I have a number of machines that synchronize with SkyDrive.  Last week, things went sideways and one of my machines was reporting errors and quit synchronizing.  After the next reboot (which naturally fixes most issues), the SkyDrive application would initialize, trying to start processing the changes, and then do a faceplant in the form of a crash and generating an event in the event log like this:

This looks and sounds bad.  I wasn’t sure how to resolve it, but it’s actually pretty simple.  There is a catalog or index of everything that is synched and it is stored on each machine in a hidden location.  You need to delete that file and restart SkyDrive.

After doing some searching, I found a thread on the Microsoft Help forums.  It’s as simple as deleting %localappdata%\Microsoft\SkyDrive\settings\3e2972b1aa909a0c.dat.  After you delete that, restart the SkyDrive client and you should be back in business.

Quite honestly, having been in the TAP for Windows 8 and having logged a lot of time using the product, I was frustrated because I felt lost when it came to finding something or executing a task.

I shy away from the “Start” screen, the screen you see after you’re logged in to Windows 8.  As with a lot of people who have used the product, I saw this screen as something only useful to those who were running a tablet, and I found myself never leaving the “Desktop”, and trying to run Windows as I always had since the beginning.

I’m trying to get better at it, after all, I still use it everyday.  What I maybe find the most frustrating still, is the feeling of “who moved my cheese.”  It’s interesting I felt that way, cause at first, Scott Hanselman felt the same way.  Scott has a huge following in the development community, so I was interested to hear what he had to say about it.

About a week ago, Scott posted a video that intends to teach you the basics, or at least what you need to know (and understand to make sense of it) to get around Windows 8 on your desktop (not necessarily a tablet, Surface, etc.)

Scott’s blog post does a great job of covering the main aspects from a user perspective.  He also has a video (you’ll find that in the blog post too) that he created that gives you what you need to know about Windows 8 in 3 minutes.

Thanks to Scott for this valuable content.  I started my search this morning looking for “intro to Windows 8”, and this was by far the best find.

If you’re an IT Pro, or someone that manages (or will be managing) Windows 8 in your environment, then check out this free eBook from Microsoft Press which provides an introduction to this new OS.