Software & Apps - Page 17

CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and Windows are making headlines again, but this time, the issue is nowhere near as severe as the last CrowdStrike Falcon sensor issue, which caused millions of PCs to BSOD (blue screen of death) earlier this year. Theo ne that impacted airlines, travel, banks, and other infrastructure around the globe.

This time, an issue with Windows 11 24H2 is causing apps like Microsoft Office to hang or crash. Windows 11 24H2 is one of the most significant updates to the operating system to date, with Microsoft calling it a full OS swap, so teething issues are expected. And, yes, one of the teething issues involves the CrowdStrike Falcon sensor.

It all comes down to policy settings, such as the Enhanced Exploitation Visibility Prevention Policy. This doesn't affect home users as CrowdStrike Falcon is a business-facing cybersecurity solution. CrowdStrike has already provided a statement confirming that the issue is Windows-related and unrelated to its software or any recent update.

The City of Columbus has confirmed that at least 500,000 people have been affected by a ransomware hack that potentially leaked a collection of personal information.

Ransomware traced back to the group known as Rhysida was detected on systems over the summer and now the City of Columbus, Ohio, has confirmed at least 500,000 people's data such as first and last names, dates of birth, home addresses, bank account information, and more, were leaked online. Reports indicate that Rhysida published approximately 3TB of stolen files on its blog after it failed to obtained a ransom from the city for the stolen data.

Letters were sent to the potentially affected individuals and were delivered to addresses around October 7. Notably, the confirmation didn't state how many victims received letters, or the specifics of the data that was leaked online, and is more than likely accessible somewhere on the dark web. Furthermore, security researcher Connor Goodwolf, legally called David Leroy Ross, said after downloading the stolen data from Rhysida he discovered one of the sources for the hack was the city's prosecutor.

Microsoft has been put in a tough position as the severance date for support for the world's most popular operating system is approaching, and users don't seem to be upgrading at the rate the Redmond company would like.

We have known for quite some time that Microsoft plans to officially cut support for Windows 10, the world's most popular operating system, in October of next year. Following the cut-off date, Windows 10 machines will no longer receive security updates from Microsoft, putting them at exponential risk of security breaches. It was only recently that Microsoft began offering users a $30 one-year continuation of Microsoft updates, with Enterprises needing to pay $61 and the education sector $1 (for the first year).

There is also the massive looming issue of what happens to all of the Windows 10 machines that don't meet the system requirements for Windows 11. Those machines will effectively be rendered useless as they will no longer be eligible to receive critical security updates. There are an estimated 240 million working computers soon to be thrown into landfills, according to technology firm Canalys, which issued a warning about this very problem back in December 2023.

Windows 11 24H2 is turning out to be quite the bug-fest, with some odd glitches popping up, and here's another one, this time hitting File Explorer.

Windows Latest reports that there's a serious issue in File Explorer with the three-dot (ellipsis) menu when you're using it in a full-screen window.

That's the button with three dots on it (also called meatballs) on the toolbar along the top of the File Explorer window, which when you click on it, summons a flyout menu below with extra options on it.

Microsoft is offering a prize of $1,000,000 as a fresh incentive to switch over to use its search engine, Bing, or web browser, Edge, or indeed other services.

This is part of the Microsoft Rewards loyalty program, a scheme whereby you pick up reward points by using Microsoft services such as the aforementioned products.

Windows Central flagged up the new million-dollar sweepstakes program, which was announced via an email from Microsoft that the tech site received, and is also detailed on an official website.

According to sources like StatCounter, which covers all PCs, Windows 10 is still by far the most used Windows operating system among PC users, with a 60% market share. However, looking at PC gamers - specifically, the data supplied by Valve as part of its monthly Steam Hardware & Survey Results - Windows 11 is pulling ahead.

According to Valve's latest data, which now includes October 2024 data, 51.97% of all Steam users are on Windows 11. With Windows accounting for 96.61% of PC gamer operating systems, Windows 10 has dropped to second place with 45.95% - a figure that is 2.71% lower than September's data.

Why are PC gamers adopting or making the jump to Windows 11 versus the rest of the PC community? It comes down to the operating system's more robust integration of DirectX 12 technologies like DirectStorage and cutting-edge visual effects like ray tracing. Plus, gamers are more likely to upgrade regularly versus businesses and those simply using their PCs for day-to-day tasks like shopping and checking emails.

If you've been worrying about what you're going to do in a year, when support runs out for Windows 10 - and you really don't want to upgrade to Windows 11 (or hardware requirements mean that you can't) - then Microsoft has thrown you a lifeline.

Albeit a lifeline with a cost attached, but this is the first time that Microsoft has actually made the scheme to pay for extended support available to the average consumer - with a charge of $30.

Previously, Microsoft has enacted ESU (Extended Security Update) programs for enterprise and education users, with subscriptions per user, but this personal individual option is new.

Microsoft's new super resolution ability - which was recently applied (in preview) to the Photos app in Windows 11 - has suffered from a seemingly botched rollout by the software giant.

This is a new AI ability - one for Copilot+ PCs, as it requires a beefy NPU for acceleration - and it allows for enhancing or enlarging images, by a factor of up to 8x. The idea is you can blow up a photo for a large print, or improve very low quality photos to something a bit sharper and more palatable.

This was supposed to be in testing for Windows Insiders, but as leaker PhantomOfEarth reports, super resolution was appearing on some devices that it wasn't supposed to be on. Presumably, that means non-Copilot+ PCs, rather than the feature coming to users outside of the Windows Insider programme.

It's officially less than a year until the world's most popular operating system loses support from Microsoft, in an event that is being described as "The biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete" in history.

That operating system is none other than Windows 10, which, according to data from Statcounter, currently holds approximately 65% of the operating system market, with Windows 11 only recently bumping up past the 30% market. Notably, Windows 11 is being adopted at a rate much slower than previous operating system generations, and with Microsoft announcing the end-of-support date for October 2025, it's a real possibility that millions of Windows 10 users will have an increased security risk following the official end of support date.

Each PC no longer receiving security updates from Microsoft will be exponentially vulnerable to breaches or be rendered obsolete if it doesn't meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11. Microsoft has stated users with Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) editions of Windows 10, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC will all have extended support durations. However, any other version of Windows 10 will no longer receive support from Microsoft post-October 14, 2025.

Microsoft has recently published a paper and patent for a new form of video streaming called 'Gaze Based Video Stream Processing.' It's a simple but impressive software tool powered by AI that would bring the concept of foveated rendering to video meeting and chat applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Discord.

It's technology based on how we see as humans where objects within 5-10 degrees of our main focus are viewed with the most detail, with that quickly falling off by 20% outside of this 10 degrees.

Foveated rendering for VR gaming involves using eye-tracking to ensure that the areas or objects you're directly looking at are rendered at the highest quality with all the effects and detail settings cranked. At the same time, areas or objects not being looked at have reduced quality to boost performance. With its new patent, Microsoft is bringing this concept to video streaming.

If you own certain models of Western Digital SSDs then the company is 'highly recommending' that you install a new firmware update that resolves a bug in Windows 11 24H2.

As you may have seen yesterday, the issue pertains to the Host Memory Buffer feature (for more details, read our previous article), and the resulting bug means that some SSDs are affected by repeated crashing (with some ending up in a boot loop of BSoDs, in fact - really nasty).

WD tells us that the affected models are as follows:

When Windows 11 arrived, it received a rather lukewarm reception - something that continues up until today, in some respects (as evidenced by the OS adoption figures) - and some of that reaction was bound up in the interface.

Granted, most of the grimacing was around mysterious and baffling UI changes (getting rid of 'never combine', taskbar options and so on), but there were folks who didn't take to the new look (and especially the Start menu).

Of course, if you want to tinker and customize Windows 11, you have a raft of options and software to help you, and one intrepid modder has illustrated how radical a change it's possible to make - in reskinning Windows 11 to look like Windows 95.

Microsoft has announced it's releasing a new build of the world's most popular operating system despite its scheduled appearance on the proverbial chopping block next year.

That operating system is Windows 10, and according to a new Windows blog post, the operating system has gotten Windows 10 22H2 19045.5070 (KB5045594) in both the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel for Insiders. For those who don't know, Microsoft will end support with Windows 10 in October 2025, which will cause millions of PCs around the world to become exponentially vulnerable to security breaches - not to mention obsolete if they don't meet the hardware requirements for a Windows 11 upgrade.

Beta and Release Preview channel users for Windows 10 may begin to notice new changes to the account manager and the Star Menu. One user described the changes as unnecessary and the equivalent of a supermarket reorganizing its shelves just because management believe it's the right thing to do. Notably, when Microsoft severs support with Windows 10 in October next year the operating system will continue to function, but it will no longer receive security updates.

Windows 11 users are getting the 24H2 update, but as this upgrade is being gradually rolled out, some folks are encountering problems - one of which is 24H2 seemingly eating some of their drive space.

You may recall that we previously reported on this issue, whereby after the 24H2 update has been installed, the user will see 8.6GB of cached files for the upgrade, which can be removed by Disk Cleanup. However, when that cleanup is actioned, Windows 11 still reports that the 8.6GB of files remain.

This has left many people scratching their heads, but now Microsoft has come forth with an explanation. Essentially, the cleanup operation actually works fine, the bug is in the figure reported by Windows 11. So, your drive has actually had said space freed, it's just that the OS still says the files are present.

Windows 10 will run out of support in less than a year now, but Microsoft is still developing the older OS - despite mulling a feature-freeze at one point - and drafting over features from Windows 11.

In a new Windows 10 preview - build 19045 in the Beta and Release Preview channels - there's a backported feature as highlighted by regular Windows leaker PhantomOfEarth on X.

This is the 'Copy' button in the Share menu which was brought into Windows 11 a few months back (plus you get a preview of the file's icon and its size), though we should note this isn't live in preview yet. It's hidden behind the scenes, and you need to use ViVeTool to enable the functionality.

Microsoft has rolled out the Windows 11 24H2 update and according to some reports it contains a collection of data that users are unable to delete.

It's not uncommon for Microsoft to include what many users would find unnecessary content within their updates, which are typically removed by those who are so inclined to purge their system of any unwanted Microsoft software. File remnants in various forms has been recognized by Microsoft who stated Windows keeps multiple copies of all installed updates from Windows Update, "even after installing newer versions of updates."

However, for those wanting to remove these unwanted files to free up storage, Microsoft provides the Disk Cleanup tool or the Windows Setting application. However, it appears that 8.63 GB of data cannot be removed from the system after downloading the Windows 11 24H2 update. The Register reports that regardless of how much a user deletes it or restarts Windows 11, it will still remain.

Windows 11 has run into more trouble with its 24H2 update, with fresh revelations that the upgrade is causing serious problems with internet connectivity in some cases.

Windows Report highlighted the issues (as flagged by PC World) and there are posts from people who have upgraded to Windows 11 24H2 complaining about internet-related woes for both wired and Wi-Fi connections with 24H2.

There are various reports on Microsoft's Answers.com forum, with a lengthy thread containing some 60 replies underlining that this isn't an isolated issue. (At the same time, it may not be all that widespread, either - as there isn't an overwhelming volume of posts).

Windows 11's latest updates have arrived - yesterday was Patch Tuesday, of course - and it appears that the painful bugs which were present in last month's preview of the cumulative update for 23H2 have been stamped out in the full release.

However, the update for Windows 11 24H2 doesn't look to have been so smooth for some folks thus far, and while there aren't quite such showstopping bugs, there are some annoyances for sure - and some oddness, too.

First of all, the good news on Windows 11 23H2, with the new update fixing the mentioned major problems with Blue Screens of Death (and Green Screens, too) and multiple forced reboots. There were other bugs too, with wireless peripherals and more.

A startling new bug in Microsoft Word can mean that saving a (certain format) file actually deletes that document.

Yes, this is a strange one indeed, and Neowin flagged up the serious glitch in Word that could potentially cause you quite a bit of grief - at least if you don't realize what has happened (it's not difficult to retrieve the deleted file if you do catch on, thankfully).

At any rate, the way Word is misfiring goes like this: if your document has a capitalized extension - such as .RTF rather than .rtf - and it's being saved to your local drive, if you quit Word with unsaved changes, and then click to save those changes on exit, the file ends up being deleted.

YouTube has confirmed it's responsible for deleting thousands of accounts and videos that were mistakenly flagged as violations against its terms of service.

9to5Google pointed out that many YouTube account holders reported the loss of access to YouTube content. These reports were quickly followed up by YouTube in a support thread that confirmed bugs were present and they were affecting many aspects of the platform such as access to paid features such as YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Music.

Additionally, the bugs also affected other YouTube features, such as playlists. Along with the deleted of specific channels these bugs also removed videos from the platform. Reports indicate that affected users were sent unclear instructions by YouTube that ultimately weren't helpful in the recovery of their accounts. Additionally, another user claimed there was no way to lodge an appeal of the decision by YouTube.