For the most part, 32-bit applications just work on the 64-bit version of Windows. However, I was curious about how it all works behind the scenes. In this post, I go down a rabbit hole exploring what makes 32-bit applications work on Windows 64-bit. WoW64 When Microsoft transitioned from 16-bit to 32-bit, they created a…
PowerShell is a wonderful tool built into Microsoft Windows. Both Windows and Windows Server come with PowerShell version 5.1 pre-installed. PowerShell version 5.1 was initially released in 2016. Since then, there have been many improvements to PowerShell. However, many of those improvements are only available in newer versions of PowerShell and aren’t always backported to…
With Microsoft Windows installations, there’s a hidden user profile called Default. Anything in that user profile is copied directly to any new user account that logs into the computer. It is a template for each user who logs onto that system. The default user profile is located C:\Users\Default When a user logs into a Windows…
Sometimes, you have a certificate in PEM format as a CRT file (also called a CER file) with a key file (also called a PEM file), and you need to combine and convert them into a PFX certificate. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to convert a PEM certificate into a PFX…
There are many ways to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request). In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to generate a CSR using OpenSSL. Prerequisites The Process I will be using C:\SSL as my working directory. I will be using Microsoft Windows with Windows Terminal and PowerShell. In my example, I will name my private…
Certain situations can arise where you no longer know a Windows user account password and need to reset it or make a new one. Third-party tools can assist, but in my experience, many of them have been hit-and-miss. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to reset a Windows password using Windows install…
The net user and group commands are very powerful tools for managing local and domain users and groups. In this post, I will show you how to use the net user command locally and on a domain to create a user account, reset a user account password, and view general info about a user account.…
Microsoft Windows Server 2025 has just reached general availability. I decided to install it and see what’s changed compared to Windows Server 2022. Right off the bat, the installer loading screen is slightly different. With Windows Server 2025, there are two setups the new setup UI, which is the default, and the previous setup UI,…
There are many ways to activate Windows, and a really cool way to activate Windows is with Active Directory-Based Activation. Active Directory-Based Activation (ADBA) was first introduced in Windows Server 2012 and is only usable if your Microsoft Volume licensing has a KMS host key. If you don’t have a KMS key, you may need…
With Windows 11, many visual elements have changed, and one of the most noticeable ones is the Start Menu. With a new star menu comes a new way to manage it. With Windows 10, you can control the start menu with an XML file. Now, with Windows 11, you can control it with a JSON…
