Windows Archives

Home » Windows » Page 3

Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

Dave Farquhar Windows September 7, 2021April 26, 2025

When Microsoft announced Windows 11, they also announced some pretty severe hardware requirements. Windows 11 would only be supported on the three most recent CPU generations, and would require a TPM chip. At the end of August 2021, Microsoft announced a way to work around it. Then they did their best to try to talk you out of doing it. Let’s talk about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

Led vs lead past tense

Dave Farquhar Windows July 21, 2021July 4, 2021

Homonyms are terrible things in the English language. One example is led vs lead. Which one is past tense?

If I say “Past Tense Zeppelin” and it means something to you, I just answered your question. If that doesn’t help, I have a story for you to help you remember, and it involves a hard rock band.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Windows Zip folders slow? The fix.

Dave Farquhar Windows July 13, 2021March 3, 2024

The other day my son was working with a Zip file and getting frustrated. He was trying to delete a large number of files from it, and the CPU went to 100% usage and never finished. Here’s how I got him around the problem of high CPU usage with Zip files, or Windows Zip folders being slow.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Windows 10 black screen after hibernate: Try this

Dave Farquhar Windows June 28, 2021June 26, 2021

Occasionally when I close the lid on my laptop, it doesn’t come back. The hard drive light is blinking and it shows signs of life like the caps lock light lighting when I hit the key. But the screen remains black and I can’t do anything. Before you power down and risk losing work, try this if you experience the Windows 10 black screen after hibernate.

The magic key sequence is Win+Ctrl+Shift+B to fix the Windows 10 black screen after hibernate. It resets the graphics driver and usually brings the machine back to life from the black screen of death.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Error 0x8007025d installing Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows May 6, 2021June 7, 2022

I was installing Windows 10 on an HP Z210 workstation and kept getting error 0x8007025. There’s not a lot of information about that error, so here’s how I fixed it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Pinginfoview: A free Windows ping sweep tool

Dave Farquhar Windows March 29, 2021March 26, 2023

Sometimes you need to ping sweep a network. I have a batch file for that, but what if your list isn’t continuous? In that case, there’s a better tool for you. Pinginfoview is my favorite free Windows ping sweep tool. It’s easy to use, small, and standalone, requiring no installation. In this blog post, I’ll explain why it’s so great.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Xxcopy vs Xcopy file copy utilities

Dave Farquhar Windows March 23, 2021September 19, 2023

XXCOPY vs XCOPY: Which file copy utility do you like? Both of them are extensions of the DOS command COPY. Think eXtended Copy and eXtended eXtended Copy. Two extendeds are better, right? Yep.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Make a Word hyperlink UNC path

Dave Farquhar Office, Software, Windows February 20, 2021command prompt, Once Windows, UNC

I had an issue in a document with a hyperlink to an existing file. The file existed on a network drive, so the link worked fine… until someone with different drive mappings than me had to look at the document. Then the link didn’t resolve and the person got an error message. A confusing error message. It turns out it’s tricky to make a Word hyperlink UNC path.

Fixing it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Convert AVI to WMV for free. No fooling.

Dave Farquhar Windows January 25, 2021January 24, 2021

I see tons of guides out there claiming to tell you how to convert AVI to WMV for free. Then they give you instructions that don’t work before pitching you some $80 tool to do it. You can’t convert AVI to WMV with VLC, but you can do it with another free tool called FFMPEG. Here’s how.

The most reliable free way to convert AVI files to WMV for free is using a command line tool called FFMPEG. It’s not as easy as having a GUI, but it works. WMV isn’t the ideal video file format, but there are times you need it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Resize images in bulk in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows September 29, 2020September 12, 2020

In case you haven’t noticed, I blog a lot. And I learned the hard way that if my blog posts don’t have pictures, no one ever clicks on them. Since I have a day job, I tend to write in bulk, and that means I tend to deal with images in bulk. Here’s how I resize images in bulk in Windows 10.

The classic application Irfanview, a favorite image viewer among long-time Windows users, includes a bulk rename feature. Here’s where it hides and how to use it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net