Turning Off Smart Screen In Windows 8

 IT Admin Tips, Windows 8  No Responses »
May 182012
 

There is a new security feature in Windows 8 called smart screen.  This new level of security can help prevent unknown computer programs from running on your computer.  I ran into a situation where I wanted to disable the smart screen feature.   Below are the steps needed to complete in order to turn it off.

1.  Open up the control center.

Windows 8 Control Center

 

2.  Click on Action Center

Click On Action Center

 

3. In the left pane click on “Change Windows SmartScreen Settings”

Left Hand Column, Click On Change Windows Smart Screen Settings

 

4.  Select the option for how you would like Windows SmartScreen to handle unrecognized apps.

Windows SmartScreen Options

5.  Select Ok to close the dialog box.

6.  You can also choose to disable message so you will not get the security warning in the desktop tray.

Click Turn off messages about Windows SmartScreen

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Driverquery.exe Command Line Tool

 IT Admin Tips, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008  No Responses »
Jan 152012
 

System administrators sometimes need to be able to produce a list of drivers that are installed on their system.  Driveryquery.exe is an excellent command line tool from Microsoft to accomplish this.  This tool will give you a report on all of the current device drivers that are loaded on your system.  The command line tool also gives you several options on the information that it will display.  Below is a screenshot that shows all of the options available for running Driverquery.exe.

Driverquery.exe From Microsoft

Driverquery.exe From Microsoft

 

Examples Of Driverquery.exe

This example will pipe the information from driverquery.exe to a txt file on the drive.
C:\driverquery.exe > C:\driverqueyr.txt

This example will format the output into a list view.
C:\driverquery.exe /fo list

This example will turn on verbose output for more information.
C:\driverquery.exe /V

This example will show drivers that are currently running.
C:\driverquery.exe /v | findstr Running

 

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Missing Security Tab In XP

 XP  No Responses »
Sep 292010
 

Its amazing how quickly we can forget small options in operating systems that we no longer normally use.  I came across one example tonight when working on an XP machine for a friend.  I had to do the song and dance of removing the old hard drive from the computer and putting it in an external drive.  I then hooked up to their old XP machine and quickly realized I did not have a security tab under folder properties.  This was essential in order to change security on the files in order to copy them over.  It took me a little bit to remember the below steps in XP to make the security tab visible on a home machine.

1.  Launch Windows Explorer
2.  Open up folder options under the tools on the menu bar.
3.  Click on the view tab.
4.  Under advanced settings uncheck “use simple file sharing (recommended).
5.  Click OK.

There is one last very important piece of information that you might over look.  In order to see the security tab you also have to be logged into the machine with administrator privileges.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

 Older Entries