How to disable the Customer Experience Improvement Program within Windows 7

To disable the Customer Experience Improvement Program within Windows 7, click on the Start Menu and type “customer”.  One of the available selections should be Control Panel –> Change Customer Experience Improvement Program settings.  Once launched, select the “No” option and use the Save Changes button.

Several scheduled tasks may be present under Microsoft –> Windows –> Customer Experience Improvement Program that can be disabled.

Additional scheduled task entries can be disabled under Microsoft –> Windows –> Application Experience.

The screen captures below are from Windows 8.1.

Disable WPAD within Windows

The WPAD protocol is designed to allow organizations to provide proxy settings to all devices that connect to the network. The organization can place a WPAD configuration file in a standard place, and when WPAD is enabled, your computer or other device checks to see if there’s WPAD proxy information provided by the network. Your device then automatically uses whatever settings the proxy auto-configuration (PAC) file provides, sending all traffic on the current network through the proxy server.

Within Windows 7, access Control Panel –> Internet Options  -> Connections tab –> LAN settings button –> clear the “Automatically detect settings” check box.

Within Windows 10, access Settings -> Network & Internet –> Proxy –> disable the “Automatically detect settings” option.

How to disable the Customer Experience Improvement Program within Windows 7

To disable the Customer Experience Improvement Program within Windows 7, click on the Start Menu and type “customer”.  One of the available selections should be Control Panel –> Change Customer Experience Improvement Program settings.  Once launched, select the “No” option and use the Save Changes button.

Several scheduled tasks may be present under Microsoft –> Windows –> Customer Experience Improvement Program that can be disabled.

Additional scheduled task entries can be disabled under Microsoft –> Windows –> Application Experience.

Another entry may be present under WPD.

Also verify that the Diagnostic Tracking Service is disabled.

PowerShell version 5.1 for Windows 7

PowerShell version 5.1 is available for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/01/19/windows-management-framework-wmf-5-1-released/

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54616

How to disable SMB1 for Windows 7 and Windows 8/10

The KB article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2696547 highlights how to disable various versions of the SMB versions for different editions of Windows.  To disable SMB1 on Windows 8/10 as a server, launch an elevated PowerShell session and use the following command:

Set-SmbServerConfiguration -EnableSMB1Protocol $false

The following command can verify that SMB1 is disabled:

Get-SmbServerConfiguration | Select EnableSMB1Protocol, EnableSMB2Protocol

To disable SMB1 for Windows 7, use the following command:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters" SMB1 -Type DWORD -Value 0 –Force

To disable SMB1 with Windows 7/8/10 as a client, launch an elevated command prompt and enter the following commands:

sc.exe config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb20/nsi
sc.exe config mrxsmb10 start= disabled

How to disable Telemetry in Windows 7, 8, and 10

Microsoft back ported some telemetry features to Windows 7 and 8 that were originally designed within the development of Windows 10.  To disable the service that is tied to this telemetry component, launch an elevated PowerShell session and enter the following commands.

Stop-Service diagtrack
Set-Service diagtrack –StartupType disabled

Create a text file of installed updates and hotfixes within Windows

To obtain a text file that contains a list of installed updates and hotfixes from within Windows, launch an elevated command prompt and use the following command:

wmic qfe list brief /format:texttablewsys > list.txt

Disk Cleanup update for Windows 7

In October of 2013, Microsoft released an update to the Disk Cleanup utility for Windows 7.  The KB article concerning this update can be viewed at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386

Once installed, launch the Disk Cleanup utility as normal.  Select your default partition.

Click on the “Clean up system files” button if the user account in question does not have local administrative authority as in this example.

When the application reloads, the list of items should include a new entry named “Windows Update Cleanup.”  In this example, this entry was over 3 GB in size.

During the next reboot, the boot screen may display a notification stating that some maintenance tasks are being performed.

Capturing network traffic using the netsh command for the Windows Filtering Platform

The Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) is a new architecture that debuted in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  Microsoft added a diagnostic tool for the Windows Filtering Platform in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  To capture network traffic, launch an elevated command prompt and use the following command:

netsh wfp capture start 

To stop the capture, use the command:

netsh wfp capture stop

 

Within the .cab output file, two files should be present.

Within the .XML file, details of the network traffic should be present.  The example below is a ping to the IP address of 8.8.8.8.

Copy Output from Command Line Applications to the Clipboard

With Windows Vista and 7, an option is available to copy output from the command line to the Clipboard by piping it into the clip command:

command | clip

Below is an example of copying the output of the tasklist command to the Clipboard.

The contents of a file can be piped into the Clipboard by reserve.

clip < filename

The example below copies the contents of the file test.txt to the Clipboard.

XML filtering within the Windows Event Viewer

Starting in the Windows Vista/Server 2008 time frame, an option was made available to modify or create a XML query to generate Custom Views within the Event Viewer.  To create a Custom View, access the Event Viewer application.  Right-click on the Custom Views subfolder and select the Create Custom View menu option.

Click on the XML tab and then on the Edit query manually checkbox.  Click on the Yes button within the warning dialog box.

Enter text for the XML query.  Below is some sample text to search the Security logs for the user account test:

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0" >
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data[@Name='SubjectUserName'] and (Data='test')]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

When finished, give the Custom View entry a name and description.

Queries can include AND/OR operators.

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0">
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data[@Name='SubjectUserName'] and (Data='test' or Data=’testtwo’)]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

To find additional fields to query on, access the details of an event entry and click on the XML view.

The query below looks for events that any data or field equals test

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0">
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data and (Data='test' )]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

Windows Live Mesh

Windows Live Mesh is one of the available components of the Live Essentials suite that can currently be found at http://download.live.com.  Live Mesh has two main features:  to sync data between two or more computers and Skydrive, and to allow remote access.  A list of supported file types within the sync process can be found at http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh-sync-file-types-ui.

After the application is downloaded and installed, the initial screen will ask for a Windows Live ID.  Two checkboxes are available to remember the Windows Live ID parameter and password, and to automatically log into the service in the future.

Once logged in, the initial screen should be displayed.

If the Remote main menu option is selected, the link to allow remote connections on the computer in question should be available.

In this example, the Windows 7 computer was configured to automatically log in using a “swalker” account.  To allow remote connections, an account must have a password configured.

If another computer has Live Mesh installed and configured with the same Windows Live ID and has remote connectivity enabled, and the machine is connected to the Internet, the entry for the machine should have a green dot.

If the “Connect to this computer” link is accessed, a new dialog box should appear.

A dialog box on the remote computer should pop up asking for confirmation.

If an individual does not click on the Deny button, the current account will be logged off.  The original computer should now see a login screen for the remote machine.

To sync a folder, click on the “Sync a folder” link on the main page.  A browse dialog box should appear asking to select a folder.  In this example, the My Documents folder was selected.  A dialog box will then appear asking which devices to sync to.

Any remote computers that has Live Mesh installed and configured with the same Windows Live ID should be listed, as well as Skydrive.  The current limit with the Skydrive option is 5 GB total with each file less than 100 MB.  Between two computers, the current limits are 200 folders with each file size less than 40 GB.

The default for the sync process is to use the same folder (My Documents in this example) on the remote computer(s).  So any changes made on any client should be transferred to the others.

If you wish to check the status of the sync setup, click on the arrow to the left of the sync entry.

As stated above, the path used on the original machine is normally used on a sync partner.  To use a different destination folder or path, create a sync entry (Desktop in this example) but do not select any remote machines or Skydrive within the selection dialog box.

On the destination computer, the sync folder entry should be present for the original machine.

Click on the Sync this folder link on the remote computer.  When the browse dialog box appears, select a different folder.

Change your default printer depending on your location with Windows 7

Windows 7 includes an option to change the default printer depending on what network location is used.  To configure this feature, access the Devices and Printers dialog box.  Select one printer to display additional menu selections.  Then click on the “Manage default printers” menu option.

A new dialog box should appear with drop-down boxes for both network locations and printers.

One location entry is “no network”, which could be used for a XPS or PDF print queue when no network connectivity is available.