windows 10

The upcoming twice-yearly "major" Windows 10 update looks like it lacks any major features. That could be good news for users who have come to fear such updates causing compatibility issues and software bugs. The spring feature update, currently ... codenamed 21H1, is one of the two big updates delivered each year. This time round it's really not that big in terms of content or impact. Arguably the best news is that the installation is not only optional but should be relatively quick and simple. That's because it's mainly an "enablement package" that simply activates code that's already been ... (view more)

Microsoft is trying a new method for releasing and managing Windows 10 updates. The aim is to reduce the number of bugs where an update doesn't install properly. The plan involves combining two types of updates: cumulative and servicing stack ... updates, which were previously released separately. The cumulative update contains new content and fixes for Windows. Cumulative refers to the way the updates are designed to be downloaded and installed in order, meaning each individual update can be a relatively small file size. Unfortunately, the cumulative updates are also part of the reason Windows ... (view more)

As many as 100 million PCs could still be running Windows 7 according to a newly-published estimate. That's despite Microsoft withdrawing support for the 11-year old system last year. The estimate comes from Ed Bott of ZDNet and is based on data ... published at analytics.usa.gov. That brings together site visitor data from most US government agencies. It means the figures will primarily represent visitors from the United States. (Source: zdnet.com ) Bott notes that across the agencies, 8.5 per cent of visitors in the past 90 days were running Windows 7 and 3.4 percent running Windows 8 or 8.1. ... (view more)

A free Microsoft offer to upgrade to Windows 10 was supposed to expire in 2016. However, it appears the upgrade still works, with claims the deadline was simply a marketing ploy. With Windows 10 released in the middle of 2015, the free upgrade offer ... was advertised as running for a year. It was available for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, with most getting an upgrade to the Windows 10 Home edition. Those running Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8.1 Pro could upgrade to the Windows 10 Pro edition. As most people either upgraded in the first year or decided to give Windows 10 a ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Michael O. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a strange problem. Every few reboots, my laptop screen refresh rate will automatically change to 59Hz, even though I've repeatedly set it to 60Hz. On my particular laptop model (Lenovo ... T460), whenever the screen refresh rate is at 59Hz and the screen brightness is relatively low, the screen starts to flicker. The screen flickering is hard to see unless it's on a white background, but it is definitely noticeable and enough to make me want to pull my hair out. When I change it back to 60Hz, the screen flickering stops. The problem is ... (view more)

A Windows 10 update causing problems is no surprise, but the two latest glitches will be familiar to long-time users. Both can lead to the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death," indicating a significant problem. The first problem affects users who run the ... built-in CHKDSK utility, which scans hard drives to look for errors. It appears that running "chkdsk /f" via command line (after the new KB4592438 patch has been applied) can cause the file system to corrupt, which then might result in Windows not able to boot at all. Microsoft says a fix has already been rolled out through an automatic ... (view more)

Microsoft is rethinking the way it releases new features through Windows Update. New "Feature Experience Packs" will come out separately to the two major updates each year. The idea is to use the packs to release features and updates for tools that ... fall into a gray area where they aren't an integral part of the Windows 10 operating system itself, but aren't really applications in their own right. The packs will be released as and when they are ready. That opens up the possibility that these "unscheduled" updates could also be used for improvements and fixes to Windows itself without having to ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Harry V. writes: " Dear Dennis, My Windows 10 PC recently updated, but got stuck in an automatic repair boot loop. Now it won't boot into Windows. To fix this, I created Windows Install media on a USB thumb drive using another PC, ... then I booted off the thumb drive on the broken PC and reinstalled Windows. I am now trying to partition the C drive into two partitions (C and D), with C containing only the operating system and D drive containing my user data. When I use disk management (diskmgmt.msc) to shrink the C drive, it tells me there isn't enough free space to shrink the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bill G. writes: " Dear Dennis, My question is about how to compact a VHD file (virtual disk). I recently virtualized an old Windows 2016 server and am using Virtualbox as my hypervisor. In the process of updating and configuring ... the virtual machine, I created 3 snapshots (live backups) in case I needed to undo changes. The .VHD is the Server 2016 C Drive and was originally only 60GB - however, I noticed that the 'snapshots' folder has grown to a massive 168GB! I went into virtual machine's snapshot window and deleted all the snapshots, hoping to free up space on the disk ... (view more)

Microsoft is reportedly testing full-screen "ads" to try to persuade Windows 10 users to run the Edge browser. There may be no easy way to stop them appearing. The messages are being displayed to some users after the most recent Windows 10 updates. ... They appear to be part of an A/B test in which two groups of users are shown different versions of an ad or message to see how the response differs. (Source: techradar.com ) Ad Appears After Update The ads will reportedly appear on machines with Chrome or Firefox as the default browser in three circumstances: When a user sets up a new Windows ... (view more)