Microsoft

Microsoft is to make the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) a little less likely to leave people feeling helpless. Users may be able to hold a smartphone up to the screen and get a link to an explanation of the problem. The screen appears when ... Windows encounters a serious problem that causes it to completely crash. When this happens, a blue screen with a cryptic error message is displayed, and sometimes the system will reboot automatically. For the most part, a blue screen involves an incompatibility or fault between Windows and software or a hardware device. At the moment, the ... (view more)

Microsoft has unveiled a couple of changes to improve Windows 10: smartphone owners will be able to see notifications on their computer screen, while many Chrome extensions could be coming to the Edge browser. A forthcoming update will introduce ... something called "notification mirroring." That will mean pairing a Windows or Android smartphone or tablet with a Windows 10 computer. Users can then automatically have any notifications that normally appear on their smartphone or tablet show up on their computer screen instead. The idea is that while somebody is working on their computer, ... (view more)

Microsoft has unveiled some of the features for the next major update to Windows 10. Among the biggest surprise is better support for the world of Linux. The new features and tweaks will come in an update that's been codenamed Windows 10 Redstone. ... It's expected some time this summer and is planned to be the biggest update yet. Microsoft has likened Redstone to the level of change that came with Windows 8.1, though thankfully this time it will be less about undoing changes in the initial release that went down badly. Cortana & Action Center Overhauled The most visible changes for ... (view more)

Microsoft has finished work on a special edition of Windows 10 for Chinese users. It appears to be designed to keep the country's authoritarian government happy. The edition is known as Windows 10 Zhuangongban, which translates as Specially Provided ... Edition, and will be aimed mainly at government agencies and government-owned businesses. The new software is described in an article on Chinese website Caixin, though its unclear how free the site was to cover the news without either direct censorship or self-censorship. Software Meets 'Special Needs' Based on an automated Google ... (view more)

Microsoft's push to get Windows 10 onto computers seems to be going a step further than anticipated. Even tech-savvy users are complaining their machines updated to the new system without their express consent. The last big change to the Windows 10 ... upgrade process took place last month, but seems to be working more aggressively than expected. The change involved Windows 10 being reclassified as a "Recommended" update in the automatic update program. That was hugely significant as the default setting for most Windows PCs is to install all recommended updates automatically. It ... (view more)

The Department of Defense plans to upgrade four million staff members to Windows 10. It's a major boost for Microsoft given the security needs of the DoD. Historically, government organizations have been slow to update operating systems. That's ... often because of the complexity of doing so across an entire network; for example, having to weigh up the problems of different computers on different systems, plus the hassle of having too many computers out of action even temporarily during an upgrade. Major upgrades such as this have caused concern in the security community - especially when ... (view more)

Windows 10 "phones home" thousands of times each day even with the most restrictive privacy settings, according to a newly published article. While the precise figures are in question, it highlights ongoing concerns about Microsoft monitoring. The ... experiment was carried out by a message board poster using the somewhat unlikely name of CheesesCrust. He decided to find out exactly what happens if Windows 10 is run with all tracking supposedly disabled. (Source: voat.co ) To do this, he used a virtual machine tool on a laptop to simulate installing Windows on a completely new machine. ... (view more)

Microsoft has reclassified Windows 10 as a "recommended update" for Windows 7 and 8.1. That means it will automatically download and attempt to install for many, and likely even most, users. It will be possible to stop the installation or to undo it ... without any major hassles (with some restrictions). That said, the download could be a problem for people on restrictive broadband plans. Late last year Microsoft classified Windows 10 as an optional update . That meant users could manually choose to download and install it through the Windows Update system that's normally used for ... (view more)

Windows virtual assistant Cortana will soon step up scanning of emails by default, in order to make Cortana more useful. Whether its an improvement or a sign of creepiness on Microsoft's part is up for debate. The announcement comes almost 3 years ... to the date, where Microsoft publicly launched a campaign named " Don't get scroogled by Gmail ." In that campaign, Microsoft complained that Google's email scanning practice was unjust. Email Scanning Takes Note of Schedule Cortana's new email scanning is being tested among Windows Insiders - the group of users who have signed up to get ... (view more)

In a move surely to upset many users, Microsoft has said it will be ditching support for Windows 7 and 8.1 on most new PCs. Some other PCs will lose support next July, earlier than many expected. The change is to do with the Skylake micro ... architecture for processors released by Intel in August 2015. Many PCs purchased recently will be running Skylake, as will most in the future. Until now, Microsoft had promised to offer extended support for Windows 7 until January 2020 and for Windows 8.1 until January 2023. Extended support means Microsoft continues to fix bugs and issue security updates, ... (view more)