Category: Troubleshooting

Windows 10 Not Booting After Drive Clone
An SSD was failing, and the cloning process did not go well. When I tried booting from the drive, it immediately failed with a generic Error code of 0xc000000e.

Solution:

Boot from a Windows installation USB or Disk.

Enter the troubleshooting menu and open the Command Prompt.

Ensure the boot drive is not an MBR disk by going through this series of commands. Hit enter after each one.
```
diskpart
```
```
select disk 0
```
```
list partition
```
This should result in a list of partitions. Select your primary partition.
```
select partition 4
```
```
active
```
This may result in a message saying “The ACTIVE command can only be used on fixed MBR disks.” If that is the case type
```
exit
```
So if that is the case, we can switch to a different strategy. Check to see if drive C is your Windows drive by entering
```
c:
```
and then
```
dir
```
You should see a list of folders that include Windows and Users. If you don’t, try looking at drive D or E.

If drive C is your drive, type
```
bcdboot c:\windows
```
If you get the message that the boot files have been successfully created, you can try booting to Windows. If it is a different drive, substitute that drive letter in the previous command.
2025-05-31
Get Into Windows Without Password
_{Note: This works on computers with only one active user. If this is the case, you will need to boot from a USB stick to copy the cmd.exe file. The instructions are roughly the same except the method by which you get there. You can boot from a live Linux environment or from a Windows installation drive. In the case of the latter, you can pull up a terminal by pressing Shift+F10 on the first screen.}

At the Windows Login screen, click the power symbol in the lower right corner. Hold shift and select “Restart.” Keep holding Shift through the reboot until the Windows boot screen says “Please wait.”

Select “Advanced” under Recovery Options and then open the Command Prompt.

Enter this command and press Enter
```
cd C:\Windows\System32
```
Caveats

The Windows PE drive letters may not align with the Windows proper lettering. In this case, you may need to run this command to list the available drives to find the active Windows installation:

fsutil fsinfo drives

If that doesn’t work, use this command:

wmic logicaldisk get caption

I also had a strange issue where it didn’t seem to honor the cd command until I entered this command

C: dir
Enter these commands and hit the Enter key after each.
```
rename utilman.exe utilman.exebak
```
```
copy cmd.exe utilman.exe
```
Close the terminal and select the option to continue booting into Windows. This time, when you get to the login screen, click the Accessibility button. This will open a command prompt with Administrator privileges.

Enter this command and hit Enter:
```
net user administrator /active:yes
```
Then, enter this command and edit the password for the Administrator account.
```
control userpasswords2
```
Now reboot one more time. This time, when you get to the login screen, you will be able to select the Administrator user in the lower left corner. Enter the password you set in the last step, and you’re in!
2025-05-04
Image in Gmail Signature Not Showing in Outlook [Workaround]
Google does not officially support embedding images in email signatures. While you can add an image to a signature, it gets sent as a linked image, which Outlook will not display. However, I found a workaround to embed the image directly into the email.

Step-by-Step Guide
1. Optimize and Encode Your Image:
  - Use an optimized image with a limited color palette and reduced size to minimize the encoded text length.
  - Encode your image to base64 using an online tool like elmah.io’s Base64 Image Encoder.
  - You will copy the code generated in the “HTML usage:” output.
2. Create an HTML File:
  - Open your favorite text editor and create a new file.
  - Insert the following basic HTML structure:
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    
    </html>
  - Replace the second line with the code from the “HTML usage:” box.
  - Save the file with a .html extension.
3. Render and Copy the Image:
  - Open the HTML file in your browser. You should see your image rendered.
  - Select and copy the image in the browser.
4. Add the Image to Your Gmail Signature:
  - Compose a new email in Gmail and paste the copied image into the message body.
  - Send the email to yourself.
  - Open the received email and copy the image from there.
  - Go to Gmail Settings, select “See all settings,” and scroll down to the Signature section.
  - Paste the copied image into your signature and edit the text as desired.
  - Scroll to the bottom of the page and save your settings.
5. Verify and Maintain the Image:
  - Send a test email to someone who uses Outlook to verify that the image displays correctly.
  - Archive the original email that contains the image, but do not delete it, as (I believe) the signature pulls the image from the original email to embed the image.
Important Notes
- Mobile Compatibility: Currently, this method does not work with the Gmail app on iOS. The image will show while composing an email, but the recipient will only see a placeholder once the email is sent. To avoid this, enable the “Mobile Signature” feature in the Gmail app.
By following these steps, you can successfully embed an image in your Gmail signature that will display correctly in Outlook.

Disclosure: I wrote this post and then prompted ChatGPT to “edit this blog post for clarity:” This post is only lightly edited from that output.
2024-07-17
Adobe Acrobat Closes Immediately After Opening [Workaround]

Occasionally Adobe Acrobat will close again almost immediately after opening. Here is a short video capturing the problem.

To fix it, open Adobe Acrobat Distiller instead. The authentication popup will stay open and you can complete your authentication. In my case, I needed to de-authorize another instance of my computer so I could authenticate again.

2023-12-29
Single Step Repair “Trust Relationship Between Workstation and Primary Domain Failed”
There is a simple method to re-establish the trust relationship between the workstation and the domain controller. It only involves a single restart and a single step.

Open System Properties. This varies by Windows version. On Windows 10 and 11, open “Settings” select “System” and then open “About”. In Windows 10 select “Advanced system settings” on the right. In Windows 11 select “Domain or workgroup”. Both of them will give you a window that looks like this.
1. Select Change… and another window will pop up
2. Remove .local from the Domain: field
3. Click OK and it will welcome you to the domain.
  - Click OK on the welcome message
4. Click OK on the System Properties window. It will warn you that a restart is required so accept that to reboot the workstation.
Everything should be as before. If you open the window back up after the reboot, the .local domain name will again be in that field.
2022-11-17