Syncthing

Ever thought about how you could set up your own mini cloud at home? Syncthing is essentially that, a powerful synchronization tool.

You install it on your device like a smartphone, set up which directory to synchronize then link it up with your preferred destination, lets say your PC. Capable of working when it’s on a specific network (so it knows not to start trying to synchronize when you connect to some random wifi network), so yes, for example when you get home, have your PC running, it will synchronize your photos from your phone to a folder on your computer. Simple. Smash your phone and you’re pictures are all backed up! Without it going through the internet!

Scanning

If you require almost instantaneous file change updates then you can change the watching delay from the default 10 seconds to say 1, within the config file. Make sure you’re also changing the correct folder variables.

fsWatcherDelayS="1"

Make sure fsWatcherEnabled is enabled to true also.

fsWatcherEnabled="true"

Syncthing Configuration

You can find the SyncThing configuration file at:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Syncthing

Disabling Windows 10 telemetry & other things

Via the Group Policy Editor.

Open up the Group Policy Editor by launching gpedit.msc as an administrator. Go through Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Data Collection and Preview Builds > Allow Telemetry

Microsoft has slightly changed some things so they may be worded differently. Such as Windows Defender is now called Microsoft Defender so older guides may not reflect that. Tamper protection needs to be also disabled.

Links & References

Windows Audit Mode, Out-Of-Box Experience (OOBE)

So you have a system that you would like to reformat and install a fresh version of Windows 10/11, but it’s for someone else and you would like them to create the first user. That’s where Windows Audit Mode comes in handy.

Basically you are able to pause the personalization of the installation and get right to the desktop to do whatever you want, such as updating, activating and installing specific programs, say for example an office suite.

How?

Using your usual method of freshly installing Windows, just as it asks you to setup the system (exactly on region selection step) press CTRL+SHIFT+F3 and it should boot directly to desktop. It should also add a dialog box to allow you to select to shutdown once you’re all done.

This method is also part of the way of creating a Windows image that can be used to install on multiple machines, but that warrants a different post.

References:

Boot Windows to Audit Mode or OOBE | Microsoft Docs
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/boot-windows-to-audit-mode-or-oobe?view=windows-11

Customize Windows in Audit Mode | Microsoft Docs
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-7/dd799305(v=ws.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN