microsoft

Apple and Microsoft have disputed claims that some of their key services are so big they require additional regulation. The European Commission will now reassess whether they qualify as holding "gatekeeper" status. The status matters because of the ... new Digital Markets Act, designed to boost competitions. A "gatekeeper" status means the service needs to follow tighter rules to make it easier for customers to switch to rivals. It's particularly aimed at cases where one business controls software and hardware in multiple areas, for example an operating system and a browser. The assessment is for ... (view more)

Microsoft is to finally ditch WordPad after nearly three decades. It will add a few new features to Notepad for lighter word processing tasks. WordPad first appeared as a free tool in Windows 95. Microsoft says it will no longer update WordPad and ... will remove it in a "future release of Windows." It's not clear if that means a potential Windows 12 or simply one of the major updates to Windows 11. Announcing the move, Microsoft perhaps unwittingly pointed out one of the major flaws of WordPad. It says: "We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad ... (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)

Users of Windows versions dating right back to Windows 95 can now get updates for their system. It's thanks to an enthusiast project and is absolutely not meant to be a sensible alternative to using modern version of Windows. The Windows Update ... Restored site aims to recreate the official Microsoft web pages for getting feature and security updates for older versions of Windows. Those pages were used by people who chose to manually download and install updates rather than use automatic updates. Understandably, Microsoft has long since taken down the pages for updating many Windows versions ... (view more)

Windows 11 users are continuing to report hard drives performing more slowly after mandatory system updates. The problem appears to affect solid state drives rather than traditional older model hard drives with moving parts. The Windows Latest ... website gathered together reports from its own forums, discussion site Reddit, and Microsoft's support forums. It concluded that the "performance issue doesn't appear to be widespread, but it is real." (Source: windowslatest.com ) One piece of evidence that something is actually amiss rather than it just being a fluke pattern is that those complaining ... (view more)

Microsoft is to forcibly upgrade computers running a version of Windows 10 that's about to stop being supported. It's billed as a way to keep users "protected and productive." The update will cover consumer devices plus "non-managed business ... devices" running Windows 10 version 21H2. That was the version with the major feature update in the second half of 2021. (Source: theregister.com ) The move should only affect users who have switched off automatic updates, which is why the forced update won't be to everyone's taste. The chances are that many people in this position have deliberately ... (view more)

Microsoft has experimented with one of its most audacious attempts yet to persuade users to prefer the Edge browser over Google Chrome. It appears the plan, which effectively involved full-size banner "ads" on the Chrome website, will not proceed ... after the tests. Technically speaking, the Microsoft Edge browser is built using "Chromium" code (which is open source), which is the exact same code that Google's Chrome browser uses. The only difference between Edge and Chrome is that Edge has been customized with its own set of unique features and is branded as being Microsoft Edge. That ... (view more)

Microsoft and Google have both put plenty of effort into artificial intelligence in recent months. After an initial wow factor, they've been plagued with a host of problems. Interest in AI-text shot up with the public release of ChatGPT, a tool that ... can not only simulate conversations with the user and answer questions, but also write articles and other text in a variety of styles. While it appears extremely clever, it's effectively an extremely souped-up version of the auto-predict feature many phones offer when sending text messages. ChatGPT is produced by an independent developer called ... (view more)

A Microsoft Defender update has caused havoc by removing desktop, Start Menu and Taskbar shortcuts. Some users even say entire programs have disappeared. The closest thing to good news is that, although it affects both Windows 10 and 11, the problem ... only appears to affect Windows enterprise versions, rather than home users. That's because the problem is with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, a version of the security tool designed for networked computers. For most affected users, the problem is "limited" to the various shortcuts disappearing. Some have also reported that using the Windows key ... (view more)

Microsoft has abandoned plans to recommended websites in the Windows 11 Start menu. It hasn't said exactly why but suggests user feedback played a role. An idea to suggest searching on Microsoft Edge when copying text has also been ditched. It was ... the latest attempt to promote the browser to Windows users. The two ideas were both rolled out last November to users of the Dev channel in the Windows Insider test program. That's the first time potential new features are available to anyone outside of Microsoft. People who choose to use the Dev channel are particularly eager to see new ideas, ... (view more)