Newsletter Archives

• Foley: Win7 Extended Support Updates will cost two arms and three legs

  Posted on February 6, 2019 at 06:02 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Mary Jo Foley, posting on ZDNet, has come across some official information about the price of extended support for Win7 — security patches to be delivered after Win7 reaches end of life on January 14, 2020.

  If your organization’s running Win7 Pro, it’ll cost $50 per device for the first year, $100 for the second and $200 for the third.

  For Win7 Enterprise, it’s $25, $50 and $100.

  You have to be a volume licensing “active customer” in order to qualify to spend the extra bucks.

  Microsoft hasn’t confirmed the numbers.

  Windows News Windows 7 extended support

• Report of a buggy MSComCTL.ocx in January’s Office patches. Again.

  Posted on February 5, 2019 at 17:42 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Günter Born just posted details (German). Quoting blogger Sam:

  Microsoft once again issues a wrong file version of the MS Common Controls (MScomctl.ocx) for the Office January 2019 updates. It affects the following file:

  18.01.2019 22:33 1’410’216 MSCOMCTL.OCX

  This is particularly stupid for Office 2019 C2R, because there is only a new build. A manual uninstall of the relevant update is not possible.

  In the other versions of Office, I have found absolutely no clues at Microsoft, with which patch in December 2018 or Jan 2019 the wrong MS Common Controls file version is delivered. MS is totally silent here.

  Any of you getting bit by a bad MSComCTL.ocx?

  UPDATE: Looks like the bad, older version is in the February non-security patches, too. Details coming on Born City.

  Office Patches/Security January 2019 Black Tuesday, MSComCTL.ocx

• More Intel microcode updates released through the Update Catalog

  Posted on February 5, 2019 at 14:37 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  I count 14 separate updates in the Microsoft Update Catalog, all of which are dated “2019-01” but released on Feb. 4. The main ones:

  Win10 1809 – KB 4465065

  Win10 1803 – KB 4346084

  Win10 1709 – KB 4346085

  and several lesser releases of the same ilk.

  Of course, you shouldn’t install them, unless your company’s mentat predicts a Spectre 3a, 4, or L1TF attack that no one else has seen.

  Windows Patches/Security KB 4346084, KB 4346085, KB 4465065, Microcode

• Gralla: Why Windows 10 may never get another killer feature

  Posted on February 5, 2019 at 11:33 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Interesting conjecture from one of my favorite writers, Preston Gralla, in Computerworld:

  There haven’t been any “latest and greatest” features introduced into Windows for quite some time. And don’t be surprised if there never will be again.

  That may well be true.

  Windows News Future of Windows

• Fred Langa: How do I safely transfer files from an old, possibly infected laptop to an external HDD?

  Posted on February 5, 2019 at 06:50 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Give them a double washing.

  More great advice from Fred Langa on his website.

  Other Transfer files

• Xin nian hao

  Posted on February 5, 2019 at 00:44 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  

  Other

• Special thanks to Tracey Capen

  Posted on February 4, 2019 at 09:34 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Usually Tracey just toils behind the scenes as Editor in chief of the AskWoody Plus Newsletter.

  Last night, though, he hit a formidable problem: Snow storms in his neck of the woods knocked out power. He was working on battery, a wing and a prayer, and a warm fireplace.

  Somehow he got the Newsletter out in the wee hours of the morning today. He’ll have the full version posted here on the site in a few hours.

  UPDATE: The full version is up.

  Thanks, Tracey.

  Other

• Mozilla stops rollout of its latest version of Firefox, version 65

  Posted on February 2, 2019 at 18:22 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  Lawrence Abrams on BleepingComputer says

  Mozilla has halted the automatic updates to Firefox 65 as users are unable to browse web sites due to certificate errors. These errors are being caused by conflicts between various antivirus program’s HTTPS scanning and Firefox 65.

  Here in the browsers forum we have confirmation from Charlie and others.

  Abrams goes on to say:

  If you have upgraded to Firefox 65 and are seeing errors when browsing the web that state the “Connection is not secure”, then you are most likely affected by this bug and seeing a conflict between the browser and your antivirus software.

  And offers two workarounds. Various antivirus manufacturers are also distributing a bypass.

  Windows News Firefox

• AskWoody Alert 16.3.2 just went out

  Posted on February 1, 2019 at 13:09 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  

  If you’re a Plus member, you should’ve received an AskWoody Plus Alert in the past few minutes. It points you to the change to MS-DEFCON 4, and the associated Computerworld article.

  (I’ve wanted to do this for years! Yipppeeee!)

  Anyway, if you’re a Plus member,and you don’t get the Alert in the next hour or so, check your spam folder (make sure Editor@AskWoody.com is whitelisted). If you don’t see the email, hit me up on CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com. Our mail delivery system, MailChimp, is very cautious about messages that bounce, for whatever reason. Easier to clean out the pipes from this end….

  Have a good weekend, everybody.

  Windows Patches/Security AskWoody Alert

• MS-DEFCON 4: There are a couple of niggling problems, but they’re for (ahem) edge-use cases. Go ahead and get Windows/Office patched

  Posted on February 1, 2019 at 10:38 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  For almost everybody, now’s a good time to apply the January patches.

  As usual, there are some tricks.

  Details in Computerworld Woody on Windows.

  Windows Patches/Security January 2019 Black Tuesday, MS-DEFCON 4

• Windows 7 market share UP in January

  Posted on February 1, 2019 at 04:52 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  No, I don’t believe the numbers. But this one’s gotta tickle yer fancy.

  According to NetMarketShare, Win7 went from 36.90% share in December to 37.19% in January.

  At the same time, Win10 went from 39.22 to 40.90%.

  Don’t believe the numbers. Do believe the sentiment.

  Gregg Keizer will have a much better breakdown later today. I’ll update this post when it’s up.

  Windows News market share

• DNS Flag Day: We’re buckled in over here

  Posted on January 31, 2019 at 19:02 CST by admin • Comment in the Forums

  

  February 1 is DNS Flag Day – a day when the people who support the internet’s lookup pages (think phone book — if you’re old enough to remember what those are) start to get rid of decades-old bypasses that are gumming up the works.

  If your connection runs through a Windows Server you may see a complaint that “Minor problems detected” for your connection.

  You don’t need to worry about it. We’re hunkered down here and ready to enter the 21st century.

  Other DSN Flag day
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