Windows 10 Speech language missing

 

As part of the Insider program I get rather frequent upgrades to Windows 10. Each time the upgrade installs it resets my speech language to “English (United States)” which means Cortana stops working as my Region is set to “Australia”

I also use ConfigMgr to handle updates on my network (this would also apply for people using WSUS) so when I go into the Region & language settings I don’t get the Speech feature appearing under the “English (Australia)” options.

Luckily, it is relatively easy to sort out.

SOLUTION:

Windows 8, 10 and Server 2012 R2 upgrade stops at “Setting up a few things”

I’ve done upgrades on several computers and for the most part never had an issue, but everyone now and then I have found that while the Windows install goes all the way through the installation and device setup, it then seems to get stuck during the very last “Setting up a few more things” stage, sometimes stopping at a frustrating 79%!

I’ve tried leaving them for several hours but it never gets past that point. A hard reset is the only option, after which Windows restores the previous version. So at least nothing is lost other than time.

In all cases though, I’ve found the problem is having the Hyper-V role installed. There must be something about the Hypervisor that causes a problem.

After the OS rolls back, go into roles and features and remove the Hyper-V role, then try the upgrade again. After it completes just add the Hyper-V role back in again and it should pick up all the previous settings.

Windows Server upgrade followed by quick and dirty Exchange Repair

NOTE: I am not an Exchange person by any stretch of the imagination, but I do run it at home for all my email as a partial learning exercise, and so get to encounter all sorts of issues I really think I’d rather live without. On that note, this post is here really for my future reference. If anyone else uses this it is at your own risk. Running Exchange 2013 on Windows Server 2012. I wanted to upgrade to Server 2012R2. I was already running Exchange 2013 CU6 so it was supported for 2012R2 at least. There is a *small* note on the Exchange pre-reqs page saying something about upgrading the OS not being supported when Exchange is installed. HA! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.150).aspx#prereq

You can't upgrade Windows when Exchange is installed on the server.

I figured I’d give it a go anyway. I mean, like, what’s the worse that could happen, right? A quick Hyper-V Checkpoint (snapshot) created, checked last nights backups were good and away we go! After the upgrade, the worst happened 😦

Windows RT 8.1 upgrade fails with Boot Configuration error

UPDATE 19 August 2014 regarding KB14-045 bluescreens:

Although I don’t have a fix, there seems to be a lot of people finding this post while searching about the recent bluescreen issue caused by Microsoft Updates KB14-045. I have started a new post about this issue here:

https://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/windows-update-kb2982791-ms14-045-causing-bluescreen/

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Microsoft have now released the Full Recovery Image for WinRT (3.7GB download). You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/surface-rt-startup-error-0xc000000d?lc=1033

It uses the same steps to complete the upgrade with the last part being to recreate the full recovery volume. Some news sites are saying the MS image will revert you to 8.0, it does not. It will complete the 8.1 upgrade and then the extra steps are to recreate the on-device recovery volume with the 8.0 image which only applies if you rollback sometime in the future.

First point – How annoying is it that you can only update Windows RT from the App Store, although probably not a drama if you only have one tablet. Slightly annoying if you have two. Both need to download the update, so that’s 2x the several GB needed. If you happen to be an enterprise/business that decided to buy several of them (does such a entity exist?) then it would appear you are about to have a ton of downloads happening unless you boost your proxy cache size.

And now for todays story. I updated one Surface RT with no drama. It took a long time but I just let it run overnight and it was all good the next morning. The other tablet, not so good.

Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired
The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information
File: \BCD
Error code: 0xc000000d

Yay.

Although it takes a while, and might be a bit tricky, it does seem to be fairly easy to recover from. (UPDATE: I have now received multiple confirmations that this works, and no data is lost!)