Undoubtedly, DVD is gradually disappearing from home media. Increasing people prefer to watch movies, TV shows on streaming media. Furthermore, most PC manufactures are eliminating disc drives while developing the latest device.

So what if you have a big collection of DVDs but couldn't find an available device to play them on? Let us discuss about a software, that I came to know recently.

With the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, on 17th October 2017, Microsoft also released the SDK for the developers to build and publish apps. It contains the latest headers, libraries, metadata and tools to build applications targeting Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

If you didn't yet grab that, download it now and start building new apps or updating your existing ones with the new features.

We all know that, the next major update of Windows 10, named 'Fall Creators Update', is already there. The update released worldwide on 17th October 2017, contains a set of new features like: Fluent design, Windows Mixed Reality, OneDrive placeholders and many more improvements and fixes.

By the time you might have already received the upgrade notification, but in case you didn't, here's some ways to grab the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

While Microsoft is preparing for the next big update, named 'Windows 10 Creators Update', to be available worldwide from 17th October, the Windows engineering team has already started pushing their next set of updates from the RedStone 4 (RS4) branch to the Windows Insiders.

Along with build 17017, for the fast ring insiders, Microsoft has started testing a new Startup settings page, easily accessible from the Windows 10 Settings app.

Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 17017 to the Windows Insiders who are on the Fast ring, and that also includes the insiders who opted in to Skip Ahead. If you are among them, check for updates to get the new bits installed on your system.

This is the first build, for the fast ring Windows Insiders, from the Redstone 4 (RS4) development branch. Checkout to know what's new in this build.

Microsoft released a new update for Visual Studio 2017, increasing the version to 15.4. If you have already installed Visual Studio 2017, you will get the update notification under the notification icon. You can also check for updates inside the Extensions and Updates dialog.

Check out this blog post to know what has been newly added/updated in this build. It also lists the issues that has been fixed.

Microsoft Edge browser, which was first introduced with Windows 10 operating system, has now been extended to be available on mobile devices running iOS and Android operating systems.

If you are an insider, running iOS and Android, you can now experience the features like Favorites, Reading List, New Tab Page and Reading View of Microsoft Edge browser on your phone.

Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed reality device often seems to be overlooked in discussions of VR, as it isn't really a consumer-facing device right now. It costs around $3000 for developer edition and $5000 for commercial edition.

In this post, we are going to discuss about the future of Microsoft HoloLens and its uses, as it is now a most interesting topic.

In this computing world, we are familiar with PDF document formats, which opens in Acrobat Reader or any other compatible PDF Reader applications. In Windows 10, it is easy to create PDF files using the Microsoft Print to PDF printer drivers.

Though, this feature is available by default with the operating system, but in case it is not available, you can install the required driver by following the steps mentioned in this post.

If you are a Windows Insider, and in the First Ring, you might have already received the new build notification. Microsoft has released a new build 16294. This build might not be available for everyone as it rolls out. So, you may get the update notification later.

Going a step ahead to release 'Windows 10 Fall Creators Update' on 17th October, Microsoft focuses on bug fixes in this build.

Haven't used your PC for a while and forgot Windows 10 sign-in password? Change Windows password often but couldn't remember the last password used on your laptop? Need to assist someone else in resetting lost computer password?

Performing a clean install of Windows is never a good idea, especially if you have important softwares or files stored on your hard drive. In this tutorial we'll show you how to easily reset forgotten Windows 10 password with or without reset disk.

When you want certain constructors, methods or properties out of the debugger scope, you can use the DebuggerHidden attribute, part of the System.Diagnostics namespace. When a member has been marked as DebuggerHidden, breakpoints will not hit for that member.

If you are unaware of this attribute, let's go a step ahead to learn about this attribute and how it works. Continue reading to know more.

Due to improper closing of Outlook data files, this happens many times when the mails in the 'Inbox' folder are inaccessible. Therefore you would not be able to read and reply important mails. Also, the default Outlook PST Repair Tool is unable to fix that issue! Now what to do?

Most people will panic in such a situation, but the ideal deal is to move forward and install the Phoenix Outlook PST Repair Tool from Stellar.

Lightweight solution loading is a new concept in Visual Studio 2017, when enabled, Visual Studio loads a small subset of the projects instead of loading all the projects available in a large solution. Thus, it loads solutions twice faster.

You need to manually enable/disable this feature. But in version 15.3 and above, you can ask Visual Studio to decide whether to enable it or not. Let's discuss the steps.

Are you waiting for the next major update of Windows 10? Then the wait is near to end. Microsoft has announced that the next big update will start rolling out on 17th October 2017, with so many new features to make you creative.

As a Windows Insiders in the fast ring, you might have already experienced the latest update. If not, then hold your breath for another few days!!!

Looking to jump start a career in web development? Seeking help in recalling an HTML tag? Just here to check out what all the fuss about HTML is about? Well, if your answer to any of these questions is in the affirmative, then you’ve come to the right place.

Losing important data files or folder can lead you to the most stressful and difficult situation. Imagine landing in such a scenario, where you have a presentation due in an hour and have lost the file. You had spent hours, the previous day, to make that particular presentation and now you are left with no time and energy to do the same.

Most people will panic in such a situation, but the ideal thing to do is to make a wise move and download free data recovery software to recover the lost file.

After two weeks of delay, Microsoft started rolling out a fresh new build for Windows Insiders in the fast ring. Windows 10 Preview Build 16273 includes a set of new improvements and fixes, stepping ahead to release the Fall Creators Update in the coming month.

Checkout the blog post to know what has been changed in this build, to grab an idea of the improvements made in it.

If you are a web developer and designing any website or a page, you may want to run it in multiple browsers to check cross-browser issues. Visual Studio provides an easy way to run the web application in all the selected browsers at a single shot.

In this quick tip, today, we are going to learn how to run the web application in multiple browsers from the Visual Studio IDE. Continue reading to know more about it.

If you are using Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, it came with new improvements on top of C# 7.0, thus changing the version to 7.1. One of the new change in C# 7.1 is 'default' literal to avoid the redundant information while writing code.

In this post, we will learn about this improvement and will also cover how to use this. Continue reading to know about it.

In every programming language, when you want to loop through a collection, you use the 'for' loop in maximum scenarios. When writing code in Visual Studio, you might be aware that, there exist a code snippet to write the for-loop structure.

But you might not noticed that, there exist another code snippet to generate a reverse for-loop. Let's see what it is and how it operates.

Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, has been released, along with .NET Core 2.0 and Visual Studio for Mac (version 7.1) operating system. Microsoft, in a blog post, announced the availability of both the products. Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3 contains many new improvements and fixes.

.NET Core 2.0 is the second major version of .NET Core and this release focuses on performance improvements and expanded set of APIs available via .NET Standard 2.0.

If you are using BitBucket Git repositories for hosting and managing your code, Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2017, and Visual Studio 2019 have the extension to easily manage your files, directly from the Team Explorer view of the IDE.

In this post, we are going to get you started with the extension and see the main features that the extension supports.

If you are using COM components on your .NET code, you might be already aware of the Marshal.ReleaseComObject and Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject, which are used to release the managed reference to Runtime Callable Wrapper (RCW) of the COM object.

If both are used to release COM objects from memory, and you are unsure which one to use, then this post will help you to learn the differences between the calls.

.NET Framework 4.7.1 is the next version of the .NET Framework, which is going to ship with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Microsoft, in a blog post, announced the availability of 'Early Access Preview Build' of .NET Framework 4.7.1.

It's now a feature complete build and running under testing phase. If you are a Windows Insider, you can start validating your applications running on the latest version.

If you are using COM objects like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint, you may sometime notice that the COM instances are not releasing from the process list; even though you called Close(), Quit() on the application instance.

In case you faced the same issue, this post will guide you to find the Process ID (from the HWND) of that particular instance to take further action to release it.

If you are using .NET Framework 2.0 or .NET Framework 3.5, and getting unexpected Runtime Error while repeatedly calling the System.Net.NetworkInformation.Ping.Send method from C# code, this is due to an issue which got resolved in .NET Framework 4.0 and above.

Today, we are going to discuss about the issue, the root cause and the workaround to resolve this issue targeting .NET Framework version older than 4.0.

It's often require to parse a string value to another data type, like integer, and there exists a confusion among the developers whether to use the Parse method or the TryParse method that the framework provides to us.

In this post, we will discuss the difference between each of those two methods and guide you to understand and pick the preferable one. Continue reading to know more.

Let's continue our 'Back to Basics' series. It's often an interview question to get an idea of the basic knowledge of a candidate. This is one of the simple question that an interviewer may ask during an interview and you should also know this while writing your code.

In this post, we are again going to discuss on the basics and this time we will learn the difference between null string and empty string.

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that, my book titled 'Mastering Visual Studio 2017' has been published today. It was a great journey, with months of efforts. Thanks to Packt Publisher for the opportunity to write for them. Sincere thanks to the editorial team and the reviewer.

By reading this book, you will learn not only what Visual Studio 2017 offers, but also what it takes to put it to work for your project.

Microsoft, today announced a new PC build 16251 for the Windows Insiders in the Fast Ring, from the RS3 (Redstone 3) development branch. And thus, moving towards one step forward to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which is expected to release within few months.

Along with this new PC build, they have also announced a new build 15235 for mobile devices. In this post, we are going to list the new features that you can see in the new PC build.

StringCollection class is a spcialized collection type present in .NET Framework class libraries. The name itself represents it as a collection of strings. It exposes common methods and properties to manage string collection.

If you do not know about this class, in this post we are going learn about it's properties, methods and learn how to use it.

In last few articles we have discussed about NPOI libraries for .NET. There could be some cases, while reading Excel files, you may get an exception with 'The supplied spreadsheet seems to be Excel 5.0/7.0 (BIFF5) format. POI only supports BIFF8 format' as message.

In this quick tip, we are going to discuss about this issue, the way to handle it and the way to read the same Excel workbook content.

In the last two articles, we have learned how to use the NPOI library to read Excel 2007 (.xlsx) and Excel 97-2003 (.xls) file format. We have also discussed more about the APIs and shared the code snippet for you to understand it easily.

In this article, we will learn how to read Excel 95 and older workbooks easily using the free Apache NPOI libraries in your C#/.NET applications.

In the last article, we have discussed about the NPOI library and then learned how to read Excel 2007 file formats using the free, open sourced NPOI library. I hope, the code snippet was clear and easy to understand.

In this article, we will learn how to read Excel 97-2003 workbooks easily using the free Apache NPOI libraries in your C#/.NET applications.

Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16241 is being rolled out to Windows Insiders in the fast ring. It includes a no. of new improvements to the Windows Shell. Apart from that, Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview build 15230, has been also released.

Check this post to know the latest improvements, fixes in this new PC build 16241. Don't forget to checkout the known issues before downloading this build.

Recently, we have learned how to read Excel workbooks using the Microsoft Office COM APIs. As you may already know that the COM APIs are slow while performing operation, we will see another way to read the content which is faster.

In this article, we will learn how to read Excel 2007 workbooks using the Apache NPOI libraries which is available freely to use in your application.

Windows 10 Update delivery works better by creating a peer network to send/receive updates within LAN and/or internet. But till date, there was no control over it's upload/download bandwidth and thus, there was a need for it.

Though this feature is not yet announced in Release Notes, but a separate settings page has been seen in recent version of Insiders Preview build, which we are going to discuss in this post.

After the last Windows Insiders Preview build 16232, which was released on 28th June, Microsoft came up with a new build 16237 for the insiders. If you are in the fast ring, enjoy your weekend exploring the new improvements part of it.

This new build mainly focuses improvements to Microsoft Edge, Windows Shell including the Action Center, Emoji Panel, handwriting panel and many more.

Code lens is a feature, first introduced in Visual Studio 2013, which helps you to understand important aspects about your code without leaving your favorite editor. It tells us the code changes in a fantastic way, within the code editor.

In this small tips & tricks post on Visual Studio, we will learn how to change the font and color settings of Code Lens.

If you are using Microsoft Word Automation or COM Components to read a MS Word document, you may notice the following error message for few word documents "Error 800A175D - Could Not Open Macro Storage".

This is caused by the user account, whose "user hive" is not loaded when Microsoft Word started. Continue reading to know more about the issue and solution.

Along with Windows 10 Insiders Preview build 16232, Microsoft to introduce a new feature called 'Controlled folder access' in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. This will make it easier for you to protect valuable data from malicious apps and threats.

In this post, we are going to preview this new feature that's going to introduce in Windows Defender in the next major build of Windows 10.

A new Windows 10 PC build (16232) is now available to the fast ring insiders, along with Mobile Build 15228. This new PC build includes a no. of new security enhancements to Windows Defender, many other improvements and fixes.

Don't forget to read the 'Known Issues' first, before downloading as there is a possibility of update failure in this build.

In a month of two, after the attack of 'WannaCry', a new Ransomware named 'Petya' started spreading across the world. It's a massive cyber attack that paralyzed firms, airports, banks and government departments that uses unpatched old Windows operating system.

Starting with Ukraine, it already spread many countries like UK, Spain and India. Check this post to know how to take precaution from such attacks.

If you are using 'iTextSharp' library to read/write PDF files in your application and faced an InvalidCastException with the message "Unable to cast object of type 'iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfLiteral' to type 'iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfString'", this post will help you to know the root cause of the issue. Continue reading to learn more about it.

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update to get some new changes in Task Manager. Along with Windows 10 Insiders Preview Build 16226, Microsoft added grouped processes and GPU performance to the Task Manager window.

In this post, we are going to see the new changes that's going to come in Task Manager. Continue reading to know more.

Microsoft has updated the Storage Sense UI, which is targeted to release with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Along with insiders preview build 16266, it now allows you to easily delete the old version of Windows 10.

If you are a Windows Insider, and in the fast ring, you can now check this feature ahead of the general availability. Let's see it in action!

Good news for Insiders! A new Windows 10 PC build (16266) is now available to the fast ring insiders, after the last build released two weeks ago. This build includes a no. of new changes and improvements, along with many fixes.

Don't forget to read the 'Known Issues' before downloading this build. Sharing here the key improvements, that you can see after installing it.