Author: hewagen
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GimmeNote – A tiny Outlook add-in that lets you pin a note to any mail
A tiny Outlook add-in that lets you pin a note to any mail, conversation, or appointment — kept as a real file on disk, opened in the editor you choose, and flagged with a colored category so you can spot at a glance which items carry a note. Why I Built This My inbox is my memory,…
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HWPad – A fast, modern little text and HTML editor for Windows
A fast, modern little editor for Windows — with a clean rounded window, a proper settings dialog, and everything remembered between sessions. It happily handles a throwaway plain-text snippet and a genuinely formatted note, and it now does the formatting the way the web does: as real, WYSIWYG HTML. Think of it as the notepad…
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ADMXComparer – Take Control of Administrative Template Changes from the Command Line
Group Policy Administrative Templates (ADMX/ADML) are constantly evolving. Every new Windows release, browser version, or feature update introduces changes—new settings, removed settings, or sometimes even a reorganization of templates. But answering simple questions like: …is surprisingly difficult with standard tools. This is exactly where ADMXComparer comes in. 🔎 What is ADMXComparer? ADMXComparer is a C#…
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UpdateWindows – Take Control of Windows Updates from the Command Line
Keeping Windows systems up to date is essential—but not always transparent or easy to automate. Which updates are installed? Which ones are missing? Which cumulative update (LCU) is actually active on a system? And what exact OS build is running on that machine? To solve these problems, I built UpdateWindows.exe — a lightweight .NET Framework…
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Demystifying the Client Repeatable Feature in Edge
Autofill behavior in modern browsers can sometimes feel confusing—especially when suggestions suddenly stop appearing even though data is still being entered correctly. In Microsoft Edge, this behavior is often caused by a feature called the Client Repeatable Feature. This article explains how Autofill works in Edge, how Frequently Saved Data (FSD) and Parsable Name are…
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Understanding Windows Settings URIs and How to Use Them in Enterprise Environments
Windows provides a powerful and flexible management framework that enables organizations to configure, restrict, or simplify the Settings experience for their users. One of the key mechanisms behind this framework is the ms-settings: URI scheme — a consistent, internal navigation system that defines how each Settings page in Windows is accessed. If you have ever…
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Slightly clear the fog around BlackLotus mitigations
Hi, I’m Helmut Wagensonner, a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. Despite the detailed information we’ve previously provided about mitigating the UEFI BlackLotus bootkit, it appears there is still considerable confusion surrounding the entire process. What specifically needs to be addressed, and why are manual steps required to activate the mitigations? Understanding BlackLotus and its mitigations…
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Remotely create a combined trace
Why combined remote tracing? Sometimes the machine you need to investigate is physically inaccessible, hung, or its GUI has become unresponsive. In such cases, you can still capture rich diagnostic data—kernel events, network traffic, and user‑mode system calls—by driving tracing entirely from a separate “Admin PC.” Combining multiple trace types into one workflow lets you…