Tag Archives: microsoft

Simple method to Encrypt/Decrypt Zip files on Windows

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Unfortunately, encrypting a file on Windows with a simple password is not super simple. While Windows does now support other compression formats (RAR, 7-Zip) it does not support encryption for them.

Currently, Windows natively supports the ZipCrypto algorithm. No AES. Note that the ZipCrypto algorithm is not considered secure, and shouldn’t be used for highly confidential data.

The following method, you will need 7-Zip to create the archive, but you won’t need it for decryption as Windows has built in support for ZipCrypto decryption.

To create the archive, you will need 7-Zip installed. Right click on your file/folder -> 7-Zip -> Add to Archive.

You should be presented with a similar window.

Change Archive format to zip
Enter the password
Ensure that the Encryption method is ZipCrypto
Hit OK to create the Archive.

You can now transfer the password protected archive to a new machine. You’ll be prompted for the password when you extract the archive.

How to Disable Windows Suggestions when copying text

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Windows 11 introduced “Suggested Actions”. When you copy a date, time, or phone number, you will get this little pop up asking if you want to “Create event” or “Call number”.

While this can be helpful, it can also be slightly annoying and get in the way. Fortunately, there is a simple way to turn it off. Hit the little down arrow, then click “Go to clipboard settings”

Once in the System settings, turn “Suggested actions” off.

Send Post Webhook Message to Teams from Mikrotik RouterOS

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The following is the correct syntax needed to send a message to Microsoft Teams from a Mikrotik router. You will need a valid Teams webhook to send to.

Change “Test Message” out for your message. You should receive a “status: finished” response.

/tool fetch http-method=post http-header-field="Content-Type: application/json" http-data="{\"text\": \"Test Message\"}" url=https://domain.webhook.office.com/webhook/long/string

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Fetch

Earning Microsoft Rewards With PowerShell

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Earn Microsoft Rewards with PowerShell Script

You can earn Microsoft rewards by using Bing for searching. What if you could automate Bing searches to automatically get rewards? Oh wait. PowerShell can launch Edge with a Bing search! So we can acquire Microsoft Rewards with PowerShell!

Create a new PowerShell file and past the following in.

1..30 | ForEach-Object{Start-Process msedge https://www.bing.com/search?q=bing+$_ 
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 3000
}

The script will launch 30 Edge tabs with a Bing search of “Bing 1” next tab will be “Bing 2” etc. You could definitely be more creative with what and how you search for things, but this works as a proof of concept.

I created and ran this script from Visual Studio Code. But you should be able to create it with a normal text file and launch it in PowerShell.

The person at the following link did an excellent job at creating a system for this. Looks really cool.

https://medium.com/@prateekrm/earn-500-daily-microsoft-rewards-points-automatically-with-a-simple-python-program-38fe648ff2a9

Remove hiberfil.sys

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The hiberfil.sys is created and used when hibernating in Windows. Sometimes can be needed to help shrink the space on a drive.

Launch a command prompt with administrator privileges.

You can hit Windows Key + R, type in cmd, and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter together. It’ll ask you to verify that you want to launch it. Hit Yes.
Alternatively you can search for the Command Prompt, Right click on it and Run as Administrator

Turn Hibernate off

powercfg -h off

A reboot should remove the file. If not you should be able to delete it. It is on the root of the drive, but you’ll need to enable hidden files and disable the “Hide protected operating system files” to see it.

You can turn it back on by changing off to on

powercfg -h on

More information:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/920730/how-to-disable-and-re-enable-hibernation-on-a-computer-that-is-running

Install Microsoft Teams Preview on Linux

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Download the correct package for your distribution of Linux from
https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads

You should be able to open the installer and it should install, if not you can run the following commands from a terminal

The install instructions are for Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint.

Install using dpkg

sudo dpkg -i Downloads/teams_1.2.00.32451_amd64.deb

Launch Teams by typing 

teams

Or you can launch it from your Applications Menu

After Teams is installed and launched, sign in to your Microsoft account.

Windows 10 – How to “fully” shutdown

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Windows 10 by default does a hybrid shutdown which is supposed to make it quicker to start back up.

To fully shutdown you can hold the Shift key down while clicking the shutdown button.

Side note. A Restart will do a full shutdown before starting back up.

More info.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/625963/details-of-shut-down-vs-restart-please/#entry4079503
https://superuser.com/questions/974553/what-does-shiftshutdown-do-in-windows-10

TFTP firmware to Ubiquiti radio

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Boot up radio in tftp mode by pressing the reset button for ~20seconds or till you get the crossing blinky lights.

Enable TFTP
In Windows, search for
“turn windows features on or off”
Open up and select tftp client. Then hit OK.

That should install the tftp client

Flash firmware
To flash the firmware, open up a command prompt and run the tftp command

tftp -i 192.168.1.20 PUT "\Users\bob\Downloads\XM.v6.1.3.31939.171117.1238.bin"