The giant company "Microsoft" released Windows 10 last year, on 29th July 2015, offering a free upgrade from genuine Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 systems. The free upgrade offer is going to end on 29th July 2016 and will have a charge of $119 for upgrades.

 

If you didn't yet upgrade to the new operating system, just few hours left before Microsoft stops this free upgrade and apply a nominal charge. Why to pay, when you can grab it for free?

Published by on under News | Windows

Outlook 2016 brings a new set of features with the July update by which you can get someone's attention in the body of the email message or a meeting invite very easily. It will not only include their name highlighted in the body, but also add them to the “To” field.

 

This feature is currently available to Office Insiders and going to roll out soon. Let’s see brief about this new feature before it comes to public release.

Published by on under Office | Office 2016

If you are installing Visual Studio 2015 with Office Developer Tools and/or LightSwitch, you may encounter an issue saying "Microsoft Identity Extensions" package failed to install. Though the Visual Studio installation succeeds, you may get this warning message after the installation completes.

 

If you encounter this, there is an workaround to resolve the installation problem. Read more to know about the root cause behind this issue and the solution.

Published by on under Tips | Visual Studio 2015

If you are using Visual Studio 2015 and want to change the existing installation from the Programs and Features item in Control Panel, you may see an error message "Failed to install setup update - Error code: -2147205120" after you accept an online update.

 

If you face this issue while modifying your existing installation, here is the simple solution for you as a workaround to proceed with. Read more to know about the solution.

Published by on under Tips | Visual Studio 2013

Microsoft has released a cumulative update (patch) for Windows 10 preview build 14393, bumping the version to 14393.3. You can install this bits only if you are a Windows Insider in the fast ring and have installed the previous 14393 update.

 

The patch consists of minor bug fixes, improvements to stability and performances. We are expected to see few more patches before the final release of Windows 10 Anniversary Update, this August.

Published by on under News | Windows

Visual Studio 2015 supports automatic updation of extensions. When the auto update extensions settings is enabled, the extensions will be automatically updated when a new update of the extension is available; that means, you don't have to perform any manual action.

 

Today we will discuss about it. In case it is disabled on your system, you will be able to reactivate it to get the auto update feature of extensions.

Published by on under Tips | Visual Studio 2015

Microsoft released another build 14.0.25424.00 for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, which is a patch under the KB article KB3165756. This patch builds are cumulative service updates and cover fixes for high-impact bugs noticed by product team and the community.

 

If you have Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, you should download and install these patch builds in order to work smooth with your favourite IDE installation.

Published by on under News | Visual Studio 2015

The .NET Framework is a software development framework developed by Microsoft which runs primarily on Windows operating systems. But these days, it is used by millions of developers to create apps and services on any device and operating systems with amazing performance.

 

In this post, I am going to bookmark most of the .NET redistributables for references in future. Bookmark this for your future references too.

Published by on under .Net | C#

If you are a developer and using C# .NET to build your application, you may need to access the Application Data (AppData) folder of all the user accounts currently created in a specific system. The .NET framework exposes API to detect only the logged-in user's AppData folder.

 

To get the path for all the users of the system, you have to find it from the Windows Registry. Today we will discuss on that topic with a piece of code. Continue reading.

Published by on under .Net | C#

Today, Microsoft released a patch for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, which was released on 27th June 2016. It is a cumulative update with fixes to the existing Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 installation. If you have installed Update 3, install the patch KB3165756 mentioned below.

 

Though it is not mandatory, but good to have install this patch as it addresses many fixes related to memory leaks, crash and other issues.

Published by on under News | Visual Studio 2015

Sometime we need to retrieve the Visual Studio installation directory programmatically using the C#/.NET code and there’s no direct API call available to retrieve this information and also you don’t know the exact path where it has been installed.

 

Every installation of Visual Studio puts a specific registry path to keep track of the installation directory. If you know that, it’s easy to retrieve the information. Let’s discuss on this topic today.

Published by on under Tips | Visual Studio 2013

It’s a weekend but the Microsoft Windows team is busy on releasing a new insiders preview build 14385 for fast ring users. This build is now available for both PC and Mobile devices, with a wide range of fixes that you might have waited for.

 

If you are a fast ring Windows Insider, check out for new update, try the bits and give your feedback to Microsoft. But before that, you would like to check for fixes available in this build.

Published by on under Win10Tips | Windows

Dona Sarkar, the new chief of Windows Insiders division, in a blog post announced the availability of new Windows Insiders build for both PC and Mobile devices. They numbered it as build 14383. Microsoft already started airing this build.

 

If you are a fast ring Windows Insiders, do check for updates to get the notification. But before that, you may want to check what got fixed and what not. Continue reading to know more.

Published by on under News | Win10Tips

Sometime we need to filter out a console command output and display only the portion that we want to show to the user. This could be based on any specific term or string that we want to include or exclude based on our requirement.

 

Today, here in this post, we are going to discuss on this and learn how to extract/filter the said information from the console command output.

Published by on under Batch File | Command Prompt

Microsoft India is providing a free Azure trial pass of Rs. 50,000/- to organization entities to try out Azure from the India data center for 2 months. If you are from India and part of any organization, you just have to fill out an online application form to get started with.

 

Don’t miss this opportunity. Act now, grab your free trial and get started with Microsoft Cloud service in the Azure portal.

Published by on under Azure | News

If you face the error message “An error occurred while validating. HRESULT = '8000000A'” while building Visual Studio setup project from command line in Visual Studio 2012 or above IDE environment, the reason is because the new IDEs do not support build outside the own process.

 

But there is a tweak which will help you to enable the same and you will now be allowed to build the MSI setup project from the command line itself.

Published by on under Tips | VisualStudio