Take Ownership and Assign Permissions to Yourself on Windows

Sometimes on mounted external drives, you are not the owner (don't ask me why, I'll never understand what's the reasoning behind Windows in general) and cannot change/view files.
Try this:

# Recursively take ownership of directory:
> takeown /f "c:\path"

# Reset permissions recursively
> icacls "c:\path" /reset /T

Dell Laptop: Plugged In, Not Charging

I recently noticed this unwanted message on my Dell Latitude E6540 with Windows 7.
Don't know exactly what prompted it but the battery would not charge above 64%, no matter how I changed the settings of the power saving mode.
Here's how I solved it:

1. Power off
2. Remove the battery
3. Restart Windows
4. Go to Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Device Manager
5. Under Batteries, remove all Microsoft AC Adapter and Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
6. Power off
7. Put the battery back in place
8. Restart Windows

Then magically the battery restarted charging and didn't stop until it reached 100%.
Thanks to nickscomputerfix!

On the contrary, a good reason not to keep it charged at 100%:

The third tip relates to when and by how much batteries should be charged. One of the more widely known aspects about battery life is the “memory effect”.
In older rechargeable battery chemistries, such as nickel cadmium, partial charging and discharging significantly decreases the energy capacity.
What is less known is that the memory effect in lithium-ion batteries, if it exists, tends to be very small. Instead, they have quite nuanced characteristics. When not in use, batteries degrade most when fully charged. So if left for several days or weeks without use, they should ideally be kept at a relatively low charging state, e.g around 20% charged.
Conversely, when being charged and discharged a lot, it is best to keep the batteries as close to the 50% mark as possible. So if you are only charging and discharging batteries a bit at a time, it is much better to do this between 45-55% than between 90-100%.

Full article.

Windows Taskbar Does Not Hide

Sometimes even if you configured the taskbar to hide itself, it won't and you tried everything you know.
Welcome to the Windows way of doing things!
There is probably a notification from some process, which you cannot easily spot.
The quick way to solve this: kill and restart the file explorer.

Go to the Task Manager --> Processes, and kill explorer.exe.
Then File --> New Task (Run) and type explorer.exe.
Done!

iReport 5.6.0 Failing Silently

Versions up to 5.6.0 (currently the last one) do not run with JDK 1.8. They will silently fail, at least on Windows 7.
If you want to keep JAVA_HOME set to a JDK 1.8 installation, you can run it launching a batch file with something like this inside:

@echo off
set JAVA_HOME=C:\opt\java\jre1.7.0_71
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Jaspersoft\iReport-5.6.0\bin\ireport.exe"

Customize as needed.

Removing commons-logging Dependency from Spring with Ivy

Let's say you want Spring to use SLF4J instead of commons-logging.

First you need to remove the dependency from spring-core:

[TODO]

In the unlikely event you are already not loading transitive dependencies:

<dependency org="org.springframework" name="spring-core" rev="3.2.8.RELEASE" transitive="false"/>

you need to to nothing.

Then add the following dependencies to specify the framework you want to use:

<dependency org="org.slf4j" name="jcl-over-slf4j" rev="1.7.7" transitive="false"/>
<dependency org="org.slf4j" name="slf4j-api" rev="1.7.7" transitive="false"/>
<dependency org="org.slf4j" name="slf4j-log4j12" rev="1.7.7" transitive="false"/>

Ant: Class not found: javac1.8

This error is known to happen with Apache Ant versions less than 1.9.0, which aren't compatible with Java 8.
Upgrade!
Worked for me.

Thanks to Kristian.

Find out which applications are using port x on Windows

Find out which applications are using port x on Windows:

> netstat -aon | findstr 0.0:8080

Google Drive: Failed to Schedule 1 File for Upload

If your Google drive application for an Android mobile device gives you this message and you have the Developer Options enabled, try to uncheck Do not keep activities before trying anything else.

Thanks to bbell67.

Wireshark: The NPF driver isn't running

The NPF driver isn't running. You may have trouble capturing or listing interfaces.

You run Wireshark occasionally and don't want to start the NPF driver automatically at start up.

Open a command shell with administrator rights and type:

> sc start npf

You can [stop] the service in the same way.

Run a Command as Administrator on Windows

I didn't know this but since I'm a Linux guy, I'm not ashamed.
On windows, if you log in as a user with administrator privileges but want to run a command shell with administrator's rights, you still need to run it in a special way:

1. Go to the start bar search box
2. Type cmd
3. Right-click on cmd.exe and choose "Run as administrator"

Thanks to Olav.

Building with Ant from Eclipse: "Specified VM install not found"

After an update of the JDK and successive removal of the old version, when I tried to build with Ant from Eclipse I got:

Specified VM install not found: type Standard VM, name jdk1.7.0_55

Yeah, right, OK, but where do I update the JDK that's used by Ant??
Here:
Run -> External Tools -> External Tools Configurations -> JRE

Thanks to Michael Borgwardt

Windows Keeps Forgetting the Wi-Fi Connection Password

One possible cause of the problem is that the Intel PROSet/Wireless WiFi Connection Utility is somehow conflicting with the OS.
Try to disable it and go back to Windows  managing the connections.

Once you're opened the Intel WiFi connection utility, choose: Advanced, then something like Let Windows Manage the WiFi Connections.

You're done.

Windows: Choose What is Started at Startup

Run:
> msconfig

then switch to the Startup tab.

Windows 7 Taskbar Icons Not Displaying Properly After Repair

If some of your icons display like empty boxes after a repair to the system because of some reset, then follow these instructions. They worked for me.

1. Open the task manager in the processes tab.
2. Kill explorer.exe.
3. From the File menu in the task manager, choose New task (run...)
4. Execute the following:  
1. cmd /c del %userprofile%\AppData\Local\IconCache.db /a
5. And restart explorer running: 
1. explorer.exe

Everything should be fine now!
Tested on Windows 7

Thanks to bhadri.

Add a Program to the Send To Menu

If you need to use Windows and would like to add some more user-friendliness to the super user-friendly MS GUI, like, adding some other program to the Send To menu, here it is what you need to do:

1. Open Windows explorer and type: shell:sendto in the text field.
2. Create a link, ehm shortcut for the program you plan to add in some place (directory, desktop).
3. Cut and paste it into the Windows explorer directory.
4. You're done! 

Updated for Windows 10 in May 2016.

Specified VM install not found: type Standard VM ...

Specified VM install not found: type Standard VM, name jdk1.7.0_45

You installed a new JDK, configured Eclipse to recognize it but the old one still pops up when you compile or do something else.
Try removing the following file: \.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.debug.core\.launches\projectname build.xml.launch

Thanks to Mujahed

Mercurial: abort: uncommitted local changes

If you're using TortoiseHg Workbench: go to Repository --> Terminal.
Otherwise simply open a console and cd to the root directory of your repository.
Type: 
 
> hg update --clean -r tip

That should solve the problem.
Thanks to Mike here.

Annoying Eclipse Validation Errors

Sometimes you run into these Unknown validation errors in Eclipse which you seem not to be able to get rid of.
The Maven build is running fine even from within Eclipse but the messages won't go away even if you:

• Right-click on the project --> Validate
• Project --> Clean
• Close and re-open it

What worked for me is: select them all, right-click and delete them.
If there was no real reason for them to show up because in the meantime you had removed the reason for them to exist, then they'll not be generated again.

Thanks to pelotom!

Nexus 7 Not Showing Up on Windows 7 After Upgrade to Android 4.3

First generation Nexus 7 with Android 4.3

It was working before the last firmware upgrade.
After the upgrade the device simply doesn't show up in the file explorer.
If you go to the list of devices, it's there.
If you remove the driver, Windows will simply reinstall it automatically.
If you choose "Upgrade driver" Windows will tell you you have the most recent version.

What worked is:

1. Go to Settings --> Storage
2. Open the menu on the top left corner and select USB computer connection
3. Choose Media device

It will immediately appear :-)
It should...

Forgot to Change Mercurial's Commit Comment?

If you're using TortoiseHg (my version is 2.9.2) and it's the last thing you did (the commit), then you can simply go to Repository --> Rollback/Undo. What you need is the Undo and to preserve the changed files in the workspace. Follow the instructions then and you're set!