Test - Reviving the blog

 Republishing some old articles.

Windows 10 Pro Storage Spaces Issues

I recently had a corrupted Win10Pro virtual disk image. After some research I wasn't aware of the fact that just turning it on isn't enough. The default options can cause data loss. There are ways to secure it but after a bit of reading this is a deep rabbit hole.

Ultimately I want backup recovery and restore options for Win10. First I am turning on System Restore points under the recovery option and File History. I am not sure why these are not on by default, or at least asked about during install.


Summary of Items used:
File History
Windows System Restore (Turn on System Restore for each drive)
Windows Defender AV (Enabled - this allows for daily snapshots, once you update your group policies)
Back up and Restore (backup is enabled)
Disk Management
Local Group Policy Editor (for editing things, run > gpedit.msc)

Links:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-automatic-system-restore-points-daily-windows-10

Enabling Windows Defender:
My Windows defender install was disabled by group policy (this is a home PC). So I am walking through the recommended steps for fixing this issue.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_other-protect_updating-windows_10/windows-defender/dd9e4c78-efc5-4e30-8e6f-3030ae9713ff

https://www.askvg.com/windows-10-fix-your-organization-used-windows-defender-application-control-to-block-this-app-error-message/

https://windowsreport.com/windows-defender-error-577-windows-10/

https://www.lepide.com/blog/top-10-most-important-group-policy-settings-for-preventing-security-breaches/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-defender-security-center/wdsc-virus-threat-protection

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1977-windows-10-tutorial-index.html

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender/e994f94f-92d5-4d44-9721-79c2a686ce24

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-automatic-system-restore-points-daily-windows-10

Follow the steps provided in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-is-stopped-by-group-policy/9152a503-2e55-46ba-9a39-1ae6ef919769

And illustrated in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

If you have a more general problem with downloading or running these malware-removal apps; or if they aren’t able to remove the malware – then run a scan with Windows Defender Offline or download a rescue disk on another PC. All of these apps run outside of the Windows environment just like WDO:

http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk?level=2

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/How-to-create-a-BitDefender-Rescue-CD-627.html

http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system

http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd-download

http://www.freedrweb.com/livecd/                                                                                                                               

http://www.eset.com/int/support/sysrescue/

Windows Defender isn’t supposed to be turned off via Group Policy when a third-party AV app is installed, as I’ve explained in this thread:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_start/windows-defender-is-off-i-cant-turn-it-on/c1ef0d9b-7940-4108-9578-de2c996b75ea

So on a home PC; we would normally assume that the Group Policy switch was thrown by malware that’s somehow managed to escalate its privilege-level to the rank of “administrator”. It’s also quite likely that the malware succeeded because Defender didn’t have a signature/behavioral detection for it – so I would recommend scanning with this set of malware-removal tools:

Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool:

http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/kvrt2015

Emsisoft Emergency Kit:

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/eek/

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free version only):

https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/

Eset Online Scanner:

http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

Some other trusted third-party malware-removal tools are listed here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/wiki/protect_other-protect_scanning/list-of-malware-removal-tools/d824b9af-ebd8-4c47-94e2-8ee6c544c100

Then turn Defender back on with this REG command: Right-click on the Start button, select Command Prompt (Admin), and then copy, paste, and run (enter) this command line:

REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender" /v DisableAntiSpyware 

As I’ve illustrated here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_defender-protect_scanning/windows-defender-this-app-is-turned-off-by-group/dfa59c2a-b358-4f62-80b6-6b8e4994dc32

Or, if you suffer from command-line phobia, then use the REG file provided here:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5918-windows-defender-turn-off-windows-10-a.html

Turn_On_Windows_Defender.reg is a trusted file, and this is all there is to it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Created by: Shawn Brink

; http://www.tenforums.com

; Tutorial: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5918-windows-defender-turn-off-windows-10-a.html

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender]

"DisableAntiSpyware"=-

Links:
https://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/kvrt2015 (Kapersky Virus Removal Tool 2015)

Enabling Backup Options on Windows
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/55153-select-drive-file-history-windows-10-a.html
https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-home.html (Check this one out/research)
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/windows-7-64-bit-the-backup-failed-error/a4abfd13-edcd-44e5-b658-2440672f1f90



Links:
https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-home.html
https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/buy-backup/
https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-back-up-windows-10-3635397/
https://www.aomeitech.com/download.html

Spring Tools Suite

Going to work on setting up Spring Tools Suite (STS) - customized Eclipse IDE again for the umpteenth time. Each time I start on this project I get pulled back into a much larger project and do not have time to finish. At work I normally  use Sublime or Atom editors to do my fast editing. But for debugging and code analysis I need an IDE for Java. I tried out IntelliJ for a while, but I have decided I want to go back to Eclipse, the workhorse I used to use for the last ~10+ years. Normally it doesn't take this long, but our project setup here at Trion is quite complex.

One of the things I noticed while setting things up was performance I adjusted memory settings and disabled some of the default settings on STS. I did this because as I added software, plugins and configured the very large default application I am working on, I noticed a significant performance decrease.

Links used:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyCR5jRMLi8 [Basic setup for a project in STS]
• http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB/1084/?q=vss&l=en_US&fs=RelatedArticle
• http://help.eclipse.org/neon/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/reference/ref-icons.htm [Icons on the package explorer]

[Update: I originally started writing this a few weeks ago.]

STS is up and running currently on version 3.9.1. In addition I have JRebel setup but there are issues with that our project so I'm working with JRebel support to get that working. It's nice to have a working debugger again. I tried using IntelliJ and though I don't hate it -- for our setup and purposes I didn't like it. I might go into details in a later post.

Parking more info about Aerohive items. I could use a link tool such as diigo, but this has more context and it won't get lost in a the shuffle, plus I can come back later and edit the post for more details.

http://www.insearchoftech.com/2013/03/22/aerohives-latest-product-release/

Parking JS MVC Info

This isn't the best blog post, but sometimes I'm reading and I read through an article (so it doesn't belong in something like Diigo or Evernote or Pocket) and I know I'll want to reference it and a series of others in its's context later. In this case its around advanced JS MVC topics. We aren't quite ready to implement them, and I'm not quite ready to throw away my research materials. I also need to get them out of my browser.

[No idea how current these are]
List of articles:
http://tomdale.net/2012/01/amd-is-not-the-answer/
http://tagneto.blogspot.com/2012/01/simplicity-and-javascript-modules.html

Found a good article about Mocks and Stubs in various languages:
http://a-developer-life.blogspot.com/2011/12/mocks-stubs-expectations-fakes-stubs.html

Learning Resources - Reposting a Link Dump

Very Ruby on Rails specific, but valuable nonetheless.

https://github.com/bf4/learning

http://railsapps.github.com/best-recommended-learning-rails-books-resources.html

http://everydayrails.com/2010/08/04/more-free-ruby-rails-books.html

http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books

Program like a game developer

I really liked this article. Both because it is something I need to work on and it espouses the philosophies I believe in for how to work and make work fun.

Program like a Game Developer

Want to know Rails? Break it. Break it to pieces. Delete all of application.rb and see what happens. Create controllers that pull data from files instead of databases. Create views that initialize variables and contain huge swaths of business logic. Create models that contruct HTML and JavaScript. Tie it all together with duct tape and CoffeeScript. Test nothing, test everything. Build models that only contain one field. Build a model that houses every piece of data your application could possibly need.

This is an awesome quote. Break stuff. Don't overanalyze. Don't fuss about naming conventions and folder structure.