Windows

Microsoft is a classic American story. If you want to know why Microsoft is the best in some people’s minds, it helps to start with that. But two people can look at the same set of facts about Microsoft and come to very different conclusions. That makes Microsoft interesting to follow, but at times confounding.

Microsoft’s story is basically the story of a string of successes, in sequence. The details matter, but in a nutshell, people’s opinion about Microsoft is generally shaped by their opinion about that success.

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I wanted to be able to stream from Windows Media Player to Roku. I have lots of media stored on my Windows computers, but what’s the point of connecting a computer to my TV if I already have a Roku on it? Fortunately it’s not hard to get Roku and Windows talking.

People of a certain age probably have a lot of media loaded on their PCs, whether it’s MP3s ripped from CDs or vinyl, home movies, or digital video obtained from other sources. Needless to say, a lot of that stuff isn’t on streaming services and never will be. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want to watch it.

Windows Media Player can stream between multiple PCs, but it can also stream to devices like Roku, which, in many cases, is even more convenient.

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The computer my sons use sometimes became unreliable a few weeks ago. It would work normally for a while, but rarely could make it through a full day without locking up hard. Here’s how I fixed the Windows 10 random lockups.

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I saw an interesting question the other day. A sysadmin had a department asking for more computers, and he suspected the department wasn’t using the machines they have. His IT department didn’t want to go to the trouble and expense to provide more computers to a department that didn’t need them. So here’s how to check computer usage.

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You probably know how to unzip a file in Windows 10. You double-click on it. But Windows 10 can create zip files too, not just extract them. Here’s how to zip a folder in Windows 10 without buying or installing any additional software.

This option isn’t exclusive to Windows 10. Windows 7 included this functionality too, as did some versions of Windows I wish you wouldn’t use anymore. It’s hiding in a menu that doesn’t get a lot of use these days. But back when floppy disks existed, this menu was the fastest way to copy a file to a floppy. Today it’s the fastest way to create a zip file.

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A good trick for the busy system administrator is knowing how to reboot Windows from a command line. For example, I used to push patches on Thursday and Friday, suppress the reboots, then reboot my servers from a batch file starting on Monday. Rebooting from a command line rather than using the Start menu and selecting shutdown or restart saved me countless hours.

As a security professional, I know when systems need to reboot based on seeing Tenable plugin 34543 or Qualys QID 90126 in my scan results.

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My Windows 10 sound stopped working suddenly. One day it worked, the next day, it quit. Nothing else changed–I hadn’t even rebooted. If, like me, you experience Windows 10 sound not working, here’s a quick fix to try that should take you less than a minute.

My symptoms were simple. My web browser quit playing audio. Muting and unmuting didn’t help. Changing the volume didn’t help. I tried a different browser and it wouldn’t play audio either. Then I fired up Windows Media Player and tried to play a song. I got silence. Then I got a red X next to the song that didn’t play. If this sounds familiar, keep reading. I can probably help you.

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