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Never go full Windows Munich city council's administrative and personnel committee has decided to move any remaining Linux systems to Windows 10 in 2020.A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted (PDF, in Deutsche, natürlich) for the Windows migration on Wednesday, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hübner told The Register.Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised – mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange – and in February the...

Readers routinely ask me whether it’s still possible to clean install Windows 10 with an unused Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 product key. Over two years after Microsoft first enabled this functionality, the answer is a resounding yes.And I can think of a number of reasons why one might need to do so.As noted, Microsoft first introduced this capability over two years ago, and in doing so it erased what had been one of the early install/activation issues with the then-new Windows 10.Almost a year later, I reported that this capability—which was supposed to be temporary, by the way–still worked....

More than a year after ending its free Windows 10 upgrade program, Microsoft is getting ready to shut down the last official free upgrade extension. The news wasn't exactly shouted from the rooftops. If you've been waiting to claim your free Windows 10 upgrade using the "assistive technologies" exception, you need to act soon. In a quiet change to an obscure web page, Microsoft announced this week that those exceptions will end on December 31, 2017. On July 29, 2016, Microsoft officially ended the Get Windows 10 program, which offered free Windows 10 upgrades to anyone currently running a supported...

A below-the-radar security feature in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, aka version 1709 released last week, can stop ransomware and other file-scrambling nasties dead.The controlled folder access mechanism within Windows Defender prevents suspicious applications from changing the contents of selected protected folders.Though controlled folder access has been known about for months – it surfaced with Insider builds earlier this summer – the feature is only now being thrust into the spotlight with the general public release of the Fall Creators Update for Windows 10.The feature can be enabled through the Windows Defender Security Center App for most users, and...

Windows 10's Fall Creators Update is full of changes, but one of the understated additions could make a big difference if you're a gamer. Microsoft has switched on its previously teased TruePlay feature, which promises to protect against "common" cheats in Universal Windows Platform games. Titles that take advantage of the safeguard will both run in a protected mode and trigger a background service that watches for typical cheating behavior. If they find anything amiss, they'll send data to the developer. You can switch off TruePlay if you're nervous about Windows transmitting your data, but companies can limit what you're...

With the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update last week, the "Controlled Folder Access" that Microsoft touted in June is now live for millions of users. As the name hints, the Controlled Folder Access feature allows users to control who can access certain folders. The feature works on a "block everything by default" philosophy, which means that on a theoretical level, it would be able to prevent ransomware when it tries to access and encrypt files stored in those folders. The benefits of using Controlled Folder Access for your home and work computers are tangible for anyone that's fearful...

Caveat: This is a Microsoft Marketing Announcement of Windows 10 Version 1709 "Fall Creators Update".This update __WILL__ be pushed out to ALL Windows 10 users, so those of you who run Win10 should pay attention because your computing experience is about to change. "Today, we deliver the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update offering breakthroughs in creativity – from bringing mixed reality and 3D to the masses, to faster broadcasting for gaming, to turning photos and videos into real memories, and so much more. The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update can be experienced on a wide variety of Windows 10 PCs...

The market share of Windows 10 is rising and, if the numbers by known analyst firms turn out to be true, Windows 10 might have a greater market share than the all-time popular Windows 7. According to the numbers by Statcounter, the total market share of Windows 10 as of September is 39.3% which isn’t much less than that of Windows 7 (43.99%). Also, the market share graph in the case of Windows 10 is constantly rising, it saw a bump of 1.43% between August and September. By looking at the graph, it’s visible that there has been a decline...

Versions in use by millions lag behind latest OS, leaving systems vulnerable to attack Microsoft is silently patching security bugs in Windows 10, and not immediately rolling out the same updates to Windows 7 and 8, potentially leaving hundreds of millions of computers at risk of attack.Flaws and other programming blunders that are exploitable by hackers and malware are being quietly cleaned up and fixed in the big Windows 10 releases – such as the Anniversary Update and the Creator's Update. But this vital repair work is only slowly, if at all, filtering back down to Windows 7 and Windows...

The Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 is almost here, but if you're not ready, in this guide, we'll tell you the steps to delay it. Starting on October 17, Microsoft's update servers are expected to be busier than usual pushing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) to millions of compatible devices already running Windows 10. The update will roll out in phases, beginning with newer devices known to work with the new version to work out any unforeseen bugs, and then expanding at a slow pace until is fully available to everyone. If you rely on your...

Allowed Windows 10 latest update/build to run on my PC last night. It ended shortly before I went to bed, and I shut down the PC. The morning I could not execute my Win 7 games - Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Freecell, Majong. All the "run as administrator" and "compatibility" and "compatibility troubleshooting stuff" didn't do a dam thing. NOTHING, not even reinstall of the games and then all the compatibility stuff again worked. Nada, zilch., I had expended considerable effort from XP to Win 7 and then to Win getting versions of these games that would run, after each Windows...

While many people welcomed the arrival of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10, it has been found to be a potential security issue. A new technique known as a Bashware has been discovered by security researchers that makes it possible for malware to use the Linux shell to bypass security software. While administrator access is needed to execute a Bashware attack, this is fairly easily obtained, and the technique can be used to disguise malicious operations from antivirus software and other security tools. Researchers from Check Point Research point out that the danger stems from the fact that...

MICROSOFT has promised not to repeat its initial, somewhat forceful approach to Windows 10 upgrades. Microsoft has responded to a lawsuit from a German consumer agency by promising not to repeat its initial approach to Windows 10 upgrades. Microsoft was heavily criticised during the initial roll-out of the next-generation operating system. Between mid-2015 and mid-2016, during the promotional year when customers could claim a free upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft preinstalled 6GB of data on users’ machines. The 6GB data dump was designed to make installing Windows 10 faster, however, there was no obvious way for users to opt-out of...

Insider build aims to address glitch spotted by gamers Microsoft says it is working to address a bug that had caused some Windows 10 applications to experience momentary "stuttering" performance problems.The flaws, reported to Microsoft by gamers who had installed the Creators Update, resulted in games stuttering and momentarily dropping frame rates. After months of waiting for a fix, users running the Insider Build have now been told by Microsoft that patches are in the pipeline."Thank you everyone for providing feedback and submitting traces," Microsoft said via an alert posted to the Feedback Hub app on Windows 10. "We have...

Looks like Microsoft’s Windows 10 is growing very slowly now. Last month Windows 10 market share had grown by 1%. The new report by NetMarkeShare revealed that Windows 10 share has increased to 27.99% from 27.63%. Good news is that Windows 10 market share is still increasing but very slowly.Windows 8.1 market share dropped to 6.07% from the 6.48%, Windows XP’s share also decreased slightly. On the other hand, Windows 7’s market share dropped slightly to 48.43%.Image Courtesy: NetMarketShare.com Although Windows 7’s market share is dropping, Windows 10 is still far behind to over take the former. Windows 10’s market...

Microsoft is planning to add native eye tracking support into Windows 10. The new support is primarily designed to help those suffering from neuro-muscular diseases like ALS and other disabilities to control the various interface elements in Windows 10 without a traditional mouse and keyboard. This ranges from gazing at apps to launch them, or using an onscreen keyboard to glance at characters and type out words.Dubbed Eye Control in Windows 10, the new feature will require hardware like Tobii’s Eye Tracker 4C. Microsoft has worked closely with Tobii to enable this support, and existing devices like Tobii Dynavox PCEye...

Microsoft Paint, the first image editing software experienced by countless photographers and PC users around the world, is being laid to rest. Microsoft has announced that it’s abandoning the famous program after 32 years. The Guardian spotted a newly published page on the Microsoft website with a list of Windows features that will be removed or deprecated in the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Among the many entries is a simple line that reads, “Microsoft Paint,” with an indication that it will be deprecated. Paint, which first appeared on Windows 1.0 in 1985, has been replaced by Microsoft’s new...

Don't want to enter your Microsoft password every time you log into your PC or laptop? Our helpful guide will show you how to bypass the Windows password login in Windows 10. Part of the reason tablets became so popular is the fact they are always-on - no waiting for Windows to load, and no needing to enter your password every single time you wanted to use them.Well, tablets are great, but depending on the situation at hand sometimes you just need a PC or laptop. And you still want it to load quickly. That shouldn't be too much to ask.You...

I woke up this morning without wifi. I noticed that this update was installed. I couldn't find my adapter in the Devices list. The wifi adapter is: Realtek RTL8723BE 802.11 bgn Wi-Fi Adapter. It replaced it with a bunch of other WAN adapters which won't work. I removed the update and now I have wifi again. However, this update is downloading again and I'm not interested in going through this every time the update runs. How can I block this update until this issue is resolved? I have an HP Pavilion laptop.

Exclusive A massive trove of Microsoft's internal Windows operating system builds and chunks of its core source code have leaked online.The data – some 32TB of official and non-public installation images and software blueprints that compress down to 8TB – were uploaded to betaarchive.com, the latest load of files provided just earlier this week. It is believed the confidential data in this dump was exfiltrated from Microsoft's in-house systems around March this year.The leaked code is Microsoft's Shared Source Kit: according to people who have seen its contents, it includes the source to the base Windows 10 hardware drivers plus...