[SOLVED]Unexplained random Dell XPS 15 L502x laptop freeze (no BSOD, no cursor, blank solid colour background) Monday, 16 Jul, 2018 In the past few weeks, my Dell XPS 15 L502x started experiencing unexplained freezes, with a blank screen (ie. black, white or other solid colour background), no mouse cursor and no BSODs. It was a little bit hard to troubleshoot my problem. tl;dr FIX: MSI Afterburner with the MINIMUM POSSIBLE GPU and Memory… Read More
[SOLVED] Window Update Error 80072F8F. Monday, 18 Jun, 2018 For a few years, I’ve been haunted by the dreaded Windows Update issue 80072F8F. I experienced this error whenever one of my Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows Server 2012 R2 computers searched for updates on Windows Update (my computers were originally joined to a Windows 2012 Domain then raised to 2012 R2). And no, raising… Read More
Mikrotik 1-to-1 NAT with netmap and masquerade. Sunday, 15 Apr, 2018 | 3 Comments Guide on how to make a NAT with Mikrotik.… Read More
Adding second Domain Controller tip. Wednesday, 7 Mar, 2018 While adding a new Domain Controller (DC) to your pre-existing forest, a nice tip to remember is to: (At the beginning) Always configure your wanna-be (New) DC's TCP/IP v4 PRIMARY DNS IP Address to point it to the FSMO DC. Then, once the New server becomes a new DC ("gets promoted"): Make sure that replication is successful… Read More
setuid and setgid to setup shared files and folders. Sunday, 18 Feb, 2018 This article starts with an introduction to the setgid feature and ends showing you how to configure a shared folder between CentOS users!… Read More
2 ways to customise Event Viewer "Log Size" through Group Policy. Saturday, 23 Dec, 2017 | 2 Comments If you ever wondered how to setup a custom event viewer log size through Group Policy, and all Google or Bing told you was this: located at: “Computer Configuration”. “Policies”. “Windows Settings”. “Security Settings”. “Event Log”. OR this: Located at: “Computer Configuration”. “Policies”. “Administrative Templates”. “Windows Components”. “Event Log Service”. Welcome to the bandwagon 🙂… Read More
Windows Anniversary Update (1607) To Windows Fall Creators Update (1709) failed - Error 0x80070057 - 0x2000A Thursday, 7 Dec, 2017 The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during PREPARE_FIRST_BOOT operation Fix. Make sure that your device has enough space. Your device requires at least 16 GB of free space to upgrade a 32-bit OS, or 20 GB for a 64-bit OS. For more info, see Free up drive space… Read More
my fav iptables settings. Thursday, 16 Nov, 2017 Today I'm going to write about the (in)famous iptables, the be-all do-all of GNU/linux packet filtering de-facto standard. Iptables is recognized to stand as one of the most used and most powerful firewall solutions around the web. Here I'll just share some really basic rules applied to one of my little boxes: #!/bin/bash IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables modprobe… Read More
Set[UID][GID], Sticky Bits & checksecurity tools. Wednesday, 18 Oct, 2017 Who, where, what. Linux file permissions is all about numbers: read permissions correspond to a "4", write permissions correspond to a "2" and execute permissions correspond to a "1". When you sum the previous values, you'll get the corresponding "rwx"-scheme (incidentally this also happens to correspond to 3 bits - From 000 To… Read More
3 easy steps to reduce hdd partition size with diskpart Monday, 11 Sep, 2017 In a galaxy (Windows) "Millenium" away, for hard disk drive (hdd) partitioning maintenance tasks, I used to rely on third party (alright - "stolen") applications installed on Windows. Cloning tasks where relegated to Gparted, booted off an "old" CD. Since XP-Vista, I got into "diskpart", Microsoft's "barebones" partition editor. diskpart is good for basic NTFS (doh!… Read More
ntpd config on CentOS. Wednesday, 23 Aug, 2017 Easy and fast guide on how to configure the ntpd on linux CentOS.… Read More
How to make a daily backup copy of a SMB-shared file. Monday, 12 Jun, 2017 Back in the day (when Shadow Copies, GitHub, SharePoint and Google Docs were unbeknown to me!), I relied on Linux file servers with Samba for basic Windows LAN company data shares. Some Company files were more important than others, so having some working copies of those files it was of utter importance (you already know… Read More
[SOLVED]'Stopping-Critical' stuck Hyper-V VM Monday, 15 May, 2017 | 3 Comments tl;dr: Open PowerShell As Admin. Find VM's GUID. Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\virtualization\v2 -class msvm_computersystem | select elementname, processid, name| ft -auto Kill related vmwp.exe <GUID>. taskkill /PID 1234 /F (Only during specific scenarios/if above won't work): net stop vmms & Restart Hyper-V Server. What happened?! Someday I was in the process of shutting down an Hyper-V Virtual… Read More