconds and so on

 


An alternative way to do it with a short VBscript, here is an example:

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Dim Input
Input = "10:00"

'Input = InputBox("Enter the shutdown time here.","", "10:00")

For i = 1 to 2

CurrentTime = Time & VbCrLf

If Left(CurrentTime,5) = Input Then

objShell.Run "shutdown -s -t 00", 0
WScript.Quit 1

Else

WScript.Sleep 1000

End If

i=i-1

Next

Enjoy

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Posted in Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Various, Windows | 2 Comments »

Remove pre-installed HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Toshiba not needed default vendor software on a new bought PC notebook quickly with Decrap My Computer

Thursday, April 14th, 2016

remove-default-unneded-software-from-manufacturer-hp-asus-acer-dell-toshiba
While browsing today and looking for software to clean up all the spy software from my corporate HP laptop, I've come across an interesting tool called Decrap which aims at removing Bloatware from a Windows PC / notebook (mirrored here because original software site was down)

So what is Bloatware ?

The term Bloatware (also called jokingly crapware) is term is the one that was coined to describe, the default pre-installed software that comes to you together with Windows pre-installed OS by the hardware manufacturer.
I'm sure anyone who bought brand new branded PC or laptop over the last 10 years have already suffered the unwanted and unnecessery
bunch of software that comes pre-installed freeware programs aiming to help you in your daily work but in reality just slowing down your PC
and showing annoying popups or at best keeping useless in Windows system apptray.

Let me give you an example:

Cleanup (Remove) common ASUS, HP, Dell default  installed unneded (Bloatware) software

Many users may want to uninstall ASUS Crapware software such as ASUS Tutor, ASUS LifeFrame3, ASUS WebStorage and ASUSVibe.

Like Asus, HP computers often come preloaded with useless software from factory, example for this is HP Customer Service enhancements, HP Update, HP Total Care Setup and ProtectSmart.

If you buy Dell PC notebook soon you'll discover that there are several preloaded software (often unnecessery software) such as Dell Stage, Dell Digital Delivery and Dell DataSafe.

Toshiba computers and notebooks contain pre-loeaded "crapware" software from Toshiba.
Just to mention a few of those: Toshiba Disc Creator, Toshiba ReelTime, Service Station, Bulletin Board and Toshiba Assist.

Often there are fingerprint reader programs, Wi-Fi connection managers, Bluetooth managers, Audio Management sofware and other third party vendor software which tend to be not working as good as others softwares from third vendor, so Decrap is to help you to identify and remove these too in a easy GUI manner.

Non-experienced Computer users often leave the bloatware to hang around for even years and only if some relative that is an IT involved person / sysadmin / Even once you're aware that the Bloatware is on the system the ordinary user is hard to remove it as he is scared not to break the system.
Besides that fften this bloatware just soft comes so much integrated into Windows that removing it costs hours of tries and research online on
all the Bloatware components and even then could mislead you so you break the PC. programmer etc. comes home of such users finds out about the happily existing of the useless software on the notebook.


So here is Decrap My Computer coming at place aiming to help to remove the unnecessery Hardware vendor software in few easy (Click, Click, Click Next ..) steps.

decrap-my-computer-clean-up-bloatware-crapware-on-windows-laptop-main-gui

Then decrap does silently all the complex operations and suggestions to make the HP, Dell, Asus, Toshiba manufacturer prebundled software to be stopped and uninstalled.
Decrap My Computer is a freeware, lightweight and easy to use and lets you safely remove crapware and bloatware, or any software, from any Windows PC.

Even for Old computers, Decrap comes handy for the unexperienced avarage user who used his laptop with this useless  default vendors programs silently killing the performance respectively user experience for years.

Using Decrap is quite intuitive PC is scanned for Bloatware and then after a backup Windows Restore Point is offered you're offered to review and Uninstall the unwanted softwares. There is also an automatic mode but those one still could be a bit dangerous, so use the automatic mode only on multiple machines with the same model  / brand notebooks that comes prebundled with same sofware after testing and confirming the automatic mode on 1 initial machine will not break up some needed functionality.

decrap-your-pc-clean-up-windows-from-hp-dell-toshiba-asus-bloatware-unuseful-programs

Here is few screenshots of the tool in action:
decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought-pc

decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought-pc-1

decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought

Another good alternative (since decrap seems to be not maintained anymore) as I just leardned from Natasha Myles (thanks for pointing me about the broken link to decrap website) is SpeedUpPC more on speeding up old PC or laptop is her article 

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Posted in Everyday Life, Performance Tuning, Windows | No Comments »

Must have software on freshly installed windows – Essential Software after fresh Windows install

Friday, March 18th, 2016

Install-update-multiple-programs-applications-at-once-using-ninite

If you're into IT industry even if you don't like installing frequently Windows or you're completely Linux / BSD user, you will certainly have a lot of friends which will want help from you to re-install or fix their Windows 7 / 8 / 10 OS. At least this is the case with me every year, I'm kinda of obliged to install fresh windowses on new bought friends or relatives notebooks / desktop PCs.

Of course according to for whom the new Windows OS installed the preferrences of necessery software varies, however more or less there is sort of standard list of Windows Software which is used daily by most of Avarage Computer user, such as:
 

I tend to install on New Windows installs and thus I have more or less systematized the process.

I try to usually stick to free software where possible for each of the above categories as a Free Software enthusiast and luckily nowadays there is a lot of non-priprietary or at least free as in beer software available out there.

For Windows sysadmins or College and other public institutions networks including multiple of Windows Computers which are not inside a domain and also for people in computer repair shops where daily dozens of windows pre-installs or a set of software Automatic updates are  necessery make sure to take a look at Ninite

ninite-automate-windows-program-deploy-and-update-on-new-windows-os-openoffice-screenshot

As official website introduces Ninite:

Ninite – Install and Update All Your Programs at Once

Of course as Ninite is used by organizations as NASA, Harvard Medical School etc. it is likely the tool might reports your installed list of Windows software and various other Win PC statistical data to Ninite developers and most likely NSA, but this probably doesn't much matter as this is probably by the moment you choose to have installed a Windows OS on your PC.

ninite-choises-to-build-an-install-package-with-useful-essential-windows-software-screenshot
 

For Windows System Administrators managing small and middle sized network PCs that are not inside a Domain Controller, Ninite could definitely save hours and at cases even days of boring install and maintainance work. HP Enterprise or HP Inc. Employees or ex-employees would definitely love Ninite, because what Ninite does is pretty much like the well known HP Internal Tool PC COE.

Ninite could also prepare an installer containing multiple applications based on the choice on Ninite's website, so that's also a great thing especially if you need to deploy a different type of Users PCs (Scientific / Gamers / Working etc.)

Perhaps there are also other useful things to install on a new fresh Windows installations, if you're using something I'm missing let me know in comments.

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Posted in Everyday Life, Remote System Administration, System Administration, Various, Windows | 2 Comments »

Use mac PC built-in camera to make / take pictures on Mac OS X macbookair notebook with Photo Booth

Friday, February 26th, 2016

take-picture-or-video-with-built-in-camera-on-MacOSX-PhotoboothLOGO

It seems we lost our Good high quality Digital Camera somewhere and I was in need urgently to make a good quality photo (my ZTE Phone) has a very bad camera, so I got the idea to use Macbookair's camera as it has better
resolution to picture my present a  Tank Tort 🙂 hand made by my wife as a present for the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland which is a major feast in Russia, Belarus and many of the ex-Soviet Union members communist countries.

Actually using build in camare in MacBookAir is a handy thing for people mising at the moment a good high quality digital camera as it is thin and light and build in MacBook cam can be used to make Videos and Pictures exactly the same way
as an ordinary Tablet Computer is used so commonly nowadays by many:

In other words I needed for the Mac OS X equivalent to Cheese's (Photo and Video) capturer program for Linux.

Luckily for people interested in using their Mac OS notebook as a amateur camera this is easy by using default shipped Mac Application called:

Photo Booth app

To Launch Photo Booth app it just look it up in Finder and double click it:

PhotoBooth-how-to-take-photos-on-macosx

Clicking the large red button underneath the preview area will take a picture after an optional countdown.

Tort Tank of Svetka

Besides being able to capture Video and Pictures from Mac's camera it could add also some nice effects to taken pictures and videos (supports a basic video editing) features and effects.

The effects you can choose are are: Sepia, Black and White, Glow, Comic Book, Normal, Colored Pencil, Thermal Camera, X-Ray, and Pop Art. There are also effects that change the person in the picture using these effects: Bulge, Dent, Twirl, Squeeze, Mirror, Light Tunnel, Fish Eye, and Stretch. Actually  photographic filters of Photo Booth are very similar to Adobe Photoshop.

make-picture-on-mac-photobooth-effects-screenshot
By default Photo Booth will create picture, howver

Photo Booth saves your photos as JPEG files in a folder named Photo Booth, located in your home folder.

Choose File > Reveal in Finder

to see your picture files.

A much better way to be able to easily see and access all taken Pictures and Videos with Photo Booth is to

 

open Terminal

 

and type:

——-
 

 

$ cd Pictures
$ ln -s Photo\ Booth\ Library/Pictures/ PhotoBoothPics


This will make Link to pictures be easily accessible from your Finder -> Pictures folder
 
Applying custom photo backgrounds

A very useful feature of Photo Booth is that the user can apply backdrops to provide an effect similar to a green screen. When a backdrop is selected, a message appears telling the user to step away from the camera. Once the background is analyzed, the user steps back in front of the camera and is shown in front of the chosen backdrop.

For people who prefer to take photos using a console program on Mac OS I guess you should take a look at ffpeg
Here is one more snapshot of the Tort Tank snapshot made with the Macbookair of Svetlana 🙂

Tort Tank


P.S. If you like the Tort Tank and you happen to live in Sofia Bulgaria, you can order it  by dropping me a comment with request 🙂

Enjoy ! 🙂

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Posted in Curious Facts, Entertainment, Everyday Life, Mac OS X, Various | No Comments »

Change Skype for Business UI to Lync – Skype for Business Lync Theme / Remove Skype for Business coloroful UI and Switch to Lync simple interface

Wednesday, February 17th, 2016

Revert-skype-for-business-Lync-User-Interface-change-skype-for-business-theme-skin

If you are working in a large corporation such as (HP or HPE – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE is the new splitted company brand name for the Software and Servers division of ex-HP) / IBM / Dell or any other company with the size of top fortune companies and you Computer Domain admistrator has forced your work PC to already use Skype for Business instead of the good tested Lync Client along with the goodies and PROS of having the newer Skype for Business (S4B) as usual for old fashened users like me and the avarage employee the New S4B interface will turn into nightmare with all this circled names and more buttons and the annoying Skype Blue Theme.

For anyone who has even basic idea of design and aesthetics, I believe the default Theme of Skype For Business  will be evaluated as a serious "interface downgrade" compared to the simple looking Interface and White Skin of Lync Client.

With this said it will be logical for the end user like me to desire to customize a bit default S4B Skin to make it more elegant looking like Lync 2013 client but guess what there is a Surprise if you google around, Skype For Business just like the regular Skype client doesn't have integrated support for Skins / Themes.
To make the horror complete, many big corporations are choosing to migrate their Email infrastructure from the classical and well tested Windows Domain with Exchange Server to  Microsoft Office 365 (Cloud services),
which makes the dependency on M$ products even bigger and in the long run control and spying on people's email and information (people's data security even worsers) as you know how hackable Windows prooved to be over the years.


Well for those who remember the good old times of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and ICQ (I seek you) 🙂 and even Jabber when chatting emerged and boomed into popularity all the chat clients nomatter whether it was a free software under GPL / BSD license or it was a Proprietary licensed software, there was always alternative on the Interface Outlook of the Chat clients and on practically all popular Chat / Audio / Video communication Standards / Protocols, there used to be some option for the users to use either a different client or to customize the outook of the program.

Well now the big surprise with Skype Protocol which was purchased by Microsoft some years ago back is this terrible already M$ program doesn't have any option for changing the Theme and even basic customization besides the ones provided by default by Microsoft. For my surprise such a trivial and everybody used program like Skype with perhaps already 1.5 or 2 Billion or even more users doesn't have even basic support for customization !!!
To make the Skype program use horror story even worser Microsoft does upgrade the Skype client agressively and for the last 3 or 4 years Skype is owned by Microsoft the interface gets changing slightly or even completely with every next release.

Now with latest Skype versions since a 1.5 year or so the agressiveness of the program even increased further as it wants you to automatically upgrade, every time you run Skype.
With this in mind and the fact, I have to spend about 8 to 10 years on the PC with Skype for Business switched on on my notebook with no option to use Lync for communication because of the Domain Exchange forcing the changes to all of the users within our EMEA.

So after some serious digging on the Internet, the only work around to change the Skype For Business Theme available by a couple of sources is to Revert Back the Skype User Interface to Lync 2013 Client by changing a value to the Windows registry and get back the good old elegant Lync interface instead of S4B.

The Windows registry value that needs to be changed is:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]


The default value there is:
 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]
"CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00

 

The value has to be changed to:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]
"CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00


restart_lync_screenshot-ms-windows

The value "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00 – instructs so Skype for Business UI is used:
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00 – instructs S4B to revert back to Old Lync interface

For a little bit more on the value check out also articles – Alternate Between The Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business
and Managing the Skype Client UI in Skype for Business.

To modify about registry setting you will either have to manually run regedit from Start -> Run ->  cmd.exe or use Windows button + R and type inside run box:
 

regedit


Or even better just use and Run (Click over twice) on this skype.reg (download) sciprt which will modify registry

Because the Domain administrator has forced a policy to automatically offer Change of Lync Interface to Skype for Business on every notebook boot to disable EnableSkypeUI registry value and make Skype appear in the good old Lync UI, I've created also a tiny Batch script lync_ui.bat with following content:
 

cd \
cd \Users\georgi\scripts
 regedit /s skype.reg
exit


You can download lync_ui.bat from here

Note that both skype.reg and lync_ui.bat should be existing in my case in C:\Users\georgi\scipts , change this path to whatever your username is and create scripts folder in your User Home dir.
If unsure about the home directory name you can check it from command prompt with:
 

C:\Users\georgi> echo %HOMEPATH%
\Users\georgi


To make the lync_ui.bat (script invoking skype.reg)  be executed on every PC boot, you need to add it to:

Start -> All Programs -> StartUp

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/how-to-add-script-to-windows-startup-screenshto-microsoft-windows-7

Well this is it now you will have back the Lync UI, Enjoy! 🙂

 

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Posted in Everyday Life, Outlook, System Administration, Various, Windows | 2 Comments »

How to update macos from terminal / Check and update remotely Mac OS X software from console

Friday, October 23rd, 2015

../files/how-to-update-mac-osx-notebook-from-terminalsoftware-update-command-line-mac-screnshot-1

If you happen to have to deal with Mac OS X (Apple) notebook or Desktop PC (Hackintosh) etc. and you’re sysadmin or console freak being pissed off Mac’s GUI App Store update interface and you want to “keep it simple stupid” (KISS) in an Debian Linux like apt-get manner then you can also use Mac’s console application (cli) terminal to do the updates manually from command line with:

softwareupdate

command.

how-to-update-mac-osx-notebook-from-terminalsoftware-update-command-line-mac-screnshot

To get help about softwareupdate pass it on the -h flag:

softwareupdate -h

1. Get a list of available Mac OS updates

Though not a very likely scenario of course before installing it is always a wise thing to see what is being updated to make sure you will not upgrade something that you don’t want to.
This is done with:

softwareupdate -l
…

However in most cases you can simply skip this step as updating directly every package installed on the Mac with a new version from Apple will not affect your PC.
Anyways it is always a good idea to keep a backup image of your OS before proceeding with updates with let’s say Time Machine Mac OS backup app.

2. Install only recommended Updates from Apple store

softwareupdate -irv


Above will download all updates that are critical and thus a must to have in order to keep Mac OS security adequate.
Translated into Debian / Ubuntu Linux language, the command does pretty much the same as Linux’s:

apt-get –yes update

3. Install All Updates available from AppleStore

To install absolutely all updates provided by Apple’s package repositories run:

softwareupdate -iva

One note to make here is that always when you keep updating make sure your notebook is switched on to electricity grid otherwise if due to battery discharge it shutoffs during update your Mac will crash in a very crappy hard to recover state that might even cost you a complete re-install or a need to bring a PC to a Mac Store technical support guy so beware, you’re warned!

4. Installing all updates except Specific Softwares from Terminal

Often if you have a cracked software or a software whose GUI interface changed too much and you don’t want to upgrade it but an update is offered by Apple repos you can add the -i ingnore option:

softwareupdate -i [update_name(s)]

For example:

softwareupdate -i Safari-version-XXXX

5. View Mac OS Software Update History

The quickest way to see the update history is with System Information app, e.g.:

/Applications/Utilities/System Information.app

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Posted in Computer Security, Curious Facts, Everyday Life, Mac OS X, Remote System Administration, System Administration | No Comments »

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