Parse Excel XML using power query in excel

I wanted to load an Excel XML file (a.k.a. Microsoft Office Excel 2002 and Excel 2003 XML Format — SpreadsheetML) in another Excel file using Power Query M formula language. It turns out that it's trickier than I expected so I decided to blog my solution.

LogonCommand doesn't execute in windows sandbox

I was trying to use Windows Sandbox to run UniFi server and I wanted to install VC140 as a logon command which seemed to not work 🤔 I was mounting the Desktop folder where I had both the executable and the startup.cmd file. Opening the sandbox and running the script worked. This means that the LogonCommand should also work, right? 

Well, no, because the scripts needs to use full paths as mentioned in this youtube video.

Running Ubiquiti UniFi Network Server on Windows 11

I was trying to run the self-hosted UniFi Network Server v8.0.26 on a newly installed Windows 11 but I was getting a cryptic message "Server taking too long to start…" followed by a "Start-up failed" error. It turns out that VC140 runtime is a hidden requirement (Visual C++ redistributable aka MSVC) and in my case it worked fine installing the latest MSVC for 2015,2017 and 2022 available in the official Microsoft site. Here is how I discovered the missing dependency.

Disabling critical battery action

 I have an old laptop with an almost dead battery, which I always use tethered to a power source, mostly as a media device connected to my TV. Occasionally, I need to move it, and if it's open, Windows realizes that the battery is very weak and decides to hibernate, as that's the default critical battery action. This can become very frustrating. The good news is that you can easily address this issue using Windows' powercfg command.

Installing Windows 11 in QEMU on Supported Hardware

When attempting to install Windows 11 in QEMU, you may encounter the "unsupported hardware" message. This occurs because QEMU does not enable TPM 2.0 support by default.

Copy contacts from outlook to gmail

To transfer your contacts from Outlook to Gmail and keep the pictures, you need to export them as vCard files (vcf) and then import them into Google Contacts. However, Outlook does not support exporting multiple contacts as vCard files at once and neither does Google Contacts support importing multiple vCard files at once. You can use a workaround to export your contacts in batches and then combine them into a single file. Here are the steps:

Dual boot two windows operating systems

I wanted a windows installation where I could write my book and escape from the apps of my everyday windows operating system. You will find plenty of articles about dual boot with Linux, but I couldn't find one on how to dual boot two windows installations. 

In hindsight, after talking to one of my colleagues, there is an easier way to do the same thing using just the windows boot disk and navigating through the UI wizard. This article is still relevant if you want to understand what the wizard does, if you want complete control, or if you want to upgrade the OS in just one of your partitions.