Tag: Windows 10

Oct012019October 1, 2019September 30, 20191 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Reset and Reinstall Windows 10 using Cloud download

Reset and Reinstall Windows 10 from the Cloud

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Insider MVP

In the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build you have a new feature called Windows 10 Cloud Reset. This new feature helps you to reset and reinstall your Windows 10 machine from the cloud. The feature first showed up in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18970 which are preview releases of Windows 10 20H1. If you wanted to reset or reinstall your Windows 10 machine, you already had the option doing that from your local installed copy of Windows 10 and reusing existing Windows files to construct a fresh copy. Or if you wanted a completely fresh install of your Windows 10 machine, you needed to download Windows and create a USB stick to boot from. The new Cloud download option in the Windows 10 recovery settings, allows you to get the best of both worlds.

Reset and reinstall Windows 10 using the cloud download feature ☁

The new Windows cloud download feature allows you to reinstall Windows 10 using fresh Windows installation files from the cloud. There is no need for a recovery partition or create a USB drive.

Brandon LeBlanc from the Windows team wrote about the benefits of using cloud download for the reset or fresh installation:

A more reliable way to reinstall Windows ✅
Depending on your internet speed it can be faster ✅
No need for a USB stick or DVD ✅

There are two options to reset from the cloud. First, if you have a running copy of Windows 10 and you want to do a fresh installation, you can use the recovery.

How to reset your Windows 10 PC from the cloud in the recovery settings 💻

Reset and Reinstall Windows 10 using Cloud download

If you have currently a running Windows 10 machine and you want to initiate a reset or reinstallation from with the cloud download option, you can do this through the Windows settings.

Open Settings
Go to Update & Security
Click on Recovery
On the recovery screen, select Get started
Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
If you select Cloud download, this will use Windows Update to download the fresh Windows files

How to reinstall Windows 10 from the cloud if you can’t boot

Windows RE recovery cloud download

In the case that you are not able to boot your Windows 10 machine anymore, you can start your reinstallation using cloud download from Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).

Click on Troubleshoot
Click on Reset this PC
Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
This will need drivers for the network adapter in the Windows RE image. Most of the time you have drivers for the wired connection. It might also work with wireless network connection depending on the drivers loaded by the PC vendor in the Windows RE image.

Conclusion

Cloud download is a great new option to reset and reinstall your Windows 10 machine, and getting it back to a healthy and fresh installation. This is just another great new feature in Windows 10 like other improvements we have seen over the last couple of years.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and use the Feedback Hub.

Check out other Windows 10 improvements like:

Sep242019September 24, 2019September 24, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Change the Windows Terminal Theme from Light to Dark

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Terminal, Work

This is again a very small post on the Windows Terminal, like how to open the Windows Terminal from the command prompt or run and how to change the Windows Terminal background image. This time I got asked about how you switch the Windows Terminal Theme from light to dark. Well, the answer is pretty simple. The theme of the Windows Terminal is defined by the Windows 10 color theme. So to change the Windows Terminal theme from light to dark, you simply need to change the default app mode to dark or switch completely switch to dark in the Windows 10 personalization settings. Not like other Windows 10 apps, after you have switch the color mode, you will need to close and reopen the Windows Terminal to see the change.

The Windows Terminal is currently in preview and lets you run shells like the classic command-line, PowerShell or WSL and WSL 2. If you want to know how to install the Windows Terminal, check out my blog post.

Change to Windows Terminal Dark Theme

Here is how you change it to the dark theme.

Open Windows 10 Settings
Go to Personalization
Click on Colors
Choose your color and select “Dark“

Windows Terminal Dark Theme

Activate Light Theme

Here is how you change it to the light theme.

Open Windows 10 Settings
Go to Personalization
Click on Colors
Choose your color and select “Light“

Windows Terminal Light Theme

I hope this is a quick help, also check out my blog post about the new font called Cascadia Code. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment.

Sep192019September 19, 2019September 22, 20197 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

New Microsoft Code and Terminal Font Cascadia Code

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Terminal

Cascadia Code is the latest monospaced font shipped from Microsoft focusing on delivering an excellent font for command-line experiences and code editors like Visual Studio Code. The Cascadia Code font was first announced at the Microsoft Build conference in May 2019. And yesterday, Microsoft just released Cascadia Code version 1909.16 and it is available publicly on GitHub. Cascadia Code makes an excellent font for the Windows Terminal, and you can download it today.

It is the latest monospaced font shipped from Microsoft and provides a fresh experience for command line experiences and code editors. Cascadia Code was developed hand-in-hand with the new Windows Terminal application. This font is most recommended to be used with terminal applications and text editors such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

I took some time to install Cascadia Code font on my Surface Book 2 and it works great with application like Visual Studio Code and the Windows Terminal running PowerShell. To start using it, simply download the font, install it, and configure the application to use is. In the Windows Terminal app, open the settings.json file and change the font in the specific terminal profile.

VS Code Cascadia Code setting for Windows Terminal

  "profiles" : 
    [
        {
            "acrylicOpacity" : 0.5,
            "closeOnExit" : true,
            "colorScheme" : "VibrantInk",
            "commandline" : "C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\6\\pwsh.exe",
            "cursorColor" : "#FFFFFF",
            "cursorShape" : "bar",
            "fontFace" : "Cascadia Code",
            "fontSize" : 12,
            "guid" : "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}",
            "historySize" : 9001,
            "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}.png",
            "name" : "PowerShell Core",
            "padding" : "0, 0, 0, 0",
            "snapOnInput" : true,
            "startingDirectory" : "%USERPROFILE%",
            "useAcrylic" : true,
            "backgroundImage": "C:/Users/thoma/OneDrive/Pictures/Me/Thomas Maurer Logos 2016/WindowsTerminal/Black Cloud Robot.png",
            "tabTitle": "PowerShell Core "
        },

If you want to know more about customizing the Windows Terminal, check out my blog post. If you are optimizing and customizing your code editor experience, you should also have a look at my favorite themes for Visual Studio Code.

The font is open source and licensed under the SIL Open Font license on GitHub, so it is easy to contribute. Have you tried the Cascadia Code font, and what do you think about the new coding font? Do you like it? And if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

If you are looking for some other cool Microsoft coding projects, have a look at Azure Cloud Shell and PowerShell 7.

Sep142019September 14, 2019September 22, 20194 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Windows Terminal Background Acrylic Opacity

How to Change the Windows Terminal Background Image

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Terminal, Work

As you may know, Microsoft released a new Windows Terminal, which is currently in preview. However, it has some great new features, and a lot of people are currently trying it out. Now I got a lot of questions about how you can change the background of the Windows Terminal. So I decided to write a quick blog post about how you can configure and customize the Windows Terminal background image. There are multiple ways you can do this. And you can not only change the color or use a background image, but you can also change the opacity, and if it should use the acrylic Windows effect.

Customize the Windows Terminal Background Image

First open the settings of the Windows Terminal app, which will open a JSON file, where the settings are stored.

Windows Terminal Settings

This will allow you to customize the settings and colors of the terminal. Every console has a so-called profile, which you can modify. Let’s start with adding a background image.

        {
            "acrylicOpacity" : 0.5,
            "closeOnExit" : true,
            "colorScheme" : "VibrantInk",
            "commandline" : "C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\6\\pwsh.exe",
            "cursorColor" : "#FFFFFF",
            "cursorShape" : "bar",
            "fontFace" : "Consolas",
            "fontSize" : 12,
            "guid" : "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}",
            "historySize" : 9001,
            "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}.png",
            "name" : "PowerShell Core",
            "padding" : "0, 0, 0, 0",
            "snapOnInput" : true,
            "startingDirectory" : "%USERPROFILE%",
            "useAcrylic" : true,
            "backgroundImage": "C:/Users/thoma/OneDrive/Pictures/Me/Thomas Maurer Logos 2016/WindowsTerminal/Black Cloud Robot.png",
            "tabTitle": "PowerShell Core "
        },

With the “backgroundImage” value, you can set a specific image as the background.

"backgroundImage": "C:/Users/thoma/OneDrive/Pictures/Me/Thomas Maurer Logos 2016/WindowsTerminal/Black Cloud Robot.png"

Opacity

You can use the “backgroundImageOpacity” to set the opacity of the for the background image, and this is super helpful when you have a full background image.

Windows Terminal Background Image Opacity

You can add the following value to configure the opacity.

"backgroundImageOpacity" : 0.2

Acrylic effect

You can also configure the Windows Terminal to use the Acrylic effect in Windows 10 for the background. This will combine the acrylic effect with the background image.

Windows Terminal Background Acrylic Opacity

Just set the following value to the settings.

"useAcrylic" : true,
"acrylicOpacity" : 0.5

Here is a full config you can have a look at, with all the settings enabled.

Profile

Let me know if that helps you to set, change, and customize the background image of the Windows Terminal. You can read more about the new Windows Terminal on the official blog. And if you want to know more about how you can run Azure Cloud Shell in the terminal, check out my blog post. If you have questions, let me know in the comments.

Aug152019August 15, 2019September 22, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Download the new Windows Terminal Preview

How to open Windows Terminal from Command Prompt or Run

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Terminal

This is a really short blog post and more of a reminder than anything else. You might have seen the new Windows Terminal for Windows 10 was just released in the Windows Store as a preview. However, in the last couple of updates to the Windows Terminal app, it got to a state which already makes it my default terminal. The Windows Terminal allows you to run Windows PowerShell, PowerShell Core and even Bash using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Especially the integration of the Azure Cloud Shell is a great plus for me. In this blog post, I am just going to show you how you can open the Windows Terminal from command prompt or Run (WIN + R).

To open Windows Terminal from the command line (cmd) or in Windows Run (WIN +R) type:

wt

Open Windows Terminal start wt

If you want to know more about the Azure Cloud Shell integration, read the blog of Pierre Roman (Microsoft Cloud Advocate) on the ITOpsTalk blog.

Aug012019August 1, 2019August 4, 201916 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Run Linux Containers with Docker Desktop and WSL 2

Posted in Containers, Docker, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server

Today, Docker launched the first Tech Preview of the Docker Desktop WSL 2. This means you can now use Docker Desktop and the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) which is using the hypervisor in the background to run Linux containers on Windows 10. With the significant changes to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, you can now take advantage of these improvements with your Docker Desktop client.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 is currently in Tech Preview, and it also requires the Windows 10 Insider Preview builds. That means you should only use for not production environments.

WSL 2 introduces a significant architectural change as it is a full Linux kernel built by Microsoft, allowing Linux containers to run natively without emulation. With Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview, users can access Linux workspaces without having to maintain both Linux and Windows build scripts.
Docker Desktop also leverages the dynamic memory allocation feature in WSL 2 to greatly improve the resource consumption. This means, Docker Desktop only uses the required amount of CPU and memory resources, enabling CPU and memory-intensive tasks such as building a container to run much faster.

You can find more information about the Tech Preview here.

Prerequisites

To run the Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview, you will need to set up the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) first. You can do that using the following guide, or follow these steps:

Install Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18932 or later.

Install the Windows WSL feature and the Windows Virtual Machine Platform feature running the following commands:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
 
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

Download WSL Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 18.04 from the Microsoft Store. You can read more about Linux on Windows 10 here. The distribution needs to be set as the default WSL distro.

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

Make sure that the WSL distro is running in WSL 2 mode. You can check the list of distros installed on your Windows 10 machine, with the following PowerShell command:

wsl -l -v

To set the distro to WSL 2, you can run the following command. Change the name of the distro:

wsl --set-version DistroName 2

Install WSL 2

To find out more about installing WSL 2, check out the Microsoft Docs page.

How to set up Docker and WSL 2

First, you will need to download the Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview here. Make sure you already configured all the WSL 2 steps described in the prerequisites, before you install the Docker WSL 2 Tech preview. If you are prompted if you want to use Linux containers or Windows containers during the installation, select Windows containers. If you choose Linux containers, you will have the classic Docker experience with a Hyper-V VM.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview Menu

Run the installation wizard, and after a successful installation, the Docker Desktop menu displays the WSL 2 Tech Preview option. You can select WSL 2 Tech Preview from that menu to start and configure the daemon running WSL 2.

Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview

You can switch between the classic daemon or the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 with the following commands:

# Switch to classic deamon
 
docker context use default
 
# Switch to WSL 2
 
docker context use wsl

Linux Containers on Windows 10

You can now also do crazy things like run SQL Server on Linux in a Docker container on Windows 10.

SQL Server on Linux Docker Container Windows 10 WSL 2

I hope this gives you a good overview of how you will be able to run Linux containers on Windows in the future. Again this is still a Tech Preview, and we might see many changes to that feature. If you want to know more, read the full blog post on the Docker page. Also, check out the current Linux Container on Windows documentation. If you any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Jul302019July 30, 2019July 30, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

How to Install Azure CLI on Windows (one-liner)

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Docker, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

There are many ways you can manage Azure, for example, by using the Azure PowerShell, Cloud Shell, or many other tools. One of them is the Azure CLI, which is a command-line tool providing a management experience for Azure resources. In this blog post, I will show you how you can download, install, and update the Azure CLI on Windows with a simple PowerShell one-liner.

Installation

First, if you want to install the CLI, on Windows, Linux or other platforms, we have some excellent documentation on this on Microsoft Docs.

Install Azure CLI on Windows using a PowerShell One-liner

Install Azure CLI on Windows using PowerShell

Instead of downloading the MSI file manually and install it on your Windows 10 machine, you can run the following PowerShell one-liner to install the Azure CLI. Start PowerShell as administrator and run the following command:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/installazurecliwindows -OutFile .\AzureCLI.msi; Start-Process msiexec.exe -Wait -ArgumentList '/I AzureCLI.msi /quiet'

This will download and install the latest version of the Azure CLI for Windows. If you already have a version installed, it will update the existing version. Reopen PowerShell or the command prompt to start using it, and just type:

az

If you are running behind a proxy, make sure you configure your proxy settings.

Run Azure CLI on Windows using a Docker Container

Run Azure CLI Docker Container on Windows 10

If you have Docker installed, you can also run the CLI in an isolated environment using the mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cli container image and run the following command:

docker run -it mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cli

You can also use the container image as a base for your custom container image. Little fun fact, the container image is based on Linux, and with Linux containers on Windows, it runs great on Windows 10. You can find more information about running the CLI in a Docker container, on Microsoft Docs.

Configuration

After the CLI is installed, you can also configure some default settings.

az configure

One of the settings which I really like to change is the default output from JSON to table. However, you can configure it the way you like it.

az configure

To manage your Azure resources you now need to log in using the login command.

az login

az login

After the login, you will run the commands in the context of the specific user, and start working with your Azure resources.

Azure PowerShell vs. Azure CLI

I often get asked by customers, which one should they use. The short answer is: it depends. I am a long-time PowerShell user, so PowerShell is more natural to me when it comes to scripting. But if someone is using different CLIs in the past, he might prefer the CLI experience. I personally love that PowerShell gives me objects and especially in scripts, this makes things much easier for me. However, when it commands to do something in a one-liner quickly, the Azure CLI experience often works better for me. So it really depends on what you prefer, Microsoft gives you a choice to use whatever works best for you. Yes, not all services are indeed available in both of them. Especially when the service is in preview, it can happen that you only have one of them available. However, the teams are working hard to bring services to both experiences.

By the way, you can always run the latest version in the Azure Cloud Shell. And you can see this runs great if in the newest preview of the new Windows Terminal.

I hope this helps you installing the Azure CLI on Windows if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Tag: Windows 10

Change the Windows Terminal Theme from Light to Dark

Change to Windows Terminal Dark Theme

Activate Light Theme

New Microsoft Code and Terminal Font Cascadia Code

How to Change the Windows Terminal Background Image

Customize the Windows Terminal Background Image

Opacity

Acrylic effect

How to open Windows Terminal from Command Prompt or Run

Run Linux Containers with Docker Desktop and WSL 2

Prerequisites

How to set up Docker and WSL 2

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