Streaming video content from a PC to a smart TV with Windows 10 “Cast to Device”

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’m not massively into collecting and curating digital video content – I have some family movies, and I stream content from BBC iPlayer, Amazon Video, etc. – pretty normal stuff. Even so, there are times that I think I could use the tech available to me in a better way – and there are times when I find I can do something that I didn’t previously know about!

Today was one of those days, whilst I was studying for an exam and I wanted to watch some videos.  I wanted to be able to watch the videos in the comfort of my living room instead of on a PC and I was sure there must be a way. I had copies on my Synology NAS but, somewhat frustratingly, the Plex media server wasn’t picking them up (and I wanted to be watching the videos, not playing with Plex!).

Cast to Device in Windows 10

Then, when I right-clicked on a video file in Windows Explorer, I spotted an option to “Cast to Device” which included options for my Samsung TV and also my Bose speakers – though I think the choices will depend on the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) devices that are available on the local network. I selected the TV and found I could create a playlist of videos to watch in the comfort of my sofa – and, even better, the TV remote can be used to pause/resume playback (the PC was in a different room).

Cast to Device in Windows 10

Now I’m studying in comfort (well, maybe not – I gave up the sofa and lay on the floor with another PC to take notes!) and streaming media across the home network using Windows and DLNA.

Some UK keyboard advice for running Windows on a Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

After the rebirth of my old Mac Mini as a Windows 10 desktop PC, I had a couple of little niggles to sort out with a UK Apple keyboard:

Clear key - acts as Num Lock when running Windows

  • Where is the hash key? (essential for tweeting!) – Ctrl+Alt+3 creates a lovely # (no, it’s not a “pound” – a pound is £, unless we’re talking about weight, when it’s lb).
  • And, talking of currency, a Euro symbol (€) is Right Alt+4 (just as in Windows), not on the 2 key (as printed on my keyboard).

Another useful link is the Use your Apple Keyboard in Windows with Boot Camp Apple support article.

A new lease of life for some of my old Macs

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Apple iMac G3For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a selection of PCs (Windows, Mac or Linux) in the house running a variety of operating systems. The Windows machines come and go – they are mostly laptops provided for work (either mine or my wife’s) – although we also have a Lenovo Flex 15 as “the family PC” (in reality, it’s difficult to get near it most of the time as the kids are using it!). Linux is normally for me to do something geeky on – whether that’s one of the Raspberry Pis or an old netbook running Ubuntu to easily update an Arduino, etc. The Mac purchases require a bit more consideration – their premium price means that it’s not something to go into without a great deal of thought and, although I still regret selling my Bondi Blue G3 iMac (one of the originals), I have 2006 and 2012 Mac Minis, and a late-2007 MacBook.

2006 Mac Mini running Windows 10!

Earlier this year, I brought the 2006 Mac Mini back to life with a SSD upgrade and, although it’s not “supported”, I managed to install Windows 10 on it (actually, I installed Windows 7 via BootCamp, then updated). It’s working a treat and, although it only has 2GB of RAM, it’s fine for a bit of web browsing, social media, scanning documents, etc. The only thing I haven’t been able to get Windows to recognise is my external iSight camera – which is a great device but has long since been discontinued.  I had some challenges along the way (and I can’t find all of the details for the process I used now) but some of the links I found useful include:

I also found that my aluminium Apple keyboard (wired) wouldn’t work for startup options; however, if I plugged in an older Apple White Pro keyboard, I was able to use startup options! I later found a forum post (when I was writing this blog post, but not when I originally had the issue) which suggests that a firmware update will fix the issue with the aluminium keyboard.

Once Windows 7 was installed on the Mac, it was just a case of following the Windows 10 upgrade process (back when Windows 10 was still a free upgrade).

Late 2007 MacBook destined for the scrap heap

The MacBook has been less successful. Not only has the keyboard rest broken yet again (for a third time) and the replacement battery that’s only had around 90 charges is completely dead after a couple of years of not being used, but it seems the latest supported Mac OS X version is 10.7.5 (Lion). I had hoped to bring it out of hibernation for use in the garage with Zwift but that needs at least OS X 10.8, leaving me waiting for an iOS app for Zwift (it’s on the way), or borrowing the family PC from the kids when I jump on the turbo trainer. Regardless, with no battery and an ancient OS, it looks like this MacBook is about to go to PC heaven…

2012 Mac Mini going strong but watch the updates…

The 2012 Mac Mini running OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) is still supported and I’m considering installing macOS 10.12 (Sierra) on it.  I say considering, because that looks likely to force me to spend money on a Lightroom 6 upgrade (with Lightroom 7 just around the corner, based on the fact that we’re up to 6.7 now). I also skipped OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) which I now regret, because that means it’s not in my purchase history so I can’t download it if I ever need an older MacOS version.

Adventures with robocopy.exe

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

It’s been a while since I had to make copies of large numbers of files in complex directory structures from the Windows command prompt but, faced with the need to take a backup within a command line environment (the WinRE Command Prompt), I needed to refresh my Windows command line skills.  There’s loads of advice out there on the Internet (most of it subjective) but the general consensus seems to be that the Extended Copy command (xcopy.exe) is deprecated and has been replaced in recent versions of Windows by the Robust File Copy command (robocopy.exe). Of course, there are many alternatives but they are not natively provided in WinRE!

(Some of the more useful articles I found are Nicholas Tyler’s reply on Stack Overflow, Oliver Muchai’s reply on Super User and Scott Hanselman’s blog post from 2007.)

Robocopy has loads of options but the ones I selected in the end were:

robocopy sourcefolder targetfolder /MIR /ZB /XJ /R:3 /W:1 /log:filename.txt

to make a mirror copy of the data, in restartable mode (to survive network glitches), using backup mode in the case of an access denied error, to exclude Junction Points, to retry 3 times on failure, waiting 1 second each time (compared with the defaults of 1 million and 30 seconds respectively) and to log to the chosen file.

The /XJ switch was added as a late addition after some abortive attempts ended up with recursive Application Data folders. Some people have erroneously referred to this as a bug in Robocopy – actually it’s caused by Windows’ attempts to prevent application developers writing to system locations (and forcing them to write to the user profile instead, as described by “DaddyMan” on a Microsoft Forum post:

“The Application Data folder is actually a junction, which points back to its parent folder.
[%username]\AppData\Local\Application Data\
points to
[%username]\AppData\Local\”

and by Shawn Keene (@LtCmdrKeene) in another, similar, post:

“[Any time] an application tries to save a file to a naughty location (such as C:\Windows or C:\Program Files), Windows will force the actual save to end up at a place inside your user folder instead (C:\Users\Username\LocalSettings\VirtualStore\Program Files).  It tricks the program into thinking that the file really did go to the Program Files folder, but in reality it’s somewhere inside your user folder.

This [virtualisation] (tricking the program) is required so that badly-created apps that save to naughty locations will still work.  The alternative is that the program tries to save and then crashes when it can’t access the Program Files folder.  If Windows didn’t do this, the program would require administrator access every time it runs — which is very insecure, plus would make the program impossible to use in corporate environments where users aren’t allowed to be administrators.

Rest assured that the multiple layers you are seeing are a result of folder redirection and [virtualisation] (also known as junction points).  There’s no need to clean these up or correct it, and you are well advised to avoid exploring those files.”

Finally, I needed to remove the folders that I had accidentally created with recursive Application Data folders inside (I counted 25 in one case!). Neither Windows nor the Windows Command Prompt (del and rmdir commands) could do this, resulting in “too long” errors but Super User Aaron has the answer (which is a variation on the method Bob Coss commented on one of my own old blog posts):

“Create an empty directory with mkdir empty, then use robocopy empty\ "Application Data\" /mir" which will remove the whole directory tree. Then issue a rmdir empty and rmdir "Application Data to clean up and you’re done.”

Windows 10 PC stuck in BitLocker loop (and recovering details of open tabs in the Edge browser)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I try not to reboot my PCs too often – frankly I thought I’d left the days of daily reboots behind with Windows 95 – but, faced with a display driver bug on my Surface Pro 3 (that seems to be triggered by the Azure Portal), a change of password that led to repeated authentication prompts (and OneDrive refusing to sync), together with some software updates pushed to my PC from SCCM, I had little choice this afternoon.

Unfortunately that “quick reboot to get things working again” turned into a disaster, with an hour long support call, followed by a desperate attempt to recover the last few hours’ work.

Stuck in a BitLocker loop

After rebooting, I found that a Windows 10 update hadn’t properly applied. Each time I entered my BitLocker PIN, I was faced with a message that invited me to use the BitLocker key to recover my PC. My IT support team gave me my key… and then after a restart we went round the loop again. We tried hard resets, turning the TPM on and off in the BIOS and more, until I found a TechNet wiki article that seemed to describe the issue (or at least something very like it).

To terminate this BitLocker recovery loop, I needed to suspend BitLocker from within the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). That’s OK, as long as you have the recovery key and, following the advice in the article linked above, I chose the “Skip this drive” link at the bottom of the page that requests entry of the recovery key, before selecting Advanced options/Troubleshoot/Advanced options/Command Prompt.

Next, I disarmed BitLocker using the following commands:

manage-bde -status c:
manage-bde -unlock c: -rp recoverypassword
manage-bde -protectors -disable c:

With BitLocker disabled, I hoped to be able to restart the PC and boot Windows, but unfortunately it was still not playing ball. I’ll be driving to the office on Monday for someone to take a look at my PC and I suspect a rebuild will be on the cards…

Work in progress

Despite the support team’s assurances that all of my data is on servers, I’m pretty sure it’s not. All of my data until I changed my password is on servers but anything since then has been failing to sync. If the sync engine can’t authenticate, I’m pretty sure I must be working from a local copy – which will be lost if the PC is rebuilt!

The items of most concern to me were some scripts I’d finally got working this afternoon; and any notes in OneNote.  I wrote last year about issues with OneNote and OneDrive (now overcome by doing it properly) but goodness knows where the unsynced changes are (again, I found a backup, but it doesn’t have the latest changes in it).

Again, using the WinRE Command Prompt, I backed up the files I thought were most likely to be missed. I tracked down the scripts that I’d finally completed and that had led to a few late nights this week (phew!) – and made a backup copy of my user profile, just in case.

The last worry for me was my browser. Forced by policy to use a Microsoft browser, I had lots of open tabs in Edge, as well as a few in Internet Explorer. The ones in Edge included the various posts I’d found that had helped me to complete my scripts – and I wanted to go back through them to blog about what I found…

Edge does recover sessions after a crash but, with a potential PC rebuild on the cards, I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance so I tried tracking down the location of the recovery data.  Brent Muir’s fascinating look at Windows 10 – Microsoft Edge Browser Forensics told me where to find the recovery files (in %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\Recovery\Active) but they are binary. Gleb Derzkij’s answer to a Stack Overflow forum post looked useful but I couldn’t get it to work.  What I could do though was open each of the (115!) .dat files in the Active Recovery folder using Notepad and see enough information in there to identify the URIs, then manually copy and paste them to a text file (ready to open when I’m back at my PC).

So that’s recaptured my work and the PC is ready to be completely razed to the ground if necessary. And the moral of the story? Never apply updates on Friday the 13th!

Encrypting Windows 10 with BitLocker

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

In common with many small business owners (indeed any business owner, it could be argued), my wife needs to be sure that her customer’s data is adequately protected. In her case that means professional cloud services for email (Office 365) and PC backup (Azure) but the data on the PC needs to be protected too…

All major operating systems come with whole drive encryption technologies these days – and for Windows that feature is BitLocker.

When we replaced my wife’s PC a few months ago, I picked what seemed a good small business laptop from Lenovo – a Thinkpad E550 – and, by and large, I’ve been pleased with the purchase.  Somewhat frustratingly though, the PC shipped with Windows 8 (not Pro) and so it has been updated to Windows 8.1 then to Windows 10 Home. That meant that, when I attempted to encrypt the drive by right-clicking in File Explorer, there was no Manage BitLocker option (and the BitLocker Settings stub in Settings, System, About didn’t do anything). Folder-level encryption with the Encrypted File System (EFS) was similarly unavailable (although greyed out, rather than invisible), even when I tried to manually enable it with sc config EFS start= demand.

Whilst there are alternatives available, my support model for my wife’s PC is KISS (“keep it simple, stupid”), as the last thing I need whilst I’m consulting with my own customers is to be worrying about support issues with family devices, so I decided to stick with the technology that’s built into Windows. That meant an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

Thinking $99 isn’t too bad a price to pay (after all, this is a business expense for my wife)… I clicked Settings, Update & Security, Activation, Go to Store, only to find that it’s £99.99 in the UK – a £33, or 50%, uplift at today’s exchange rates. By this point I’m starting to feel a little ripped off… although I’m not sure if I’m more annoyed with Lenovo selling a small business PC with an inadequate version of Windows, or Microsoft for only putting encryption in the high-end Windows versions…

Windows 10 Edition upgrade completed

The final point to remember is that not all PCs have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip.

BitLocker error on PC without a trusted platform module

That’s not a problem if you’re prepared to use a USB flash drive as a startup-key. It just needs a little policy change (run gpedit.msc, then Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Bit Locker Drive Encryption\Operating System Drives\Require additional authentication at startup) after which you can work through the BitLocker encryption process as usual but with an extra choice whether to use a USB key or enter a password:

Allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM

Choose how to unlock your drive at startup

Banish passwords and unlock your PC with Windows Hello

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Passwords are so old-fashioned. And insecure. Often, after a high profile website hack we’re asked to change our passwords because most people use the same password for multiple services. So, what’s the answer? Well, not using the same password for multiple sites might be one solution but that leads to problems with remembering passwords (which is why I use a password manager). Others think the solution lies in biometrics (and I’d certainly consider that as a second factor).

Windows 10 has an interesting new feature called Windows Hello. Rather than relying on a password, or a PIN (which is ultimately the same thing, once it’s been hashed…), Hello uses facial recognition to determine whether you can have access to a PC or not – and I’ve been testing it for a few weeks now.

Actually, we have two PCs in our house that can use Windows Hello: my wife’s Lenovo E550 (using the fingerprint reader or optional 3D camera); and the Lenovo B50 All-in-one PC I have on loan also includes the 3D camera that is required for facial recognition (iris readers will soon be available too). And in case you’re reading this and getting worried about a copy of your face being shared around the Internet, Hello’s facial recognition uses infra-red technology with the camera to capture data points (a kind of graph of your face) rather than a picture itself and the data never leaves the PC (where it is stored in encrypted form – you can read more in Microsoft’s Windows Hello privacy FAQ).  In essence, you have possession of a device; you unlock it with your face (or other biometrics); and then Windows Hello authenticates on your behalf but your biometric information is never transferred.

I was a bit confused at first to find that Hello was not available on the B50, until I discovered that the OOTB drivers were not up to the task – once I’d installed the Intel RealSense Depth Camera Manager (DCM) drivers, Windows was happy to learn how my face looks and Windows Hello jumped into life.

“So, what’s it actually like to use?”, you might ask.

Setup is just a case of following a wizard to let Windows recognise your face and after that it’s really, really straightforward.

Windows Hello setup - welcome! Windows Hello setup - make sure it's you Windows Hello setup - say cheese! Windows Hello setup - all set! Windows 10 sign-in options, including Windows Hello

Just make sure you look directly at the PC (no slurping a cuppa whilst waiting for it to recognise you).

Sometimes the camera takes a while to wake up when the PC resumes from standby (a driver issue, I expect – they seem to be under constant iteration) but in general it seems pretty reliable. It seems to cope well with varying lighting conditions too – whether I have a full ceiling light on, daylight from the window, or a little desk lamp; and I’ve moved offices since I originally set it up – that doesn’t seem to make a difference either. And there’s no problem with variations in the amount of facial hair I’m wearing on any given day. Apparently, even identical twins don’t fool it…

Logging on to my PC with little more than a wiggle of a mouse (to wake it up) and a stare is great… it’s a shame I’ll have to give the PC back soon.

Further reading

Short takes: Windows/Office productivity guides and training materials

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Some more mini-snippets, this week with a focus on Windows 10 and Office/Office 365.

Windows 10 shortcuts and other productivity guides

A few days ago, I added a link to my delicious account with a useful list of shortcut keys for Windows 10. Quite why it’s a Word document downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center is anyone’s guess but I did find it’s one of many potentially useful productivity guides at the Microsoft IT Showcase.

Office and Office 365 training

Another resource for IT training materials, particularly around Office (and Office 365) is the Office Training Center. I’m a little embarrassed that it was one of my customers who alerted me to this… but it’s worth knowing about, with some useful guides for users – for example this quick reference card for OneDrive for Business.

Don’t waste time and money on third party security software: Windows Defender is just fine!

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

So far in my “series” of Windows 10 posts, I’ve written about refreshing or resetting the PC (to get a clean configuration) and about getting an Office 365 Home subscription for some productivity apps but I skipped one area that many people are sold products for… security software.

Actually, this is one of my major bug-bears. In the enterprise, I often see third party security products used but there’s only one reason I can see for that: management. Not just of the updates, but of quarantine for any infections that are caught.

Unfortunately, in the consumer space anti-virus products are often foisted onto unsuspecting consumers. Both the PCs I’ve bought for family in recent years have come with McAfee products installed (removed soon afterwards) and high street PC shops/office suppliers/supermarkets will happily sell alternatives.  I was particularly annoyed to see that, after my parents in-law went to a local “PC specialist” (because they thought I was too busy), Microsoft Security Essentials had been removed (from their Windows 7 PC) and replaced by AVG. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with AVG, except that, the last time I used the free version, it kept nagging to be upgraded to a paid one – and there’s simply no need to clog up the system with third party apps like this.

Reputable providers of consumer advice seem to be caught up in the trap too: I took a look at the Which? report for security software best buys and even their best free antivirus software guide doesn’t include the software built into the operating system – indeed it says:

“Two programs could interfere with one another causing problems. If you are installing a third party piece of security software make sure you uninstall Microsoft Defender.”

I’d put it a different way: don’t waste time and money on third party anti-virus software – just use Windows Defender!

  • Windows Defender scans for malicious software. The schedule for scans can be edited in Task Scheduler.
  • In Windows 10, Windows Defender is enabled by default. It will turn itself off if you install another antivirus application, but equally it can be left in place and will receive updates through the same mechanism as other Windows updates.
  • If Windows Defender finds a virus it can’t remove, it will prompt to download and run Windows Defender Offline. Once the download is complete, the PC will automatically restart into the recovery environment, where Defender will run a more complete scan and remove threats.

Other security features built into Windows (avoiding the need for third party products) include Windows Firewall (which helps to protect a PC from damage caused by worms or hackers attacking across a network) and SmartScreen (a phishing and malware filter implemented in several Microsoft products including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and inside Windows).

Find out more about the security settings in Windows 10 by searching for Security and Maintenance.

Windows 10 Control Panel - Security and Maintenance

Windows 10 Enterprise domain join options

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

When running Windows 10 setup from enterprise media, one of the options presented is to choose how you’ll connect Windows to your organisation.

  • Join Azure AD
  • Join a domain

You might ask, “where’s the option to just continue as normal and stay in a workgroup?” (as a non-domain-joined PC) but the explanatory text helps:

  • Join Azure AD if your organisation uses Office 365 or other business services from Microsoft.
  • If you plan to join the PC to a domain, a local account is created and then you can join a domain as in previous Windows OSes once setup is complete.

The “join a domain” option doesn’t actually join a domain at all – indeed, once you’ve elected to join a domain you can switch to signing in with a Microsoft account (and gain the benefits of settings being synchronised between PCs) as well as adding a workplace or school account (signing in to Office 365, for example), changing sign-in options, joining/leaving a domain and/or joining/leaving Azure AD (for administrators to manage the PC in line with policy).

Windows 10 - Accounts - Your Accounts

Windows 10 - Accounts - Signin Options

Windows 10 - Accounts - Work Access