Monthly Archives: December 2020

• 2021 has arrived

  Posted on December 31st, 2020 at 20:00 Susan Bradley Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  (well for some…. for me not quite)

  Well we almost have made it.  It is …or nearly is… 2021.

  I’ve seen some of the fireworks displays of other countries – hopefully these links work for everyone?

  Auckland fireworks

  Sydney fireworks

  Taipei fireworks

  Dubai fireworks

  Paris fireworks

  England fireworks and drone show

  New York

  Las Vegas

  Los Angeles

  Here’s to a better 2021 for everyone from all of us here at Askwoody.com

  Other Happy New Year!, Patch Lady Posts

• Today’s the day – Flash EOL has arrived

  Posted on December 30th, 2020 at 18:02 Kirsty Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  Today’s the day – Flash EOL has arrived

  Back in 2017, Adobe announced it was “planning to end-of-life Flash”. Yes, this has been posted about before… Well, the time has now come. Pop-ups have been seen in those machines still using it, for a bit now.

  If you have questions about what happens next, Adobe has a page full of questions and answers here.

  If you’re looking for articles on how to uninstall, check out Martin Brinkmann’s ghacks post.

  (and yes, only half the world is having New Year’s Eve already – Happy New Year to all)

  Security EOL, Flash

• Windows 7 “not dead yet”

  Posted on December 30th, 2020 at 17:34 Kirsty Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  Nearly a year after Win7’s EOL, Ed Bott has been diving into how many might still be using the OS. He hints it’s a big number.

  …as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%
  …
  If my calculations a year ago were on the mark, that means more than 100 million Windows PC were retired, recycled, or upgraded in the past 12 months.

  It is somewhat reassuring to hear that WinXP is now in the region of a “fraction of a rounding error”. And of course, that doesn’t quantify how many of those Win7 machines are or aren’t enrolled in the ESU program.

  You can read Ed’s write-up on Zdnet here.

  Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows News Ed Bott, Win7 EOL, Win7 ESU, Win7 market share, Windows market share

• Tech support scams want you

  Posted on December 29th, 2020 at 22:43 Susan Bradley Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  One of the items that came out of the first ever Askwoody survey is that most of the readers are older.  You’ve been around technology for a long time.  And that’s a good thing as you have experience with a lot of technology.  But that also puts you in the “sweet spot” of scams.  Meaning that the attackers see you as a good target to attempt to scam.  And one of those classic scams is the Microsoft support scam not to be outdone by the increasingly used Apple iphone support scam.

  This headline caught my eye:

  Dept. of Justice credits Microsoft with identifying tech-support fraud scheme that targeted seniors

  No kidding.  Of course if you are a savvy senior (which most readers are) you may do the trick where you pretend to be a stupid user just to draw that person on the phone line on so as to waste their time so they don’t try to go after another person.  I’ve often played the dumb blonde routine until the very end where I tell the person on the other end of the call that they should be ashamed of themselves.

  What do you do?  Do you hang up?  Do you keep them on the phone?

  Security Patch Lady Posts, Tech Support Scams

• MS-DEFCON 4 – all clear to install updates

  Posted on December 28th, 2020 at 08:16 Susan Bradley Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  Well it’s time to close the year and the month on patching.  If you haven’t already done so, install them now and get ready to say goodbye to Adobe Flash.

  More on Computerworld.

  Windows Patches/Security December 2020 Black Tuesday, MS-DEFCON 4, Patch Lady Posts

• Signing off from AskWoody

  Posted on December 27th, 2020 at 21:10 Tracey Capen Comment on the AskWoody Lounge
  

  CHANGES

  By TB Capen

  The smartest call you can make in business is knowing when it’s time to leave.

  After some thirty years in tech journalism, it’s time I put the cap on the old digital inkwell. To wit, this is my last issue as editor of the AskWoody newsletter.

  It’s been a fun and interesting ride. Back in 2010, Brian Livingston convinced me and Riley the cattle dog to move 1,000 miles up the West Coast and become the editor of Windows Secrets. I retired from the newsletter seven years later during the Penton years.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.51.0 (2020-12-28).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Masthead changes

• Drive-dense system suffers from sub-par performance

  Posted on December 27th, 2020 at 21:05 Tracey Capen Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  The final LangaList for 2020 takes a look at a subscriber’s PC with a strikingly unusual configuration.

  It’s a high-capacity machine, but the owner reports slow boots and RAM use that never drops below about 17 percent — even at idle!

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.51.0 (2020-12-28).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Disk unmounting, RAM use, Slow boots

• Windows 10 and chkdsk issues?

  Posted on December 27th, 2020 at 21:00 Tracey Capen Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PATCH WATCH

  By Susan Bradley

  Yikes! Say it isn’t so!

  Günter Born reports that a small number of Windows users whose systems have solid-state drives ran into serious trouble with the classic chkdsk tool after installing KB 4592438, the December cumulative update for Win10 20H2. When they kicked off chkdsk c: /f, their systems crashed with a blue screen of death. The problem appears to be limited to machines with SSDs.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.51.0 (2020-12-28).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Watch, Windows 10 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Chkdsk issues, High CPU use, Office updates, Printing problems, SolarWinds, Win7 ESU, Windows update failures
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