Windows Client OS

Learn about the Windows Recovery Environment and how to access and use it to troubleshoot and fix common technical issues with your computer, like when Windows won’t boot. What is the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE)? Windows Recovery Environment, or WinRE, is a recovery environment that can repair common startup issues with Windows.  It’s a simplified,…

System Restore on Windows 10 is a crucial backup feature included in the OS. It lets you create restore points before installing any new apps, drivers, and Windows updates. If something you installed on your PC starts causing issues, you’ll always have the option to go back to a previous restore point and get your…

Windows 10 doesn’t reliably give you easy access to stop codes when it crashes. Plus, these codes may flash on your screen for just half a second! In this guide, we’ll show you how to find Windows 10 stop codes, find the reasons behind Windows 10 crashes, and guide you to solidify your Windows reliability…

Many IT pros probably take for granted sharing files on their predominantly Windows environments and local area networks. Although several protocols are available, Server Message Block (SMB) is clearly the most prevalent. This article examines how Windows file sharing works over ports 445, 139, 138, and 137. How does file sharing via the SMB protocol…

Windows PCs may sometimes encounter issues during startup, and that can happen when Windows fails to load properly. In this post, we’ll explain how you can use Windows Boot Manager to troubleshoot boot errors and get your PC up and running again. What is Windows Boot Manager? Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe) is Microsoft’s proprietary Unified Extensible Firmware…

The “trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed” error means that the computer cannot access a network because it is offline, or that it has lost its membership to the Active Directory (AD) domain. This guide will help you understand what’s happening behind the scenes when this error occurs, and we’ll go…

Icacls is a Windows command-line utility that IT admins can use to change access control lists on files and folders. One of the most common tasks that an IT Pro or system administrator performs is modifying permission on a file server. Using the icacls command is a very efficient way to do that, and we’ll…

In this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss the new setup process coming to Windows and Windows Server.

Installing Active Directory domain controllers in a virtual machine (VM) can be useful if you want to separate them from the physical network, giving you more flexibility and additional protection for your Active Directory infrastructure. In this guide, we’re going to detail the best practices for installing Active Directory domain controllers (DCs) in a virtual…

PsExec is a command-line utility program for Windows written by none other than Mark Russinovich, the current CTO of Microsoft Azure. It’s still being updated as part of the SysInternals suite of utilities. PsExec allows you to run programs locally, and, more importantly, on remote computers. You can even kick off similar commands on multiple…

Roaming profiles are a Windows feature that allows user profiles to be used across multiple workstations within a network. A user profile contains personalized application settings, desktop configurations, application preferences, and other user-specific data. In this article, I will show you how to deploy roaming user profiles in your Windows environment so that users have…

Microsoft released yesterday a big update for Windows 11 version 22H2 with over 200 new features. The company announced this update during its special event last week, and one of the main highlights is the new Copilot assistant that can be pinned right on the desktop.  Copilot provides access to the same Bing Chat experience…