Windows 11 without a Microsoft account: oobe\bypassnro and its replacements
The classic oobe\bypassnro trick, how to revive it via registry after Microsoft removed it, and the modern start ms-cxh:localonly alternative.
Windows
Proxmox: Windows is slow with CPU type host (md_clear and flush_l1d)
host exposes md_clear and flush_l1d; Windows sees them and enables mitigations that multiply RAM latency (100 ns → 2000 ns on old Xeons). x86-64-v2-AES or v3 do not expose them. qm set –cpu and stop/start.
Windows: convert a running machine to VHDX with Disk2vhd (live P2V)
disk2vhd.exe as administrator, Use Vhdx + Use Volume Shadow Copy, every volume on the system disk, destination on another disk. Then Hyper-V or qm disk import on Proxmox; first boot on SATA and virtio afterwards.
Windows: paths longer than 260 characters (LongPathsEnabled) and why it is sometimes not enough
New-ItemProperty … LongPathsEnabled 1 and a reboot. It only applies to programs that declare themselves longPathAware; for the rest, \?\C:\path, subst, or robocopy.
Netcat equivalent on Windows: Test-NetConnection
Windows has no nc. Test-NetConnection -Port is the port check.
WinDirStat: see what is eating the disk on Windows
du gives numbers. WinDirStat gives the map: which folder and which extension own the disk.