Search within Lanny's blog:


Leave me comments so I know people are actually reading my blogs! Thanks!

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Daily Battles: How to Reboot Windows Through Remote Desktop Connection

If you have multiple computers and need to remotely control one or more Windows computer(s) (even from a Mac or your phone), Remote Desktop is a great tool you can use to achieve that.


If your Remote Desktop is not enabled, you can follow this link to enable it:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/clients/remote-desktop-allow-access

However, you'll find that through a Remote Desktop Connection, you can't really restart your computer remotely. This is designed to prevent remote users to do damage to your computer. But for someone who knows what he is doing, and actually wanted to reboot the computer, this can be super annoying.

But lucky for you, here's a small hack that will let you reboot your computer at will!!!

Solution:

There's a command line tool you can use called shutdown.
Just open a Command Prompt (click Start Icon and then type CMD), and then type:
shutdown -r -f -t 0
-r means reboot, -f means forcing apps to quit, and -t 0 means do it right now! Just hit Enter to reboot!


 The shutdown command is built in with your Windows Operating System. You can also use this command for other purposes, such as just shutting the computer down or reboot another computer on the same network (I can't use this cause I am on a Mac). Just type shutdown and hit Enter will show you all the available options. I'll list them here for your convenience.

C:\Users\Lanny>shutdown

Usage: shutdown [/i | /l | /s | /r | /g | /a | /p | /h | /e | /o] [/hybrid] [/f]

    [/m \\computer][/t xxx][/d [p|u:]xx:yy [/c "comment"]]

    No args    Display help. This is the same as typing /?.

    /?         Display help. This is the same as not typing any options.

    /i         Display the graphical user interface (GUI).

               This must be the first option.

    /l         Log off. This cannot be used with /m or /d options.

    /s         Shutdown the computer.

    /r         Full shutdown and restart the computer.

    /g         Full shutdown and restart the computer. After the system is

               rebooted, restart any registered applications.

    /a         Abort a system shutdown.

               This can only be used during the time-out period.

    /p         Turn off the local computer with no time-out or warning.

               Can be used with /d and /f options.

    /h         Hibernate the local computer.

               Can be used with the /f option.

    /hybrid    Performs a shutdown of the computer and prepares it for fast startup.

               Must be used with /s option.

    /e         Document the reason for an unexpected shutdown of a computer.

    /o         Go to the advanced boot options menu and restart the computer.

               Must be used with /r option.

    /m \\computer Specify the target computer.

    /t xxx     Set the time-out period before shutdown to xxx seconds.

               The valid range is 0-315360000 (10 years), with a default of 30.

               If the timeout period is greater than 0, the /f parameter is

               implied.

    /c "comment" Comment on the reason for the restart or shutdown.

               Maximum of 512 characters allowed.

    /f         Force running applications to close without forewarning users.

               The /f parameter is implied when a value greater than 0 is

               specified for the /t parameter.

    /d [p|u:]xx:yy  Provide the reason for the restart or shutdown.

               p indicates that the restart or shutdown is planned.

               u indicates that the reason is user defined.

               If neither p nor u is specified the restart or shutdown is

               unplanned.

               xx is the major reason number (positive integer less than 256).

               yy is the minor reason number (positive integer less than 65536).


Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!


Video of the Day:



BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Daily Battles: Can't Change Computer Name in macOS Field Greyed Out

I recently changed my work laptop and migrated all my stuff from the old laptop to the new one. Then I found out that there were many things that were locked up by the company IT department.

One thing that drove me nuts was that I couldn't even change my computer name because the field is greyed out and locked.

This is simply stupid!

Anyway, I finally figured out how to resolve this. However, you do need to have sodu access on your own computer, which is likely! Also your company is using jamf to manage your Mac, which is also very likely.

Solution:

Open your terminal and then run this command and replace Baymac (my computer's name) with the name you want for your computer:
sudo jamf setComputerName -name Baymac 
You can actually also try to completely remove jamf by running this command below. But don't blame me if you get fired. Good luck! 
sudo jamf removeFramework

There are always some battles I have to fight with technology every day! Hope you don't have to fight so many battles OR hope you enjoy your fights and come out triumphant!

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!





There's always a way! 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Monday, January 18, 2021

Daily Battles: How to Rearrange Icons in your Menu Bar for MacOS Big Sur

I have a lot of icons in my menu bar on my Mac because I use a lot of free programs such as:

I also have a lot of built-in utilities that I access frequently, such as:

  • Bluetooth manager
  • WiFi manager
  • Sound input source and volume control
  • Timemachine for backup
  • VPN
Then there are programs like:
  • WeChat
  • Google Hangout
  • Android Web Messages
  • iOS Messages
  • Slack
  • VLC
  • etc.

As someone with OCD, it is super important for me to be able to group things together the way I want. So how can you do that on a Mac with Big Sur?

The answer is super easy, although took me a while to find:

Solution:

You just hold the command key and then drag the icon with your mouse!
Yep, it's that simple! But if you don't know, you don't know.

By the way, I also am very particular with icons in my Dock and icons on my Mac touch bar. But since other people have provided detailed instructions, I'll just link them here:



Hope someone finds this blog post useful! Moving on to my next daily battle!

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!

Video of the Day:

The right way to work!


BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Daily Battles: Pandora Won't Auto Start on Firefox

I think one thing we all have learned is that after some system updates or application updates, something just stops working. This time, it was my Pandora station not playing after Firefox updates.

You see, I live inside this giant robot called Philip. And Philip is also my sweet smart home assistant. In the morning, Philip would turn on music throughout my home, and gradually increase volume from low to medium to wake us up with beautiful and relaxing and free music on Pandora.

Then, one day, Philip just stopped doing that.

When I finally had a chance to investigate, I found the problem:

Philip uses Firefox to play Pandora in the morning. In the past, when opening Pandora on Firefox, it would just automatically start playing. But now, when I go to Pandora website, I have to manually click the play button to start the music.

So why was it working and not stopped working? Because I updated Firefox. And with a new Firefox, it automatically blocks music or video from playing on all websites. What you have to do is to explicitly enable autoplay on each website as shown below.

Click the lock icon on the left side of the address bar will show a popup menu where you can enable autoplay again. You can also go into the Firefox Preferences page to manage websites where you want to allow or deny autoplay.

To go to Firefox Preferences page, simply type about:preferences in the address bar and hit enter. Then just search for Autoplay.

Well, after this tweak, (and after I fixed the stupid Bluetooth volume control problem in Windows 10 since stupid Microsoft updated my computer AGAIN and then changed the registry setting,) I finally can enjoy Philip's morning natural music wake up ceremony again, and I can finally find some peace again during a pandemic.

Hope this is useful for someone else running into the same problem. Remember, whenever you update, something WILL break. So happy living in a technology world (or inside a giant robot)!

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!


Video of the Day:

How the kids and their dog worked as a team to evade the coming home dad.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Daily Battles: Mac Not Detecting External Monitor After Waking Up From Sleep

Are you having problems connecting your Mac to your external monitor(s)? Especially after your Mac goes to sleep, and then upon wake up, it no longer detects your external monitor(s) that was working just fine before?

Maybe you see something like this:


Turned out this is a bug macOS Big Sur introduced by update 11.1, and the recent 11.2 as shown in this article: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/03/macos-big-sur-external-display-issues/ Basically your Mac failed to wake up the monitor after the monitor also went to sleep.

In my case, the Mac laptop always successfully detects 2 external monitors, but always fails to detect the 3rd external monitor. Very Annoying Indeed!!

So how do you solve this problem? Here are several things you can try:

Solutions:

  1. Turn your monitor off and then back on.
  2. Unplug your external monitor (HDMI plugged into a USB-C adapter) from the Mac laptop and then plug it back in.
  3. Use the key combination ⌘-F2 or ⌘-fn-F2 to force monitor detection.
  4. Go to System Preferences, select Display, and then hold the OPTION key down. The Gather Windows button will change into Detect Displays. Click this button will help your Mac find the external monitor.

If any of the above methods work for you, great! To be honest, still quite annoying. But to really solve the problem, we'll have to wait for Apple to release a fix maybe in the 11.3 updates.

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!


Video of the Day:

The proper way to fish!


BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com