Direct download links for Microsoft Surface drivers
Here are links to the driver packs for various Microsoft Surface devices, including Surface Laptop and Surface Pro. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-au/surface...
Read post →Our thinking
Blog
Technical notes and observations from years of supporting creative businesses on Mac.
Start Windows Defender offline scan with third-party antivirus installed
If you're using Windows Defender as your primary antivirus, then it's pretty easy to start an offline scan – simply go to the Window Security app > Virus & t...
Read post →Set Immutable ID (onPremisesImmutableId) in Entra ID via Microsoft Graph PowerShell
I've got a few clients who use Google Workspace as their main platform, but also need to use Microsoft Office or Teams, so have a Microsoft 365 tenancy as we...
Read post →IT Support Technician (Part-Time, 3-4 days/week)
Automatica is a boutique consultancy that keeps creative small businesses humming. We tame Macs, wrangle the occasional Windows machine, and dive deep into M...
Read post →Network discovery using LLDP on macOS
In trying to find the IP address of a switch on the network, I first turned (without much hope) to performing a Bonjour discovery on the network, but as expe...
Read post →Post-installation script for Dropbox on macOS
If you're deploying Dropbox to multiple systems, there's now an Enterprise Installer available from Dropbox which has a postinstall script to properly initia...
Read post →Create new user in Microsoft 365 Entra ID via PowerShell when using Federation with Google Workspace
I've got a client for whom I've set up federation between their Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra ID tenancies. Google Workspace is their primary platform...
Read post →Bypass Windows 11 TPM check from within the Windows 11 Installation Assistant
Today I needed to install Windows 11 on a late-model Intel-based Mac mini. The Mac mini has an 8th gen Intel Core i3 CPU, 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD. It supports...
Read post →Install Windows 11 on Apple Mac mini (2018)
I'm putting this up as a duplicate of my recent post detailing how to bypass TPM checks when installing Windows 11 on an Intel-based Mac mini with 8th-gen CP...
Read post →Bypass Windows 11 TPM check from within the Windows installer
I recently needed to do a clean install of Windows onto some specialised hardware – a PC that was custom built as a controller for some industrial equipment...
Read post →Getting started with this blog
The first post — testing the setup and demonstrating the blog format.
Read post →Issues with DNS on macOS not looking up hostnames on LAN from internal DNS server
I had an issue recently with a client whereby they were unable to resolve servers on the local network via their hostnames. What was really odd is that using...
Read post →Import Contacts in to the Microsoft 365 Global Address List using PowerShell
I'm working with a client who needs a few hundred contacts added to the GAL in Microsoft 365. Easy! Just upload a CSV and you're good to go! Shortest. Blog P...
Read post →Prompt user on macOS to change local machine password on first login
I frequently set up new laptops for clients, and as a part of this, I'll often set up their user account so I can sign in to all of their services for them....
Read post →Can't log in to Windows after deleting user profile folder in /Users
I recently had a client who when they gave me the login details to set up a new user for them, they had a typo in that person's first name. As their email ad...
Read post →Configure Netgear NF20MESH wifi modem router in bridge mode
I was recently stuck with trying to set up a UniFi Dream Machine on an NBN FTTN connection, and being FTTN it was delivered over VDSL, not Ethernet. As such,...
Read post →Download older Intel macOS Installers on an Apple Silicon Mac
I recently picked up a bunch of older Intel Macs that a client was disposing of, and needed to wipe them and instal an older version of macOS, such as Catali...
Read post →Fix broken createinstallmedia from macOS Catalina to run on modern macOS
In my last post, described a way to download the macOS Catalina onto an Apple Silicon Mac . Once I had the installer in hand however, running the createinsta...
Read post →Add a domain to the Tennant Allow/Block Lists in Microsoft 365 using PowerShell
If you're using Defender for Office 365, then you have access to some pretty powerful anti-phishing and anti-spam capabilities. Sometimes however the anti-ph...
Read post →Force Spotlight to rebuild search indexes
There's an excellent series of articles on Spotlight in recent versions of macOS over on the Eclectic Light website. I've recently had a couple of machines t...
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