AWS

I'm trying to create a Windows 8 snapshot using: C:Windowssystem32&gtrecimg /createimage C:Refresh Source OS location: C: Recovery image path: C:RefreshCustomRefresh.wim Creating recovery image. Press [ESC] to cancel. Initializing 100% Creating snapshot 100% Writting image (this may take a while) 8% The recovery image cannot be written. Error Code - 0x80070006 I've got a C: with over 40GB of free space left on it, and I've also tried saving to the second D: partition on which I have &gt10GB of space with the same result (I'm preety sure that I don't need much more since the Windows installation for which I'm trying to create the recovery image for has only ~15GB ... it has only been fully updated and had Office installed on it (after fresh install)? View the full article

I just upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and none of the tiles except Maps works. They just seem to load for EVER, leaving me in front of a blue screen. I tried everything: changing the screen resolution, creating another user account, running all sorts of tests, multiple restarts, turning off my antivirus, deleting the ole key etc. It looks like a lot of other people have the same problem yet there has been no solution. Microsoft should never release something not functioning! View the full article

So Windows 8 was great, then installed AVG Antivirus and now it keeps restarting and i can't get it to stop, keeps BSOD with DPC Watchdog Violation. Anyone know how to fix, I get about 30sec-2min before it BSOD? View the full article

Is there any way to make the windows 8 start screen STAY active on one of the monitors while working on the others? If not the start screen is just a horrible waste of space and time for me and countless other users who will have this same issue. Also is there a way to make the start screen boot onto a monitor that is not my main? This needs to be implemented as it is an annoyance every time I boot up my computer. I know this is an issue for many users already and I think this is a very needed addition to make any kind of use of the windows 8 start screen with multiple monitors. Thanks for your time. View the full article

Not sure how to get Windows Media Center to auto launch when I restart my PC... This article: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Start-Windows-Media-Center-automatically-when-Windows-starts Says I can go into some settings, but when I hit that screen I only have two options: &quotShow a warning before..&quot and &quotShow task bar notifications&quot View the full article

I am running Windows 8 Pro RTM, activated and updated. Last week suddenly it startet, that everytime Windows 8 starts it opens the "My Documents" Folder by its own and so switching to the Desktop. It is really anoying. I made a full fresh Install of Windows 8 in hope this issue will vanish, but after login in (synchronizing) with my Microsoft Accout the issue was back. Any ideas? View the full article

I have two local accounts with empty passwords. When computer boots it always logs in as the first account. Is there a way to make it show the log on screen, so I would be able to choose which account to use? View the full article

Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox are not working in Windows 8 View the full article

You can upgrade Windows 8 pro to Enterprise View the full article

sir/madam I am a windows 8 pro user and my windows is fully activated but still when I go to P.C SETTINGS I am not able to change my account picture, lock screen &amp start screen display, So kindly help me. Regards utkarsh chandel View the full article

Hi - I'm trying to get an Office 365 Exchange account set-up with the Windows 8 Mail app. It's giving me an error stating the following: To sync this account, you first need to: Make your Windows user account an administrator. I do not want to give admin privileges to the individual user account on Windows (as the error is stating that it wants me to give admin privileges to the local Windows 8 account - not on Office 365) and I cannot find any restriction set-up in the admin console/settings on Office 365 (or in Widows 8) that would require this privilege. This same account (on Office 365) can connect fine via Outlook 2010 and a Windows Phone 7 mail app. How can I solve this?.. View the full article

I am running a web application that requires System.IdentityModel.dll file. This DLL file is present in Windows 7, .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, however, it is missing from Windows 8 .NetFramework 3.5. Is there a reason it was left out? How can I get that DLL file into my assembly in Windows 8? Could not load file or assembly 'System.IdentityModel.Selectors, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. View the full article

On a remote desktop session to an Enterprise edition of Windows 8 I cannot get it to allow me to use more than one local monitor but less than all my local monitors. In my setup I have three local monitors and wish to use only two for the remote desktop session. I have used gpedit.msc to set the value of the setting below to 2 per this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/07/01/using-multiple-monitors-in-remote-desktop-session.aspx but when I try to connect to the remote desktop after setting it to 2 and doing a gpupdate it will only connect one of my local monitors. I had to disable the setting and let it connect to all three again. Is there no way to use only two of my three local monitors in a remote desktop session to Windows 8 Enterprise Edition? BTW, I could connect to Windows 7 Enterprise edition using the RDC /span option. Not as nice as full two monitor support but usable and for me better than using all three local monitors. I have been unable to get this option to connect to more than one monitor with Windows 8. Thank you in advance. View the full article

How do I enable Windows Update desktop notifications or a tile or something? ThereHAS to be a way. For Christ sake... It doesn't show you if there are new updates unless you check manually through Windows Update (no, I don't have it set automatically and I won't have it that way either). You loose important updates. You don't know if the computer has to be restarted. View the full article

yet.. Icons are located at C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsMicrosoft Office 2013 is there a way to &quotPin to Start Menu&quot all of them at once? thanks View the full article

Like the person here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/how-can-i-disable-auto-sign-in-for-internet/6501d8bb-543f-4fce-83c4-5c719ddb517f I would like to figure out a way to disable the automatic sign in when you go to a Microsoft website like Outlook.com within IE10. The account I am using on my Windows 8 machine for example would be : username1@outlook.com But if I want to go to Outlook.com, and check my email for account: username2@outlook.com, as soon as I connect to the website, it automatically logs me in with username1@outlook.com. So I have to log out, and back on as the account I want to use. Yes I could switch my Windows 8 account over to the 2nd account, but I would be in the same boat if I wanted to check mail for the first username. Right now to avoid this problem I simply just have to use a browser other than IE, but I would like to see if there is someway to get IE10 not to automatically sign me in under my current Microsoft Account I have on Windows 8. Resetting IE settings, etc does not help. This is something Windows 8 does by default with IE10 on every machine. View the full article

I have a problem with a pdf file which does not open with reader in windows 8 but it opens properly with adobe pdf reader. All other pdf can be opened in reader.But when i open a pdf(see this link for pdf for which i got error http://incometaxsoft.com/temp/Form.pdf) it gives error as &quotCan't open this file. There's a problem with file format&quot. The same file opens properly in adobe pdf reader.You can check the pdf file which i have mentioned in the link above.But the reader which comes with windows 8 can open some other pdf in the same PC.What may be the error causing this??[url=" View the full article

Today I was checking &quotMetro&quot control panel and noticed that apps list in the notifications settings is empty (I have apps capable of showing toasts and they are listed properly in the lockscreen settings). Anyone had similar problem and know how to fix it? I also have a strange problem with &quotOpen in command prompt&quot command from Windows Explorer menu - it doesn't work only on one partition (nothing happens after clicking it, partition letter is D: if that helps). There is no problem with C or E. &quotOpen command prompt as admin&quot works on every partition without any problem. All partitions have NTFS files system, C and E was formatted during Windows 8 installation, E wasn't touched since I installed Windows 7 last year. I tried running Chkdsk but it didn't find any problems. Screenshot of blank apps list in notifications settings: View the full article

Pretty much since the beginning I've noticed wmiprvse.exe hogging one of two cores in my test machine. Seaching elsewhere I saw a suggestion to see what file handles were open by the process. I don't think this tells us very much: C:WindowsSystem32&gthandle c:|find &quot4160&quot WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 8: C:WindowsSystem32 WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 7C: C:WindowsSystem32en-USuser32.dll.mui WmiPrvSE.exe pid: 4160 288: C:WindowsWinSxSamd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.9200.16384_none_418c2a697189c07f I can kill the wmiprvse.exe process from Task Manager, but it tends to re-appear an hour later (+/- 30 min.). I haven't tricked out Windows 8 very much... but due to the lack of any matches in these forums when searching for &quotwmiprvse.exe cpu&quot I am guessing my situation is not common. First thing I did was remove antivirus, but the problem continues. I'm sure I can start a brand new clean install of Windows 8, and slowly add things back until the problem recurs but that's not exactly optimized troubleshooting. Found a blog post about using netmon to diagnose this kind of problem, but the winmgmt svchost process has 0 network traffic during the time that wmiprvse.exe is consuming a core. Suggestions? View the full article

I've been using Windows 8 File History to back up my libraries, but Windows 8 keeps saying "Reconnect your drive" and "Your File History drive was disconnected for too long. To keep saving copies of your files, reconnect your drive and then run a backup." I've seen it do this on the same day that the drive was connected earlier and copies were saved! Is it possible that looking at the pictures/videos could also be somehow modifying the file in such a way? Has anybody had problems with excessive backup in Windows 8 File History? Note: I did create several custom libraries, in order for File History to backup all of my data, including data that is outside the normal libraries. Although, I do not think this is causing the issue. I'm seeing .avi files getting re-backed-up as well. Is Windows Indexing somehow causing this? Maybe something with thumbs.db? I'm not manually re-indexing, but I'm also not modifying these files either, and yet something is triggering File History to re-back them up. The only thing I can think of is Windows Indexing? This is becoming a serious problem, because my external hard drive is now full, and my only option is to remove the older versions of the files. Removing older versions does not give me much of a backup, since if something happened, I could not roll back to known good versions. Why is File History saving so many duplicate copies of my media, when I'm not making any changes to the media or metadata?!? Does anybody know? Thanks, Jacob PS: This was initially reported at Microsoft Community , and went unanswered. View the full article

Hello, For some reason, none of the options listed under the advanced context menu work except for &quotRun&quot and &quotDesktop&quot. They used to work but one day stopped. I can manually go to the C:UsersuseridAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsWinx respective folder and can run any of them by double clicking them but If I try to use the list itself under win + x, I click them and nothing happens. Any Ideas? Thanks, Phillip View the full article

I noticed that when I watch a photo using the Metro Photos app, there is a compression applied to the photo that degrades the image quality. When I watch the very same photo using the Windows Picture Viewer, no compression is added and the image quality is not decreased. See the image below left is the image seen in Windows Photo Viewer and right as seen in the Photos app. Is this normal behavior? Is there a way to turn off the compression that the Photos app adds? Because it is starting to become very annoying. <a href= Some further explanation: I don't think that the Photo app is only sharpening the image (and enhancing the global contrast perhaps). I definitely see some compression (I'm quite sure it's not just that the already available compression is sharpened, but that additional compression is added as well). To make a clearer comparison, I increased the contrast in both images. You can then very clearly see that additional compression is added (the fine® structures in the left image (especially in the sky) are replaced by more blocky structures in the right image, and also notice the compression block at the right of the dark triangular shape in the bottom half of the image). So it's not just sharpening compression artifacts that were already present. [url=' alt='> In these examples I only showed a particular cropped section of the entire photo. Overall, when I compare the entire photo using the Windows Photo Viewer and the Photos app, the image quality of the Photos app is worse it is duller and not as sharp as the Windows Photo viewer. So whatever 'post processing' steps the Photos app is applying, they are certainly not improving the perceived quality, but definitely degrading the image quality compared to the Windows Photo Viewer. View the full article

I am unable to change the screensaver timeout in Windows 8 Pro RTM. I believe it was change by the mail app, enforcing Exchange ActiveSync policies to 1 minute (even though the server does not enforce 1 minute on a phone). I got so fed up with it I removed the Exchange account from mail app and rebooted. But if I change the screensaver timeout value, as soon as I go back into the settings, it is back at 1 minute. Actually I managed to get it to say 15 minutes in there by editing the local GPO (User ConfigAdmin TemplatesPersonalizationScreen saver timeout) but even when it says 15 minutes in there, it comes on after 1 minute. This is very annoying because it also locks the screen, even though this is not set either. So basically it is ignoring any setting in personalization, and is fixed at 1 minute with screen lock. I consider this a bug, since even if the settings were enforced by Exchange, the setting should be removed after removing from control panel. As far as I can see my only option is to delete the local profile. View the full article

After almost a month fulltime on the official release of Windows 8 Professional, I still find that there are too many places where I can't find a workaround that is as fast or faster than what we had previously. The Metro Modern UI is an excellent interface for touch devices. However, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of different devices and optimize accordingly rather than implement a common denominator or be biased toward just one class. Touch has tremendous bandwidth. One swipe of a finger is several tens of Mbps, but it is not precise, and your fingers can't do much else such as typing. It is a trade-off. The mouse (or similar pointing devices on the notebook PC) generates a much lower bandwidth, but it is much more precise. So for touch (and no keyboard), you require huge cartoon icons and can have all on a flat list and swipe the start screen to look for what you want quickly. For a PC user, laying out giant icons is a pure waste of space, and having them in one flat list across multiple screenfuls makes aiming for the right icon take a much longer time. For touch, having cascading menus is harder because the gigantic icons to cater for the huge finger hotspot takes up too much space and leave little room for cascading menus to be practical. For PC users, we don't want icons (we have since graduated from kindergarten), and often, we use fast keys (because we have a keyboard) to jump to a menu item, and grouping and cascading menus is a time-tested excellent scaling solution. Textual lists are easier to search as they can be in sorted in alphabetical order. What is the sort order for icons? Colors? Picture complexity? Faced with a 1920x1080 screen of icons, I have a hard time locating what I am looking for. For the type of work I am doing, the difference between 0.2s and 2s is 10X, a big number. I am not asking for removing the Modern UI. I am all for it, and tablets need it. I am changing my methods to adapt to it, but there are simply too many situations where I cannot find an equivalent as fast as previously. Right now the Metro Modern UI is unsuitable for the PC. As an example which I face many times a day, I press the Windows key and type in something, the letters I type are shown on theFAR RIGHT of my 1920x1080 screen. The search results of what I type appear on theFAR LEFT of the screen. But the thing I want is under Settings instead of Apps and so I have to swing to theFAR RIGHT of the screen to select Settings. Then my attention has to switch to theFAR LEFT of the screen for the results. And if I right click an item shown, the context menu is not in context but at theFAR BOTTOM of the screen. Don't you think this is a giant leap backward if not comical? My type of work requires a multi-tasking PC. I have to monitor several on-going tasks during certain intense periods. But if I press the Windows key, my desktop is completely blocked. This is disruptive and affects productivity as I have to re-synchronize my visual context all over again. It is wrong to force fit the desktop UI onto a phone, as seen in the big difference between the usability of the iPhone and Windows Mobile. And it is also obviously wrong to force the phone UI onto a PC or server. Microsoft, until the day PCs play a minor role in the world, please bring back the PC desktop for PC applications. View the full article

PC Refresh on my DELL XPS studio desktop is failing. I created a custom image using recimg according to KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2748351 I've ran it from PC Settings with a message after boot that says there was a problem and no changes were made. I've ran it from the recovery menu with a message that says the drive is locked. It's Win8 enterprise booting from VHD. I tried storing my custom image both within and outside the VHD - not sure if that matters. Event Viewer is boring. Says RESETENG failed. error 4502 - attempt to restore blah blah. However, the message just before is the SCM with a &quotboot-start or system-start driver did not load: dam dam? not sure if it's related to my problem. Also, the hyper-v feature has been enabled. Ideas? Thanks! Jason Jason Yates View the full article