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It is sad to see how Windows 10 paranoia has gained momentum during the past weeks. Sad, but at the same time, to be totally honest, somewhat amusing. Take a look at this thread on Seven Forums, titled “I Want to Keep Windows 7 Forever” and comments to OP’s original post to see an example
As we have repeatedly told here on Win10.guru, it’s most definitely time to remove Windows 7 from the life support and let it die, time to upgrade to Windows 10. Some hard core users, as well as businesses relying on legacy software running on Windows 7 will hang on, continue the life support against patients
Jen Gentleman (@JenMsft), Software Engineer and Community Manager at Microsoft, is one of those “people on Twitter every Windows enthusiast should follow.” A few days ago she tweeted this: What's a computer tip/trick that you think everyone should know? — Jen Gentleman 🌺 (@JenMsft) January 18, 2020 At the moment, the thread has already over
In looking at the differences between the new Feature Upgrade C:\Windows folder for Build 19546 verus its Windows.old “equivalent” (Build 19541), I couldn’t help but notice more that was different than alike. Start with the intro image for this story. Windows.old (left) includes 86,332 files and 22,148 folders and is 15.3 GB in size (15.1
Upgrade attempts to tonight’s new Insider Build 19546 failed twice when using Windows Update. Next, I tried upgrade using an ISO image made with UUP Dump. It failed, too. I am already used to working through various issues with Insider upgrades, and have some routine preparations I’ll make every time before starting. These include: disconnect
An accidental launch of Google’s Password Checkup utility points out some possible security compromises and “less-than-best” practices in my password stable. I take corrective action, but it’s slow and intense work. Sigh.
As Ed Tittel wrote earlier, yesterday marked the death (EOL, End of Life) of Windows 7. Users still using Windows 7, especially the hardcore who truly believe all the false rumours and have thus not tested Windows 10 at all, this is for you. I have written a tutorial on Seven Forums, a sister site
Tomorrow, January 14, 2020, is EOL (end-of-life) day for Windows 7. Starting then, only a Extended Security Contract or running Win7 as a VM on Microsoft Virtual Desktop will keep that aging OS up-to-date. Time to migrate!
A GitHub comment from the Windows Terminal Program Manager Kayla Cinnamon preannounces cool new features, including a smashingly retro CRT look (featured image).
The free Patch My PC Updater program does a great job of identifying and updating out-of-date PC applications that it recognizes (around 300 in all). It’s limited in scope, but good at what it does. Check it out!
The end of the 2019-2020 holiday season marks the start of our third year here at Win10.Guru. I want to thank all our subscribers, readers and my Guru partner Ed Tittel for those first two years. Thanks a lot, in fact! It all started five years ago when I had an idea for a website
While digging out my inbox after 8 days away from it all, I learn to my delight that Microsoft has renewed my Windows Insider MVP status for 2020. Hooray!
As I look back at two years at Win10.Guru, I reflect on successes with the Admin Toolkit and DISM series, and somewhat less enthusiasm for news and musings from readers. I resolve to offer more of interest and engagement in 2020. Happy New Year, All!
OK readers: it’s no longer in any doubt. Windows 7 is set to shuffle off the scene next month (as much as it can, anyway). Windows 8 and 8.1 never amounted to much. Other OSes outside the Windows umbrella enjoy less marketshare than XP does, 5 years after its end-of-life came and went. There’s no
Please take a look at this Reliability Monitor output over the past 2 weeks. Notice the yellow exclamation points. Each one arises from the same cause as shown at the foot of the screen cap. It is a “Failed Windows Update” for the built-in Skype app (UWP style). I never use it on my production
With a new definition of the Fast Insider ring as a place where new Windows 10 features and functions will come and (possibly) go, the Slow ring gains importance as the focus for detailed feedback on the next planned OS release. This changes my priorities.
Running Windows on a Hyper-V virtual machine can naturally never be as fast as that same version of Windows on host machine’s real physical hardware. However, by tweaking virtual machine settings, you can greatly impact the speed and functionality of a virtual machine. As a Hyper-V enthusiast, I want to share my tips for making
With the announcement for Build 19365, MS also decrees massive changes to what the Windows Insider program does and how it works. This will make life very different for Windows Insiders, so please check this out.
The Windows Insider team released Build 19536 for Fast Ring yesterday, December 16. It is the seventh release in a month. Even for keen “clean installers” like me, that is simply too many to do a clean install whenever a new build is released. However, now we can be sure that there will not be
When I see my Lenovo T520 is stuck at downloading updates, I try — and fail — to reset WU so I can try again. Catch-22! I fix it with a reboot and a disabled NIC. WU reset works, and updates begin flowing again.
An overly dramatic title, I know, but I mean it. My smartphone is and will be a Nokia Lumia 925, running Windows Phone 8.1, until one of us stops working, until the end of one of us .It simply is the best smartphone I have seen, used or tested. Responsive, versatile operating system, fast and
When your Hyper-V host computer is connected to a VPN, virtual machines still use the host’s default connection. They are not connected to the VPN. This is often practical, in fact. Thus, for example, while VPN allows my host to use another geolocation, I can use a virtual machine on that same host for services
When it comes to keeping device drivers up-to-date, life with Windows 10 is always interesting. Lately, I’ve found myself in such circumstances with one of my two Lenovo X380 Yoga laptops. Lenovo’s System Update facility (now integrated in the Lenovo Vantage app) shows I need to install an Intel driver on the Fast Ring (Build
Always when talking with PowerShell users, I am surprised to learn how only few of them are using the PowerShell ISE version. For me, it belongs to my favorite native Windows tools, because it’s a flexible and versatile front-end for PowerShell. The following quotation comes from the official Microsoft PowerShell ISE documentation: The Windows PowerShell
When you plug into a third-party USB port for power, all the data pins remain active, ready to be sniffed, attacked, or even exploited. By routing only power leads through, a USB condom stops such attacks cold.
In my opinion one of the characteristics of good code, be it a batch file or script or an application, is clear and precise on-screen instructions to its intended user. I recommend adding enough remarks for those reading the source code, and really doing your best to make output clear, understandable and readable. I will
In January 2010, the iPad made its debut. At the same time, at least one pundit announced “The PC is dead.” Wrong! Still can’t live without one today, nor for the foreseeable future.
OK, then: it’s official. MS announced yesterday — December 5, 2019 — that it will now automatically initiate updates to 1909 for users still running 1809. We’ve known this was coming, because EOL for was originally scheduled for May 11, 2020. Here’s the text verbatim from the Windows 10 1909 Status Page (see text outlined
Every IT professional and advanced user knows that the real formatted capacity of a Terabyte (1 TB) HDD or SSD is just over 931 Gigabytes (GB). The difference is because HDD and SSD manufacturers, without exception, use powers of 10 to claim disk sizes (decimal system), whereas computer file systems are based on powers of
With the End-of-Life (EOL) date (January 14, 2020) for Windows 7 in the offing, lots of businesses and organizations have to be thinking about moving on up from 7 to 10. Dire warnings and admonitions notwithstanding — see this Minneapolis StarTribune article as a good example — I’m a little more optimistic about making that
Nothing important, posting just for posterity. I want to write down what I see in the future of Windows 10, a few things that I am quite sure will happen. I know that many advanced users and experts share my thoughts, but also that quite many disagree.
I love my Nokia Lumia 925 phone and its Windows Phone 8.1 OS. But even a hardcore enthusiast like me must concede that Windows Phone is history. Wanting to test Android before starting to look for a new phone, I tried several Android emulators. Sadly, I didn’t get a realistic Android experience with any of
On newer hardware, you may find the new Win10 disk layout (puts the Windows Recovery partition in last place, after the Windows OS partition) showing up after installing CU KB4524570.
The Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA) is an excellent tool to resolve Outlook and other Office 365 issues. Quoting from its official download page, here’s a description: The Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant works by running tests to figure out what’s wrong and offers the best solution for the identified problem. It can currently
I wrote last week about Windows Insider team pushing full feature fast ring upgrades too often, when a simple cumulative update had been enough. This went in even more weird direction on Tuesday this week, when the build 19033 was released. Four fast ring builds in 11 days, each one only containing some bug fixes.
With the release of Build 19033, MS labels the version number for what’s code-named 20H1 to 2004. Check it out!
When Microsoft gets permission from the US Department of Commerce to sell “mass-market software” to Huawei, does this mean the Windows and Office ban for that company is over? Time will tell.
Since the release of Windows Insider Fast Ring build 19008 — that is, for a month now — Cortana has been hiding from non-US users. She’s simply not there, not present, not working. What’s weird is this issue has never been mentioned once in Microsoft’s release notes as a known issue. On this topic, there’s
Checking over my Insider Preview Fast Ring system/boot drive (C:\) this morning, I found something new and interesting. It’s a hidden, read-only folder named $WinREAgent. Folders that start with a dollar sign are usually hidden, created during installation for temporary use. I’ve seen plenty of such things come and go over the years, but this
My Nokia Lumia 925 with Windows Phone 8.1 is the best, most reliable smart phone I have ever owned. Unfortunately, now I must find a replacement: Windows Phone and Windows Mobile are dying. In Finland, we have an old saying “I do not need manure, I am not a farmer.” In my case, this equates
The end of extended support for Windows 7 is less than two months away. After January 14, 2020, Windows 7 will not receive any more free or generally available technical support, software updates, and security updates and fixes. Although Microsoft tells users that “the best way to experience Windows 10 is on a new PC.
On Friday, November 15, Fast Ring Insiders got build 19025. Just four days later, Tuesday, November 19, build 19028 was released. It only contains fixes for a few unimportant bugs: – We fixed a recent issue that could result in Settings crashing when docking/undocking your device. This issue may have also impacted Action Center launch
When a raft of dwm.exe errors show up on my Lenovo T520, I’m already primed for troubleshooting. Couple that symptom with a blackscreen (no desktop) and graphics drivers seem involved. A new Nvidia driver fixes things.
Hyper-V has a Quick Create feature, which allows users to create virtual machines from a VHD repository, using virtual hard disks with preinstalled Windows. We covered that earlier here at Win10.guru in this story: Hyper-V Online Gallery: Create a VHD repository But, what if you want to start from scratch, with a new virtual machine
MS says that uninstalling and reinstalling Windows Store in Window 10 is not supported. They recommend reset or reinstall for serious repairs. I suggest two other (faster, easier) things to try first.
In an enterprise environment, users do not need to worry about Windows activation on their work devices. That’s one of the many jobs for the IT department. It’s another story with personal devices. Every user should be prepared: a laptop might be lost, a PC motherboard stop working, and so on. In such cases, actually
Late last night, just after upgrading to Insider Fast Ring build 19025, Windows Update on my HP ProBook 470 G5 laptop (see title image) told me an HP Firmware update was ready, awaiting a restart to install it. I clicked Restart, not worried at all because all previous firmware updates had worked without any issues
You can’t do what I do for a living and not like to tinker. One of many reasons I’m a Windows Insider MVP is because I’ve never been able to stop myself from messing around with Windows. That really means “messing around on PCs running Windows.” Right now, at my house I’ve got nine PCs,
Last weekend, I decided to concentrate on a single mission: Get a desktop installed in any or all of my WSL distros without using X Server or any other third party software installed in Windows, then create a WSL Sandbox for testing purposes. The first goal was the easiest. I got XFCE desktop installed in
As of mid-day November 12, version 1909 for Windows 10 is out and available. Admins will want to start playing and testing right away. Basic reaction right now: so far, so good!
Needing screenshots of Windows Setup for a new tutorial, I accidentally noticed today that Microsoft has finally changed its default partitioning of the system disk to comply with their own partitioning guidelines. The title image above shows how Microsoft recommends a GPT disk be partitioned. Until recently, and still in Windows 10 versions 19H1 /
Could the happy stars have finally lined up over Redmond? Windows 10 Insider releases are steady, stable and trouble-free right now. Same goes for the 1903 production version. What gives?
This weekend, I have had just one single task, and one goal: to get the GUI desktop environment working in my Linux distros running in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I finally managed to do it, and I am extremely happy about how fast my WSL Linux distros work when I connect to them
A week and a half ago I saw an interesting post on Ten Forums: it concerned image customization and deployment of that custom image. The case started with CopyProfile issues, during which phase custom settings were not being applied on target devices. Finally, when that was resolved, another issue appeared: target devices were not activated
Everybody knows the POWERCFG command can handle hibernation or sleep/wake states. It can also do a whole lot more, including controlling Power Options settings.
For the first two years of the Windows Insider program, feature upgrades were delivered as ESD updates. From my point of view, that was a good system. In it, Insider build upgrades were delivered relatively quickly and they were reliable. Generally speaking, Insiders had far fewer upgrade issues and failed upgrades than they do today
With the announcement of Insider Fast ring build 19018.1 on November 5, the Insider Team reports no more Skipahead builds going forward. Insiders who elected “Skip” will automatically switch to “Fast.”
The Windows Ignite 2019 conference is underway in Orlando Florida through November 8. Remote viewing of streamed sessions is free, so it’s worth checking things out to see what’s happening. Enjoy!
I have never really blogged, just for the sake of blogging. That said, I decided to start blogging about my personal computing and IT life, including small and weird stuff that happens every now and then. My idea is to write at least a few times a week about things too minor or unimportant to
I have seen a few posts lately in which users ask “What is the Defaultuser0 account?”,”Can it be deleted?” , “What’s its password?, and so on. Officially, Microsoft offers no information about this account and its intended purpose. Or at the very least, any such information is extremely hard to find. First, let me assure
Preparing a video for Ten Forums about how to use Macrium viBoot to upgrade Windows 10, I thought I would document that process to show how good Microsoft PowerPoint is at making videos. The best thing is that it is so extremely easy to use PowerPoint to build nice, simple instructional videos. In addition, when
Because I have two nearly identical laptops running Windows 10 Insider Preview builds it’s easy for me to tell that one build is subject to Windows Desktop Manager crashes when I leave Remote Desktop open. Reported to Feedback Hub.
In the spirit of the upcoming end of year holidays, Ed shares his wishlist for the Windows Insider program. Here’s hoping!
MS must provide core OS capability for Azure by December at the same time it’s finishing 19H2. This explains 19H2 is just a minor add-on to 19H1. Hopefully, getting onto an Azure schedule also means adopting their mindset.
Once upon a time, it was nearly impossible to work on websites without using FTP. This is no longer true, but when you need Internet file transfer capability, the free, Open Source program FileZilla is the way to go.
I get my fair share of phishing and other scam emails. I’ve gotten messages from Nigerian princes, State Lottery Authorities in several US states, and I’ve been told that an unknown philanthropist in Australia has left me millions in his will. I get these emails mostly to my so called junk address, an email I
Last weekend, I saw a post on Ten Forums that really got my attention. A fellow member had been preparing a deployment image, and was wondering why his answer file simply did not work. Here’s an extract from the original post: I’ve followed tutorials on Ten Forums, Win10Guru, docs.microsoft.com, and many others. I’ve made my
WinDirStat is free Open Source software that illustrates Windows file and folder hierarchies, with an emphasis on file size. It’s a useful tool for grooming and managing Windows drives or volumes.
DISM is maybe the most versatile and useful of all native Windows tools (a subjective personal opinion). In this post, I use it to create USB install media containing Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows 10 version 1903 (19H1), version 1909 (19H2), and Insider Preview build 19002. All three versions, a total of six editions,
A lone developer in Poland is behind the excellent and capable UUP dump website, which makes it possible for Windows Insiders to grab and build their own ISOs for Insider Preview versions of their choosing on demand. Great work!
The Office Software Protection Platform (ospp.vbs) script is an invaluable tool for inspecting and managing Office 365 (and other Office version) licenses. Check it out!
Here’s an interesting and bright bit of recent news about PC sales. Analyst firm Canalys reports a jump in global PC sales growth for Q3 2019. In fact, their numbers show an increase of 4.7% for that quarter, a rate not seen since Q1 2012 when growth hit 5.4%. For the record, that translates to
This time, a personal story about 2FA and Windows Phone making this expat’s life somewhat difficult. In my opinion, globalization or global integration is a very positive phenomenon. The world is becoming smaller when more and more people are free to travel and even move abroad without permissions and visas, freight moves more freely, and
A week ago we reported on Dona Sarkar leaving the Windows Insider team, which suddenly and surprisingly left the team without a team lead. Everything we know — or rather, everything we do not know — owing to Microsoft’s and its Insider team’s silence on this sudden move, only makes me more convinced that Sarkar’s
Poking around on the Remote Desktop Connection app on my production PC, I notice some stale entries. I show how to clean them up with some careful registry edits.
I am a big Hyper-V fan, but even I must admit that running Linux virtual machines within that hypervisor can be problematic. First, enhanced session mode does not work, so changing guest resolution is quite difficult. In addition, Copy & Paste between the Windows host and the Linux guest does not work. One option is
Bo Elam
Ed Tittel
Kari Finn
Toni Fasth