Windows 8 factory reset notebook model Acer V3-571G

On the Login Screen hold shift and move click on shutdown icon. Select 'restart'.
After reboot will be prompted a menu, now you may navigate : troubleshoot > Advanced option >  Reset PC

Please note, doing reset will lose all data.

Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier ( MD5 or SHA1 )

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11533

Windows Tools

got myself some free tools to use

Folder size,
http://www.mindgems.com/


Clean temp folder,
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

JRuby Platform detection

p/s: This is by no means my work, i take no credit, however this post serves as memory bank as i am a goldfish.I thank the owner for sharing on the web.


useful excerpt for my case:
Quote
======
2. Platform detection. I've seen this question lots of times. Since in JRuby, RUBY_PLATFORM constant is always "java",  users are unclear how to detect the underlying platform. It is pretty straghtforward with rbconfig module, JRuby fully supports it:
   require 'rbconfig'
   Config::CONFIG['host_os'] # returns mswin32 on Windows, for example

There is plenty of additional info in Config::CONFIG, just print it out to see.
======


Links:
http://ruby.dzone.com/articles/10-hot-tips-jruby

Serial Communication on Linux

killall -9 xxd
stty -F /dev/ttyUSB$1 raw -echo -iexten
echo "W: "c0
echo -ne "\x"c0 > /dev/ttyUSB$1
xxd -c1 -l2 < /dev/ttyUSB$1

Partition harddisk? Free tool from sourceforge

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

solving windows live messenger missing online contacts

%userprofile%\local settings\application data\microsoft\windows live contacts
OR
%userprofile%\AppData\microsoft\windows live contacts




delete everything in this directory!