Newsletter Archives

• Longstanding feature requests, and their status

  Posted on May 29, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  We’ve been waiting a long time for the OneNote features promised in 2019.

  I asked Microsoft to tell us what’s coming when.

  The very first time I heard about OneNote, at a press briefing for Office 2003, I saw how useful it would be — but there were also some things that I thought wouldn’t work. I went over to talk to Microsoft’s Chris Pratley and spent the next 20 minutes trapping him in a corner between the wall and the lunch table, making suggestions and asking for changes, before a PR person tactfully extracted him.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.22.0, 2023-05-29).

  OneNote Features, Newsletters, OneNote, Status, updates

• Being legal, supported, and secure

  Posted on February 27, 2023 at 02:43 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Who regulates your software decisions?

  As an operating system comes to the end of its life span, we users have to decide what to do with our technology. Do we continue using it as is, with no consideration of risks? Do we stop using the technology and look for alternatives? Or do some of us do a combination of both?

  With proprietary software, our decisions are often driven by what type of customer we are.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.09.0, 2023-02-27).

  On Security Licensing, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, Risk, Software, updates

• Security isn’t just a Microsoft thing

  Posted on November 1, 2021 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Here at AskWoody, we concentrate on Microsoft patch days and security issues.

  But insecurity, privacy, and protection of your sensitive information aren’t just a Microsoft thing. Attackers go where there are people, and computers, to attack. Recently, an ad claiming that Chromebooks were immune to ransomware caught my eye. While makers of Chromebooks can state that they do not have the operating system targeted by ransomware, that’s not to say they are immune from all security risks. There should be a certain amount of paranoia on every platform.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.42.0 (2021-11-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, On Security AskWoody Plus Newsletter, backup, On Security, Patch Lady Posts, updates

• Is it safe to print again?

  Posted on August 16, 2021 at 02:41 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Is Print Nightmare finally fixed?

  The August updates are out and finally include a fix for the fix for the earlier fix for Print Spooler issues that allow attackers to take control of your system via rights elevation. While the good news is that we finally have a fix for the current Print Spooler issue, I’m seeing in various tweets that an issue still exists. If you want SYSTEM (beyond admin) rights on any supported version of Windows, there is a way to use a remote/cloud malicious print driver to get them.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.31.0 (2021-08-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Watch AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Lady Posts, printing, updates

• Why don’t we patch?

  Posted on August 9, 2021 at 02:41 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  

  By Susan Bradley

  The vast majority of 2020 and 2021 attacks were not from zero days, but rather were old vulnerabilities for which patches had been released months, or even years, ago.

  Recently, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a document about the top attacks in 2020 and those so far in 2021. Interestingly, many of these vulnerabilities used in attacks are not Microsoft-based but are vulnerabilities in tools we use to access networks.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.30.0 (2021-08-09).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Watch AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Lady Posts, patching, updates

• Wi-Fi stutters every evening like clockwork

  Posted on September 13, 2020 at 21:05 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  What on earth could cause a Wi-Fi setup to momentarily fail each night at around the same time?

  Perhaps a rogue scheduled task? A power-savings malfunction? A failed update attempt? An electrical power fluctuation? External electromagnetic interference? Aliens?

  There are many possible causes; here’s how to sort through them.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.36.0 (2020-09-14).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Power conditioning, updates, Wi-Fi interference, Windows tasks

• Where we’re headed with AskWoody Plus — an update

  Posted on September 9, 2019 at 01:15 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  

  LETTER FROM THE EPONYMOUS FACTOTUM

  By Woody Leonhard

  At the beginning of the year, we took over the then soon-to-be-closed Windows Secrets and made it part of AskWoody. It wasn’t an easy transition — and it’s still a work in progress.

  As planned from the beginning, we’ve been working to keep parts of the AskWoody site free to all, while making other parts available only to AskWoody Plus members — those who have supported the site and newsletter through financial contributions.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.32.0 (2019-09-09).

  Special note: If you’re a Plus Member and you didn’t get this newsletter in the past few hours, please drop a line to CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com. We’ll get you sorted out.

  AskWoody Plus membership AskWoody Plus membership, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Paid content, updates

• Why can’t Microsoft reliably patch its own hardware?

  Posted on July 22, 2019 at 01:15 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  WOODY’S WINDOWS WATCH

  By Woody Leonhard

  You don’t need me to tell you that Windows patches are too often of, uh, questionable quality.

  But the latest screw-up with Win10 Version 1903 and top-of-the-line Microsoft Surface Book 2 PCs really takes the cake.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.27.0 (2019-07-22).

  Hardware, Windows 10 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, dGPU failures, Surface Book 2, updates

• July updates come with a few warts

  Posted on July 15, 2019 at 01:05 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  By Susan Bradley

  This month’s Windows and Office updates are settling in without raising any major alarms. But it’s still early, and caution dictates deferring the patches for another week or so.

  July’s updates do fix a couple of issues from previous months: the IE/Power BI conflict and the Event Viewer error message — both of which impacted just a small number of Windows users.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.26.0 (2019-07-15).

  Patch Watch AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Office, updates, Windows patching

• Windows 7: Preparing for an uncertain future

  Posted on July 1, 2019 at 01:15 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  By Susan Bradley

  By now every Win7 user should know that official support for the venerable OS ends next year.

  The final updates should go out on January 14, 2020 (more MS info) — at least they’ll end for those of us who don’t have deep corporate pockets to pay for extra patches.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.24.0 (2019-07-01).

  On Security, Windows 7 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, safety, security, updates, windows 7

• Win10 update crashing other, simultaneous installations?

  Posted on April 1, 2016 at 15:23 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Interesting email from CH:

  I would be interested to see if other people have a similar experience.

  I recently did testing with a Virtual Machine running Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4, which is the server equivalent of Windows 10 v 1511.

  The build version for Server 2016 TP4 is the same 10.0.10586. They even get the same updates.

  While installing other software, the installer did not complete correctly because, and this is from memory, ‘there is another restart pending’.

  I immediately went to Windows Update and found that there are updates installed waiting for a restart while concurrently I was trying to install something else.

  For those who are not aware, Windows Server 2016 TP4 has the same Automatic Update behaviour out-of-the-box like Windows 10.

  Any thoughts or similar experience?

  Windows Patches/Security updates