If your current Windows 10 installation gets corrupted, you’ll be able to use the recovery drive to reinstall Windows 10 — restoring the same build and version of Windows 10 you were using, along with the installed drivers and preinstalled customizations.
For this, you’ll need to have created a USB recovery drive beforehand — when your system was healthy. Recovery Drive can also be useful if you’ve replaced your hard drive and want to install Windows 10 on it.
Restoring from Windows 10 USB recovery drive is equivalent to using the Remove Everything option in Refresh/Reset this PC in the Windows 10 settings. The recovery drive is an alternative if Windows doesn’t boot.Read more
Domain Name System (DNS) is the address book of the Internet. Web browsers interact through Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. DNS translates domain names to IP addresses so browsers can load Internet resources.
Windows caches the DNS records for a considerable time. This cache can be cleared by running the command ipconfig /flushdns. Other than this, your web browser like Google Chrome maintains a separate DNS cache mechanism.
Why do you need to clear the browser DNS cache?
System administrators often find times where they need to redirect the domains by editing the host file, in order to override any DNS records for a domain name. However, every time you want to change a hostname to a different IP, you needed to close the browser before the change will take effect. This can get tedious if you have too many browser tabs or windows open.
When doing web development or other work that requires changing the web hosting IP in the HOSTS file for testing purposes, you needed to restart the web browser every time for the new host to IP mappings to take effect.
However, with Google Chrome, you can clear the internal DNS cache without closing and reopening the browser. This post tells you how to clear the internal DNS cache of the Google Chrome browser without restarting Google Chrome.
Youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube or other sites. When you run the software on some computers, you may receive the following error:
youtube-dl.exe – System Error
The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCR100.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.
Let’s see how to fix the msvcr100.dll missing error.Read more
Earlier, we saw how to fix the Some required files are missing error when attempting to create a USB Recovery Drive in Windows 10. The steps involved copying the Windows Recovery Environment image Winre.wim from the Windows 10 source (DVD/ISO) and also fixing the recovery partition.
The following is a different error that appears when creating a Recovery Drive.
We can’t create the recovery drive
A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive.
There seem to be many different causes for this error, but the most prominent reason is the failure of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to generate a snapshot. For most users, the above error happens only if you enable the option Back up system files to the recovery drive.Read more
When upgrading to Windows 10 or 11 from Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, or updating Windows 10 or 11, you might encounter the error We couldn’t update system reserved partition, or error 0xc1900104, or error code 0x800f0922.
Error when updating Windows 10Error when upgrading from Windows 7, 8, or 8.1.
When this happens, the setupact.log in the Panther directory may contain the following entries:
Info CFreeSystemPartitionDiskSpaceChecker: checked InsufficientSystemPartitionDiskSpace, found HardBlock.Not enough space on partition [\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume1\] Required: 15 MB. Available: 9 MB.
Info ConX::Compatibility::FreeSystemPartitionDiskSpaceCheckerImpl::SaveToPersistableData: Save data - FreeSystemPartitionDiskSpaceCheckerImpl = no
Info ConX::Compatibility::CCompatibilityHost::SerializeData: Provider wsc:setup: is serializing 28 bytes of data.
Info [0x090008] PANTHR CBlackboard::Open: C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\CompatScanCache.dat succeeded.
Info [0x090009] PANTHR CBlackboard::Close: c:\$windows.~bt\sources\panther\compatscancache.dat.
Info ConX::Compatibility::CCompatibilityController::ReportData: Type: [0], ID: [2], ReportOption: [2]
Info ConX::Compatibility::CCompatibilityHost::SetScanResult: Provider wsc:setup: reports HardBlock
Info MOUPG InitializeRoutine: MOSETUP_ACTION_IMAGE_EXIT
Info MOUPG ImageExit: Initializing SetupResult: [0xc1900201]
Info MOUPG ImageExit: Initializing Extended: [0x20008]
This happens if the System Reserved Partition (SRP) or the EFI partition is full. The EFI or the System Reserve Partition partition on your hard drive that stores boot information for Windows.
According to Microsoft, to upgrade your device, you’ll need to free up 15MB of space on the SRP using the appropriate method below. And then try the upgrade again. If you’re updating Windows 10, you need to free up 13MB.Read more
After installing the Windows 10 Feature Update 1903 or higher, you may have noticed that the accent color checkbox Start, taskbar, and action center is grayed out. The recent Windows 10 versions come with a new Light Theme (“Light” color mode) that displays the Taskbar, Start menu, action center, notification area pop-ups, etc., in light grey color.
When the light color mode is enabled for Windows, the Taskbar, Start menu, and the action center can’t be colorized, which is why those settings are dimmed out. This is by design. You’ll be able to show an accent color for window title bars and borders, though.
Here is how to enable the dark color mode for Taskbar, Start Menu, and the Action Center. The current version of Windows 10 is 20H2 as of this post, and the instructions apply to version 20H2 as well.
After updating to Windows 10 version 2004, mapped network drives don’t reconnect after a restart. Here are some of the symptoms you may be experiencing:
Mapped drives that link to your NAS (e.g., Synology, ReadyNAS, etc.) or Windows 2000/XP/2003 computers do not work after upgrading to Windows 10 v2004. Remapping the drive works only for the current session. Enabling the SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing support in Windows Features dialog also doesn’t help.
As soon as the computer restarts, a red X sign appears on the mapped drive, and the drive doesn’t reconnect. The following error appears when you attempt to access the mapped drive:
Restoring Network Connections
An error occurred while reconnecting z: to \\computername\share_name
Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use.
This connection has not been restored.
The UNC paths to network shares work correctly, but only if you haven’t already mapped a drive letter to the share. If not, the following error occurs when you access the share using the UNC path: (e.g., \\computername\share_name)
\\computername\share_name is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.
Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed. Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again.
When you try to connect to the network share using \\servername\share_name or \\IP_Address\share_name using the correct domain\username and password, you may get the error code 0x80070043 - The network name cannot be found.
Many users have rolled-back Windows 10 to version 1903 or v 1909 due to the above issues.
Let’s see how to fix this issue without having to rollback Windows 10 to v1909 or v1903.
On some Windows 10 and 11 computers, Microsoft Defender Antivirus may repeatedly warn about the same threat, although you’ve taken the necessary action (remediated) on that threat.
When you click “Start actions” after choosing “Remove”, nothing happens. Windows Defender would keep showing that non-existent threat.Read more
When installing an update, especially a Cumulative Update or .NET Framework package in your Windows 10 or 11 computer, the update installation may fail with an error code 0x800F0922 (“CBS_E_INSTALLERS_FAILED“) or 0xc1900104 or the error message “Something didn’t go as planned”.Read more
Windows allows you to create USB recovery media using the RecoveryDrive.exe (“Create a recovery drive”) utility. When you attempt to create the recovery drive in Windows 10 or 11, the following error appears, and the process stalls: We can’t create a recovery drive on this PC Some required files are missing. To troubleshoot problems when … Read more
