GRUB loading, Error 21 on Windows 7

I installed Linux on a flash drive and after booting my computer, I encountered an error:

GRUB Loading Stage 1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 21

From what I read, this means that I can no longer boot windows normally without having the flash drive plugged in because my Windows MBR was corrupted by the installation of GRUB Stage 1. Anyway, a great explanation of this mess can be read here (start at the second paragraph).

MBR can be easily repaired with the Windows recovery disc, which I don't have but I did find an easy solution which worked well for me.

Volume slider keeps going down

A strange thing happened to my volume slider - it kept sliding down to 0 by itself.

In my case, the solution was quite simple. My keyboard has media keys and it turned out that the volume down key was jammed. If you encounter this same problem, I hope it's just because of your volume control keys as well. I came across posts in forums whose problem lies in the soundcard or other complicated stuff.

Computer restarts after hibernating

Just a quick tip here. Whenever I run into the problem of having my computer restart instead of hibernating, it is usually because of plugging in a new device -- most often, a mouse.

If this is your case, you can try the following solution.

How I got SpeedFan to run at startup in Windows 7

I was having trouble running SpeedFan on startup. I've already tried placing a shortcut on the Startup folder and even tried using the Task scheduler. Not sure what configuration I am missing on the Task scheduler but I always see an error that SpeedFan can't be started up because of admin permissions or something (although I did set it to Run with highest privileges). Anyway, if you seem to have the same problem, you can try my solution but I don't guarantee that this is the best. If anyone knows how or why, feel free to share it in the comment section.

Increase volume in Windows 7, quick & dirty

Often times I would come across videos (especially online) whose volume is way too low. I don't really know much about tweaking audio and stuff so here is a quick and easy way to temporarily amp up the volume.

Windows 7 File Association - "Open with" problem

For certain programs, I have trouble associating it with the file it should open. No matter how many times I try, it just won't show on the Open with dialogue box. Turns out that I had to edit something in the registry to update the program path.