Windows May Update 1903 enabling Sandbox mode and turning on Virtualisation on ASUS ROG AMD system SVM/Virtualisation

With the latest Windows update (May 1903) we get a new feature called Windows Sandbox. This allows us to run a sand-boxed (protected, isolated, quarantined) version of windows for opening dodgy files/testing etc. when you've finished with the sand-box and closed it the settings are gone and whatever damage/changes were made are gone for good.

This comes with Windows 10 Pro and above!

To enable sand-boxing, you firstly need to check if you have virtualisation enabled on your system, and that is supports it.

1. Open command prompt
2. Type "systeminfo" and press enter
3. Look for the Hyper-V line that says "Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware"

If its "Yes" then you're good to go. However, if like mine it says "No" then I had to reboot my system and enable it in the BIOS.

Typically, I couldn't find a Virtualisation Option anywhere. I have an AMD machine with an ASUS motherboard, and to enable it you need to find an option called SVM. On my system this was under the advanced view (as opposed to the EZ view), and then the advanced section, CPU Settings and then SVM

Once done, you can now add this feature to Windows by searching the start menu for "Turn windows feature on or off"

When this window is open, tick the "Windows Sandbox" option and let Windows install the new feature. After its finished you will be prompted to reboot.

And that's it! the Sandbox should be on your start menu under "Windows Sandbox"; running it opens up a virtual Windows 10 ready for you to destroy

Enable Google Face Recoginition in Google Photos - UK

It recently came to my attention that folks in the US and other parts of the world get access to a great feature called "Google Face Recognition" - something that's been blocked in the UK due to GDPR issues amongst other things.

I wanted this feature, and with a little bit of effort you can enable it in your own account

1. You'll need a VPN to use so that your browser thinks you're in the US
2. I used "tunnelbear" (i have no affiliation with them). URL below:
https://www.tunnelbear.com/download

3. If you're using chrome, download the chrome browser extension
4. Sign up to tunellbear for their free 500MB account, its more than enough
5. Once you're signed up, click the VPN button and connect to the US. Icon looks like the below in the task bar:

6. Once connected, you can then sign into Google Photos
7. And thats it! Face Recognition should be enabled - you can check it under Settings > Group Similar Faces

One thing to bear in mind is that it takes a few days for Google to crawl all of your photos, and then eventually you should get a new album called "People and Pets" where you can then name each face and group them together

Love it!

Getting Access to Xiaomi themes, store and other apps when you recieve "Themes not supported in your region" message - Miui10

I recently purchased a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE (such a good phone for the money!) and tried to install some third party themes on it.

However, being set to the UK I received the error "Themes not supported in your region"

To get around this, I simply searched the settings page for "Region" and then changed myself to India

I could then download and install all the themes I wanted and then reverted my region back to UK after I had finished

Easy!

Upgrading to May 2019 Windows 10 update early (1903)

Want to get the May 2019 (1903) update before its fully available to everyone on Windows Update? It's pretty simple! Just go to the below address and click "Update Now"

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

And you can download the installer to upgrade your PC/laptop

Enjoy!

Exchange 2010 OWA Out of Office - "Sorry! We're having trouble processing your request at the moment. Please try again in a few minutes."

Had an issue where whenever a user attempted to access their Out of Office section in OWA 2010 they received an the following error when saving it:

"Sorry! We're having trouble processing your request at the moment. Please try again in a few minutes."

In this particular instance, Exchange 2010 is running on a 2012 server

Eventually tracked the issue down to certain applications pools in IIS being assigned to .net v4 instead of v2

To check this out yourself, open IIS and go to "application pools"

Look in the list to see what version .NET Framework is set to - in particular look at the highlighted ones below.

"DefaultAppPool", "MSExchangeECPAppPool" and "MSExchangeOWACalendarAppPool"

When I initially looked at IIS, these were set to v4.0. I double clicked on the them and changed them back to v2.0 as below

This instantly resolved my issue!

Windows 10 appearing to briefly lose connection when using a mapped drive

A clients office has recently started to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7

They've been running a couple of machines with 10 to check all works OK with their software. The machines which were upgraded started to develop a strange fault; Windows would report that the connection to the mapped drives had dropped

At face value it looked like the problem was that the network had a fault, potentially a failing switch, NIC or cable but the problem persisted after changing ports and switches.

Fast forward through more investigation and the problem was eventually tracked down to how the mapped drive was being made using Group Policy

For some reason, if the drive is mapped using the CREATE option then Windows 10 appears to drop the mapped drive connection (for only a brief moment) to re-create it again. The Windows 7 PCs don't seem to mind this and it doesn't cause any problems

The resolution was simply to change the mapping from CREATE to UPDATE and the problem was solved

Installing Sage Accounts 2010 on Windows 10

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to install Sage Accounts 2010 then you'll probably see that installing it isn't as easy as you may think. When you run the installation, Windows 10 will stop it and not let you install.

Right click on the installer and select "Run as Administrator" I hear you cry! Alas, that won't work either.

Disable UAC? Nope

To get around it, run a command prompt as an administrator and then launch the installation from here - problem solved

You may also find that updates won't automatically download - in which case you'll need to log into the Sage website and download them manually. Use the above process again to run the updates