Highlights

Monday, March 17, 2014

HOW TO: Run Android Apps on Windows

With BlueStacks, you can run your favorite Android Apps on your Windows computer. Although a number of apps have their Windows version, some other apps are only available on Android. One example is WhatsApp.*

By installing BlueStacks, you can run Android apps as a "window" on your Windows PC. You can also make it full screen, setup Play Store and install other Android apps on it. It uses resources of your PC, which means Android apps and run faster, have more RAM and storage resources to run your apps. For some apps, like simulation games, this is important.

To download the free beta version, go there - http://www.bluestacks.com/. Although it is a beta version, it runs quite stable on my Windows 7, really worth a try!

*To install WhatsApp, you need to provide your phone number for activation, which will not work on a normal PC; but, after the activation timeout, then you still have an alternate method to activate it. However, note that your WhatsApp can only be installed on ONE machine.

Monday, March 3, 2014

SOLVED! IE, "Page Cannot be Displayed"

Just upgraded my laptop to Windows 8.1, with built-in IE 11. Weird, my Chrome browsing web pages working fine, but Internet Explorer can't browse to any pages, with the error message "Page Cannot be Displayed".

Ping test, working fine. On IE, even using IP address, will return the same error message "Page Cannot be Displayed". Reviewed IE settings, reset to default settings. Same.

This reminds me of the "WinSock" problems... with some research, different individuals offer their "Winsock Fix" apps... well, be honest, I'm not comfortable with those "tools"...

Then, come across two simple commands, which actually fixed my problem!

SOLUTION: 

netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ip reset reset.log hit
These two commands reset winsock entries, and the TCP/IP stack. You need to REBOOT your computer. After reboot, IE works fine as before.

No need to re-install IE or downgrade / re-install your Windows. Just two commands!!