Tech Corner

[MaloK]

Since I found Macrium Reflect... My expectation are very high on imaging solutions...

Loll.

 

[davros]

I have one of those hardware duplicators which works well. Annoyed that I has to buy a package because win10's utility was too stupid to move and enlarge the partition afterwords

 

[jaylach]

Macrium is good but I just prefer EaseUS just like I prefer their partition manager. All done with the clone and both proven.

 

[davros]

Gave win permission to download ONLY win11. Somehow I ended up with win 11 in the morning. Except for snippy pretty seamless, surprised all my cad apps still work

 

[seangee]

Anyone using Microsoft Intune?
Been looking at it tonight for the first time.

For Mrs Gee's business (5 users + me as admin) I have been using Jumpcloud, ESET Protect and Office Business Standard.
Got the email today from Jumpcloud saying they changed their mind about the free for life if you have <10 users / devices.
Its OK for a free tool but deployments are a bit clunky and they do lots of non -standard stuff.
If I upgrade my users to Office Business Premium it costs less than their pricing + I get MS Defender for exchange so may not need ESET any longer (jury's still out on that). And I have a single pane of glass to manage everything. All the endpoints are Windows 11 and I might secure their phone apps if they want to use them for email, teams etc. The very big bank I work for is moving to Defender for endpoint protection, including Linux workstations. SO I guess it must be a lot better than it used to be.

Any compelling reasons not to, or any gotchas I should be aware of? No Microsoft haters or Linux is better evangalists . So far I have managed to deploy apps, change registry settings, deploy basic security settings and create / deploy GPOs - something I do miss after having gone serverless some years ago. My testing so far has been to just reset a laptop to do a fresh deploy, but I may be nice and migrate their user profiles so they don't have to remember their favourites etc. OTOH nothing is stored locally so blowing them away may be good hygiene

 

[MaloK]

If you are interested to try a Pro Windows 11 tweaker / debloater with some very neat tools.

I can also create pre stripped installation media that are near IoT level. And doesn't need any of the M$ compliance to install. But there no hacked files you still need to register and activate windows and the installation doesn't break EULA.

Winutil must be run in Admin mode because it performs system-wide tweaks. To achieve this, run PowerShell as an administrator. Here are a few ways to do it:

1. **Start menu Method.
- Right-click on the start menu.
- Choose "Windows PowerShell (Admin)" (for Windows 10) or "Terminal (Admin)" (for Windows 11).

2. **Search and Launch Method.
- Press the Windows key.
- Type "PowerShell" or "Terminal" (for Windows 11).
- Press `Ctrl + Shift + Enter` or Right-click and choose "Run as administrator" to launch it with administrator privileges.

### Launch Command
#### Stable Branch (Recommended)
irm "https://christitus.com/win" | iex

#### Dev Branch
irm "https://christitus.com/windev" | iex

If you have Issues, refer to [Known Issues](https/winutil.christitus.com/knownissues/)

 

[jaylach]

Started looking at my Windows 11 install attempt and the potential of the issue being an adapter to mount an M.2 drive in a PCIe slot. While I have not yet done anything to correct, sure enough the M.2 drive to which Windows 11 was installed is mounted in such an adapter. Not sure why that is as I have an empty M.2 slot empty on my motherboard. I guess I was just satisfied when things worked in Windows 10 when I dropped back. Still no hurry on this but I suspect that when I put the drive on the motherboard slot instead of the adapter all will probably work.

 

[MaloK]

Good chances, Standard M.2 adapter normally don't need special drivers as they are only pass-trough, but some adapter that are multi m.2 can have full fledged raid controller that will require special drivers to run.

 

[davros]

I'm way behind on this but aren't some of those m2 slots shared among periphs?

 

[davros]

If finally found something that wasn't working on the win11 -my VPN. A reinstall fixed that so I'm starting to relax. I've got got quite a divergence now, one win11 lappy and and a whole sh**load of w7 boxes...

 

[anewbie]

I'm way behind on this but aren't some of those m2 slots shared among periphs?

The answer to this is tricky as it depends on motherboard chipset; implementation and so forth but yea typically some m.2 slots have lower performance for various reasons. In some cases you can toggle switches on the mb or such to enable/disable certain devices/pcie lanes. There is no fixed answer though i suppose in the typical case esp with older mb one m.2 might have fewer lanes and/or share lanes with sata ports (in which case you can use one of the other but not both) and in some cases.....

Best answer is to read your mb manual and if you have a pre-built system throw it away and build your own so you know exactly how the pcie lanes are setup

 

[jaylach]

I'm way behind on this but aren't some of those m2 slots shared among periphs?

On my motherboard the secondary M.2 slot will disable either a SATA port or a third PCIe X16 slot; can't remember which but most likely the third PCIe slot.

 

[MaloK]

Besides buying a Pro grade motherboard with 40 lanes available. Many small boards have 20-24 and that lead to bifurcation and slot sharing.

 

[jaylach]

Besides buying a Pro grade motherboard with 40 lanes available. Many small boards have 20-24 and that lead to bifurcation and slot sharing.

Actually my motherboard is getting rather long in the tooth at about 8 years old but still is strong. It is an ASRock X370 Taichi.

ASRock > X370 Taichi

ATX; ASRock Super Alloy; Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen Series CPUs (Summit Ridge & Raven Ridge); Supports DDR4 3200+(OC); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1; NVIDIA Quad SLI™, AMD Quad CrossFireX™; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec), Supports Purity Sound™ 4 & DTS Connect...

www.asrock.com

 

[anewbie]

Yes older mb (mine dates back to 2500k since it has a 2500k ) share lanes but the last generation or 2 of both intel and amd added a lot more pcie lanes for mb to play with and esp in intel land there are more diverse chipsets that play with the pcie lanes differently. I.e., they made a confusing situation more confusing.