Category Archives: tech pit

everything related to technical stuff

HOWTO setup and use OpenSSL local CA capabilities

Some weeks ago, to debug one of my programs, I needed my certification authority to produce my certificates, because self-signed certificates cannot be used anymore. After some days of investigations, I tracked down the process of setting up a local certification authority to produce all needed certificates using OpenSSL.exe (included in the library package) using the included OpenSSL.cfg. step 1 – create the needed folder-tree … Continue reading HOWTO setup and use OpenSSL local CA capabilities »

HOWTO fix Windows Update error 0x80070643

I encountered this error on several Windows 10 PCs and after a week of investigations, I discovered the problem. This error is reported when the recovery partition in your system disk is too small. The solution The solution is to resize it to 900 Mb, or even better to 1 Gb. A task that usually involves two sibling partitions, and that requires a good amount … Continue reading HOWTO fix Windows Update error 0x80070643 »

HOWTO install ‘winget’ from command line

Sometimes we might need to use the amazing ‘winget’ command where it isn’t available (for example from a Windows Sandbox, …). The few steps below will solve this problem. The installation process To install ‘winget’ command, you will need to download C++ Runtime framework packages for Desktop Bridge from MS, selecting the proper package (x86, x64, …) from the ‘How to install and update Desktop … Continue reading HOWTO install ‘winget’ from command line »

HOWTO integrate NASM with VS2019

updated 18/04/2023 Occasionally I use Intel assembler language to squeeze processing power from my programs. A cheap solution was C inline assembler sections, but VS2019 doesn’t support them in a 64-bits program.  Other compilers use other more or less complex solutions (IBM assembler, …). This forced me to consider having & link .asm files in my projects.  I can split them with 32 and 64 … Continue reading HOWTO integrate NASM with VS2019 »

HOWTO redirect TCP connections on Windows

Recently I needed to redirect TCP connections and data streams to another PC. It is useful when you have PC1 and PC2 visible on the same LAN and can only see PC1 from outside.  In these cases, you have to use PC1 to reach PC2. Open a Command Prompt with administrative access rights and type the following: netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenaddress=<local address/name> listenport=<localport> … Continue reading HOWTO redirect TCP connections on Windows »

HOWTO switch back W11 to the old right-click menu

Recently I switched to Windows 11, and (IMHO) one of the most painful features is the new right-click menu in File Explorer. Since it doesn’t display any of my needed items (git, svn, notepad++, …), I always need to click on ‘Show more Options‘, and then I can select the required option. I found it quite uncomfortable because it doubles the efforts to use them. … Continue reading HOWTO switch back W11 to the old right-click menu »

HOWTO block Windows 11 automatic upgrade

Introduction Recently I tried to upgrade my previous flagship notebook to Windows 11 but it didn’t work. The update constantly failed because of several problems that I wasn’t able to fix. When I decided to sign off from W11 upgrade, I discovered that I cannot change my previous decision anymore. This problem is that Windows Update constantly tries the upgrade process failing every single time … Continue reading HOWTO block Windows 11 automatic upgrade »

HOWTO block Windows Update from installing old drivers

Introduction One of the problems with the new notebook is that Windows Update keeps installing old AMD Radeon software for courtesy GPU, and the CPU itself. Even if I installed the latest ones (v30.0…), it keeps installing the 2-years older ones (v27.0…). Yesterday I overcome my tolerance limit and decided to solve the problem once for all. First steps First of all, we need to … Continue reading HOWTO block Windows Update from installing old drivers »

HOWTO set new SVN server in git-svn

These days, we migrated our SVN server to a cloud VM, and one of the needed tasks is to switch also my GIT repositories. An easy approach is to rebuild them, but it has one major drawback: it is possible only if your GIT repositories don’t include uncommitted revisions.  In these cases, you will lose them all. Since I have several unaligned GITs, I needed … Continue reading HOWTO set new SVN server in git-svn »