Workaround: Chrome will not PIN sites to Windows 10 Taskbar

I could rant for a long while about how Microsoft removed the verb “Pin to Taskbar” from the Shell.Application COM object but I won’t. I will simply say that I think they did that to keep OEM’s from putting crap on it when you buy a new PC. However as so often is the case, there was unintended side effects. Reasonable use cases like Chrome being able to PIN websites and Corporate IT being able to PIN corporate applications comes to mind. Lets not talk about how anti-competitive it looks when Internet Explorer (IE) is able to still pin items to the taskbar yet 3rd Party browsers like Chrome are left in the dust.

Ok I said I wouldn’t rant, here is the workaround.

  • Simply do the normal process in Chrome to PIN something to the start menu.
  • Then go here:
    • C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Chrome Apps
      • Note: <username> will be your username you use to logon to Windows. If you dont know it simply go to c:\users and you should be able to figure it out
  • Find the shortcut Chrome created for your website, right click and you will see “PIN to Taskbar”

Also thanks to Reddit for figuring this out:

Chrome "Add To Taskbar" Issue from Windows10

Leave a comment if it helped you!

-Eric

Get a list of all System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM 2012 R2) Users via SQL

Ever need to send a notice to your System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) users like “Upgrade to UR7 coming” but realized you never took the time to collect all of their names?

Here is some quick SQL that will give you the names of anyone who has actually used the platform:

select
distinct replace(SessionOwner, ‘contoso\’,”) as Username
from [tbl_TR_TaskTrail]
order by 1

As a added bonus if you replace contoso with your domain name it will strip that out making it ready to past into outlook for name resolution.

Enjoy!

-Eric

Search Active Directory for Specific Word or Phrase (string) in a Group

Ever tried to search for a group by name but the part you know is in the middle? Did you think you would be smart and go to the advanced tab then do “blah” contains, hit search and find nothing?

Quickest way to find is actually via PowerShell

Get-ADGroup -Filter {Name -like “*blah*”} | select SAMAccountName

Works great!

Enjoy

-Eric

Offline Downloading of Windows 10 Patchs

Anyone looking at Microsoft KB’s may be surprised to see that there are no direct download links. However you can still download the patches manually by finding and downloding them here:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com

This can also be used to import patches into WSUS if needed.

Hope it help

-Eric