Microsoft’s Upgrade Windows with only a product key website has two Windows download / upgrade tools: one for Windows 8, and another for Windows 8.1. Both tools require valid Windows key to download installation setup files. After that you can choose whether to upgrade Windows immediately or just create a bootable DVD or ISO file.…

Issue Following error pops-up when trying to open any Windows Explorer window (My Computer, Recycle Bin, Control Panel, etc.) The Window actually opens, but nevertheless the error was pretty annoying. Missing File ErrorUnable to find locale data files. Please reinstall.

Update: August 2015 – If you are getting Outlook 0x800CCC13 error after upgrading to Windows 10, check this article. After many months of working absolutely fine, Gmail IMAP / SMTP account on MS Outlook 2010 started to misbehave. It was still receiving emails fine, but was randomly failing to send anything over SMTP. Emails would get stuck on Outbox…

Acer W510 tablet / hybrid Intel Atom Processor Z2760 (Clovertrail) Windows 8.1 After updating Acer W510  to Windows 8.1 (and updating to the latest drivers provided by Acer), computer no longer resumes from sleep properly. Normally W510 resumes from sleep instantly, but now it takes 5-10 seconds. Occasionally after resuming from sleep, display would only…

Issue Internet Explorer 11 stopped working on Windows 8.1. On startup it crashes with error “Internet Explorer has stopped working“. Internet Explorer has stopped working.Windows is checking for a solution to the problem…

Change your word file extension from .docx to .zip Go into the .zip archive and open file word\document.xml with any text editor.

Issue Heavily formatted two column Word document (docx) created in MS Word 2010. Everything looks fine until you print it. When printed, in one particular spot word “Optical” would be visible. This would print right on top of the normal existing text. 

Issue Certain in-house developed software update package fails to run properly on Windows 7 machines with UAC (User Account Control) enabled. The updater was run under administrator account with elevated privileges. After some investigation we concluded that issue was caused by the update package trying to access user’s mapped network drives that were unavailable because…

PDF files can normally be protected / encrypted in two different ways: Owner password. Also called print / edit password. Anyone can open and view the document, but printing, editing and copying can be prevented. Users must provide password to enable these actions. User password. Also called Open password. Document cannot be opened without providing…

If you installing Windows 8 using legacy BIOS boot method, volume will be partitioned using old good MBR (Master Boot Record).If you install it using new UEFI boot method, volume will be partitioned as GTP (GUID Partition Table). This normally doesn’t make too much difference in day-to-day usage of Windows, but can be quite important if…

Had a small issue trying to install Windows 7 Pro on DELL Latitude E5430 laptop that originally came with Windows 8. Using DELL original Windows 7 Pro installation DVD. First issue was that Windows 7 Pro installation DVD would not boot. This one was easy to resolve. Simply load DELL BIOS and disable Secure Boot…

Issue Java 7 update 40 installation via group policy hangs on some Windows XP and Windows 7 computers. This was an update for Java 7 Update 25 previously also installed via Group Policy. Trying to remove Java 7 Update 25 manually via Control Panel fails with error:  RunDLLThere was a problem starting C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\installer.dllThe specified…