Windows 10 Core Isolation Control 1.0 released!

Microsoft has introduced several new security features in Windows 10 Spring Update/April Update, one of which is called “Core Isolation” and is designed to prevent attacks from inserting malicious code into high-security processes.

In theory, it’s a great feature. In practice, Microsoft cocked it up. Again. Not with the feature itself, that should work fine, but with controls for it. And I can’t believe this slipped past their QA control given that I noticed the feature being broken in 1 minute after trying the Spring Update.

You can enable it just fine under Security center, but if you for whatever reason want to disable it again, you’re greeted with this message:

I’m the bloody Administrator. What the hell? Well, after some fiddling, I managed to figure out the controls for this thing and created a tool to manage Core Isolation externally.

I present you Windows 10 Core Isolation Control tool:

It’s a simple tool to flip Core Isolation controls ON or OFF regardless of what Security Center interface says. I even made it aware in what state Core Isolation is, so you basically don’t have to use Security Center anymore to control it (or check its status).

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Slim down your Windows with Auslogics Windows Slimmer

If you’re tired of constantly running out of disk space, especially on smaller SSD’s, and Windows Disk Cleanup doesn’t do much and you don’t want to use magic all in one optimizers that usually just break everything, maybe it’s time for you to check out Auslogics Windows Slimmer. It’s a very focused tool that doesn’t do anything magical, but it does focus on Windows stuff that gets accumulated the most. WinSxS libraries, Old Windows versions which always remain after larger Windows updates, Windows Update remnants and System Restore points. Under Regular Maintenance you’ll find few more usual entries like Memory Dumps, Recycle Bin, Temporary Files and old Windows Logs. Over time, all this can accumulate quite a lot of stuff and this is by far the easiest (and free!) tool to remove all that clutter. CCleaner generally does similar, but this one focuses on few more areas not covered by CCleaner.

Just a word of caution, installer of Auslogics Windows Slimmer offers bunch of their other apps which you have to manually decline during installation, so watch out what you click during installation.

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Windows Update Cache Cleaner

I had my laptop running in circles re-downloading same update over and over again and failing at 95% every single time. Restarting Windows Update only caused download to start at 95% every time and again, failing as well. The solution was easy, cleaning the Windows Update download cache. Update was re-downloaded and installed successfully. But since casual users aren’t in the mood of messing up with files inside Windows folder, I’ve made this simple tool that does that for you, 100% risk free.

The instructions are pretty self explanatory. Just follow them and Windows Update should work again.

Works on Windows XP/Vista/7/8.x/10 and probably future Windows versions since Windows Update cache has the same folder location for years.

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Installing old Lexmark printer drivers on latest Windows

There is a bit of an issue with Lexmark and existing (older) printers because Lexmark left the consumer market of ink-jet printers and is thus not providing new drivers anymore. Which means you have to use Windows 7 or Windows 8 drivers on newer versions of Windows like latest Windows 10 Anniversary (Redstone). Trying to install it normal way just won’t work, so you have to do several additional steps to make it work.

First, download the latest Lexmark drivers for your device:

http://support.lexmark.com/drivers

Right-click on the downloaded installer and select Properties. Go to Compatibility tab and select Run this program in compatibility mode and select same Windows version as the driver was designed for. In my case, it was Windows 8 for my rather old Lexmark X3650.

In the past, it used to work even without this step, but with Windows 10 Redstone, this isn’t the case anymore. At least for me that is…

Temporarily disable Windows driver signing check

This step is critical, otherwise the installation of driver will fail since it is not designed for the latest Windows.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Hold Shift key and click Restart button that you’d otherwise use to simply restart the computer (holding Shift key will open a special recovery menu).
• Select Troubleshoot
• Select Advanced options
• Select Startup Settings
• Click Restart
• Press F7 key on keyboard to select Disable driver signature enforcement

System will restart and start in a mode with driver signature check disabled just for this session. After you restart the system again, this feature will automatically turn itself back on again!

Installing the driver

Firstly, make sure you don’t have printer connected with USB cable to your PC. Yes, this is not a typo. Lexmark requires driver installation prior physical connection, otherwise you’ll experience problems.

After you have disabled Driver signature enforcement and made sure it’s not connected to PC with USB cable, you can start the installer with compatibility mode already applied to it (as shown above). Follow the instructions of the installer.

It is possible there will be an error message during driver installation, but you can just dismiss it, it’ll still work just fine.

You may also get popup like this (example from Windows 8.x):

Don’t worry, this is normal since we have disabled driver signature enforcement. Confirm the installation of the driver. If you do not do this, printer won’t work!

When driver installation is complete, Lexmark driver installer will ask you to connect printer with USB cable to your PC. Do so and wait for a moment for it to recognize it.

Setting printer as default device

It is possible that driver won’t set your newly installed Lexmark printer as your default printing device.

Go to Start and then Settings. Select Devices button, select the Lexmark printer and click Manage button. Select Set as default. That’s it.

Finishing installation

We’ve finished everything already, just make sure to restart your system in order to re-activate Driver Signature Enforcement feature. It is really not recommended to run system this way other than for such specific tasks as installation of trusted but old driver.

Final word

I have an old Lexmark X3650 that I use for making copies and printing using just black cartridge, because I just don’t need color printing. And I was this close of throwing the damn thing through the window because it kept on failing to install the driver, but then I gave it one more try and then I figured it out with the compatibility step. Would be a shame since it’s scanning stuff really nicely, printing stuff nicely as well and I’m using its card reader as general purpose SD card reader. So, despite the age, it’s actually a really nice device with quite cheap cartridges. It would really be a shame throwing it away. So, I’m kinda happy that I’m this determined for certain things and I got it working again. I hope this guide will help you get your Lexmark printer working again even on latest Windows. 🙂

Permanently disable Input Indicator

Do you prefer to use English Windows, but you need your native language to be the default input language (for keyboard)? It’s the only language, but Windows somehow feels the need to give me choice I don’t even need…

Do you hate this thing appearing when you launch apps and games? I sure do, because I hate taskbar being cluttered with things I never need and this damn thing appears every time I run CS:GO.

Click the Magnifying glass in taskbar and type in “system icons”. Only one entry will appear, click it. You’ll see this…

Switch the Input Indicator to Off.

Click the Magnifying glass in taskbar again and type in “language”. Select Language Control panel.

Select Advanced settings and you’ll land on this panel…

Select Options button…

Select Hidden option.

If you only disable it on Advanced settings panel, it still shows up for some reason. But if you have selected “Hidden”, it’ll stay hidden forever.

This will permanently get rid of the annoying Input Indicator in the taskbar.

Delete Windows.old folder

Just upgraded your Windows to Windows 10 Anniversary Update and you can’t get rid of that pesky Windows.old folder? Not even after using Windows Disk Cleaner like this?

Here is a quick and simple method…

Click Start -> Power -> Hold SHIFT key on keyboard -> Restart

Wait for a bit until Choose an option screen appears.

Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> Command Prompt

Enter password if you use one for your account (leave empty if not), click Continue and wait for a bit until Command Prompt appears…

Then, follow these steps:

1. Type in C: and hit ENTER key
2. Type in rd /s Windows.old
3. Confirm with Y and hit ENTER key
   
4. Close the Window with X and select Continue button to return to Windows

It should look like this (simulated in Windows)…

There should be no Windows.old folder left on your C: drive anymore after this 🙂 For some reason, doing it in Windows using Command Prompt (Admin) doesn’t work. But this does.

Disable Windows 10 Anniversary Windows Defender notification icon

Don’t like the new Windows Defender icon in Anniversary Update? Not using Windows Defender and you want to get rid of the icon? For some reason the control for it is not located in same menu as for all other notification icons.

You can however disable it somewhere else…

Right click Taskbar -> Task Manager -> Startup tab

Select Windows Defender notification icon and click DISABLE in bottom right corner.

Windows Defender icon will not appear on next system boot. This also works if you still use Windows Defender, you just don’t want the icon in taskbar. Windows Defender will still protect you and still show notifications when it finds malware, it just won’t show taskbar icon anymore.

Btw, ignore my boot time. For some reason it’s reading 8240.7 seconds which is 137 minutes XD Somehow unlikely on a system with a speedy Samsung 850 Pro SSD as the only storage drive hehe.

Update to Windows 10 Anniversary Update now without waiting…

If you want to update to Windows 10 Anniversary update now and Windows Update keeps saying you’re already up to date, then do the following…

Visit this webpage:

https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10

You should see a notification about the update on top of the page. Just confirm it and you’ll download a small tool that will begin the Anniversary Update right away without waiting. For some reason I managed to update my system on 2nd August 2016 via Windows Update, but I have to update both my laptop and tablet via this tool for some reason.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update tomorrow, get your systems ready!

We’ve talked about nonsense in Windows 10 about million times so far, but this one is on a bit more serious note. Yeah, I’ve been running Windows 10 for a while now and apart from privacy garbage, it’s been working fine.

However, massive update is scheduled for tomorrow, 2nd August 2016. To avoid potential problems, make sure you have all your 3rd party applications fully updated and verify that it’s Windows 10 Anniversary Update compatible. This especially applies to resident system applications like SSD caching software and antiviruses. Most vendors have been busy releasing compatibility updates, but since they aren’t pushed to users and most hesitate to update, make sure you’ll be ready. This will help avoiding unnecessary problems, lockups, BSOD’s and so on.

I’m looking forward to the update and I’m already prepared. I suggest you check your system too.

Don’t turn off System Restore!

There is this common misconception about System Restore people still have that it’s not useful and just eats drive space. I think that’s still from Windows XP days when System Restore never really worked when you needed it the most, but for the rest of the time it was just eating tons of drive space.

The first thing people do when they install Windows is to head into settings and disable it. Ok, sure, it saves you few gigabytes, but it can really save you tons of time when things go wrong. And it has worked great since Windows 8.1. Whenever I had to fix something that I broke by tweaking it too much, System Restore fixed it.

You don’t need to give it 50GB of space to work with. 10GB is plenty, hell I think sacrificing 5GB should do the trick as well. It should be enough for few latest checkpoints, meaning when something goes wrong and system refuses to load Windows, you can recover it by waiting for Windows to boot into recovery mode by itself and then going through Troubleshooting section where you can fire up System Restore and fix the issue by going “back in time” before the issue happened. Whole process takes like 5 minutes. You know how long it takes to re-install Windows, even latest Windows 10 which installs the fastest.

So, don’t be stupid and leave System Restore enabled.