lurk&jerk

@D.Draker. Interesting WiFi link. @Tripredacus. Yes, Microsoft makes a lot of assumptions, that we all have wifi or that we all like the blindingly white GUI in Office, etc. What makes me more suspicious of this WiFi obsession is that MS seems to be collaborating with hardware makers to insure that WiFi is turned on so MS can update the OS at will. Everyone in Silicon Valley now seems to be enamorated with OTA updates, whether it's Tesla (cars), Andoid (phones), and Microsoft. We might as well just sit at our keyboard and let MS type for us.

Has anyone else noticed how Windows 11 (in cahoots with motherboard makers) is super aggressive about trying to establish a WiFi connection? By contrast, NIC adaptors can easily be uninstalled or disabled in the Bios. You can allegedly "disable" the Intel(R) Wi-Fi drivers but you can't uninstall them or disable them in the bios, at lease on the AsRock and Gigabyte z590 boards I have personally worked with. I've even used dism.exe to uninstall every wifi driver on the Windows 11 install.wim image file and the Intel driver still installs itself after an initial setup. Also, under "Network and Internet" Wifi randomly turns on even after you "disable" the Intel WiFi drivers. I'm trying to wrap my head around the point of this, i.e.: even if Microsoft and Intel want to automatically enroll your PC into the IOT, as an always on appliance, don't they still need a password to access any wifi network. Or is there a way around that too?

Sooooooo, after further experimenting, my original script or the powershell script works BUT the issue is that Windows 11 apparently shuts down NICs in a different manner than Windows 10. In Windows 11 the "Disable-NetAdapter" command disables only the primary active NIC. In Windows 10, all NIC adaptors are immediately disabled. Also, in Windows 11, the disabled NIC can't be re-enabled without a re-boot, at least withi my QLogic Corp. sfp adaptor. I have to restart my PC. I don't have to do that With Windows 10. That makes the disable adaptor command much less useful for me. It's a lot easier just to unplug and re-plug the cable from the wall plate instead of rebooting.

[SOLVED] Found that Powershell works better, in case anyone is interested: powershell -c "Get-NetAdapter | Disable-NetAdapter -Confirm:$false" Put it in a batch or command script and you are good to go. Still wrestling with AutoIt, though. Powershell and AutoIt don't play nice together,, unfortunately

Anybody know if the command: C:\Windows\System32\wbem\WMIC.exe path win32_networkadapter where PhysicalAdapter=True call disable no longer works in Window3s 11? I had used it in Windows 10 to prevent MS from surreptitiously updating the OS or sending telemetry info back to Redmond during bootup or shutdown, before my firewall started. But now that commend leaves some NICs disabled and some still operating.

@Jaguarek62. Thanks for the input. But after further testing, it appears the PCIe bus locks out add-in network cards with Win8 drivers. PCIe video card and USB ethernet work fine but not my add-in network card. Weird.

Anyone had any experience with Z590 Motherboards and 11th Gen Intel Rocket Lake and Windows 8? I've installed Windows 8 and Linux on two different z590s (Gigabyte & Asrock) but couldn't get the NiCs working and there were assorted PCI network drivers errors. The MBs otherwise worked OK, although NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 performance was a little slower than advertised and full Thunderbolt support was missing. I'd be curious about anyone else's experience. I've seen complaints about bad NICs on other forums but wanted to find out is this a feature of the chipset or just bad drivers..

@Sergiaws. I'm with you on Office. The ribbon on the newest versions is a real productivity killer. I still use Outlook and Word 2003, with the MS upgrade that allows Word to create and read the .docx format. But I bit the bullet and upgraded to Excel and Power Point 2010 because MS added some useful features that I needed. Otherwise, my oldest frequently used software is the backup app Copy to Synchronizer v.3.3 and IObit Uninstaller v.2.4, both of which came out about 15 years ago and still work even on Windows 10.

Amid the enless rush to upgrade Windows and MSO, I'm curious about the oldest piece of productivity or utility software people still use on their computers, not including games.

Using Double Driver 2.0 and another driver backup tool, I've tried exporting and integrating into the Windows 8.1 setup files the USB drivers for the two USB controllers I have on my motherboard (Intel and ASmedia) but Windows 8.1 still won't install from a USB 3.0 multi-card reader (Transcend), only works with a USB 2.0 card reader., Any suggestions?

@jaclaz. Thanks for that link. I'll give that solution a try.

Can anybody recommend a modern Windows 8 compatible laptop, a laptop that allows a user to downgrade to Windows 8? I currently have an LG Gram and it's not possible to downgrade that laptop. It won't boot to an external CD or a USB.

I was about to join in the fun and rollback from Windows 8.1 to Windows 8 Pro. I did so successfully last week with the retail version I purchased years ago. But I did a reinstall after an errant driver hosed the OS and now Microsoft said it won't activate and I must upgrade. Anybody else have this issue?

@jumper, yes, I've tried that. It doesn't work. Even after un-registering and re-registering the .dll. I think Microsoft is so insistent that users upgrade Outlook 2003 and Word 2003, that the only way to install higher versions of office without over-writing Outlook 2003 is to do it manually. Oh well...

I have created unattended install packages for MSO 2003 Word and Outlook (because I prefer those versions over their counterparts in MSO 2010) and for Office 2010, from which I install Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher and instruct setup "do not remove previous" office versions. But if I execute the automated 2010 install after 2003 I get the infamous "mapi32.dll corrupted" error when I try to launch Outlook 2003 and neither reinstalling or repairing Outlook 2003 or any of the online fixes floating around on the Internet work in restoring Outlook 2003 functionality. In addition, Outlook version 2010 has a shortcut in my start menu even though I instructed OCT not to install Outlook 2010. If I install MSO 2010 manually, I don't have this issue. Is there a way to create an unattended 2010 install that won't overwrite Outlook 2003 (and again, I selected the option "do not remove previous versions" in the 2010 unattended setup).

There's a mistake in the uninstall path and display icon entries for scheduled tasks. But this is a pretty nice collection of tweaks.

Yeah I ended up doing something similar: creating a hotkey from my clip app to autopaste the path I want into the dialog windows. The problem with the suggestion above is that windows clears those file location crumbs when I reboot or weed out my registry. But thanks for the suggestion

I'm interested in fixing this default icon browse location, too. It would save a whole lot of mouse clicks. I suspect in six years there's no solution but, ANYBODY, got a clue?

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... meanwhile in the UK , JFYI: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3200291/Farmer-sick-poor-internet-signal-built-DIY-mast.html jaclaz Oh yeah! My kind of hacker

We'll see. It's one thing to say to 20-somethings and the tech cognoscenti "we want your personal data as a trade off for using our OS." But it's a whole different thing to say to enterprises and folks with little bandwidth: "we want access to your intellectual property and precious bandwidth resources in exchange for using our OS." I see significant potential for consumer backlash. Apple iPhone/Android got away with this because cellphones with online mapping, mobile retrievable email and cloud backup offered what many saw as a significant consumer benefit but imposing this on a non-mandatory OS upgrade with a better start menu? Cortana is going to have to be really really good...

How do you do that? Are there Win 10 discs in shrink wrap on shelves? It's a cloud-integrated OS. There's no such thing as a non-network environment as far as Microsoft is concerned. -Noel So if Harry Homeowner in rural North Dakota goes to his local Walmart and buys a new Windows 10 machine and he doesn't have broadband...how does Microsoft deal with that? While the vast majority of people in urban areas have broadband, I'd say a good chunk of customers in rural or remote areas do not and could acquire Windows 10 on a new PC or tablet bought at a local store. The question is, looks like they might have issues if their PCs can't regularly phone home to Microsoft.

Aside from not being able to phone home, what happens when Windows 10 is used in a non-network environment, as might be the case if it is installed in a home or business with dial-up access or a classroom with no networking or restrictive networking? Does the OS react as if network access is being intentionally blocked and stops working normally? Even with network access, what happens when you don't have enough bandwidth for large daily or even weekly updates?

@Tripredacus. Sorry. That's what I get for speed reading posts early in the morning.

Does this Windows 8 command no longer work ("where Name='JOHNDOE' " is your actual Windows user name)? I ask because I use this command on my Windows 8 clean install disk and was going to use in on my Windows 10 .iso as well. C:\Windows\System32\wbem\WMIC.exe path Win32_UserAccount where Name='JOHNDOE' set PasswordExpires=false