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All Posts (530)

• 

  Published on

  2024-10-01 10:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powershellwindowswinget

  winget is broken again.

  ... because of course it is! Ah well, winget is a great idea with a decent implementation, suffering from an unstable platform it's built on. I've now seen it break down seemingly randomly 3 times - once it was one of the many reasons I had to reinstall Windows completely. But as usual - let's take a step back. How and why did I get started on this via dolorosa? Background A while back I was going to use winget to update my apps to their latest versions, as I've done before.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-24 6:37 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powertoyswindows11

  How to fix PowerToys FancyZones in Windows 11?

  This article explains how to fix an issue where FancyZones (from the fantastic Windows PowerToys toolset) fails to work because it conflicts with the built-in window management in Windows 11. I guess it's too much to ask for a level of coordination here from Microsoft... Oh well.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-17 12:23 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  certificatesopensslpowershell

  How to export the whole SSL (or TLS) certificate chain based on the original using PowerShell?

  Every now and then, you run into a situation where you have a certificate for a website or service, but for one reason or another, you don't have the whole chain. You're missing some or all of the intermediaries, and even the root certificate, perhaps. This is something I run into constantly. This article explains how to fix it! Background In my day-to-day work, I maintain a number of customer systems running in Azure.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-10 7:08 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  googlechrome

  How to solve keyboard shortcuts not working in Google Chrome on Windows?

  This article explains a fix to a puzzling issue I had with Google Chrome, where my keyboard shortcuts would seemingly randomly stop working and I'd need to click around (or change to another application with Alt+Tab) to get them working again. Luckily, the solution (or I guess it's more like a workaround, as usual) turned out to be simple.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-09-03 2:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  onenotewindows

  Search (and secretly, sync) broken in OneNote? A quick fix!

  This article explains how to fix sudden and surprising synchronization problem(s) in OneNote, that first surfaces as search (the one you open with CTRL+E, not the unified/M365-wide top bar search) not finding any results from the page content, even if it might find some from the page or section titles. This exciting story has it all: Manually triggering a job that should be automatic, finding some secret broken files and boldly removing them, and of course a daring registry hack!

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-27 9:50 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  windows

  "Destination Path Too Long" when copying files in File Explorer? Easy workaround(s)!

  This article explains another situation where you might run into a " The file names would be too long for the destination folder. You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path " error, and how to get around it. Don't install "LongPathTool", which is what all the spam comments online tell you to do. Maybe it's even on Google/Bing Ads nowadays. Instead, learn to use Windows the way it was meant to be used - without windows.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-20 2:22 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  backupsnetspotwindows

  Where does NetSpot (wifi heatmapping tool) store its project files?

  This article explains where NetSpot Wifi Heatmap software stores its project files. These files contain all of your measurements, pictures, and other files associated with your heatmaps. They're pretty important, but you don't get to choose where to store them. And that might be a problem, unless you're prepared.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-13 3:38 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  bitlockergrouppolicy

  How to fix Bitlocker failing to activate?

  Alright, so my months-long via dolorosa to achieve a functioning Windows workstation has now cost me a few weeks worth of hours of work and around $4000. And I'm finally at a point where I have Visual Studio working again, and I'm only missing some totally unimportant and irrelevant things like BitLocker. No biggie, right? What's weird, though, is that I'm only missing it because it decided to randomly break. Let me explain. Problem

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• 

  Published on

  2024-08-06 2:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  windows

  Why You (unfortunately) need a Local Administrator account on Windows 🙃

  This article explains why having a local (non-AD) user account with administrator user rights on Windows is a must. I know, I know - this is horrible design from security perspective. You shouldn't use local accounts in the first place, let alone ones with unlimited admin powers! Microsoft has been trying to stop users from creating local accounts on their machines for years now, and in theory, for understandable reasons.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-07-30 1:36 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  mvpawardmvpbuzz

  5 Years an MVP - a Humble Reflection

  A few of my friends were already worried since I didn't publish the now-classic " Humbled & Honored " post on LinkedIn - perhaps I had not been renewed this year, dropped out of the program or even been kicked out? But no, reality is much more boring: I've just been on vacation and haven't spent much time near my keyboard 😅 So long story short, I was indeed renewed as Microsoft MVP for the 2024-2025 season. 🥳 This year, I've been able to disconnect quite thoroughly.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-18 7:48 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  certificatesopensslpowershell

  How to generate Certificate-Signing Requests using OpenSSL

  This article explains how to generate a CSR using the OpenSSL CLI toolkit. We'll go through a step-by-step guide to create a private key and a CSR. This should be helpful for system administrators and developers who need to set up secure connections for their servers or applications. In the code samples, you can see how some undefined sausage is made, and it's not pretty. But it works.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-11 11:33 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  homeassistanthomeautomation

  Home Assistant 2024.4 changes weather forecasts - what to do?

  This article explains how to fix your template sensors, automations and other functionality that is broken by the 2024.4 update of the Home Assistant platform, where forecasts are removed from weather entities. Fixing the issue requires some YAML, and while you'll loose debuggability and possibly encounter some performance hits and run awry of your weather provider's rate limits, what wouldn't we do to keep up-to-date with the latest community goodness of Home Assistant?

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• 

  Published on

  2024-06-04 3:32 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  nodenpmvisual-studiovite

  External path "**" cannot have more than one "*" wildcard with vite?

  This article explains a couple of workarounds to a frustrating issue I had with vite and yet-another-weird-frontend-build-toolkit. Because every toolchain for frontend stuff is different, apparently. And they all fail in different ways. Anyway - let's get to it. Background I was just creating a tiny bugfix to an older project, minding my own business, not bothering anyone, when all of a sudden my development environment practically just imploded. Any backend builds worked just fine.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-28 5:25 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  nodepowershell

  Removing node_modules under a folder

  This quick article explains how to clean up all dependencies installed with npm or yarn, and stored in folders called "node_modules" within your project and solution files. This regrettable step might be required to either free some disk space or clear weirdly broken dependencies from your project(s).

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-21 1:03 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  sharepointsharepoint-online

  How to solve "You don't have permission to invite people to this item, but you can still add people and send an invite request to the file owner." in a SharePoint document library?

  This article explains a solution to a puzzling problem, where you might be the owner of a SharePoint site and have all the imaginable permissions on a Document Library, but still be unable to share a single item, let alone a folder with edit permissions to anyone. Turns out this is a dumb-ish configuration quirk in SharePoint. Who would've thought, right? 😅 Anyway. What did the issue look like? Problem So about 2 years ago I created a SharePoint site.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-14 9:50 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  akamaipostman

  Suddenly receiving "The requested URL "[no URL]", is invalid." in Postman?

  This article explains how to get around a sudden issue, where Postman suddenly starts showing you a nondescript and slightly misleading error about a missing URL in your request when you haven't removed any parameters and the request just worked. But don't let me get ahead of myself. Background So me and my team have had the questionable honor and privilege to build some integrations to SuccessFactors - a SAP product - lately.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-05-07 7:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoft-teamsstreamdeck

  How to enable Stream Deck integration in "New Teams"?

  This article explains how to configure the Teams integration in the Microsoft Teams Stream Deck plugin. Because chances are the documentation you've read does not match how it actually goes 😄 Also, I'll share my over 1-year-long story with Stream Deck. It, unfortunately, has not been uneventful. Want to skip the rant background story? Jump right down to the solution ! Background My road with StreamDeck has been a bit of a rocky one.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-30 12:51 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azureazureappservice

  How to solve "Error occurred during a cryptographic operation." in Azure App Service

  This article explains a couple of ways to fix an issue where after deployment, your Azure App Service suddenly starts throwing an error along the lines of "Error occurred during a cryptographic operation. at System.Web.Security.Cryptography.HomogenizingCryptoServiceWrapper.HomogenizeErrors". The error or the StackTrace doesn't point to anything helpful (understandably, it'll point to a StartUp.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-23 8:19 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  windowswindows11

  "Critical Error - Your Start menu isn't working"

  Well this one was a doozy. My Start Menu stopped working. And that wasn't nice as I kind of need that. Anyway. Found a couple of ways to try and fix this. One even worked. Wrote them down for your reference (and mine, to be honest). Find them below. (I asked Bing Chat to create me a picture of BSOD on Windows 11, but the article illustration is what it came up with - it's not what I asked for, but it IS topical) Problem The problem was simple, yet annoying. Let me explain.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-16 7:24 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  certificates

  How to export a CSR you've created on Windows?

  Another thing that I run into every now and then is creating CSRs for different customer environments. Since the requests often end up being a bit complex with a lot of SANs (Subject Alternative Names), crafting them with OpenSSL (or other console tools) is a bit laborious for my liking, and I usually just end up generating the CSR in DigiCertUtil or some other UI tool. And boom - you get a CSR you can copy-paste and send out to the customer/partner/provider. But what if you need the file later?

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-09 7:51 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azuredevopspowershell

  How to output all Environment Variables in Azure DevOps with PowerShell?

  This article explains how to list all "Environment Variables" (that's pipeline variables, job / stage variables, predefined variables and even local script variables that are mounted on to the agent as Environment Variables) using PowerShell in Azure DevOps.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-04-02 12:53 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aadentraidpnppowershellsharepoint

  CSOM suddenly throwing exceptions when trying to access list contents in SharePoint? A weird fix.

  This article explains one possibly reason why some C# code, powered by CSOM, suddenly stops working and can't access a SharePoint list anymore that it could before, throwing annoying and misleading exceptions like "The list is not DocumentLibrary, VersionPolicies is not supported" instead. Oh - and of course, there's a fix as well. Well, possibly a workaround? But at least it'll get you going.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-03-26 7:07 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  msbuildpowershellvisual-studio

  "Predefined type 'System.Object' is not defined or imported" and other System namespace stuff missing in your solution?

  This article will explain how to fix an annoying situation, where Visual Studio fails to find any System types or other "basic" stuff you're pretty sure your project should have, automagically, out-of-the-box, without you doing anything. Stuff that comes with .NET. Stuff that should just work . But life isn't always that simple. Problem & Background So I recently had a Windows Update brick my machine, and after reinstalling I was missing, well, practically everything.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-03-19 2:47 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  graphqliispostman

  How to import GraphQL schema to Postman in Windows?

  This article explains a stupid workaround for fetching a GraphQL schema into Postman when Postman doesn't want to accept it. You might run into this issue if you: (a) use Postman, (b) on Windows and (c) need to import a GraphQL schema. I guess nobody else does, though? But I did. And I wanted to make it work. Background Postman is helpful for querying different APIs, storing your earlier requests and sharing them with your team members. But it doesn't always work as expected.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-03-12 4:47 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aksazcli

  How to fix "NoRegisteredProviderFound" when trying to run any aks az cli commands

  This article explains how to fix an error "NoRegisteredProviderFound", which is thrown by az cli's aks commands when you're trying to run pretty much any aks commands in PowerShell/Terminal. Read on to join me on a journey to discover how a fresh install of the Azure CLI can simply randomly be broken! Background So here's a weird one for y'all. Some time ago, a botched Windows Update caused me to try and fix my laptop by updating it to Windows 11.

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