In Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows Update recently decided to stop working and referred me to the WindowsUpdate_80244019 and WindowsUpdate_dt000 error codes.
An answers.microsoft.com thread eventually got to the point and my issue was quickly resolved with an ipconfig /flushdns command at the command prompt.
After being hit by a crypto/ransomware trojan, I’m looking at all options to make file management and backups easier and automatic. Shadow Copy is mentioned frequently in relation to the crypto locker virus (…in that the virus typically deletes shadow copies…) so I thought I’d look into this Windows feature. I’ve been after a version history, of sorts, for regular file content for a while so this sort of helps.
In Windows 8, Shadow Copy was renamed File History and is switched off by default. To switch it on, you need an external drive or a network location but that’s lame so I sought a workaround to test the waters and get up and running on an internal drive.
This blog post details the steps to set this up, which basically entails creating a virtual drive in Windows Disk Management, initialising it and creating a simple volume, and then pointing File History (via Control Panel) to that VHD.
This is by no means a bulletproof solution and I noticed the crypto virus that attacked my machine also encrypted my virtual machines so this .vhd would not be immune. But it’s about defence in depth, I suppose.
Although I gave the VHD solution a spin, it’s not for everyone and, most importantly, they’re not attached automatically when you reboot (without a startup script, that is). Instead of the VHD approach, I created a new folder to contain my file history, shared it (granting Read and Change share permissions to my Windows account), and then pointed File History the share via \\127.0.0.1\FileHistory [or whatever you name your share].
Update (a few days on): well that didn’t last. File History very quickly consumed all available free space on my internal laptop drive (a second partition). So I’ve turned it off and am using CrashPlan instead (despite the Java dependency—grrrr) as there was no interface to configure how much storage it uses. File History seems to be yet another one of those inane Windows features that is absolutely useless in real life.
To clean up Google Analytics and remove web sites you’re no longer interacting with (e.g. client sites to which you’ve been granted access), you can simply remove yourself in the User Management screen.
To get there, log in and click on the Admin tab at the top of the Google Analytics screen.
Select the Account you want to rid of from the drop down list in the left column. Then click on the User Management link below.
You should then see a big blue button that says Remove myself from this account. Click it, confirm, and you’re done.
No deletion or trashing of views or properties (but also no undo).
iTunes annoyingly stores backups on the main system drive (c:\); the backups can get quite large but there seems to be no way within iTunes to set the backup location explicitly.
Scott Hanselman details the steps necessary to create a NTFS junction point to redirect the backup directory to a another drive using mklink but the mklink command only worked when I renamed the /Backup directory in my C:\Users\{user name}\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync directory to /BackupOld. Prior to the rename, mklink would fail with a “Cannot create a file when that file already exists” error.
The mklink command I used was:
mklink /J "C:\Users\Michael\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\Backup\iTunes"
