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All Posts (549)

• 

  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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• Published on

  2024-03-05 4:44 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  windowswindowsupdate

  How to fix annoying mouse/touch device input lag on Windows 11?

  A couple of weeks ago I posted about a really annoying issue - persistent mouse/touch device input lag on Windows 10. It was driving me crazy for an afternoon before I found the right Windows Update package to uninstall, purge, cleanse in hellfire, ship right back to Microsoft (with an angry letter attached to it), and finally block said update from ever getting installed again.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-02-27 4:51 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoft-teams

  How to install the Classic Teams for Business client?

  This article explains briefly and straightforwardly (and in a frustrated tone, the reasons of which you might already know) how to install the Classic Microsoft Teams for Business client, instead of the "new" client. I doubt the method will work for very long, but we'll see. Background The new Microsoft Teams client is great. It's shiny. It has some of the bells and whistles of the old one. And it's faster (most of the time). You should probably use it, unless it doesn't work for you.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-02-20 6:39 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  regeditwindows

  This simple registry key will make your Windows computer 11.5% faster!

  A'ight, it's a clickbait title, but it's also almost true. See, if you're like me, you're also sick and tired of Windows shoving Edge and Bing down your throat every time you search for something on your PC or click a system link? Do you want to find your files and apps (and only YOUR files and apps, not someone else's stuff) without having to wait for Windows to load a bunch of irrelevant web results and MSN news stories?

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• 

  Published on

  2024-02-18 11:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  sharepoint

  How to remove files in a SharePoint library?

  This article explains how you can remove a big batch of files from a library using either the UI or PnP PowerShell. And when I say "big", I mean, roughly, "as many as possible", without removing the library or touching the folders in it. I'm not trying to speedrun SharePoint, here, I'm just trying to get rid of some files without resorting to shortcuts. Please join me on this adventure!

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• 

  Published on

  2024-02-06 6:33 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  npmtslibtypescript

  How to solve "error TS2354: This syntax requires an imported helper but module 'tslib' cannot be found." when running npm build scripts?

  This article explains a solution to another dumb issue I ran into when checking out someone else's repository and trying to build and run the solution. I'm calling the issue "dumb" because it's not like I'm practicing rocket surgery here. And the solution isn't particularly high-flying either. Then again, neither am I - I'm just trying to add a couple of null checks to a widget that keeps crashing. But let's get to it.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-01-30 6:18 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  googlecolabpythonstablediffusion

  How to solve 'Mountpoint must either be a directory or not exist' in Google Colab workbook?

  This article is about how to fix a common error in Google Colab notebooks when trying to mount a Google Drive, and you just get an error along the lines of 'Mountpoint must either be a directory or not exist'. I'll explain the reason for the error, and provide several solutions ranging from stupidly simple to normally simple. Yeah - no space surgery available in this article.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-01-23 2:37 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  delldriver-issuessdiowindowsupdate

  How to fix catastrophic mouse/touch device input lag on Windows 10?

  Did you start experiencing weird input lag on your Windows 10 PC starting some time early 2024? This lag would take 1-6 seconds, during which your mouse and/or touch devices (touch screen or touch pad) would be completely unresponsive. Keyboard would work, though. Good. That means I wasn't the only one. 😅 Don't get me wrong! I'm sorry you have issues with your computer.

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