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Remove Ghost Network Adapters in Windows

4/19/2025

Ghost adapters left behind by physical-to-virtual conversions have been an issue since the early days of virtualization. The Great VMWare Exodus has brought this issue back into the limelight as Broadcom customers begin to abandon VMware in favor of more customer-friendly Type 1 Hypervisor companies.

If you're preparing to migrate a VMware virtual machine over to, let's say a KVM-based Type-1 Hypervisor environment, there are several preparation steps that should be undertaken, the first of which will be to change the network adapter from a static IP addresss to a DHCP address, and to remove the VMware Tools. If you forget to remove VMware tools prior to conversion, the converted VM may not boot. If you forget to manipulate the network LAN adapter settings, you could end up with a "ghost" adapter, one that has entries in the Windows registry, but that does not show up in device manager. If you also forgot to change the static IP address to a DHCP address, the static IP could be "trapped" by the ghosted adapter and Windows will give you error messages saying another adapter already has that IP address.

Here's how to "reveal" those ghosted adapters so you can clean up the mess left behind by a hypervisor platform migration.

1. Launch a command prompt as administrator in the VM.
2. Run: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 (press enter)
3. Launch Device Manager (devmgr.msc)
4. In Device Manager -> View select "Show Hidden Devices"
5. Scroll down to Network Devices and expand
6. Ghost adapters will be greyed out - right click and Uninstall
7. Select Action -> Scan for Hardware Changes to refresh device list
8. Repeat as necessary until all ghost adapters are removed

Windows OS Hub has a write-up on this process here: https://woshub.com/remove-hidden-ghost-network-adapter-windows/

Interworks has a blog post about the topic here:
https://interworks.com/blog/ijahanshahi/2014/08/21/removing-hidden-device-device-manager/

The official VMware-to-Proxmox conversion instructions are here:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE

Scale Computing has their own SC//Migrate toolkit to make VMware to Scale migrations easy:
https://www.scalecomputing.com/resources/sc-migrate-data-sheet

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Windows Server Change Time Commandline

4/15/2025

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Ever join a server to the domain and forgot to change the time zone beforehand, then the Time Zone GUI change options are greyed out? There's a way around that using either a command line option or via PowerShell.

Option1: Invoke CMD as administrator
tzutil /g (displays current time zone)
tzutil /l (displays all time zone options)
tzutil /s "Central Standard Time" (sets time zone)
tzutil /g (to verify change)

Option2: Invoke Powershell as administrator
Get-TimeZone
Get-Timezone -ListAvailable
Set-Timezone -Id "Central Standard Time"
Get-TimeZone

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Add email aliases to personal Gmail accounts

4/14/2025

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Creating email aliases for work emails is common, but did you know you can also create emails aliases for your (at)gmail(.)com email address using Gmail+ email aliases? Example: if your email is bobsmith(at)gmail you can create an alias email such as bobsmith+myamazonorders(at)gmail, use that alias for receiving emails and they will come to the inbox for your primary email account.

Here are the steps:
1. Log in to your personal gmail account in a browser
2. Go to the Settings gear icon at the top right
3. See all settings
4. Go to the Accounts and Import tab
5. Navigate down to Send Email As section
6. Click on Add another email address
7. The the email address box type your email addres and a + sign and whatever you want to add to it (ex: bobsmith+myamazonorders(at)gmail, but use the actual at sign. LinkedIn keeps trying to link when I attempt to use it in a post.
8. Make sure the "Treat as an alias" box is checked

Now you can use this alias email as a filter or in some cases to sign into a website that is having problems directing you do different sign-in functions using the same email address.

MailMeteor has a good write-up outlining the steps here: https://mailmeteor.com/blog/gmail-alias

Streak has a blog post about the process here: https://www.streak.com/post/gmail-plus-addressing-trick

*kudos to Streak for the cool graphic below this post.

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Easy File Server Migrations

4/7/2025

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The registry key that contains all of the shares and share permissions on a Windows file server is located: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares
and the Security subkey. You can export this key set from your current file server, mount the shares data drive to a new server with an updated OS and import this registry key to restore all of the shares and their associated permissions. Since you've moved the data drive to the new server, all files retained their NTFS permissions. Also, this detach/re-attach process assumes you're not using DFS.

So, step by step (assuming you're doing this in a virtual environment):
1) Create new VM with virtual HDD for OS
2) Install new OS, patch, update, etc. (Do not join to domain yet)
3) Export registry key from old file server
4) Copy registry key file to new file server
4) Unjoin old file server from domain
5) Change server name and IP address of old file server and shut down
6) Detach data volume virtual disk from old file server
7) Change server name and IP address of new file server to match old server and reboot sever
8) Join new file server to domain
9) Attach data drive virtual disk to new file server and mount with same drive letter as it had on the old file server
10) Import registry key from old file server
11) Reboot new file server

Instructions for Exporting Registry Key from old server:
Navigate to:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares
Right click on Shares in the left-side view window
Select Export
Name file. Example: filesharesexport.reg
copy this file to the new server

Instructions for Importing Registry Key to New Server:
Open Registry Editor on the new server.
Go to File > Import
Navigate to the location where you copied the .reg file.
Double-click the .reg file to start the import process.
You may be prompted to confirm the import, click "Yes" to proceed.
The registry key will be added to the registry on the new server.

At this point your new file server has the data volume mounted from the old file server and the shares permissions have been imported. I'll make a separate post on some ways to consolidate the new VM data files with the old server data virtual disk into a single folder.

*edit: One problem we have become aware of in using this process is the shared folder OWNER permissions. If the shared folder on the source system is OWNED by a LOCAL administrator user, the NTFS and share permissions of the sub-folders WILL NOT be applied on the target system. Local user \\Server1\Administrator is NOT the same as local user \\Server2\Administrator, even though the names are the same. To "fix" the issue, we changed the OWNER of the root folders on the source system to a DOMAIN admin user with local admin rights on the source and target servers. After that change, the sub-folder permissions were applied properly on the target system after the .reg key import. This is also a problem if sub-folder permissions were granted using local users instead of domain users on the source host.

If you are migrating a physical file server to a virtual machine, or possibly migrating a VM-based file server to an new VM on a different platform, you can create a root shared folder on the target system, map a drive to the shared folder from the existing file server, and use a robocopy job to copy the data to the new server.

Example1: robocopy e:\rootshare r:\remoteshare /e /copy:datso /z /MT:128

Example 2: robocoy e:\rootshare r:\remoteshare /mir /z /MT:128 /LOG+:logfilename.log

After the copy job finishes and is validated, export the registry key that stores the share permissions data from the existing file server and then import the exported .reg file into the new file server's registry.

I recently had a customer's file server boot drive MBR record get irreparably corrupted. We mounted the boot volume to the new file server as a data disk, used the remote registry mount utility to mount the \Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM registry file and export the shares registry key. When you use the remote mount utility you have to give it a temporary name. Thus, when you export the key the registry file header data has the temporary name in the (2) header paths instead of the correct header path names. We had to correct those using notepad to edit the .reg file two header data paths as follows before attempting to import the shares key into the new file server.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares\Security]

Don't forget to change the notepad save settings to *.* to preserve the .reg file extension.

Link to all Robocopy Commands: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

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Windows 11 24H2 Bypass Microsoft Account Requirement

4/1/2025

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Microsoft is removing the OOBE\BYPASSNRO.cmd command from the Windows 11 installer in yet another attempt at forcing every Windows 11 PC to have a Microsoft online account. The good news is that NeoWin is reporting that there's another workaround available.

1. Start Windows 11 Setup
Begin the Windows 11 Setup Process.
Select your region and keyboard layout.

2. Stop at the Secondary Keyboard Layout Screen
When you reach the Secondary Keyboard Layout screen, DO NOT click Skip.

3. Open the Developer Console
Press Ctrl + Shift + J to open the Developer Console.
Your screen will go dark and will appear with a prompt (indicated by a > symbol) at the top left of the screen.

4. Enter the Restart Command
Type the following command exactly as shown:
WinJS.Application.restart("ms-cxh://LOCALONLY")
Note: This command is case-sensitive. You can use Tab-completion to help:
After typing WinJS.A, press Tab to auto-complete Application.
After typing res, press Tab to auto-complete restart.

5. Exit the Developer Console
After entering the command, press Enter to execute it.
Press Escape to exit the Developer Console and return to the OOBE interface.
Note: If the Escape key doesn't close the Console, click anywhere on the screen to ensure the console is focused and then press the key again.

6. Local Account Setup
The Secondary Keyboard Layout screen will refresh, and a Windows 10-style local account setup screen will appear.
Enter your desired username, password, and security questions and click Next.

7. Complete the Setup
The Setup will go black and will then log you in to your newly created account. Allow Windows 11 a few moments to configure the user.
Continue with the remaining privacy setting prompts.
Once finished, you will have successfully created a local account in Windows 11.

Here's a link to the write-up on NeoWin: https://www.neowin.net/news/forget-bypassnro-a-new-internetaccount-bypass-during-windows-11-installs-already-exists/

Here's a fiery Reddit thread discussing the disappearance of the BypassNRO command from the Windows 11 installer ISO: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1jmgia4/microsoft_is_removing_the_bypassnro_command_which/

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Remove Ghost Network Adapters in Windows

Windows Server Change Time Commandline

Add email aliases to personal Gmail accounts

Easy File Server Migrations

Windows 11 24H2 Bypass Microsoft Account Requirement

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