Blog
Practical articles from KomuraSoft LLC about website development, SEO, Google Ads, Windows development, legacy asset reuse, and bug investigation.
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An Introduction to Microsoft Graph PowerShell — Running Microsoft 365 After the Retirement of AzureAD and MSOnline
A practical guide to migrating Microsoft 365 operations to Microsoft Graph PowerShell now that the AzureAD and MSOnline modules have been retired: connecting...
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Parallel Processing in PowerShell — Choosing Between ForEach-Object -Parallel and Jobs
A practical rundown of the differences between ForEach-Object -Parallel, Start-ThreadJob and Start-Job and when to use each, $using: and thread safety, how t...
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Calling External EXEs Correctly from PowerShell — The Pitfalls of Argument Quoting, Exit Codes, and Mojibake
Call robocopy or an in-house EXE from PowerShell and the arguments break, the exit code is unavailable, and the output turns into mojibake. A practical rundo...
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Process Explorer / Handle / VMMap in Practice — Chasing Hangs, Leaks, and "File in Use" from the State Right Now
Part two of our practical Sysinternals series, covering "it gets slower and slower," "the file can't be deleted," and "it hung." We look at Process Explorer'...
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How to Replace an exe or DLL That Is In Use — Restart Manager and the "File In Use" Problem in Auto-Update
Why can't an exe or DLL that is in use be replaced? This article covers the locking of running files and the fact that renaming is still allowed, enumerating...
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Locking Down Business Terminals with Kiosk Mode — Choosing Between Assigned Access and Shell Launcher, and Designing for Operation
How to build a Windows terminal dedicated to a single application, such as a reception kiosk or a device operator panel. Covers the differences between Assig...
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Windows Time Synchronization (w32time) and Business Systems — Solving "The Log Timestamps Don't Match" from the Mechanism Up
Why do timestamps drift between a device and a PC? This article explains it from the mechanics of the Windows Time service (w32time): the default behavior in...
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Registry 32-bit/64-bit Redirection and Virtualization Pitfalls — Wow6432Node and the "The Value I Wrote Isn't There" Problem
How a 32-bit app's writes to HKLM\Software get redirected to Wow6432Node, the conditions under which UAC virtualization diverts them to the VirtualStore, the...
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Which Windows Should You Put on an Industrial PC? — A Practical Guide to Windows IoT Enterprise / LTSC
A PC embedded in a piece of equipment is expected to run for ten years, yet ordinary Windows 11 receives an annual feature update and goes out of support in ...
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Practical Options After Windows 10 End of Support — A Decision Table for ESU, LTSC, and Replacement
Nine months on from the Windows 10 end of support in October 2025. This article organises what to do with the Windows 10 PCs still sitting in your organisati...
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Should That Batch File Move to PowerShell? — Auditing cmd/bat Assets and Making the Migration Call
A decision table for working out whether the batch files still running your business should move to PowerShell: how cmd and VBScript differ in status, bat's ...
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Calling COM and .NET from PowerShell — Widening What Your Scripts Can Reach
A practical guide to calling .NET classes from PowerShell, embedding C# and Win32 APIs with Add-Type, driving COM, cleaning up leftover Excel processes, why ...
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Choosing Between Power Automate and PowerShell + Task Scheduler — Putting Each Automation Tool Where It Fits Instead of Mixing Them
For IT staff at small and mid-sized companies where PowerShell + Task Scheduler nightly batches and Power Automate flows have started to coexist, this articl...
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Handling Credentials Safely in PowerShell — Banishing Plaintext Passwords from Your Scripts
A practical walkthrough of moving plaintext passwords out of PowerShell scripts and into safe storage: what SecureString really is and where it stops, how Ex...
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Preventing Key-Person Dependency in Power Automate — Keeping Flows Running After the Person Who Built Them Leaves
An overview of how to counter the risk of Power Automate flows stopping when their creator resigns or transfers: what happens when the owner is deleted, sett...
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What Do the Eight Digits of an Insurer Number Tell You? — Law-Type Numbers, Prefecture Numbers and Check Digits Read from a Receipt Computer's Implementation
The insurer number on a Japanese health insurance card is made up of a 2-digit law-type number, a 2-digit prefecture number, a 3-digit per-insurer number and...
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Parameter Design and Modularization for PowerShell Scripts — From a Script That Works to a Script You Can Hand Over
A step-by-step procedure for raising a PowerShell script to a quality you can hand to someone else. Covers the param block and [CmdletBinding()], input valid...
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Reading Faxed Purchase Orders With AI Builder — A Realistic Design for Cutting Manual Data Entry, and Where It Stops
A walkthrough of how to cut manual entry of faxed purchase orders using AI Builder document processing: turning faxes into PDFs on the MFP, training a custom...
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Taking Inventory of a File Server with PowerShell — Capacity Analysis and Access Permission (ACL) Auditing
A practical procedure for taking inventory of a file server with PowerShell. Covers capacity analysis and recording access denials, listing old files and ext...
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Power Automate Licensing — How Far Microsoft 365 Gets You for Free, and When You Need Premium
Within Microsoft 365 you can build and run cloud flows on standard connectors at no extra cost, but premium connectors such as HTTP, SQL Server, and Datavers...
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Code Design for Business Systems — Deciding Product and Customer Codes, and Check Digits
A practical guide to deciding the code scheme for a business system, including product and customer codes. Covers a decision table for meaningful codes versu...
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An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting (WinRM) — Managing Multiple Windows Machines at Once
An introduction to managing multiple Windows machines at once with PowerShell Remoting (WinRM). Covers how it works and ports 5985/5986, what Enable-PSRemoti...
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Building an Intake for Internal Requests with Microsoft Forms — Consolidating Email and Verbal Requests into a Form
A practical guide to consolidating the email and verbal requests that land on IT, general affairs, and accounting into Microsoft Forms. Covers question desig...
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What Does the Electronic Prescription Change in a Receipt Computer? — Reading ORCA's Electronic Prescription Support in the Source Code
What does a receipt computer actually need in order to support electronic prescriptions? From the table design in ORCA (Nichi-Rece) that manages prescription...
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The Differences Between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 — A Practical Guide to Migrating In-House Scripts
The relationship between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 (side-by-side coexistence and pwsh.exe), Microsoft's official position that 5.1 gets no new ...
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Replacing an Excel Ledger with a SharePoint List — Sharing, History, and Flow Integration to Put an End to the Broken Ledger
A practical guide to migrating an Excel ledger on a shared folder to a SharePoint list (Microsoft Lists). Covers solving concurrent editing, overwrites and r...
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Automating Excel and CSV Work with PowerShell — Practical Recipes for Aggregation, Reconciliation, and Report Output
Practical recipes for automating CSV aggregation, reconciliation, and Excel report output with PowerShell. Covers the default encodings of Import-Csv/Export-...
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Power Automate Error Handling and Retry Design — Preventing 'The Flow Was Working, Then It Just Stopped'
A collection of design patterns for preventing Power Automate flows from silently stopping without anyone noticing. Based on Microsoft Learn's official speci...
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Where Do Downcoding and Returned Claims Actually Happen? — Taking Apart Receipt Checking Logic Using ORCA's Source Code and Public Documents
Where do downcoding and returned claims actually happen? From ORCA's data check function and its check masters, through the rece-den data check, to the compu...
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PowerShell Error Handling and Retry Design — From the try/catch Trap to Exit Codes and Retry Best Practices
A practical rundown of PowerShell error handling: the difference between terminating and non-terminating errors, the -ErrorAction Stop pattern for the try/ca...