Saturday 26 December 2015

Automated Fix : Windows 10 Store Not Working Problem

IWindows Store is not working in Windows 10, then run this troubleshooter & fixer from Microsoft to reset Windows 10 Store & clear cache automatically. Many who upgraded to Windows 10 are facing several problems and issues. One of those which many are facing is that their Windows Store itself does not work or open. If you face this issue, this automated fix, released by Microsoft may help you.

Windows 10 Store not working

Visit the Microsoft web page and click on the violet Run button. Once you do this, the following think will be checked:
1]If the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\CurrentVersion (REG_DWORD) equals 6.3.
2] If the solution is found to be applicable to your system, then the following step will be taken to fix the Windows Store issue:
  • The program wsreset.exe will be run with Command line args.
When you run this automated fix, you will see Windows Store open up and a command prompt window open up. This will indicate the solution is being run.
So after upgrading to Windows 10, if you find that the Windows Store is not working or opening, go run this troubleshooter from Microsoft.



see also : Wi-Fi does not work after upgrading to Windows 10
see also : How To Install Language Packs In Windows 7
see also : Troubleshoot Windows 10 Sound and Audio problems
see also : Quick Access in Windows 10 is not working
see also : Windows 10 cannot connect to Internet
see also : Troubleshoot Windows 10 Activation Errors: List of error codes and fixes
see also : Windows 10 Installation or Upgrade Errors: 80240020, Something Happened, etc
see also : Cannot activate Windows 10. Product Key blocked
see also : Office documents do not open after upgrading to Windows 10
see also : Nividia releases new WHQL drivers
see also : INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE error in Windows 10
see also : Fix: Windows 10 Settings app does not open or launch
see also : Windows Store not working in Windows 10 – Automated Fix
see also : Windows Store apps not opening in Windows 10
see also : Start Menu does not open or not working in Windows 10

Monday 21 December 2015

Common Blogging Mistakes


                               Blogs are an excellent tool for promoting your startup or business. If you’re not careful however, it’s easy to end up putting in a lot of effort into something that yields little in the way of reward. The following is a series of common blogging pitfalls that entrepreneurs should be aware of and which you’ll want to address when it comes to your own blog.

Blogging mistake #1: Not prominently linking to your main site

It can be extremely irritating for visitors to arrive on your blog, and not have an easy way to reach your main site. Yes, the reader could remove blog. or /blog/from their address bar, but you should work under the assumption that inertia is a strong force. If it takes more than a negligible effort, a large percentage of visitors won’t bother doing it.
One of the chief goals of your blog is to get people to check out your product. You need to make this process as easy as possible.
How to fix it
  • Link to the homepage or landing page of your choice from within your navigation bar. Home should link to your main site’s homepage, not your blog’s index. Call that link within the navigation bar Blog instead.
  • If your main site’s logo is present at the top of your blog template, have it link to the main site.
  • If the main site’s logo is not included in the template, add such a logo or a fairly good sized icon derived from it within your sidebar, then link that to the main site.
  • Finally, link generously to the product or service when you mention it, be it from a short description in your sidebar or from within your posts. You want a person to look at your blog for a second, blink, and immediately know where to click to check out your offer.

Blogging mistake #2: Not integrating with social properties

Typically you opt to have a social presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ because you assume that doing so will help you reach a wider audience. If your site and these social properties are entirely separate spheres unto themselves however, you won’t capture the true value that they can offer.
It’s a mistake not to link back to your main site from these sites. That’s obvious. What might not be so obvious, is that it’s also a mistake not to promote these social properties from within your blog. In fact, properties such as your Facebook fan page, can help show your visitors that you are more than just an anonymous, faceless company. If you do a good job on these social sites, you can demonstrate how you interact with your community of customers and fans, to prospective customers.
Linking to your social properties also acts as social proof. When someone sees a large number of fans or followers, it leads them to consider you as being more authoritative, established, or worth following as well. And since you are showcasing these properties to your blog visitors, this will in turn boost these numbers and increase further your social proof.
Finally, it’s a mistake not to promote your blog posts on social properties. For example, when someone likes your fan page on Facebook, they subscribe to your updates there. By posting a link to your articles within that page on Facebook, you automatically reach visitors who may have otherwise vanished for good after their first visit to your blog.
How to fix it
  • Link to your main site from social media properties that allow you to do so.
  • Add a Facebook Like widget, a Twitter follow button, and +1 button to your sidebar. Note that this Facebook widget should be used to get people to like your fan page (therefore subscribing to your updates) and not your site. Specify the former URL, rather than the latter, when configuring the widget. Show faces when it comes to Facebook, as they are very effective at helping you immediately connect and capture the interest of your readers (after all, you’re showing them faces of their friends who like you, a quasi-direct endorsement for you).
  • Post a link to your new posts on all of your chosen target properties.TwitterFeed is one of many available tools that can take care of automatically posting your RSS to social sites (currently, both Twitter and Facebook are covered). But even doing it manually, if you so choose to, does not take much of your time.
  • Include a widget such as AddThis or ShareThis within your template, so that your individual posts can be liked, shared on Twitter, and posted on a variety of other sites by your readers. If possible, favor quality over quantity and opt for buttons that include counters (again, for social proof).

Blogging mistake #3: Making it harder to subscribe to, and regularly follow, your blog

Blogs that don’t make it easy to subscribe to new content rarely achieve a great deal of success. These day, browsers like Firefox and Chrome even ignore auto-discovered syndication feeds, making the process of subscription much harder.
You might think that RSS doesn’t matter anymore. In truth it does matter — more than most people assume actually. Even conceding for a second that your prospective customers are not the right demographic for feeds, you still need to provide and promote ways for them to keep up with your new content. You simply cannot expect them to come back to your site periodically.
How to fix it
  • Keep track of your subscription stats via FeedBurner.
  • Have a large orange RSS icon linked to your feed URL (see mine as an example).
  • Include a way to receive your new posts via email. You can use FeedBurner (enable it through Publicize -> Email Subscriptions) or much more ideally, set up your own mailing list with a service like Mailchimp (that’s what I use and I highly recommend it). Mailing lists are one of the biggest assets you can have as a business, virtually regardless of what you do. Set one up even if your crowd is technical. Include the signup widget near the top of your template, like I’ve done here in the sidebar. You can then setup an RSS-to-email campaign within Mailchimp to have your new posts automatically appear in your subscribers’ inboxes.
  • At the bottom of your posts invite readers to subscribe either via RSS or by email. You can generally accomplish this by modifying a template file or using the option to do so (if provided) within your blog’s software. For this blog, I use a plugin for the Genesis framework (i.e., Simple Hooks).

Blogging mistake #4: Only blogging about product announcements

While you certainly should use your blog to talk about and promote your products, unless you have more than one blog, it would be a big mistake to focus your site just on announcements about your products. You’d be missing out on the true marketing power of your blog if you went this route.
How to fix it
  • Write for the audience you want to attract. If you prospective SaaS customers are people who intend to lose weight, don’t spend 90% of your blog time discussing cool features you introduced in your app. Instead, write about topics that interest this particular demographic such as weight loss, fat burning, healthy foods, lean mass gain, etc. This way you’ll gather a community around that topic. Make it the blog that absolutely anyone who is losing weight should follow, whether they use your app or not. All the readers that you’ll attract will be exposed to your product either by sheer branding (ergo the importance of logos and links in the template mentioned previously) or by following your blog regularly, and then ending up reading your occasional bona fide product announcements.
  • Even when announcing a feature or posting about a product promotion, try to focus on how this will benefit the reader. Tell a story. Don’t just write a dry announcement. For example, if you are talking about an Android version of your app for dieters, talk about how stressful it is to try and keep track of calories when dining on the go, and how this new addition to your product line up will facilitate the lives of those who use your product.
  • Focusing on providing value for your readers, rather than just pushing a sale, will greatly help you increase your business. This will in fact make you come across as more trustworthy and genuine, as well as help you establish yourself as an expert in your field. If I trust you and consider you to be an expert, I’m willing to buy from you and your recommendations.
  • Have a small blurb or banner ad for your products at the bottom of your posts, rather than each post just being an ad itself for your products.

Blogging mistake #5: Hiding what your product is about

I hate it when I’m five minutes into a post of a startup, and I have no idea what these guys actually do or what they’re trying to sell me. This is far more common than it should be.
How to fix it
  • Have a small description at the top of your blog (typically in the sidebar) that explains who you are and what you do. (e.g., “Acme Fat Loss” is a web application that helps you lose weight by tracking calories and suggesting recipes that are within your daily calorie allotment”).
  • If your post has anything to do with your product, quickly introduce what your product does within your post. Don’t just assume everyone knows. For example, “The investment we received means that we’ll be able to allocate far more resources to the development of our calorie tracker and healthy recipe generator application”.
These are not by any means the only mistakes businesses do when trying to succeed at blogging. They are however some of the major, and perhaps most common, ones. Thankfully simple, effective fixes, as shown, are far from hard to implement and can be such a massive boon to you and your company.

Hope this helps for starters. Thank you.

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Windows 10 Problems and Issues

             If you have installed Windows 10 RTM Final version, you may be facing some Windows 10 problems and issues. Fortunately, the list of known issues is not long and is limited to some countries for some reason. The best thing about bugs in Windows 10 or known issues is that Microsoft works on them as soon as they are notified. Despite that, here are the some bugs and issues.

Windows 10 Problems and Issues

1] Windows installation may terminate with SOMETHING HAPPENED message

In some languages, you may see the message “Something happened” with the only option being CLOSE button. When you click the button, the installation terminates. This has been noticed if you chose to create an ISO and are using a burned DVD or USB to install Windows 10.

Windows-10-known-issyes
Though not official, the problem is attributed to Language settings in Windows OS. Check the Language and Region settings in Control panel of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 that you are upgrading using the ISO file. The fix being widely used is to re-download the US English Language pack and install it on the computer you are trying to upgrade. That is, you have to go to Control Panel, open the Language and Settings and make sure US English is installed. You may have to install the language pack again for Windows 10 ISO to work. Go here to see how to install language packs in Windows.
A better fix is to use “Upgrade This PC” option using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. The latter option would remove the need to create ISO based installation media (DVD or USB) and will do an in-place upgrade of Windows 10. The in place upgrade does not, likely, go wrong with the weird “something happened” message according to reports on social media. You will need an active Internet connection though, for every PC you upgrade this way.
In short, performing an in place upgrade is a better option than going for ISO files of Windows 10 as of now.
The “Something Happened” message is too vague and does not tell you what went wrong. The second line too, as in the image, says “something happened”. Right now, it has become the center for jokes and memes on social media. Microsoft may soon publish a proper fix or explanation for the error message. I am expecting that, at least.

2] Start menu cannot hold more than 512 items

Though 512 is a big number and I do not think anyone would pin that many programs or apps to the Start menu, it is still a known issue in Windows 10 that if you go for more than 512 apps, they will disappear from the Start menu. As long as the number of apps pinned on Start menu is less than 512, the app tiles will be visible properly. If you cross the number, the Start menu is messed up.
Microsoft has information on this and they are apparently working to remove the cap.

3] Clipboard issues in Windows 10

This is another known issue – brought to notice by @TomWarren. He tweeted the following:
OK so I am not alone, there is an issue with Windows 10 when it sometimes doesn’t copy using Ctrl+C. Lots of people seeing it. Yikes – Tom Warren (@TomWarren) Jul 29, 2015
There is no fix except to press the key combination again and again until it is copied to the clipboard. Another better option is to right click and from the context menu that appears, select COPY or CUT as the case may be.

4] Windows Store Crashes

This is more of the Store app issue than being a Windows 10 operating system issue. The Windows 10 store app keeps on crashing when you try to download anything. The issue was reported by many – including TWC authors.
Here are two posts from Twitter that further confirm the issue with Windows store:
So far, upgrade to #Windows10 has been pretty smooth on 5 year old PC except I can’t use Cortana or install apps from the Windows store. — CheckedShirtMatt (@ec1matt) July 29, 2015
And,
Why can’t I install anything from the Windows Store I just wanted to play C++ Minecraft — Aar (@Aarmastah) July 29, 2015
There is no fix on the issue but it has been notified to Windows team. I am hoping the issue will be fixed soon.

5] Wireless networks are not available

After you upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise, no wireless networks are available. Wired Ethernet connections may also not function properly, if you are using built-in Ethernet adapter or a USB Ethernet adapter. This could occurs due to presence of unsupported VPN software. If you are facing this issue, read Wi-Fi does not work after upgrading to Windows 10.

6] Start Menu not working

Some users who upgraded are finding out that their Start Menu does not open in Windows 10. This post will help you fix the problem.

7] Windows Store apps are not opening

If Windows Store apps not opening in Windows 10, after you upgraded, then this post will show you how to fix the problem quickly.

8] Windows Store is not opening

If Windows 10 Store is not working, then run this troubleshooter & fixer from Microsoft.

9] Windows 10 Settings app does not open

For some the Windows 10 Settings app does not open or launch. Or it opens the Store app instead. Use the Fix It mentioned in the tool. Update KB3081424 will prevent the issue from re-occurring.

10] NVIDIA Graphic Cards not compatible

The graphic drivers are not compatible with Windows 10 at the moment. NVIDIA is working on the issue and soon it will provide compatible drivers so that users can upgrade to Windows 10 without problems. You can search for your NVIDIA GeForce drivers here. Nvidia has released new WHQL drivers for Windows 10.

11] INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error

See this post if you receive INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error after you have upgraded to Windows 10.

12] Office documents do not open

Go here if after upgrading to Windows 10, you find that some of your Office Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents do not open.

13] Installation, Upgrade & Activation problems

14] Windows 10 can’t connect to Internet

15] Quick Access is not working

16] Windows 10 Sound not working

17] Other

NOTE: Windows 10 users may want to download FixWin 10 for Windows 10. It automates many fixes and lets you resolve issues in a click!

If you know of anything more that can be included in the list, please comment



see also : Wi-Fi does not work after upgrading to Windows 10
see also : How To Install Language Packs In Windows 7
see also : Troubleshoot Windows 10 Sound and Audio problems
see also : Quick Access in Windows 10 is not working
see also : Windows 10 cannot connect to Internet
see also : Troubleshoot Windows 10 Activation Errors: List of error codes and fixes
see also : Windows 10 Installation or Upgrade Errors: 80240020, Something Happened, etc
see also : Cannot activate Windows 10. Product Key blocked
see also : Office documents do not open after upgrading to Windows 10
see also : Nividia releases new WHQL drivers
see also : INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE error in Windows 10
see also : Fix: Windows 10 Settings app does not open or launch
see also : Windows Store not working in Windows 10 – Automated Fix
see also : Windows Store apps not opening in Windows 10
see also : Start Menu does not open or not working in Windows 10

Tuesday 15 December 2015

MsConfig Utility In Windows 10 And How To Use It?


Windows essentially being such a versatile operating system, can run into various problems and performance issues over its course of service. Most of these issues and problems are software related and can one you easily troubleshoot them, only if you know your way around your operating system.
Most Advanced Windows users are very much familiar with the MsConfig utility, and use it to its full potential. The utility offers various options that can help you troubleshoot performance issues and other problems with your machine. If you are not familiar with this utility, you should probably back up your data before you proceed any further into the process of discovering MsConfig and its various uses.
Note: you can also create a manual restore point , if you are new to this, it will be very useful if something goes wrong by mistake.
MsConfig is available for all users , running Windows Xp or above. It is a very versatile tool, that can help you configure the start up of your machine. Additionally it can be of a lot more use if you are looking to troubleshoot performance and stability issues.

How Do I Access The MsConfig Utility?

The MsConfig utility can be opened from the Run command box. This can be accessed via the task manager
1- Press Windows key + r
2- The run Box will open.
3- This is the famous Run command box we use to open different utilities in windows.
4- Type in-msconfig, and click on Run or Hit Enter.

msconfig
Windows will now identity the command entered by you, and run the associated utility with it, in this case MsConfig.
Once it opens, you will see a window consisting of 5 different tabs.

msconfig-panel
These tabs and the various options under them, will help you change and configure the start up of your System, diagnose windows for problems and performance issues, fix those issues, disable and restrict various services and also run major Windows tools. In all you can say that MsConfig is your little toolbox to help you maintain the health of your PC.
I will now explain each tab and its various options and the effects of their changes on Windows , in order to help you understand MsConfig and use it to its full potential. You would be able to improve the performance of your Pc and troubleshoot various different problems.

Tab No. 1- General

The general tab will be displayed by default when you first run MsConfig. It will have the following three start up options, that you can choose from. These options will boot your machine into the selected mode, the next time it starts up.

msconfig-general
1- Normal Startup
This is the usual Windows startup, where the operating system will load all the locally installed drivers and programs along with the default services and drivers.

2- Diagnostic Startup
This startup is similar to starting Windows up in safe mode. You can use it to check for errors and look for stability, health and other performance issues in your operating system as well as the machine. When windows boots up next time, with this option selected, it will only load up default basic services and drivers, and nothing else. This will leave out all the third party and locally installed drivers and programs, which can help you assess and diagnose the performance of your machine.
3- Selective Start up
This is an option that offers further three choices. These checkboxes will help you toggle the various startup services and programs that you want to run via the services and startup tab. You can toggle each checkbox depending on your preference.

Tab No. 2- Boot


msconfig-boot
This is the master tab to control all the boot up settings of your Operating System. It has various different options and checkboxes that can change the boot process of your Windows. It also has Advanced options that can help you control your Machine’s hardware.
When you click on and open the Boot Tab, you will see a White box with the list of operating systems installed on the current machine.
Boot options, has various options, using which you can trigger your Windows into different booting modes.
You can boot up windows into four different kinds of safe mode, depending on the error/ issue you are facing.

msconfig-safe-boot-windows-10
Timeout , specifies the Amount of seconds Windows waits in the Boot menu, before loading the default operating system.
The advanced options can help you toggle the number of CPUs you put into work, the next time your machine boots up. You can also limit the amount of RAM memory that will be used by the operating system in the next startup.

Tab No. 3- Services


msconfig-services
This tab will display all the Services configured to start up, when the operating system boots up.
You can hide all default Windows services to avoid messing up your settings using the option located in the bottom left corner. You will then be able to see only third party services that have are locally present in your operating system. Use this to your advantage and disable your prime suspects that could be causing stability issues in your operating system. Or you can also disable all of them using the option located in the bottom right corner.

Tab No. 4- Startup


msconfig-startup
Clicking this tab will redirect you to the Task Manager. You will be taken to the startup tab of the task manager, which is to essentially say that they both are the same. You can use it to disable or enable various startup program and troubleshoot your system instability.

msconfig-startup-enable-disable

Tab No.5- Tools


msconfig-tools
Once you click this tab, MsConfig will show you various utilities and tools that you can launch directly from MsConfig. You can go through the list of administrative tools and select the one you want to run, and simply click on launch. This will open the selected program or utility. This can be particularly useful if you are having problems with your file explorer.
Once you are done making changes in all the five tabs , you will have to first Click on apply and then Ok, to make sure the changes take effect. Windows will then ask you to restart your machine for all the changes to take effect.
Note: if you have enabled the safe mode, you will have to disable it again manually to exit the safe mode and boot up the operating system normally.
MsConfig is thus a very useful and versatile utility that can help you troubleshoot performance issues and configure Windows startup