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Category: Windows

  • Copy drivers from one computer to another

    If you are having issues trying to find a correct driver for a device on one PC, but have a working driver on another computer, you can easily transfer the driver from one PC to another. Windows stores a copy of each installed driver in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository folder.

  • How to determine which server is default time server in Active Directory Domain

    In Windows Active Directory Domain, the default authoritative time server is the server holding PDC Emulator (primary domain controller emulator) FSMO role. To find out which server holds PDC Emulator role run: netdom query fsmo Windows Server 2003Windows Server 2008Windows Server 2012  

  • Deploy Outlook email templates (stationary) on multiple computers via GP

    Microsoft Outlook Personal Stationary feature allows to apply a template for all new emails. This can be enabled in File > Options > Mail > Stationary and Fonts >  Personal Stationary > Theme.  Outlook themes are standard HTML files and are stored in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery (on 32bit machines); or C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\Stationery…

  • Batch rename multiple files at once in Windows

    Windows File Explorer has some (very limited) capacity to batch rename files. Simply select multiple files, right click on the first one and click Rename. All files will be renamed to your entered string, adding incremental numbers at the end. If you need more flexibility you should look into third party software. There are number of free…

  • Windows 10 Preview – Open File Explorer in This PC / Quick Access

    Windows 10 Technical Preview File Explorer by default opens in Quick Access view. You can easily change this and make it open in This PC (Previously known as My Computer) view.

  • Windows 10 Preview Cortana – I’m afraid I’m not available to help in your region

    If you live outside the US and installed Windows 10 Technical Preview, you may be disappointed when Microsoft’s new virtual assistant Cortana greets you with following message: I’m afraid I’m not available to help in your region. Hopefully Cortana will be supported in a variety of regions and languages on release, but as of now it only works in…

  • Allow to view and run scheduled tasks without admin rights

    Note: This method doesn’t work on Windows 10 / Server 2016 and higher. Issue Non-admin users cannot run (or even see) scheduled tasks created by users with admin rights. Resolution Scheduled tasks are saved in C:\Windows\System32\Tasks folder as xml files (with no extension). To allow non-admin users to view and run a task, find the task(s)…

  • Can’t deploy apk via Android Studio – stale dexed jars / INSTALL_FAILED_UID_CHANGED

    Issue Can’t re-deploy application apk that was already installed on a device via Android Studio. Application build would complete fine, but apk install stops with following warning: Installation failed since the device possibly has stale dexed jars that don’t match the current version (dexopt error).In order to proceed, you have to uninstall the existing application.WARNING: Uninstalling…

  • Add or remove watched folder manually in Google Picasa

    Not sure if this was a Google Picasa bug or by design but when I recently tried to add folders on an SD card to the Google Picasa Folder Manager it didn’t work. The SD card (drive D:) would simply not appear in the Folder Manger. After a bit of digging I found a way to add…

  • Find Windows product / serial key

    To find product / serial keys for Windows or MS Office I normally use NirSoft ProduKey. You can download v1.70 from here: 32bit / 64bit. Or look for the latest version on developers’ website. Recently I also found a simple .vbs script that decodes Windows serial number from registry. I always try to attribute developers, but in this…

  • Importing pst file via EMS or Outlook fails due to email size limit

    I recently had to import couple of large .pst email archives into MS Exchange 2010 mailbox. First of all I tried using Exchange Management Shell (EMS) cmdlet: New-MailboxImportRequest -FilePath “\\server\share\FileName.pst” -Mailbox <user.name> -TargetRootFolder “Import” One .pst file was successfully imported, but second failed. There were not many clues in EMS output. It simply said that…

  • Save emails from Outlook as .msg with dates

    To save individual emails from Microsoft Outlook to .msg format you can simply select required emails and drag them to any folder or to your desktop. The only issue I have with this approach is that each .msg file name is made up of only of email subject and sometimes a number (to avoid conflicts…