/windows | Oct 18, 2019
/misc | Oct 09, 2019
Despite the sunny promise of version 26.1's July 24, 2018 release note ("Drive File Stream now guarantees that it won't use more than 20% of the free local disk space when caching files."), Google Drive File Stream cache continues to fill up virtually all available space on many drives.
Heinzelmann's solution of setting ContentCacheMaxKbytes to 100MB is excellent but incomplete; these are the steps I needed to follow in order to resolve the issue:
/misc | Sep 29, 2019
When a G Suite user attempts to sign in to a new device, they may be greeted with:
Verify it's you
This device isn't recognized. For your security, Google wants to make sure it's really you.
Enter a phone number to get a text message with a verification code.
This seems less like additional security and more like phone number harvesting, especially since the user has no preregistered number.
Clicking "Try another way" leads to:
Get a verification code sent to your phone.
Get help
Clicking "Get help" results in:
Account recovery
Enter the last password you remember using with this Google Account
which isn't very helpful, as this user has had the same password since creation.
Entering the password dumps to a dead end:
Couldn't sign you in
Contact your domain admin for help. Learn more
Clicking "Learn more" brings us to a singularly unhelpful page:
Signing in to your work, school, or other group account
Happily, Mario R. linked to the actually relevant G Suite documentation.
In a nutshell, domain admins can disable the phone number requirement, but only for 10 minutes:
Google Admin Console > Users > click username > Security > Login challenge ("Turn off identity questions for 10 minutes after a suspicious attempt to sign in.") > TURN OFF FOR 10 MINS ("Turn off identity questions for 10 minutes after a suspicious attempt to sign in.")
/misc | Sep 26, 2019
Solution to the vexing "Drive File Stream: Can't reach Google Drive" error when attempting to login:
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Google\DriveFS, create two new DWORD values, DisableCRLCheck and DirectConnection, assigning value data as 1.
Additional settings and details (including macOS instructions) can be found in Configure Drive File Stream.
(Mad props to Ashley Rowbury for her Job-like patience in securing this veritable Holy Grail.)
/windows | Sep 12, 2019
Yahoo! Pipes "was a web application from Yahoo! that provided a graphical user interface for building data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps."
Replacements:
Huginn "is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server."
IFTTT (IF This Then That) "is the free way to do more with hundreds of the apps and devices you love, including Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, Nest, Fitbit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant."
Microsoft Flow - "Create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to get notifications, synchronize files, collect data, and more"
Pipes - "Re-live Yahoo Pipes. Get and manipulate data from the open web by connecting blocks."
Zapier - "Connect the apps you use everyday to automate your work and be more productive. 1500+ apps and easy integrations - get started in minutes."
/misc | Aug 15, 2019
/mac | Aug 01, 2019
Microsoft Office apps like Word and Excel may suddenly stop defaulting to the user-specified default printer:
Its_Garth's lonely (and locked) November 29, 2018 post (Office 365 on Windows 10 not using Windows default printer) held the unlikely solution:
/windows | Jul 30, 2019
/misc | Jul 24, 2019
In a 2016 reddit thread entitled Clone a Win95 machine while still running?, the consensus was that it could not be done (though rasfert mentioned using xcopy).
Kan Yabumoto's XXCOPY includes a purpose-built clone operation (as described in his Cloning the Win9x system disk using XXCOPY) which can image a running Windows 95 system as simply as:
XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE
Before booting the clone, set its primary partition as active/bootable. The usual method (also outlined by Kan) is to start the computer via a bootable floppy or CD and run FDISK from there, as Microsoft's FDISK does not allow marking a partition active on any drive other than 1 ("Only partitions on Drive 1 can be made active."). However, Ranish Parition Manager does not suffer from this artificial limitation, and can thus be used to mark the primary partition as active from within Windows.
The last version of XXCOPY compatible with Windows 95, 2.96.7, can be downloaded from http://www.xxcopy.com/download/xxfw2967.zip.
/windows | Jul 21, 2019