AskWoody

68.7 billion dollars later

Wes Miller has been at the forefront of Microsoft and Microsoft licensing for eons. His tweet today on the subject of Microsoft’s 68.7 BILLION (with a B) acquisition of Blizzard gaming made me chuckle

Looking forward to writing about World of Warcraft for Education and Call of Duty for Business.

For a company who totally BLEW it on the phone platform, they seem to be buying their way once again into the mobile world.

The thing that gives me pause in all of this is that it feels like Microsoft sees Big Business customers and Gaming customers and those of us in the middle kinda have to piggy back on one or the other and just hope there’s enough scraps at the table left behind. What’s your take on this buy out?

Various out of band updates out to fix January patch issues

Let your PC start the new year right! (Part Two)

ISSUE 19.03 • 2022-01-17

LANGALIST

By Fred Langa

Taking a little time now to thoroughly check and proactively service your Windows PC can pay off big time in the coming year.

Whether you’re planning to move to Windows 11 or stick with Windows 10 (or even 8.1!), this easy-to-follow annual checkup is preventive medicine that can help ensure that your PC begins 2022 in the best shape possible!

Editor’s note: This topic is an AskWoody tradition. We plan to refresh and republish it in January every year. In this year’s two-part edition, Fred provides abundant references to classic, detailed PC-maintenance how-tos originally published in Windows Secrets and AskWoody!

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.03.0 (2022-01-17).
This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.03.F (2022-01-17).

Dive into Microsoft To Do

MICROSOFT 365

By Peter Deegan

To Do from Microsoft is more than just a simple list of tasks. It has tentacles connections to Outlook, Teams, and other people.

Cutting through all the Microsoft hype about “Set yourself up for success,” To Do is a cloud-based service for task management with connections to other Microsoft services.

I’m going to show To Do as an online app in a Web browser, then show how it works with Outlook desktop and Teams. There are also To Do apps for Windows, iOS, and Android.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.03.0 (2022-01-17).

Software gems: Paint.net

SOFTWARE

By Will Fastie

Besides having a very interesting history, paint.net is a useful program.

Paint.net has an unusual origin. It was written as a senior project by a computer science student at Washington State University, Rick Brewster. His project was to write a better version of Microsoft Paint, the ubiquitous program that has been part of Windows since the dawn of Windows.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.03.0 (2022-01-17).

A bumpy road for January

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

I’m always conservative, but this month you must delay applying updates to avoid side effects. Business patchers — you face tough choices.

We are seeing reports of various issues with this month’s updates, some of which are so extreme that patching administrators in businesses have had to remove or roll back updates. Even for consumer and home users, I suggest holding off; it’s way too soon for me to feel comfortable recommending updates.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.03.0 (2022-01-17).

Tips for the weekend – Browser checkup – January 15, 2022

This weekend I’ll want you to check if you are being impacted by either of these two browser bugs that popped up recently.

Video here

The first has to do with Edge browser….

On the Patchmanagement.org list the following was reported on Edge 97:

“Hello everyone,
We’ve been seeing a weird issue where users are having Microsoft Edge open at log on. I was able to trace it down to coming from MicrosoftEdgeUpdate.exe. There is a scheduled task to run Edge update with two triggers: one at logon and one at a random time period. We’ve found that disabling the logon trigger stops Edge from opening at log on, but I’m a bit wary of disabling this for everyone, even if there is a secondary trigger available.
Has anyone else seen this?”

“Yes, version 97 that dropped on Thursday 1/6 added two registry keys found at the below location. The AutoRunOnLogon is set to 1 by default, if you change it to 0 it fixes the issue. Our machines are set to only get updates from our WSUS servers, but this one bypassed if the machines were not behind a firewall that specifically blocked all of the Microsoft update servers.”

Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate\Clients\{56EB18F8-B008-4CBD-B6D2-8C97FE7E9062}\Commands\on-logon-autolaunch
Type: REG_DWORD
Value Name: AutoRunOnLogon
Value: 0 (zero)

Note if you need this registry value – the link to automatically fix this is here.

Next up is Firefox.

As noted on the 9to5mac blog,  Firefox may hang on certain web sites. If you are seeing this, edit the following:

Open a new Firefox window.
Type about:config in the URL bar. This will open a settings screen.
Search for the setting ‘network.http.http3.enabled’.
Set this setting to ‘false’ to disable HTTP3.
Then, fully close and restart Firefox.
This workaround applies to all desktop versions of Firefox, so it’ll work regardless of whether you are on Windows and Mac.

Of course, once the actual software bug has been resolved, you’ll want to go back and re-enable HTTP3 so that you can use HTTP3-dependent services in the future.

Edit 1/16/2022: Note Firefox has resolved this bug so you should not be seeing this in your Firefox browsers.

So are you seeing either of these two bugs in your browsers?

MS-DEFCON 1: Business patchers be on alert

ISSUE 19.02.1 • 2022-01-12

By Susan Bradley

For those running a network with a domain controller, the side effects this month are extreme. Don’t patch.

MS-DEFCON 1 is a very rare occurrence. When I raise the level that high, it’s because I’m seeing critical issues with patches.

Microsoft has a technology called Active Directory that allows workstations to authenticate with a “domain controller.” This month’s updates are causing such drastic issues with domain controllers that they can become stuck in a boot loop. That is definitely an MS-DEFCON 1 condition. You should not release patches.

Anyone can read the full AskWoody Plus Alert 19.02.1 (2022-01-12).

January 2022 patch day is here

It’s that time of the month again for Windows updates where we all pause, ensure we have a GOOD backup of our machines and that we have deferrals in place in the form of “date deferrals”, or “metered”, or all the ways that we can hold back a bit.

The raw MSRC guide is out, and it looks like this month we have .NET security patches. That means that this month I’ll recommend that you install them rather than being a bit wishy washy as to whether or not to hold back when they don’t contain security content. I know .NET patching is confusing.

It’s unclear if these updates still trigger a problem with indexing in Outlook desktop.  Outlook searching has never been that great, if I really need an email I will launch outlook on the web and use that search box as well.

Those of you that run desktop Exchange mail servers – there’s an update out for Exchange. Test and patch accordingly.

There’s a couple of those “you need to update the store” as there’s a HEVC extension bug. So if you’ve disabled your Microsoft store updating, be aware we have another Store bug this month.

Already seeing issues with L2TP vpn connections source:  —  KB5009543 – January 11, 2022 Breaks L2TP VPN Connections : sysadmin (reddit.com)  Note this is not consumer vpn software, but business style vpn software.

Seeing issues with servers stuck in a boot loop   “So it sounds like the monthly Microsoft screw-up is going to be 2012 DCs getting stuck in boot loop?” ” Not just 2012R2’s, we also have a report of a 2019 in the mix.”   Source:  Patch Tuesday Megathread (2022-01-12) : sysadmin (reddit.com) and Patchday: Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2 Updates (January 11, 2022), boot loop reported | Born’s Tech and Windows World (borncity.com)

For those of you on Apple devices, by now you should make sure your December updates are installed.

If you are one of the  “take one for the team” members that do have a backup and do early testing on behalf of the rest of us, as always I ask that you report patching successes as well as failures.

Edit 1-13-2022 hearing that Microsoft has pulled updates from Windows update/Microsoft update – not sure if WSUS patches have been pulled.

Let your PC start the new year right!

ISSUE 19.02 • 2022-01-10

LANGALIST

By Fred Langa

Taking a little time now to thoroughly check and proactively service your Windows PC can pay off big time in the coming year.

Whether you’re planning to move to Windows 11 or stick with Windows 10 (or even 8.1!), this easy-to-follow annual checkup is preventive medicine that can help ensure that your PC begins 2022 in the best shape possible!

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.02.0 (2022-01-10).
This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.02.F (2022-01-10).

Look who’s stalking: Protect yourself from Apple AirTags

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

Ever since Apple started selling $29 tracking devices called AirTags last April, criminal types have used them to tail people, pinpoint and heist their cars, and worse — but warnings of planted devices were made available only to iPhone owners. Now, people who have more common phones can find out whether they’re being tracked, too.

The AirTag is a small, plastic-encased device that’s approximately the size of three or four dollar coins stacked on top of each other. It competes with such trackers as the Bluetooth-based Tile Pro and the GPS-based Verizon Hum^x. But most Bluetooth devices connect only to phones within 50 meters or so, and GPS trackers require you to pay monthly fees.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.02.0 (2022-01-10).

Freeware Spotlight – WPA2Gen

BEST UTILITIES

By Deanna McElveen

What’s stopping you from having a 63-character Wi-Fi password? Typing a 63-character Wi-Fi password.

The chances of your 14-year-old neighbor kid’s having a bachelor of science degree in cybersecurity are, well, nil. The chances of the kid’s sticking the free Kali Linux distro on a flash drive to crack your Wi-Fi password “ilovecats” is pretty plausible.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.02.0 (2022-01-10).