microsoft

Windows 10 Extended Security Updates

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Screenshot which says 'You're eligible to enrol in Extended Security Updates at no extra cost'

Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 in just two days time. What this means is, if you’re using Windows 10 and don’t take action, you’ll no longer get security updates for your computer. And that would be bad – your computer is therefore at greater risk of viruses and malware.

Previously, when Microsoft ended support for Windows, if you were a home user then you were on your own. This time, Microsoft is offering the Extended Security Updates programme, and making it available to home users for the first time. I suppose this is because Windows 11 installs only exceeded Windows 10 as recently as June this year, and around 45% of Windows users still use Windows 10 despite it being 10 years old now. This includes us.

Upgrade or replace

Ideally, Microsoft wants you to upgrade to Windows 11. Many Windows 10 computers can be upgraded, but not all. If not, then, as far as Microsoft is concerned, you should be considering purchasing a new computer.

At home, we have a Lenovo Ideapad 320S which is approaching its eighth birthday. That’s pretty old for a laptop, and it’s been used heavily as it was my main work computer during lockdown. Theoretically, it might run Windows 11, if I backed everything up, wiped its SSD and did a fresh install. But Microsoft’s PC Health Check app won’t allow an in-place upgrade, as its processor (an Intel Core i3 in the 7000 series) doesn’t meet its minimum hardware requirements.

We will, eventually, replace this with a new laptop running Windows 11 – probably some time next year. But for now, this little survivor meets our needs – especially as, back in 2021, I upgraded its RAM from 4 gigabytes to 16 gigabytes.

Enrolling for Extended Security Updates

If you open Windows Update on a Windows 10 machine, you should see the option to enrol for Extended Security Updates. This gives you an additional year of security updates, to allow you time to either upgrade or buy a new computer. As mentioned, this is a new offering for home users; previously, only enterprise users ever had this option.

Enrolling for extended security updates may cost you, depending on your system settings. If, at the time you sign up, you’re already synchronising your PC settings, then you may be offered the extended security updates at no charge. This is what happened to us, as per the screenshot at the top of this blog post. Which was nice.

Alternatively, if you live in the European Economic Area (EEA), then you should also get the updates for free. Thanks to Brexit, us Brits unfortunately no longer live in the EEA.

If you’re not eligible for free updates, then Microsoft will charge you. If you use Microsoft Rewards, then you can redeem 1000 reward points instead of paying money. Alternatively, there’s a $30 charge, which works out at about £24 for the year.

What about Linux?

If you don’t want to buy a new PC, aren’t eligible for free updates and don’t want to pay, then I suppose the other option is to consider running some flavour of Linux on your existing PC. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, but if you’re really stuck for money and have the time to learn how to use a new operating system, then sure, I guess it’s an option to consider.

How I stopped Teams from glitching

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Ever since we started using the ‘new’ Microsoft Teams, my home computer would glitch whenever joining a meeting where I wanted my webcam on. By ‘glitch’, I mean both screens going black – usually just for a couple of seconds, but sometimes longer. It may also be triggered by someone sharing their screen during a meeting – meaning I could hear them, but not speak.

Finding new graphics drivers

The simple solution to this was to update my graphics drivers. At home, I use a relatively basic Lenovo laptop bought in 2018. In 2021, I upgraded the RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB, which has helped to keep it going despite its age. Its processor is too old for Windows 11, but Windows 10 still works fine for me.

When I opened Device Manager to check my graphics drivers, they hadn’t been updated since 2018. Over the past few years, more and more applications have been updated to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration – as I write this, Firefox, Outlook, Excel, Teams and Spotify are all using my GPU. That was less of an issue in 2018, but is now.

Windows Update wouldn’t offer any new drivers, and nor would Lenovo Vantage, the tool that shipped with the computer for vendor software updates. And on Lenovo’s web site, the latest software downloads were the same driver that I already had.

As the laptop uses Intel built-in graphics drivers, I instead went to Intel’s web site to download them. Sure enough, Intel had drivers updated as recently as May this year. So I downloaded them, ran the installer, and got an error, saying ‘Your system has a driver that is locked to manufacturer specification.’

Bah. This means that Intel only wants me to download drivers from Lenovo, but Lenovo are not offering updated drivers.

Getting around the manufacturer specification lock

The good news is that you can get around this, and I found the solution thanks to this Reddit thread. You tell Windows to use a generic driver, and then install Intel’s updated drivers as an alternative.

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

  1. Do a complete back-up. We’re playing with drivers here, and the wrong driver can render your computer unbootable. Make sure you have a full system backup that can be restored in case something goes terribly wrong.
  2. Open Device Manager, find your graphics device, right-click, and choose ‘Update Driver’.
  3. Select the second option, ‘Browse my computer for drivers’.
  4. On the next screen, select ‘Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer’
  5. You should have a driver called ‘Microsoft Basic Display Adaptor’. Select this, and click Next.
  6. Your screen will flash, and you may find that any external screens will stop working. When it’s done, restart your computer.
  7. Now, try to install the Intel drivers again that you have downloaded from the Intel web site. If all goes well, these new drivers will be installed instead.
  8. If not, repeat the above steps as far as step 3. Find the Intel driver download, and open it in a tool like 7-Zip to access the files inside, and extract them to a folder.
  9. Instead of following step 4, select the folder that you extracted the files to, and Windows should detect the drivers and install these for you.
  10. You can then check your driver version in Device Manager to verify that the latest version has been installed.

This resolved the issues for me, and now Teams works fine.

The fact that computer manufacturers can stop you from easily installing driver updates is unfair, in my opinion. Sure, the computer I’m using is old, but it still works pretty well. We have a massive problem globally with electronic waste, and we shouldn’t be making functioning computers obsolete through software.

The re-launched Microsoft OneNote

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A screenshot of OneNote on Mac OS X

Yesterday Microsoft unwrapped the latest changes to its OneNote software. Originally introduced with Office 2003, OneNote is now a separate product, albeit one integrated with Microsoft’s OneDrive (previously SkyDrive) service.

The main changes are that the basic OneNote system is free and available without having to buy Microsoft Office, and that there’s now an API for third-party services to connect to. Existing Office 2013 and Office 365 customers get some premium features, but the basic note-keeping and synchronisation tools are available for all at no cost now. There is also a Mac OS X app for the first time, as previously Office:mac 2011 didn’t include OneNote.

The new API access means that there’s already an IFTTT channel for OneNote, and the folks at Feedly have included support in their feed reader (free for now but paid customers only from next month). A few other apps are also available in OneNote’s app directory.

I imagine most people will be interested in a comparison with Evernote, which is the main leader in cloud-based note-taking. Though I’m not able to do a full comparison, personally I’ll be sticking with Evernote. The OS X app for OneNote is big (over 400 megabytes when installed) and slow to start up. I’ve found Evernote a bit easier to manage plain text notes, although OneNote offers more flexibility with arranging items within notes. Evernote also lets you export and print notes, unlike OneNote’s free offering.

Other competitors include Google Keep and Apple’s iCloud Notes. Google Keep is Android and web-only (an unofficial iOS app exists), but supports voice memos. iCloud Notes is available on iOS, OS X and the web, but there’s no Windows app and only simple text notes are supported. Whilst I think that the new OneNote is definitely better than Google or Apple’s offerings, Evernote is still the service to beat.

Upgrading to Windows 8.1

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Screenshot of the start screen in Windows 8.1

Yesterday I upgraded to Windows 8.1. I run Windows in a virtual machine on my Mac using VirtualBox, and I upgraded it from Vista almost exactly a year ago. The process was reasonably smooth, in comparison to last year’s debacle, but it wasn’t without some minor incidents.

Getting started

First of all, I wasn’t quite sure how one would go about upgrading. So I opened up Internet Explorer and searched Bing, and it told me to open Windows Store, the app store for Windows 8. So I did, and… nothing. I couldn’t see anything that would suggest what to do next.

Thankfully this page came up with a possible solution. I hadn’t booted Windows 8 in a few months and so I was behind on installing fixes from Windows Update. 35 updates were presented to me; after the first run, all but 1 of these failed, so I rebooted and tried again. This time 4 installed correctly, but again, the others failed. Finally after another reboot I got the rest to install, and so I then rebooted again. This time, upon opening the Windows Store app a full-screen button for installing Windows 8.1 came up.

The first attempt at downloading the update failed, but then it got under way on the second attempt.

Installation

At this point I went to bed and left it to install overnight. I woke up to find the installer asking me to agree to the new license agreement, and to enter my details for my Microsoft Account. Then, it did a little housekeeping, and before long I was back at the Start screen, freshly upgraded. Post-upgrade, there are a couple of contextual tutorials that show you how to do things in the new ‘modern’ interface, which helps.

The verdict on Windows 8.1

I haven’t spent much time with Windows 8.1 post-upgrade but it does seem to be a minor improvement. You can do more things in the modern interface without dropping back to the Desktop – Control Panel, for example, has been largely replicated. However, I still find it harder to navigate than before, with some apps hidden away on the ‘All Apps’ menu, and it’s more difficult to find the ‘Shut Down’ button than on Windows 7. And the new interface is still over-optimised for touchscreen computers – even with an Apple Magic Mouse with sideways scrolling, it still takes longer to do things. Having to hold the mouse pointer in a small corner of the screen to then bring up menus is slow compared to clicking.

Using Windows 8.1 makes you realise why Apple keeps OS X on desktops and iOS and touchscreen devices. Having the old desktop and new modern interface in the same operating system feels like a kludge, especially when you get booted out of one into the other unexpectedly (which happens now and again). And trying to enable it for both touchscreens and mouse-controlled computers results in a compromise that disadvantages the latter, in my opinion.

I don’t think these problems are insurmountable, but let’s just say that I hope there’s a Windows 8.2 that fixes them.

Windows 8 Installation Experience

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A screenshot of Windows 8 being installed on a VirtualBox virtual machine running on a Mac

On Saturday, I decided to upgrade to Windows 8. I’ve been running a virtual machine with Windows Vista Business for some time, firstly in Parallels Desktop but later converted to VirtualBox. I never bothered upgrading to Windows 7 due to the lack of differences between the two; obviously 7 is a big upgrade from XP but not from Vista.

Another major factor is that, at the moment, existing Windows XP, Vista and 7 users can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for a mere £24.99 as a digital download, or more if you need it on DVD. It’s a very good deal, but it’s only valid until early next year. And since I’d also heard that Windows 8 should run faster on the same hardware, upgrading seemed like a really good idea.

To upgrade, you should download the Upgrade Assistant which checks your current installation for compatibility and then downloads the files. You can then either proceed with the upgrade, or save an ISO file to a USB drive or DVD-ROM. I decided to proceed, but told the installer not to keep any of my documents or settings; after all, it was a virtual machine and anything important had been saved to Dropbox and was therefore available elsewhere.

This turned out to be a mistake, frankly. It installed the files, restarted a couple of times, and then froze. No animation, no CPU activity, no disk activity. So, I hard reset the virtual machine. At which point, setup decided that the installation had failed, and set about restoring Windows Vista. So, after a few hours, I was back at square one.

This time, I told the installer to save the ISO file, which I placed in a shared folder so it was accessible by my Mac as well. I then shut down the virtual machine, and created a fresh, new VM in VirtualBox with the optimal Windows 8 settings. Bear in mind that my previous VM was originally a Parallels VM, was then converted to the VMWare format, and then used with VirtualBox 2; now I’m on VirtualBox 4.2. I mounted the ISO file mounted as the CD drive, booted up, followed the instructions, and within the hour I was up and running with Windows 8. Success!

…or so I thought. Opening the ‘classic’ desktop environment saw the little icon for the Windows Action Centre pop up, telling me I needed to activate Windows – which was odd because I had entered the product key during installation. So I re-entered it, only for Windows to pop up a 0xC004F601 error, telling me that the product key was only valid for upgrades and not a clean installation like this one.

Some expletives were issued by me at this point, but thankfully Google saved my sanity as I found this blog post which explained a workaround. I had to edit the registry to change a value, re-run the activation manager and then reboot, but after this Windows activated with no problems. Phew.

Obviously I still have the old Windows Vista VM lying around but as that license is now invalid due to the upgrade I’ll be deleting it. That, and I shouldn’t need it anyway.

I’ll write more about my actual experiences of using Windows 8 when I’ve had a longer opportunity to use it. So far, it seems okay, and the ‘classic’ desktop is almost exactly the same as Windows 7. I’ll have to play with the new desktop (formally known as ‘Metro’) a little more before passing judgement.

SkyDrive vs Dropbox

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Update (April 2012): I have since written a new article comparing SkyDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive which is more up to date. You are best reading that guide, rather than this one, as some of the information about SkyDrive mentioned below is now wrong, although I’m keeping it here for reference.

Sunset Sky

If you’re like me, you’ll have a free Dropbox account for keeping files in sync between multiple computers, as well as having documents available on demand wherever there’s an internet connection, or on your mobile phone. Here’s my referral link. It’s a good, simple service that works well, and it’s free – although you can pay for more storage.

Microsoft has been working on a competitor called Windows Live SkyDrive which also offers integration with its Office Live suite of web apps. There’s now also an iPhone app (and presumably a Windows Phone app as well). Plus, with up to 25 GB of free storage, it starts to compare quite favourably with Dropbox. So, which is best?

Storage space

On the face of it, SkyDrive wins – 25 GB versus 2 GB for a plain vanilla free Dropbox account. However, it’s quite easy to get more space on Dropbox – you should be able to manage at least another 1 GB for free, and with a bit of effort even more – some have even taken to buying AdWords campaigns for around $20 to get up to 16 GB. And whereas Dropbox lets you use all of your space for anything, with SkyDrive, you can only use up to 5 GB to synchronise between computers using its Live Mesh service (more on that later). The other 20 GB has to be used via web uploads, iPhone app, Microsoft Office or Office Live. On this basis, it’s a draw.

Platform support

Dropbox has official clients for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, plus mobile clients for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Its open API means that unofficial clients are available for further platforms as well. SkyDrive is available on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion – i.e. not available for Windows XP or Linux; alternatively you can access specific documents in Microsoft Office, on the web or on a mobile app. And as yet, SkyDrive doesn’t work on Android or any Linux desktops, nor is there an open API for third-party developers to use.

Simplicity

Dropbox’s main draw is simplicity – there’s one folder that gets synced on all of your computers, and you can also access this folder online or on a mobile app. As mentioned, with SkyDrive you can only sync up to 5 GB; furthermore, those synced folders then cannot be edited by Office Live apps, so it’s a bit more complex. Plus there’s the whole confusion between the SkyDrive and Mesh products.

I could go on, but frankly having reviewed both services Dropbox wins purely by being simple and ubiquitous. SkyDrive does give you more space for free, and also integrates well with Hotmail if you use it, but it also adds a layer of complexity by only letting you use a portion of your allowance for syncing files between desktops. And because the un-synced portion doesn’t mount as a folder on your desktop, you can’t save files to it directly, so really it’s only useful for more long-term storage, or files that aren’t edited frequently. I’ll therefore be sticking with Dropbox.

Missing .vxd files

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I mentioned back in June that Hari and I inherited a spare computer, which until now has been sat in our house serving no purpose. However, I now have a reason to use it – I joined a new guild in World of Warcraft and need to run Ventrilo 2.1 to be able to take part in raids, and I can’t for the life of me get it to work properly on my Mac using Crossover.

I mentioned that the computer lacked a network card so I bought one today, and fitted it. Alas this machine is not running a nice operating system like Windows 2000 or XP, but Windows 98SE which doesn’t ship with the relevant drivers. Worse, as this machine had never been used on a network before, it was missing all of the Windows network components. Worse still, I didn’t have the Windows 98 CD, and even worse than that, the relevant files were not saved somewhere on the hard disk. Big problem.

Of course I was busy installing the network card drivers by this point and so upon rebooting I received a series of errors to do with missing .vxd files, namely vnetsup.vxd, vredir.vxd and dfs.vxd, the latter of which gives me a mental image of a double discount sofa sales. Anyway, I found a forum post on some site which I can’t seem to find again which pointed to these technical support files, namely ‘Directory Services client for Windows 95/98’ which includes these files and will happily install them for you. You can then get rid of the program through Add/Remove Programs and it’ll be nice and leave the .vxd files there for you.

Alas, these were only some of the missing files needed for networking, so while they did remove the horrible errors I was getting they didn’t actually get me on the network, so I’ve had to resort to downloading some files from a shady torrent site in the hope that I can get things going.

Ideally I would have liked to have been able to wipe the hard drive and stick Linux on this machine, but unfortunately its primary role as a Ventrilo machine means that it’s Windows or nuthin.