Monthly Archives: January 2022

• Info-Base – Map your brain

  Posted on January 24, 2022 at 02:42 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Sometimes I can’t remember why I walked into a room. Why should I think I’ll remember my daughters’ mailing addresses if I don’t write them down? Will I remember where I wrote them down? What was I talking about?

  Oh yes, Info-Base! What is it? It’s a free program created by Jochanan Agam of Zurich, Switzerland. It’s actually an improved clone of the original DOS program called “Tornado,” which then became “Info-Select” (for DOS) and later “Info-Select” (for Windows). Jochanan renamed it “Info-Base” and added a zillion features.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.04.0 (2022-01-24).

  Freeware Spotlight Database, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Newsletters, Personal

• $68.7 billion? Peanuts.

  Posted on January 24, 2022 at 02:41 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  MICROSOFT NEWS

  

  By Will Fastie

  Frenzy around corporate acquisitions is nothing new; but this time, for Microsoft, it seems overstated.

  Last week, Microsoft announced its planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the well-known maker of such game franchises as Candy Crush, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft. Part of the frenzy surrounded the price — almost three times more than Microsoft’s previous large acquisition, LinkedIn.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.04.0 (2022-01-24).

  Microsoft News Acquisitions, Microsoft, Microsoft News, News, Newsletters

• Tip for the weekend – January 22 – the Microsoft Catalog site

  Posted on January 23, 2022 at 00:47 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  Video here

  This weekend I’m demonstrating how the Microsoft Catalog site works. This month if you use business VPN software you may need to manually download patches from the Microsoft catalog site.

  But there’s a slight little problem with the site, while part of it is in https, the links to the patch itself comes down on http. In the modern browsers that we use, this makes the download process throw off an error. So to get around it, you have to click to enable the download.

  Mind you this “bug” has been there since 2018.

  Bottom line, it’s normal. This is one of those times I’ll tell you to go ahead and “just click”. One of the FEW times I’ll tell you to click through a warning.

   

  Tech Help Patch Lady Posts

• 68.7 billion dollars later

  Posted on January 18, 2022 at 14:16 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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?

  Microsoft News Patch Lady Posts

• Various out of band updates out to fix January patch issues

  Posted on January 17, 2022 at 17:01 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  When Microsoft has issues with updates, it normally takes until Fridayish before they identify a root cause and then it’s Mondayish of the following week that fixes get released. And here we are with out of band updates to fix the various issues that were triggered by the January updates. Now I STILL am not budging from my MS-DEFCON 1 stance of don’t patch. But if you are in a situation were you are mandated to patch, at least you can grab a fix.

  https://twitter.com/WindowsUpdate/status/1483212333560172545

  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/january-17-2022-kb5010793-os-builds-19042-1469-19043-1469-and-19044-1469-out-of-band-f2d4f178-5b36-49cb-a6fd-4bf9857574f9   Fixes for various Windows 10
  Updates a known issue that affects VPN connections.

  Updates a known issue that causes unexpected restarts on Windows Server domain controllers.  Should be “offered up” on Windows update but not pushed

  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/january-17-2022-kb5010795-os-build-22000-438-out-of-band-2d2b9310-d845-41c4-9907-aeea24f36a63  Fixes to Windows 11 for VPN issues – should be “offered up” on Windows update but not pushed

  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5010794-out-of-band-update-for-windows-8-1-and-windows-server-2012-r2-january-17-2022-a92500fb-f227-400e-b70e-f7dd50386fd3

  Fixes to Server 2012 R2 HyperV issues – only on the Microsoft catalog site. You’ll need to manually download it and apply, note it’s a security only update, not a monthly rollup.

  Bottom line, out of band updates are out to fix various issues seen in the January updates.  Note that not all are out on Windows update, but rather on the catalog site.
  MS-DEFCON, Windows Security January 2022 Black Tuesday, Patch Lady Posts

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

  Posted on January 17, 2022 at 02:45 CST by Fred Langa • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  LangaList LangaList, Newsletters, Personal Computers

• Dive into Microsoft To Do

  Posted on January 17, 2022 at 02:44 CST by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365, Newsletters, To Do

• Software gems: Paint.net

  Posted on January 17, 2022 at 02:43 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Software Graphics Editors, Newsletters, review, Software

• A bumpy road for January

  Posted on January 17, 2022 at 02:42 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  Patch Watch Hyper-V, MS-DEFCON 1, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, Patch Watch, ReFS, VPN

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

  Posted on January 16, 2022 at 00:52 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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?

   

   

  Tech Help, Windows Security

• MS-DEFCON 1: Business patchers be on alert

  Posted on January 12, 2022 at 10:21 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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).

  AskWoody Plus Alert, MS-DEFCON AskWoody Plus Alerts, MS-DEFCON, MS-DEFCON 1

• January 2022 patch day is here

  Posted on January 11, 2022 at 12:11 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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.

  Security, Windows Security January 2022 Black Tuesday, Patch Lady Posts
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