How to Fix Windows 7/8 “Play To” feature when it stops working.

“Play To” is a feature of Windows 7 and 8 that will push content from a local computer to a compatible rendering device. In my case, I push video files from my local computer to my Xbox 360 in just a few clicks. It works great… when it’s working.

Thankfully when the “Play To” fails to open the application on the computer to push to a device, there’s an easy fix.
Simply open Task Manager and look for “Windows Digital Media Controller Application” in processes and kill it.

Then go back to the “Play To” menu and try again and it will work.

Fix Surface RT Limited Wifi Connection

NOTE: Changing the BAND settings below will cause 5Ghz wifi to no  longer work on your Surface. You must keep BAND at 6 for 5Ghz wifi connectivity.

10/31/2016 UPDATE:

This setting is now found in the following location:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000]
 "Band"=dword:00000004
 "[2.4Ghz or 5Ghz]AutoUse40MHz"=dword:00000000

Tip came from: https://kb.iu.edu/d/bdms and modified slightly by me.

This helpful tip came from a long Microsoft community thread. Until Microsoft gets a fix for this, the best result is to disable Wireless N mode on the Surface, which is the cause of the connection problems.

1) Open regedit.
2) Go to the following tree location:
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\”
3) Find “AutoUse40Mhz” and set it to “0” (“1” is default)
4) Change the entry below this named “Band” to “4” (“6” is default)

Reboot and Surface will connect using only the 802.11 b/g band, instead of the N band.

This has been working well on my Surface RT so far. Hopefully Microsoft gets a permanent fix for this. :\

How To Easily Find Large Attachments in Gmail, without 3rd Party Tools

Thanks to steabert on stackexchange for posting this helpful tip!

In Gmail, simply search for “size:xxxxxxxx“

This undocumented search parameter will help you find messages larger than the size you searched for.
The search parameters are in bytes, so 10485760 = 10MB or  52428800 = 50 MB, and so on.

EDIT: As of November 15th, Google has officially released support for this feature

“To find emails larger than 5MB, you can search for size:5m or larger:5m“