Received an old DELL Latitude C400 Windows XP laptop with not working sound. Quick look into device manager revealed the first problem problem: Crystal WDM Audio Codecs device was listed with exclamation mark and Device Status in Properties was "This device cannot start. (Code 10)".

First off all tried to update sound drivers to the latest available from DELL website. Initially looked like this has worked – sound was working absolutely fine and no errors in device manager. Unfortunately after a reboot I was back to square one – no sound and the same error in the device manager. Whatever I tried to do with drivers (downgrade, upgrade, completely remove from system) result was always the same – sound was working after reinstalling drivers and was gone after a reboot.



This looked like some sort of hardware or driver conflict. Checked Add Removed Programs and noticed two or three pieces of modem software and drivers. This was a bit suspicious as there was no modem listed in the device manager. Quickly removed all modem software; unfortunately no luck, Crystal WDM Audio Codecs still failed to load after reboot. Then found and physically removed actual modem (it was installed next to the RAM module; had to undo two small captive screws and remove a memory module cover). Started the laptop again and was greeted by familiar Windows XP start-up sound, a few more reboots confirmed that sound problem is fixed.

It seems that issue was caused faulty modem interfering with sound hardware or drivers.

If you have to install Office 2010 on number of machines, you may want to slipstream SP1 so you don’ have to install it on every machine manually (or rely on Windows Updates).
Slipstreaming process for Office 2010 is really simple. All you need to do is copy extracted SP1 files to the Updates folder in Office installation.

1. Create folder Office 2010 on your C: drive and copy there all installation files from your Office 2010 DVD
2. Download SP1 files from Microsoft and save them on C: drive
   • 32-bit version
   • 64-bit version
3. Run downloaded files in command file with switches:
   • /extract:C:\SP1x32 – 32 bit version. E.g:
     C:\officesuite2010sp1-kb2460049-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:C:\SP1x32
   • /extract:C:\SP1x64 – 64 bit version. E.g:
     C:\officesuite2010sp1-kb2460049-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:C:\SP1x64
   This will extract according SP1 files to C:\SP1x32 and C:\SP1x64
   
   
4. Copy SP1 files:
   • Copy/Move content of C:\SP1x32 to C:\Office 2010\x86\Updates
   • Copy/Move content of C:\SP1x64 to C:\Office 2010\x64\Updates
5. Rename folder Office 2010 to Office 2010 with SP1 and burn it on a DVD or save on the network.

Now, when you run Office 2010 setup next time, SP1 will be automatically installed at the end of setup.

A user came to me complaining that it takes 10-20 second for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to display a picture from a desktop on his Windows XP machine. During this time Picture Viewer freezes; at the same time some other opened applications including Windows Explorer hang as well.

A quick investigation revealed that issue was caused by number of broken shortcuts residing on his desktop. Some of them were pointing to non existing network locations. It seems that while Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is opening a file it also tries to read information about other files in the same folder. Deleting invalid shortcuts fixed the problem.

Windows XP SP3

If your Windows 8 dev preview Metro apps refuse to open the most likely reason is that your screen resolution is lower than 1024 x 768. Annoyingly there is no error or warning message.
Try switching to Windows Desktop App and increase resolution as you would do on any Windows 7 machine.

If you can't increase resolution to at least 1024 x 768, you can try a registry hack suggested here.