Saturday, January 26, 2019

Windows Broken Program Installs

We've all been there, not able to install, update, or remove a program because there is something else installed that is damaged or didn't properly clean up after itself.

That happened to me again recently with a Visual C++ Runtime, but this time I found this little updated gem from Microsoft.

It removes corrupted Registry entries, errant file entries in Programs and Features, plus I'm sure more they don't even mention.


Friday, January 18, 2019

Using Diskpart for a Bootable USB

Q: How many systems come with CD or DVD drives these days?

A: Close to nil.


If you need to create a bootable USB drive, Diskpart can get the job done for you. You can then dump whatever it is you need to run onto the remainder of the free space.


  1. Open a Cmd window as Administrator
  2. Run diskpart
  3. Type list disk, this will show which one is your USB drive
  4. Type select disk # where # is the USB drive from Step 3
  5. Type clean, hit enter
  6. Type create part pri + enter, then select part 1 + enter
  7. Type format fs=ntfs quick + enter (for UEFI systems, use format fs=fat32 quick)
  8. Type active + enter, then exit.
  9. Optional: Copy your files onto the USB drive, i.e. the contents of an ISO