How to spot a "fake order" scam. A popular tactic of criminals is the "fake order" scam. The way it works is that you get a message, usually in email or text, that appears to be a routine confirmation for an order. Of course, you never ordered whatever product or service it's confirming. The message looks common enough, and it says that money ...

Report a scam. If you feel like you’ve been the target of a technical support scam, you can help Microsoft stop cybercriminals by reporting it. Learn more about avoiding technical support scams.

Register the password reset verification method for a work or school account. If you forgot your work or school password, never got a password from your organization, or have been locked out of your account, you can use your security info and your mobile device to reset your work or school password. Your administrator must turn on this feature ...

Open and run DxDiag.exe. This tool is used to collect info about devices to help troubleshoot problems with DirectX sound and video. A support person might ask for this info, or you might post it in a forum when you ask for help.

Fixes an issue in which applications that use the MFC library of Visual C++ 2013 may behave incorrectly when the operating system is in high-DPI mode.

Insert a horizontal line by typing a few characters. Place the cursor where you want to insert the horizontal line. Type three of the characters shown below, and then press Enter. The line is inserted for the full width of the page. When inserted into a column, the line is inserted to match the width of the column.

You can easily insert a check mark (also known as a "tick mark") in Word, Outlook, Excel, or PowerPoint. These marks are static symbols. If you're looking for an interactive check box that you can click to check or uncheck, see: Add a check box or option button (Excel) or Make a checklist in Word.

Make it yours. Customize Windows Media Player with easily installed skins, visualizations, and plug-ins for a new look and extra features. Learn more. Learn how to download and customize Windows Media Player. Get troubleshooting help and how-to information for Windows Media Player 12.

In Word and Outlook, you can use accent marks (or diacritical marks) in a document, such as an acute accent, cedilla, circumflex, diaeresis or umlaut, grave accent, or tilde. For keyboard shortcuts in which you press two or more keys simultaneously, the keys to press are separated by a plus sign (+) in the tables.

To locate a specific item when you can't remember exactly how it is spelled, try using a wildcard character in a query. Wildcards are special characters that can stand in for unknown characters in a text value and are handy for locating multiple items with similar, but not identical data.