Because several applications are paid separately (Visio is the example) from the rest of O365, and we were running low on licenses (and we also didn’t have a Software Audit tool installed), I had to find the quick and dirty (ie cheap and fast) way of finding out the information required.

It was easy to pull who had a license associated with their account. Just log into the Admin Portal admin.microsoft.com, navigate under Billing > Licenses > click on the product.

In my case it’s Visio Plan 2. Licenses 0 available, 32 assigned.

Powershell to the rescue

$name = $env:COMPUTERNAME
$path = "\\fileserver.domain.tld\share\subdir\" + $name + "_lastusedApp.csv"
Get-ChildItem -Path ${env:ProgramFiles(x86)} -Filter "*.exe" -Recurse | Get-ItemProperty | select name,lastaccesstime | sort -Property lastaccesstime | Export-Csv -Path $path -Encoding ascii -NoTypeInformation

Just need to run that remotely on the system. You can psexec or I was trying to use the invoke-command but was coming up with lack of rights to run remote scripts and didn’t need to look any further.

The .csv then shows a list of all installed applications and the last time they were opened. Unfortunately if someone never reboots their system (uptime over a year or so) and keeps the application(s) open that entire time, it’ll appear as though they haven’t “used” it in the last year. Just something to keep in mind.

Eventviewer was showing Event ID 1515 and I was logged in as with a temporary profile. No other user was experiencing this, so I went about fixing with REGEDIT.

• Open Regedit
• Start > Run > regedit
• Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\
• Find any profiles with “.bak” in them
• Delete the .bak entire subkey
• Log off, log on

So this all started because I was unable to open the Windows Security Center. It just wouldn’t open.

I tried to open SecHealthUI.exe directly (C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.SecHealthUI*\) and that failed out. Eventviewer showed Faulting application name: sechealthui.exe, faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll. Someone wanted me to re-run the kernelbase.dll registry (regsvr32 kernelbase.dll) which doesn’t do anything unless you give yourself administrative privs to the kernelbase.dll file. And didn’t fix my issue anyway.

What did help me was re-installing all of the Windows Apps with the following powershell command:

• windows key + x
• Select Windows Powershell (Admin)
• Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
• Profit

And, because this is entitled “Widnows Apps”..

• Uninstall XBox Windows-related items
• Select Windows Powershell (Admin)
• Get-AppXPackage *xboxapp* -AllUsers | Remove-AppXPackage

Had a remote user complain that his laptop’s battery was only lasting “about 5 minutes” before it would either shutdown or he’d have to plug it in. The laptop was 3 years old, but the battery had already been replaced ~6 months ago.

It’s at this point that I’d like to push my own thinking. This user had received a new-to-him laptop as the first member of his team to be upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. If you’re familiar with Dell products, he upgraded from a 7480 to a 7490 laptop. If you’re also familiar with how office politics goes, as soon as one person on a team has something new/shiny, the others want it too. Well this PoC upgrade process (he was part of a pilot group) went well. Fast forward 6 months and the rest of his team is receiving 7400 laptops and he feels like he’s missing out (total conjecture) as part of their windows 10 upgrade process.

Anyway, you can run the battery report remotely assuming they’re somehow connected to the network – usually via a VPN or directly on the network.

• Run Powershell as an Administrator
  • windows key + x, Windows Powershell (Admin)
• powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\temp\battery-report.html"
• Open the battery-report.html in any browser