wp.jochen.hayek.name/blog-en

Category: Microsoft Windows

my 2026 Windows working environment
- apply for admin privileges on your laptop
- exploration
  - which areas outside can you reach (and how: https, ssh, irregular ports)?
    
    CryptDrive (…)
    
    my home NAS
    
    HS
- Microsoft PowerToys
  - … zones … (for splitting huge screens)
- Microsoft Sysinternals
  - process explorer
- PuTTY
- ssh (already comes with Windows, but YOU NEED TO SET UP YOUR CONNECTIONS – e.g. for backing up YOUR FILES (diary, tools, git repositories, …))
- GNU Emacs
- Git Bash
  - UNIX (AKA Linux) utilities
  - perl
  - git
  - …
- xmlstarlet
- my own tool set
  - create_snapshot.sh
  - MEGA IMPORTANT: continuous automatic backup of YOUR FILES
    
    for as long as “automatic” is not yet possible and established
    
    the “emergency action” must get established (REMEMBER the c*m*l dr*v*r with his fierceful face expression and his kalashnikov!!!)
    
    backing up must get executed a couple of times each day
    
    TARring
    
    syncing
    
    maybe: “git archive”
  - …
- ??? busybox “w32”, preferredly with Unicode support
- WSL – Windows Subsystem for Linux
- …
2026-01-24
table of keyboard shortcuts on Wikipedia: “refresh a webpage (ignoring cache)”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts#Web_browsers
On Windows you achieve this using F5 resp. Ctrl-F5 (if you want to ignore the cache on purpose).

On MacOS that’s a little more complicated. Look it up on the page quoted above!
2025-06-26
Microsoft Windows PowerToys: “Always On Top” utility
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/always-on-top
- https://defkey.com/windows-11-shortcuts/win-ctrl-t-109516
This utility comes bundled with PowerToys.

Sometimes I hit the keyboard shortcut accidentally (Win+Ctrl+t). Having certain windows (e.g. a browser window will all its tabs) pinned like that results in conflicts with KeePass – you cannot make that window “the other window”, that KeePass pastes the credentials into. So I “always” have to find the shortcut to restore the ordinary state. That’s why this article is here.
2025-02-06
Microsoft Sysinternals – utilities to manage, diagnose, troubleshoot, and monitor a Microsoft Windows environment
2024-12-09
SSH on Windows: OpenSSH, PuTTY
- https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH
- https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki
- https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/ssh.exe-examples
- %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\config – ~/.ssh/config – it allows this notation even on Windows OpenSSH (and be aware of this: %USERPROFILE = “~”!):
  - IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ssh-agent – SSH authentication agent
On Windows OpenSSH’s “SSH authentication agent” is meant to run as Windows “service“. Starting a couple of years back, Microsoft decided, to deactivate that service by default. Now there are corporations, that do not want to have the “ssh-agent” service running at all. No SSH authentication agent, no caching of ssh ID-s (after enquiring the respective passphrase) – i.e. you have to enter your passphrases again and again. Right: if you are a bad boy, you use private keys with empty passphrases – but you are not a bad boy, are you?

The alternative to OpenSSH on Windows:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY – the PuTTY package has its own SSH authentication agent: pageant – and pageant does not run as (Windows) “service“, you can start it yourself, so PuTTY may be your choice.
2024-04-17
my LG 4K-UHD-Smart-TV
- https://www.lg.com/de/tv/lg-43uq70006lb
View Screen with Just Scan:
-> Settings Wheel -> “…” ->Picture -> Aspect Ratio -> Just Scan -> On

This way the display OS does not remove edge lines and columns. That is needed, because e.g. in my case serious lines and columns get stolen, and I insist on seeing them.
2024-04-15
Run Linux GUI apps with WSL | Microsoft Learn
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps
2023-09-08
Microsoft PowerToys
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/fancyzones – PowerToys FancyZones – how to split my 4k screen into “zones”
- https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
2022-11-01
Microsoft Sysinternals ProcessExplorer: restore the original task manager after replacing it with ProcessExplorer
- https://superuser.com/questions/1320561/restore-the-original-task-manager-after-replacing-it-with-the-sysinternals-proce
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite – includes Process Explorer, the PsTools suite of command-line utilities, and a lot more
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pstools – PsTools – suite command-line utilities
2022-09-20
Git for Windows – comes with a nice minimal GNU shell environment
- https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/FAQ
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mingw-w64#MSYS2 – GfW is based on MSYS2; MSYS2 provides a Unix environment to Windows
- https://www.msys2.org – …
- https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#windows – MSYS2 users can install GNU Emacs using a pacman command line
- http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ – I wonder whether I can get this GNU Emacs for Windows to cooperate with the MSYS2 provided by GfW
- https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Microsoft-Windows.html
- I guess the ordinary way to start GfW is through “Git Bash” in the “Git” group, that you reach through “Start”
- but I like ConEmu better than mintty, and I can start “C:\Program Files\Git\bin/bash.exe”
2021-07-15