Windows 10 (Upgrade) Frequently Crashing

After upgrading a laptop (HP Envy dv6-7214nr) from Windows 8 to Windows 10, the laptop would frequently crash.  Google Chrome was almost guaranteed to cause a crash, but even after uninstalling that, the laptop would frequently crash.

Checking Windows 10's reliability monitor showed "Apple Push" as the most frequent cause of the crash, but I could find no way to disable the "Apple Push" service.

A bit of google searching led me to this link http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/upgraded-to-windows-10-but-now-msvcp100dll-is/68475c07-090a-4fe8-9a0f-7d5f1ac0cbde?auth=1.

While not an exact match for my issue, I decided to try uninstalling all versions of "Microsoft Visual C++  20xx Redistributable".  And it worked!  A few programs that relied on the missing components failed to run, but that was easily solved by reinstalling them.

I had been having trouble accessing a Dell 960w wireless all-in-one printer from my Windows 7 Professional PC, but my wife's Windows 7 laptop always worked fine.  I was troubleshooting another problem (same symptoms, but for NSLU2 network drive).  Turns out that one solution solved both problems:   http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-networking/5323-mapping-network-drive-windows-7-rc.html

Here's the content from that answer:


- Click Start
- Click Control Panel
- Click System and Maintenance
- Click Administrative Tools
- Double-Click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy
- In the left pane, click Security Options
- In the right pane near the bottom, double-click "Network security: LAN
manager authentication level"
- Click the drop-down box, and click "Send LM & NTLM responses"
- Click OK

NSLU2 with Windows 7 Professional

I was having trouble accessing my stock NSLU2 through Windows 7 Professional, and found the following link solved the problem:  http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-networking/5323-mapping-network-drive-windows-7-rc.html

Here's the content from that answer:


- Click Start
- Click Control Panel
- Click System and Maintenance
- Click Administrative Tools
- Double-Click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy
- In the left pane, click Security Options
- In the right pane near the bottom, double-click "Network security: LAN
manager authentication level"
- Click the drop-down box, and click "Send LM & NTLM responses"
- Click OK

Removing Duplicate Files

Want to save some disk space? How about removing all duplicate copies of your files? Fortunately, there are free tools to help you do this. I used DoubleKiller after reading the LifeHacker post: http://lifehacker.com/330037/top-10-free-windows-file-wranglers.

• Found many data files that were duplicates
• Found many copies of VIRSCAN*.dat files from Symantec AntiVirus. Deleted all the ones in *.tmp folders (actually, moved them to a holding location). No issues so far.
• If you have multiple copies of Matlab installed, I would recommend removing those from the search path

Check out WinDirStat from the that LifeHacker post too.

Modifying the Windows-E Shortcut Key's Behavior

Background: Pressing the key combination [Windows Logo Key] + [e] opens Windows Explorer.

I use this short-cut all the time, but I was annoyed that it always opened with the C:\ fully expanded, which took-up most of the viewable space in the left-hand pane of Windows Explorer.

After a bit of web-searching and playing around, I found a solution.

1. Go to: Start Menu -> Run -> regedit
2. Locate the registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\explore\ddeexec
3. The (Default) value should be something like: %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /e,/idlist,%I,%L


4. Delete this value so that the entry is blank (right-click on (Default), choose "Modify")

[EDIT] Recently noted my personal computer has "My Documents" appearing ahead of C:\. I need to find out how to get that for my work computer.