windows 11

With less than a year to go, Microsoft is sticking to its vow to stop supporting Windows 10. Analysts remain unconvinced given it remains the most used version of Windows. Officially, October 14, 2025 will be the end of life date for the system. ... Although it will still work, Microsoft will no longer offer security updates for Windows as standard. Instead, users will have the option to pay for extended security support. (Source: microsoft.com ) 10 Year Life Cycle In principle, this is perfectly normal. Next year is 10 years after Windows 10 was first released, and that's the normal ... (view more)

Windows users will soon be able to access files on their Android phone or tablet without a USB cable. The feature is already available in test editions of Windows 11. The feature, first reported back in June, has now arrived for members of the ... Windows Insider Program, which gives early access to in-development and test features. They will also need to install the "Cross device experience host" tool from the Microsoft store. Windows does already offer some wireless connectivity with Android phones such as using it as a webcam or getting on-screen notifications from the phone replicated on the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader William B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running a server virtual machine inside of Virtualbox and it's been quite slow. I've read that VMware Workstation has twice the performance (roughly). Out of curiosity, I tried to export my ... current virtual machine in Virtualbox using the Open Virtualization Format (.OVF or .OVA) but I get an error every time I try to export: ' Could not create the exported medium Server-disk001.vmdk (VERR_IO_CRC) .' I am not sure what to do and would like to export this virtual machine off of Virtualbox so I can give VMware Workstation a try. " My ... (view more)

(Note that the solution below applies to any Windows 11 machine that needs to stay up and running without a reboot after updates, and not just one running VMware Workstation). Infopackets Reader Calli P. writes: " Dear Dennis, We recently upgraded ... our server machine to an AMD Ryzen 9 with 16 cores and 32 threads. The old machine was very outdated (only 4 core). The role of the new server is the same as the old - to be a Hypervisor - which runs VMware workstation. Inside of VMware Workstation is a virtual machine which we regard as the Server virtual machine, which runs our ESC software for ... (view more)

Microsoft has backtracked on a new Windows 11 feature that screenshots a computer every few seconds. "Recall" will now be an opt-in tool that doesn't work by default. The theory behind the tool is that it would be helpful for users to be able to ... find information from something they'd used or been work on, even if they couldn't remember precisely when and where. That's inherently difficult to do through ordinary file or web searches, particularly if it involves an image. Searching the contents of different file types can be slow, while searching for something that isn't text can be difficult. ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Calli P. writes: " Dear Dennis, We own a heating and cooling business and have a server that uses a Windows 10 virtual machine on VMware workstation. The virtual machine runs a program called ESC Connections Server that allows us ... to book appointments (among other things) from our workstations and also remotely on our phones. The ESC Server and virtual machine are both mission critical. That said, I understand that Windows 10 will only be supported until October, 2025 and would like to upgrade it to Windows 11. The problem is that our virtual machine was built using the MBR ... (view more)

Microsoft is to run what are effectively ads in the Windows 11 Start menu. The "recommendations" will initially appear only for those who've signed up to be early testers of new features. The promotions will appear in the "Recommended" section at ... the bottom of the Start menu. This normally includes links to both installed apps and documents that the user has either recently used or frequently uses. The idea is that these are most likely to be what the user wants to open at any given moment. Insiders are Test Dummies The new feature will mean this list also includes suggested apps from the ... (view more)

This year's major update to Windows 11 is now available. The word "major" is doing some heavy lifting on this occasion. Users can now manually install the 23H2 update, which will roll out to all users through automatic updates in the next few ... months. While Microsoft issues regular bug fixes and security updates, the "H2" update is the main way it issues new features. The update, released in the second half of each year (H2) effectively counts as a new version of Windows. Once installed, it resets the support calendar and guarantees another 24 months of support from Microsoft. AI Goes ... (view more)

The latest Windows 11 update has led to complaints of all manner of problems. That's particularly troubling as it's a mandatory security update. The update in question has the codename KB5030219. It's a cumulative update, meaning it brings together ... several updates which were previously optional, though will have been downloaded automatically for most people with Windows 11 on the default settings. It's not unusual to get reports of glitches, but both tech site readers and message board users have reported a particularly wide range of significant problems. The most serious include users ... (view more)

Microsoft is looking into claims a Windows update is causing the dreaded Blue Screen on Death (BSoD) on some machines. The company says it doesn't yet know if Windows itself is the cause. The Blue Screen of Death is the informal name for a system ... crash in which Windows has a problem so significant that it can no longer operate safely. In earlier versions of Windows, users had to manually restart their computer before attempting a fix. Today, Windows can automatically reboot in some situations. User have been reporting seeing the blue screen with the usual message that "Your device ran into a ... (view more)