Author Archive

Set up Windows to Auto Login to Domain Account

July 17th, 2015 by Admin

In my previous post I’ve covered how to enable automatic login in Windows 8/7/Vista/XP, by using the command netplwiz or control userpasswords2. However, that option is disabled when your computer is joined to a domain. Fortunately, you can still set up Windows to auto login to your domain account using a registry trick.

How to Set up Windows to Auto Login to Domain Account?

Press the Windows key + R to bring up the Run box. Type regedit and hit Enter.
When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to the following registry location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
In the right pane, you need to modify or create each of these registry entries: DefaultUserName, DefaultPassword, DefaultDomainName, AutoAdminLogon. If any of these keys are missing, create a new String Value (REG_SZ).
Double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type the user name to log on with, and then click OK.
Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type the password for the user account under the value data box, and then click OK.
Double-click on DefaultDomainName, and specify the domain name of the user account. If it’s local user, specify local host name.
Double-click the AutoAdminLogon entry, set AutoAdminLogon to 1 to enable the auto logon. If AutoLogonCount or AutoLogonChecked exists, delete it.

Once those four options are created and altered, you’re good to reboot and from now on every time you start Windows it will automatically login to your specified domain account! Again, if for some reason the auto-logon doesn’t work, go back into the registry and double-check the four entries in that folder to make sure nothing’s out of place.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Tags: enable auto login in windows enable auto login windows domain windows auto logon domain

2 Options to Add a User to Local Administrators Group

July 13th, 2015 by Admin

Only an administrator can perform the administration tasks such as installing a driver or an application. If you have an existing standard or limited account, you can grant it administrator privileges by adding it to the built-in Administrators group. Here are two options to add a user to the local Administrators group in Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista or XP.

Option 1: Computer Management

The easier way to add a user to the local Administrators group is to use the Computer Management app. Here’s how:

To open the Computer Management, right-click on My Computer icon on your desktop and then select Manage. Another method is to press the Windows key + R to bring up the Run box, then type compmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
When the Computer Management window opens, expand Local Users And Groups in the left pane, and click on Users (Please skip to the option 2 below if you don’t see Local Users and Groups.)
Double-click your desired user account in the right hand side.
In the User Properties window, click the Add button.
In the Select Groups dialog, type the name of your administrators group. Click Check Names, and then click OK.

If you don’t know the name of your administrator group, click Advanced and next click Find Now.

Option 2: Command Prompt

However, not every edition of Windows have the Local Users and Groups entry in the Computer Management (for example, Windows 8 Home and domain controller). This method will work on all editions of Windows.

Open an elevated Command Prompt. In Windows 10 or 8, press the Windows key + X and then click “Command Prompt (Admin)“. In Windows 7 or Vista, go to Start > All Programs > Accessories, then right-click on Command Prompt shortcut and select “Run as Administrator“.
To see a list of local groups available, just type:
net localgroup
You can add a user to the built-in Administrators group by running the following command:
net localgroup Administrators [username] /add

For example, add a user named test to the administrators group, we can run the below command.
net localgroup Administrators test /add

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Tags: add user to administrators group add user to administrators group command line

How to Bypass the Password on Any Windows Version

July 6th, 2015 by Admin

There are lots of people that for some reason forget the login password on their Windows computers. Most of the answers they find all over the Internet is to reinstall or reset the password. This is not the answer you’ll get here. Today I’ll share with you how to bypass the password on any Windows version, not just reset it.

How to Bypass the Password on Any Windows Version?

Download the required password bypassing tool – PCUnlocker. Once it’s finished, double-click the zip file to extract it. You will then need to burn the ISO file to a writable CD using a program like ISO2Disc.
Insert the CD into the computer that needs its password bypass and boot from it. You may have to change the computer’s boot order in the BIOS in order to boot from the CD.
If you boot from the CD successfully, it will run the Windows PE environment from memory. When the PCUnlocker application opens, you’ll see a list of Windows user accounts that are discovered on your computer.
Here we’re not going to reset the user password, so don’t click the “Reset Password” button. At the bottom-left side of your screen, there is an Options button. Click on Options and select “Bypass Windows Password”.
Confirm your password bypass operation and click OK to proceed.
When you see the Congratulations dialog box, you’re almost done!

Restart your compute and take out the CD. When it boots to the Windows login screen, click the icon of any User account (supporting Windows 8 Microsoft account) and you can login with arbitrary password.

I have tested this procedure on Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP and it works fine, so if yours somehow does not work, go back through the steps again and make sure you have not missed any step. Or check out the boot up toubleshooting guide for PCUnlocker.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Tags: bypass windows password

3 Ways to Turn off Windows Defender in Windows 10 or 8

July 5th, 2015 by Admin

Windows Defender is a built-in antivirus software comes with Windows 10 and Windows 8. While Windows Defender provides very baseline protection, it slows down your PC considerably. Users who prefer using third-party security solution like Kaspersky, McAfee or Norton might want to completely disable Windows Defender. Here are 3 ways to turn off Windows Defender in Windows 10 or 8.

Method 1: Permanently Turn off Windows Defender with Group Policy

Press the Windows key + R to bring up the Run box. Type gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
In the left pane of Local Group Policy Editor, navigate to the following location:
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Defender Antivirus -> Real-time Protection

In the right pane you will see a policy labeled “Turn off real-time protection“. Double-click on it to modify.
Select Enabled. Click Apply and then OK.
You have to restart the computer to allow this policy to take place. When you try to turn on real-time protection again in Windows Defender, you’ll get a message that saying “This setting is managed by your administrator“.

Method 2: Permanently Turn off Windows Defender with Command Prompt

Open the Command Prompt as administrator. Type the following command and press Enter.
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Real-Time Protection" /v DisableRealtimeMonitoring /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
Restart your computer to apply the changes, and then Windows Defender should now be disabled.

Method 3: Temporarily Turn off Real-time Protection from Windows Defender

After opening up Windows Defender, navigate to Virus & threat protection tab. Under the “Virus & threat protection settings” section, click on the Manage settings link.
Turn off the Real-time protection toggle switch.
Windows Defender will disable its real-time protection temporarily. The next time you restart your computer Windows Defender will re-enable automatically.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 8

Tags: disable windows defender remove windows defender turn off windows defender

Reset Windows 8 or 7 Password with the Freeware NTPasswd

July 3rd, 2015 by Admin

“My laptop was installed with Windows 7 with only one account, but no reset disk was created. Now I had forgotten my administrator password and don’t know how to reset it.

Had tried Ophcrack to burn its ISO into a flash drive, but failed to recover my password. Is there any way to reset my password without formatting my whole system disk?”

Fortunately, if you have lost your Windows password, there are several approaches you can take for either recovering or resetting the forgotten password. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to reset Windows 8 or 7 password with the freeware NTPasswd (Offline NT Password & Registry Eidtor). NTPasswd is a small Linux tool that allows you to reset Windows admin/user password on a computer where you forgot your password.

How to Reset Windows 8 or 7 Password with NTPasswd?

First go to the official website of NTPasswd and grab a copy of the bootable CD image. To install NTPasswd onto a blank CD, Right-click on the ISO file and then click “Burn disc image” option. If your system doesn’t have built-in support for burning, you can take use of the free burning tool ISO2Disc.
When the bootable NTPasswd CD is ready, it’s time to reset your lost Windows password. Insert the CD into the optical drive and restart the target computer. You might have to adjust the BIOS to allow booting from the CD.
After booting to the NTPasswd tool, you have to select which partition that has Windows installed. In most cases, there will be only one partition so you can just hit Enter to use the default value.
Next, select which part of registry to load, press Enter to leave it as default option which is “Password reset [sam]”.
When you see the chntpw Main Interactive Menu, press Enter to select “Edit user data and passwords” option.
Choose the user account where you want to reset the password. You can find the RID, which you have to enter now, to the left of the username.
On User Edit Menu, type 1 and press Enter to select “Clear (blank) user password”.
If there is nothing wrong, you should see a message Password cleared!. Then, type q and press Enter to quit editing the user.
Next type q to quit the NTPasswd tool and type y to save your password reset changes. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart your computer. You should be able to login to Windows without any problems — remember to change the password to something complex that you can still recall easily.

Note that NTPasswd could be used to reset password for local account only. If you need to bypass Windows 8 Microsoft account, or reset domain user password, you might need to take use of the commercial software PCUnlocker.

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks, Windows 7, Windows 8

Tags: free windows password reset NT password reset NTPasswd NTPassword Offline NT Password & Registry Eidtor reset windows password with ntpasswd Windows NT password reset

Troubleshoot SQL Server Error 18456: Login Failed for User

July 2nd, 2015 by Admin

One of the most common error messages I come across when logging into SQL Server is error 18456: Login failed for user you provided. Can anybody tell me what the error code means?

sql-server-login-failure

This generic message means that SQL Server is not able to grant you access, but this message is useless for you to determine the true reason for the failure. To troubleshoot the SQL Server login failure, we have to dig into the SQL Server error log and find the root cause of the issue.

SQL Server maintains its own error logs that contain messages describing informational and error events. The SQL Server error log is the best place for a Database Administrators to look for informational messages, warnings, critical events, etc. By default, the error log is located at the folder:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.{instance_name}\MSSQL\LOG\

Typically, SQL Server retains backups of the previous six logs and gives the most recent log backup the extension .1, the second most recent the extension .2, and so on. The current error log has no extension.

errorlog

To check out what is happening on your database, you should check out the current error log file named ERRORLOG. It’s just a text file and you can open it with any text editor, such as Notepad. When you receive the login failure message (error 18456), just open the ERRORLOG file, browse to the end and you can find the corresponding entry related to your login issue.

sql-server-error-log

The key to the message is the ‘State’ which the server will accurately set to reflect the source of the problem. In the example above, State 58 indicates that you’re trying to login with a SQL Server account that’s not a supported authentication mode for your server.

The common error states and their descriptions are provided in the following table:

ERROR STATE	ERROR DESCRIPTION
State 2 and State 5	Could not find a login matching the name provided.
State 6	Attempt to use a Windows login name with SQL Authentication
State 7	Login disabled and password mismatch
State 8	Password mismatch
State 9	Invalid password
State 11 and State 12	Valid login but server access failure
State 13	SQL Server service is paused. No new connections can be accepted at this time.
State 16	A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the pre-login handshake.
State 18	Change password required
State 23	Access to server validation failed while revalidating the login on the connection.
State 38, 40, 46	Failed to open the database specified in the login properties.
State 50	Current collation did not match the database’s collation during connection reset.
State 51	Failed to send an environment change notification to a log shipping partner node while revalidating the login.
State 56	Failed attempted retry of a process tokenvalidation.
State 58	An attempt to login using SQL authentication failed. Server is configured for Windows authentication only.
State 65	Password did not match that for the user provided.

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Posted in SQL Server, Tips & Tricks

Tags: SQL Server Error 18456 sql server login error sql server login failure

2 Methods to Fix “The Group Policy Client service failed the logon. Access denied.”

July 1st, 2015 by Admin

When you try to log on to your Windows account, you might encounter the error “The group Policy Client service failed the logon. Access is denied.”

When you click OK, the system will return you back to the login screen. Searching this on the net gave a lot of answers but none of them seemed to solve it. In the end we discovered that it is a permissions problem and not a corrupt profile problem. Here’s two methods to fix this issue.

Before getting started, you need to log on to your computer with a working administrator account. Then follow the solutions below to fix the problem for your affected account.

Method 1: Regain Registry Permissions

Press the Windows key + R to bring up the Run box. Type regedit and hit Enter.
When the Registry Editor opens, select HKEY_USERS in the left pane. Now, pull down the File menu and choose the Load Hive option.
When the Load Hive dialog appears, select All Files in the Files of type box. Navigate to your affected profile folder (for example, C:\Users\<user_name>) and select the NTUSER.DAT hive. Click Open.

Note: if the NTUSER.DAT file doesn’t show up, you might need to configure Windows to display the hidden files.
It will ask you for a name. Give it any name, it doesn’t matter what it is.
You will now see the hive you just loaded with the name you gave it under the HKEY_USERS key. In my example, the entire NTUSER.DAT hive has been loaded into the Registry Editor under the registry location: HKEY_USERS\NTUSER.
Right-click on HKEY_USERS\NTUSER and select Permissions.
Here you should see at least three accounts: System, Administrators and the name of your affected user account who’s profile you are fixing. If ANY of these are not shown it will not work. You need to add all three and then give them full control in the Permissions section.
Once you have added all three and given them the correct permissions, click the File menu and select Unload Hive. Close the Registry Editor.
Log off or restart your computer. You should be able to login successfully with your account that you were having trouble with.

Method 2: Deleting the Local Profile

This method works by deleting your affected local profile, so you can then log back on. After successfully logging on, Windows will automatically create a new profile for your account. Here’s how to delete the profile for your affected Windows account in Windows 10, 8, 7 and Vista:

Right-click on My Computer icon on your desktop, and then select Properties.
From there, click the Advanced System Settings link on the left-hand side.
When you see the System Properties dialog, click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
In the User Profiles dialog box, select the profile of your affected user account and click on Delete.
Click OK to confirm. Now you’ve successfully deleted a user profile. Your problem should be fixed by now.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista

Tags: delete windows user profile the group Policy Client service failed the logon

How to Show Hidden Files in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 and Vista

July 1st, 2015 by Admin

One accidental deletion of a single system file can render your computer unusable. By default, Windows hides certain system files from view in Windows Explorer. This protects important files from being accidentally deleted, modified or altered.

But there are times when it’s necessary to view the hidden files and folders when coming to troubleshoot Windows problems. Here’s how to show hidden files in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 and Vista.

How to Show Hidden Files in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 and Vista?

Open up a Windows Explorer window, choose Organize -> Folder and search options.

In Windows 10 or 8, click on the View tab at the top of Windows Explorer, and then click Options.

In Windows 11, open File Explorer and click on the See more button (three dots) on the right side of the toolbar, and then select Options.
From the opened Folder Options box, go to View tab.
Under the Advanced settings section, click to select “Show hidden files, folders, and drives” radio button. If you are trying to get into the Windows directories, you might want to also remove the checkbox from “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” as well.
When you are done, just click Apply and OK, and your changes will take effect immediately.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista

Tags: how to view hidden files in windows show hidden files show hidden files in windows

Rate My Computer with Built-in Performance Testing Tool in Windows 8 or 7

June 28th, 2015 by Admin

Running benchmarks on a computer enables users to evaluate performance, to identify potential bottlenecks, and to choose effective system upgrades. Like Windows Vista, Windows 8 and 7 also come with a performance assessment tool, which rates your system and then gives you tips on improving it.

The following tutorial will walk you through the procedure to rate your computer with the built-in Performance Information Tools in Windows 8 or 7.

How to Rate Computer Performance in Windows 8 or 7?

First of all, open up the Control Panel. In Windows 8, you can simply press the Windows key + X to bring up the Power User menu and then select “Control Panel”.
Under System and Security, click Review your computer’s status.
In the left pane, click on View Performance Information.
When the Performance Information and Tools window appears, click on Rate This Computer to run the benchmark.

If you have ever run an assessment for this computer before, click the Re-run the Assessment link to recalculate your performance rating.
The assessment may take a few minutes to complete depending on your system’s hardware and software configuration.
After the test is complete, Windows will give scores for your computer’s processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics, and hard disk.

Though it’s not known as an especially accurate measure of PC performance, particularly when comparing scores with other systems, it can be a useful tool to identify a hardware deficiency.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 7, Windows 8

Tags: rate computer performance rate my computer rate this computer rate this computer in windows 7 rate this computer in windows 8

How to Enable or Disable Windows 10 Upgrade Notification

June 25th, 2015 by Admin

The final version of Windows 10 will release to public on July 29, 2015, and all Windows 7 and Windows 8 users can upgrade to Windows 10 for free in the first year of launch. To make the upgrade process easier, Microsoft has released a new update KB3035583 that will install a Windows 10 upgrade notification tool called “Get Windows 10”.

windows-10-upgrade-notification

If you click on the small Windows icon at the right end of the system tray, it will launch the “Get Windows 10” app and you will be able to reserve your free copy of Windows 10. However, for some reason this icon isn’t appearing on all systems, or you might want to remove the annoying upgrade notification. In this tutorial we’ll explain how to enable or disable the Windows 10 upgrade notification.

Part 1: Enable the Windows 10 Upgrade Notification

If the “Get Windows 10″ upgrade app icon is missing in taskbar, how can you get it to appear in Windows 7 or 8? The “Get Windows 10” app is delivered through an optional update and you need to have patch KB3035583 installed.

The first thing to try is make sure Windows Update is set to automatically install all updates on your PC and that your system is fully up to date. That alone might be enough to get the Windows 10 upgrade notification icon to appear.

Part 2: Remove the Windows 10 Upgrade Notification

But there are also many people who want to stick to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, the “Get Windows 10” app and its icon present in taskbar notification area might become annoying. To remove the upgrade notification completely, you have to uninstall the update KB3035583:

Open the Command Prompt with Administrator privileges. In Windows 7, right-click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run as administrator. In Windows 8, simply press the Windows + X key to bring up the Power User menu and then select “Command Prompt(Admin)”.
Type the following command in the Command Prompt and hit Enter.
WUSA /UNINSTALL /KB:3035583
Follow the on-screen prompts, and when complete type exit to close Command Prompt. Restart your computer and the Windows 10 upgrade notification will go away permanently.

If you want to avoid Windows installing this update again, you will need to block the patch by opening Control Panel –> Windows Updates and checking for updates, then right-click the update KB3035583 and choose to hide it.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8

Tags: disable windows 10 upgrade notification remove get windows 10 app remove windows 10 upgrade notification turn off windows 10 upgrade notification windows 10 upgrade notification windows 10 upgrade notification missing