Recent content by Skeptic Mike

Microsoft makes changes to Windows to fix security issues. One possible reason for the error is that on your particular system with your account there is an issue. WinAero has had problems like this quite recently. Check the WinAero website to see if anyone else has this problem. This is...

I have looked at this, and can't see that anyone would want it. It's certainly very irritating. The third reference about the policy from Raymond Chen mentions a talk by Aaron Margosis. That is worth reading. The link is broken, but searching for 'Aaron Margosis Unintended Consequences of...

Whether to go with a standard user account or one belonging to the Administrators group is discussed here from time to time. Indeed, @glasskuter and I have discussed this. We have different views. It's difficult, but not impossible to end up with no functional administrator accounts, but each...

If you've already created the account you want to use as a standard user, create a new account as an administrator, and use that account to remove administrative rights from your first account. I certainly think it's good practice to use a standard account for everyday use. You shouldn't have...

The tutorial shows how to remove the context menu entry for Explorer, not for Directory Opus. Check with Explorer, and if it is missing there, check with Directory Opus support. Third party file mangers usually offer their own options.

To which Notepad are you referring? If you uninstall new UWP Notepad then since it provides a New - Text Document entry, it should remove it. If you have provided a Windows 10 (or earlier) version by creating a ShellNew registry entry with the Windows 10 entries, and then uninstall legacy...

I've not seen this discussed before. As well as setting options for specific file types, you can do this for files with no extension. I haven't found any reference to this in Microsoft documentation, but Raymond Chen mentioned this in 2007. What is the difference between the Folder and Directory...

The current user version uses a different technique from the all user version. It sets the bit in Attributes value that prevents the enumeration of the shell folder. When an explorer window, or a file open/save dialog, is created all the folders are enumerated to find out what to show...

This doesn't do anything to registry keys. Takeown and icacls operate on files and folders. Your code operates on the basis that you're running as Trusted Installer, so you already have full control. There are no useful native commands in Windows to change Registry key ownership and permissions.

Well, what it does break is access to the runas verb. As well as using the right click context menu to get an elevation prompt, you can also access the verb programmatically. Adding the verb to the powershell command start-process for example powershell start-process regedt32 -verb 'runas' If...

It seems that the extensions whose icon you can't change have an icon assigned to a ProgID that they share. The default value of the .ext registry entry is the ProgID. So look at that for each extension. If they are all the same and the ProgID has a default icon, then that's the explanation. You...

I don't use these for regular maintenance, I've not seen a need for this. Other obviously useful tools in the general area are the Sysinternals - Sysinternals tools . I'd get all of them, not just the command line ones. Particularly useful are accesschk for helping with understanding...

You did a thorough investigation, presented what you found and a satisfactory solution. I have no idea why the 3 PCs ended up as they did. My comment was only possible because you were so thorough. It's really good to see that. Thanks for raising the issue.

Interesting. It's not necessary to delete the key @TopFlynn identifies, the problem is down to the data in the DWORD value Attributes in the shellFolder subkey. It's 0x100000, or SFGAO_NONENUMERATED as Microsoft’s documentation names it. And this setting isn't cleared by swapping away from and...

There is a Powershell Script here How to universalize a shortcut? which claims to analyse shortcuts. It might help you to see what's going on. For the full delight of lnk files see [MS-SHLLINK]: Shell Link (.LNK) Binary File Format