Windows

Microsoft Windows

Windows is the most popular desktop operating system most people use at home and at work. There are also "server" versions of MS Windows, which are used at big companies to manage their internal domains and active directory user account management systems, as well as other "server" type functions, even IIS, the Microsoft Internet Information Server to host websites on the Internet and MS SQL database servers, and many more functions I won't go into here.

Info, Tips & Tricks

How to clean up your Windows installation to free up drive space

Windows PowerShell Information

Windows command line tools, otherwise known as powerful stuff you can run from the DOS command prompt

On Windows 10 systems, there is a "search" field just to the right of the "Start" button, which has a little magnifying glass and says "Type here to search", which is known as "Cortana", where you can type many commands directly into, including the "cmd" command to bring up a DOS type command windows.

Keyboard shortcuts to save you time from taking your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse!

Cscript.exe is a command-line version of the Windows Script Host that provides command-line options for setting script properties.

Excellent information on SCript!

There is also the wscript command, which is almost identical to csript, other than it being targeted to running Windows based scripts, whereas cscript is meant to run console based scripts - those which run and complete in a DOS, aka, a command prompt window.

Windows creates a HUGE file over time, which is a database of all of the updates it has done.
The one on my current Windows VM I run on top of my Linux desktop is just over 1GB in size now, which is a large amount for virtual hard drive of only 100GB in size to begin with!
This file is usually located at C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore and is named DataStore.edb.

In order to delete this file to free up the drive space it was hogging, you first need to stop the Update service,
and then just delete the contents of the DataStore folder.
Additionally you should also delete the contents of the Download folder, located at C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download,
which should free up a lot more drive space!

Then restart the service and run Windows updates again. The file should then get recreated, but it will be a lot smaller to star with, but will grow over time as the previous one had.



For more information on these and other Windows scripting and programming, see this excellent site: Experts Exchange Scripting and Programming

How to mount .img files: Mounting .img files

Windows Server Information, Tips & Tricks