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Tech & Work

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Interesting Programs
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Utilities

  WinDirStat
    Fantastic visual display of storage space used on disk
    I find it helps people conceptualise disk storage and how large video files are
    Also great for finding what is eating all the space
    
  Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
    Create custom keyboard layouts for Windows
    Great for when a laptop keyboard loses a couple of keys and you can't justify replacing the board
    Just duplicate the dead keys over uncommonly used keys for convenience
    With the quick language switcher thing you can ctrl+shift to hop between layouts on the fly
    
  KeyTweak by Travis Krumsick
    Rather than creating custom keyboard layouts this one remaps keys via registry tweaks
    Can modify keys that standard keyboard layout remaps cant.
    The Help PDF that comes with it is excellently helpful and descriptive.
    No first party download link for this one so you'll need to source it yourself.
    
  TeraCopy
    Has a bunch of features but the big one for me is verification after a copy
    Especially important if I'm dropping files onto USB sticks for clients 
    
  Sysinternals Autoruns
    This one is a life saver, but not for the unaware
    Gives you far more detailed control over processes and services that start with windows
    No link because you can break stuff if you don't know what you're doing
    And if you know what you're doing you can find it yourself
    
  Most things by NirSoft
    A surprising number of my older clients still run Windows Live Mail or Earlier versions of Outlook.
    The same people tend to not know their passwords. This solves that problem.
    And it also frequently looks so easy that it scares them into updating, so win-win.
    A lot of these utils get flagged by antivirus - Do your own homework before using.
    
  WineVDM
    Allows running of 16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows
    For stuff that isn't quite old enough for DOS, but not new enough for 32-bit emulation
    Runs most stuff from the mid 90's like a charm.
    Mainly got this for older educational games and family history software

  Geogebra
    Numbers can be confusing and sometimes graphing things out makes relationships clearer.
    The graphing calculator is fantastic for it's ease of use. Sure beats the old Ti-89.
    
  HTTrack Website Coppier
    Rip websites following links to a given depth and save them locally.
    Getting a bit dated, and struggles with a lot of modern sites, but still useful.
  
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Web Browser Addon Mix (Firefox)
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Always On
  Cookie AutoDelete
    Autodelete all 60 seconds after leaving site.
    Whitelist sites I want to stay logged in to
  Decentraleyes
    Use locally supplied script libraries
  Facebook Container
    Facebook in a padded cell where it can't hurt me
  Firefox Multi-Account Containers
    Anything (Google, Microsoft) in a padded cell where it can't hurt me
  NoScript
    Catches fall-through from uBlock to control specific types of resources.
    Untrusted - Block All
    Default - Obj, media, font webgl
    Trusted - Default + scripts, frames, fetch, css
    Set top level domain to Temp Trusted
    Manually filter and flag as needed
  Toggle Resist Fingerprinting
    Toggle the in-development resist fingerprint setting of firefox.
    Reports generic time zone, user agent string, and some other bits
    Setting is in-dev and can be wonky sometimes so a fast toggle off is usefull
  uBlock Origin
    In hardened mode
    Pop out the filter matrix and 3rd party globally
    noop (grey) domains on local scope as needed
    After something is noop'd it needs to then clear NoScript to run
    
Sometimes I also use
  Tampermonkey
    Custom scripting stuff for when someone else has fixed a problem
  User-Agent Switcher and Manager
    Put on a hat and fake moustache and pretend to be Chrome
  Video DownloadHelper
    Just let me save things to my hard drive damnit.
  Down Them All
    Again, just let me save things to my hard drive.

Extra Bits
  Diagnostics, studies, safe browsing etc.etc. all disabled
  Browsing privacy set to custom and block everything
  Do not track
  DNS over HTTPS (Still undecided here but it seems reasonable)
  Pocket disabled
  Go read a basic guide to about:config privacy tweaks
  If you're using Chrome, step one is to stop using Chrome.
 
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Assorted Tech Reference - Mostly Windows
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Note - For batch script downloads they must be renamed from 
*.bat.txt to just *.bat to work around neocities free account file type limitation
Alternatively just right click on the link, save link as, trim the .txt off the end

Windows user account password workaround (local) (Win XP -> 10, sometimes 11?)
  Boot to a windows USB
  Shift + F10 for cmd prompt
  regedit
  Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  file > load hive > locate the SAM file from above directory and choose a mount point
  navigate to mountpoint\SAM\Domains\Account\Users\000001F4
  F REG_BINARY value > Line 38
  Replace first byte with 10 (It may be 11, but I've seen 15 as well)
  unload hive
  reboot

  Then load into admin acc and change user P/W or in worst case copy the user dir to a fresh user
  To finish, admin command prompt and
  net user administrator /active:no
  and reboot

USB storage refusing to mount/format under windows
  Clean disk using DISKPART - Be certain you've got the right disk or you'll be sad
  Launch an admin command prompt
  diskpart
  list disk
  select # (Use the number of the disk you want to clear from list given in previous step)
  clean

Windows DISM/SFC process
  [Right Click > Save Link As > dism_sfc.bat]
  This does an online verification of the disk image then runs system file check then pause at the end
  Admin command prompt (Or powershell, or terminal, or whatever the hell MS is deploying next)
  
    Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
    Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
    SFC /scannow
    pause
  
Windows 11 install for Local user acc (Offline install)
  At the first screen after booting to install media go Shift + F10
  run "oobe\bypassnro" without the quotes of course
  it'll reboot and let you say you don't have internet to get a local user acc
  
Win 8/10/11 Update cache purge
  [Right Click > Save Link As > win_update_cache_purge.bat]
  Restart before this and disconnect internet. Want to avoid doing this if there is an update installing
  Run as admin or in admin command prompt
    net stop wuauserv
    CD %Windir%
    CD SoftwareDistribution
    DEL /F /S /Q Download
    net start wuauserv
    pause
  
Quick and dirty CPU stress test
  Pop in a .bat. Not providing a download for this because I'm certain this is bad practice.
  Use ctrl+C to terminate. Run once per CPU core. 
  It is mandatory to imagine the CPU vibrating rapidly and screaming in pain during the test
  
    @echo off
    :start
    goto start