• When installing Windows 8, 7, or Vista from USB, you must unplug the USB device before the first restart, otherwise you will receive an error stating:
  "windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computer's hardware"

First create a registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER of type REG_SZ called EnableHexNumpad, set its value to 1, and reboot. Then you can enter Unicode symbols by holding down the Alt key and typing the plus sign on the numeric keypad followed by the character value. When you release the Alt key, the symbol will appear. This approach worked with most applications I tried, including Firefox and Safari, but did not with Internet Explorer.

Click Start/Run and type this command to fix this problem:
(Tip from David Candy)

regsvr32 /i shell32.dll

FFV1 loseless video codec