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Hail of notifications incoming... just be thankful 8 passed you by Updated Windows 7 holdouts have been warned to expect a notification suggesting that perhaps an upgrade might be in order.Matt Barlow, corporate veep for Windows, has promised Windows 7 users are to receive a "courtesy reminder" that support is running out for the venerable OS as 14 January 2020 looms large.Barlow also noted that Office 2010 ends its support run shortly thereafter, but for now the focus is on Windows 7.The helpful notifications will doubtless send a shiver of déjà vu down the spines of users who found themselves...

We all know all about Windows 10’s most controversial feature, and Microsoft has now confirmed it has struck again… Picked up by the ever-excellent AskWoody, the latest update for Windows 10 (patch KB4482887) has crippled gaming performance on the platform across both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Microsoft has now confirmed the problem and issued an official warning about the update. “After installing KB4482887, users may notice graphics and mouse performance degradation with desktop gaming when playing certain games (eg: Destiny 2),” explained Microsoft, with the company saying it is working on a fix. Needless to say, users are furious. Woody...

The new app focuses less on Office 365, more on free stuff. [TEXT ONLY ... Links at the CNet page.] Microsoft's new Office app is available now for all Windows 10 users, Microsoft announced in a blog post Wednesday. The app, which was announced in December, replaces the current My Office app. The new app is designed to be more useful to Office users by letting them launch documents, access Office desktop apps and more. While the soon-to-be-replaced My Office app has most of these features, the new one focuses on free elements. With the new app, you can find...

For the BOFHs**: Admin Center preview loaded with Software Defined Networking goodness In a busy week for Windows Insiders, Fast-Ring fans got a fresh build of Windows last night, hot on the heels of a new preview of the Windows Admin Center.You say 19H1, I say 20H1, let's call the whole thing off Having sent Skip-Ahead testers into the future with a 20H1 build of Windows 10, Microsoft has now shared the Linux love with those remaining on the Fast Ring and testing 19H1.The accessing of files lurking in distros running Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) without fear of corruption...

Others still can't even get that far Updated It has been a trying time for Microsoft punters after a Windows Defender update left some PCs unable to boot last week, while other folk continue to struggle to even get to the update service.How do you make a PC super secure? Don't let it boot A tweak to Windows Defender slowly creeping its way over PCs has an issue that can stop Windows 10 booting (and a few iterations of Windows Server – Microsoft points to Server 2016, but some users have reported problems with Server 2019).Some admins have been in...

April (2018) still on top as Microsoft's difficult October update slowly trickles onto PCs With the next release of Windows 10 edging closer, users continue to steer clear of Microsoft's October 2018 update.Figures published by ad slinger AdDuplex show that the Update of the Damned, aka the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, has dribbled its way onto 12.4 per cent of Windows 10 PCs sold.It's a far cry from the near hysterical rate at which the April 2018 Update was flung out, demonstrating just how cautious the software giant has become after the disastrous debut of Windows 10 build 1809...

What if Windows let you quickly access administrative tools, backup and restore options and other important management settings from a single window? If that sounds good, look no further than the so-called “God Mode.”

During me being at my parents over the holidays (Christmas 2017) I had the usual IT-support stuff to do, that always happens to tech savvy kids when they are back at home. As I am a happy Linux user for over a decade now, I asked myself if it would be a good idea to switch my parents away from Win 10 to a GNU/Linux (I will call it only Linux during the rest of the post. Sorry Richard ;) ) based system. I did that and now 2 years later I still think it was a good idea: I...

Microsoft to hang up support on 10 December (2019) Microsoft has formally set the end date for support of its all-but-forgotten Windows 10 Mobile platform.The Redmond code factory said today that, come December 10, it's curtains for the ill-fated smartphone venture. The retirement will end a four-year run for a Microsoft phone effort that never really got off the ground and helped destroy Nokia in the process."The end of support date applies to all Windows 10 Mobile products, including Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise," Microsoft declared."Windows 10 Mobile users will no longer be eligible to receive new...

Hello fellow FReepers and anti-Microsoft enthusiasts. Lately I was following a blog here and I followed the instructions of some of where I installed Windows 10 Release 1607, and was able to keep it from updating past that by installing WinAero Tweak. So far so good, after a week it has not updated past that release. Drivers updated just fine and I turned off most of the telemetry items that one can turn off and uninstalled all of the junk software. But I'm trying to find someway of blocking any lingering telemetry that may be leaking to Microsoft, if possible....

More than three years after its release, Windows 10 has passed Windows 7 in market share. That means more desktop computers are now running Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system than any other OS, according to Net Applications. The milestone is a nice way for Microsoft to end 2018, even though the company surely was hoping it wouldn’t take this long for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7.Windows 10 adoption started out very strong, but slowed quickly as the months progressed. Microsoft was aiming for 1 billion devices running Windows 10 in two to three years but backpedaled on that...

Dayglored note: The article is very image intensive. Definitely check it out -- I'm not going to try to re-post all the graphics in this excerpt. Give into the power of the dark side with the dark theme in Windows 10. If you’ve seen the Dark Mode that Apple recently introduced with its macOS 10.14 Mojave operating system update, and wished that Windows 10 could look the same, well, it can! Microsoft has quietly slipped the feature into not only the latest version of Windows 10 but also its Edge browser and Microsoft Office applications. We show you how to...

Some systems may get version 1809 automatically Forced Windows 10 updates aren’t entirely a new concept, and most users found out this is really a thing back in the days when this operating system was available as a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 devices.But while Microsoft promised never to embrace forced updates again in the future, a recent company release makes some believe there’s a chance it could happen one more time with Windows 10 version 1809, also known as the October 2018 Update.Microsoft rolled out a silent update to KB4023814 on December 24, and by the looks...

Microsoft starts accepting beta testers for the new Edge Microsoft is currently working on building a new browser after its EdgeHTML experiment failed, so now the company is transitioning to Chromium for an approach that just can’t go wrong.The software giant has started receiving beta testers for the new browser, as it’s now likely finalizing the preview build due in early 2019.What’s important to know is that registering today doesn’t provide you with a download link, but only adds your name to the list of beta testers that will receive the preview build of the new Microsoft Edge when it...

Remains of the year laid bare as we flay July to December Where were we? Ah yes... it was the summer of GitHub committers' discontent – as many looked on in horror as Redmond swallowed it for $7.5bn in June. But things were about to heat up further...July brings joy, junior Surfaces and jiggly financials Hayfever season began well for Microsoft as the giant took another potshot at Google and Apple's device crown. Could the Surface Go take down Chromebooks and iPads? Or was another Surface RT disaster in the offing?For the latter question, no – the Go is a...

The Vulture picks over the remnants of January to June It seems a lifetime (or two Windows 10 releases) ago, but 2018 started with Microsoft, and other software vendors, staring down the twin barrels of Spectre and Meltdown.The Spectre of January's Meltdown Flaws in Intel's silicon meant that Microsoft had to scramble to mitigate the vulnerability at the operating system level (having quietly seeded the fixes to its hardy crew of Windows Insiders towards the end of 2017). The flaw potentially allowed miscreants to read data from the operating system's protected kernel memory area of machines equipped with the broken...

Whether it’s a program you found on the Internet or something that came in your email, running executable files has always been risky. Testing software in clean systems requires virtual machine (VM) software and a separate Windows license to run inside the VM. Microsoft is about to solve that problem with Windows Sandbox.

All your activity are belong to us Updated A feature introduced in the April 2018 Update of Windows 10 may have set off a privacy landmine within the bowels of Redmond as users have discovered that their data was still flowing into the intestines of the Windows giant, even with the thing apparently turned off.In what is likely to be more cock-up than conspiracy, it appears that Microsoft is continuing to collect data on recent user activities even when the user has explicitly said NO, DAMMIT!First noted in an increasingly shouty thread over on Reddit, the issue is related to...

Update: After pausing the rollout of the update and extensively testing the software to make sure most issues have been fixed, Microsoft has now made the Windows 10 October 2018 Update once again available to download. We will keep updating this guide with any new issues we find. Some people have reported that they have encountered Windows 10 October 2018 Update problems since downloading and installing it. If you’re running into Windows 10 October 2018 Update problems, we have you covered and have gathered up all the Windows 10 October Update problems and fixes right here in this convenient guide....

Got a Surface Book 2 on 1803? You should probably uninstall last week's update Users of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, rejoice! Microsoft has slung out a hefty patch to, er, fix a whole bunch of stuff that was broken in the Update of the Damned.Released last night, KB4469342 is packed full of updates, with two notable changes lurking at the end of the list of tweaks. The failure of mapped drives to reconnect after starting and logging into a Windows device – which was a showstopper for many enterprises and consumers with home servers – has been fixed,...