All posts by Ed Tittel

Full-time freelance writer, researcher and occasional expert witness, I specialize in Windows operating systems, information security, markup languages, and Web development tools and environments. I blog for numerous Websites, still write (or revise) the occasional book, and write lots of articles, white papers, tech briefs, and so forth.

Windows 11 User Count Tops 1B Worldwide

This news comes from the Microsoft Windows Blogs dated May 26. It’s entitled “Delivering Delightful Performance for More Than One Billion Users Worldwide.” That’s the day after Build 2023 concluded, and the first time that MS has publicly disclosed user count data for Windows 11 in about a year. It’s also the first time they’ve proclaimed that the Windows 11 user count tops 1B worldwide.

These are the four instances in the afore-linked item where the “billion” word occurs:
1. In the title of the blog post, as quoted in the preceding ‘graph
2. In a sentence that reads (in part) as “... with over one billion users and a rich PC ecosystem…
3. Diagnostic data includes “…over 70.4 billion scenario performance data points per year.”
4. Final paragraph, penultimate sentence reads (in part) “…thanks to our Windows Insider community for helping us continue to improve Windows for the over one billion users worldwide.

What Windows 11 User Count Tops 1B Worldwide Means

According to Statista, as of June 2023, the company expects a ratio of 68.6% for Windows 10 vis-a-vis 18.12% for Windows 11. Thus, if there are 1 B Windows 11 users, there must also be  around 3.78 B Windows 10 users. To me this means one of two things:

(a) The ratio of visitors that Statista tracks doesn’t accurately model the Windows population of active users
(b) Microsoft’s claimed 1 B figure does not translate to active users 1-to-1 (makes sense, given that one active user can run multiple instances of the OS, especially VMs)

In January 2023, for example, Jason Wise reported at EarthWeb that MS claimed 1.4 B active devices running Windows 10 and 11 monthly in January 2022. They use this data, plus additional insights, to assert that “Windows, new versions and otherwise, run on more or less 1.6 billion devices around the world” as of January 2023.

Even assuming a monthly growth rate of 3% that puts the global Windows population at 1.85 B in May, 2023. How can there be at or over 1 B Windows 10 users and a similar number of 11 users with a total that’s arithmetically lower? Something here doesn’t make sense…

It should be interesting to see the pundit corps chew this over. Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you posted…

Note Added 1 Hour Later…

It’s got to be devices, counting both physical and virtual machines as individual devices. I use 10 PCs here at my house, and I have at least another dozen VMs across various Windows versions at my disposals. That’s over 20 “devices” but only one user. That leaves room for a tangible “muliplier” between users and devices, IMO.

 

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Zoom Restores Unpaid Update Capability

Let me first confess: I don’t know exactly when the change I report here actually occurred. What I do know is that I reported last October (2022) that the free version of Zoom no longer offered a “Check for Updates” option in its free version’s user menu. It’s highlighted in the red box in the lead-in graphic at right. Because my son is back home from college, I accidentally logged into Zoom on his (free) account yesterday, and saw that the same update item was present. Good-oh!

Glad Zoom Restores Unpaid Update Capability

If you read my earlier post, you’ll see I dinged the Zoom developers for making update a paid-only capability. Why? Because that approach fosters the possibility of security exposures for the class of users that stick to the free version. I took it as a deliberate strategy to force that class to trade security against cost. That’s not good.

Given what I discovered yesterday, I take it all back. Zoom is now doing the right thing. It may have been doing so for some time without my knowledge. That IS good, and I thank them for reversing the earlier development decisions that made users choose between more cost, better security and lower cost, lower security (or more work, to get around that limitation).

Indeed, as I mentioned in my October 2022 post, users could always uninstall an outdated version, then install the current one. This would bring them back to par, and let them benefit from any security patches or fixes in the newer version. Now, thanks to Zoom’s decision to reinstate the “Check for Updates” menu item — and its supported auto-download and -install capabilities — such contortions are unnecessary. Once again: good! And thanks again to Zoom for taking the right path, regardless of exactly when that occurred.

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Updating Intel Processor ID Utility

Hmmmm. Here’s an interesting one. SUMo just told me that the Intel Processor Identification Utility (Legacy Model) needs an update. Poking around on the Intel site, I found a download page that covers Intel processors by generation: the new one goes Gen 12 and up; the old one Gen 11 and down. The old one appears beneath the new in the lead-in graphic, so it’s the one I downloaded and installed. That got me through Updating Intel Processor ID Utility on my i7 Skylake.

Why Bother Updating Intel Processor ID Utility?

The latest version of the new utility is 5/22/2023. The legacy one that works for my i7 Skylake shows a date of 5/17/2023 on the General Properties tab for the ProcID.exe file. That means it’s the latest and greatest of such files. I’m not aware of any security or other issues that the new version fixes. I’m just in the habit of updating as new versions come out. It runs just fine on the production PC. Here, for example, is the “CPU Technologies” info from that tool:

Updating Intel Processor ID Utility.CPU-tech

CPU Technologies show instructions, virtualization, sleep and other state info support (or not).

Intel Always Makes Updates Interesting

I feel lucky this morning that the landing page for Processor ID Utility took me to the update I needed. Sometimes, they don’t make it totally easy or simple to find the latest versions. Indeed, searching on version number (6.10.29.0517) didn’t work all that well for me. But this tool has an “Update” button subordinate to its Help menu. Now that I know this is an option, I bet it will work immediately next time around. That’s what makes updates interesting in general (and Intel in particular): there’s almost always a way to get a boost from the developer, if you know where and how to look for same. Sigh.

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Concluding Windows 10 22H2 Non-Security Preview

There’s an interesting tidbit in the Support Note for KB5026435, released May 23, 2023. Indeed, it is the concluding Windows 10 22H2 non-security preview release, ever. It goes so far as to say “no more” such releases are forthcoming. In a way, this marks the beginning of the end for Windows 10, whose EOL date is 10/14/2025 (about 17.5 months from today). As you can see from the lead-in graphic, I just installed it onto my sole remaining Windows 10 production desktop.

Sussing Out the Concluding Windows 10
22H2 Non-Security Preview

MS elaborates further on the future release scheduling for Windows 10 in the afore-linked Support Note. It says:

Only cumulative monthly security updates (known as the “B” or Update Tuesday release) will continue for these versions. Windows 10, version 22H2 will continue to receive security and optional releases.

Here’s what I think this means:

  1. 22H2 is the final release for Windows 10 (unless something big changes).
  2. No more second (4th) Tuesday preview releases for Windows 10 22H2.
  3. There may be some second (4th) Tuesday security and optional releases from time to time.

The inescapable conclusion is that Windows 10 is now purely in “maintenance mode.” That means we’re unlikely to see more (or at least, precious few) Windows 11 features “back-ported” into 10.

Take it as a signal, business users. MS is clearly warning you that it’s time to start planning the transition to Windows 11 (or beyond). It should be interesting to see how this plays out between now and mid-October 2025. Stay tuned, and I’ll opine further on what’s up, what’s hot, and what’s not.

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Old-School Gadgets Still Rule

I read a Windows Latest story yesterday with interest and bemusement. It proclaims that MS is “bringing … Vista-like gadgets to Windows 11…” Of course, these are widgets (not gadgets, per se) and I don’t see them in the same light, either. I’m still happily using Helmut Buhler’s excellent 8GadgetPack, as you can see in the lead-in graphic. For me, these old-school gadgets still rule — as they have done on my desktops since Vista appeared in early 2007 (16 years ago).

Why Old-School Gadgets Still Rule

The range of still-available gadgets is large (61 total on the “Add Gadget” display). It offers elements for time, CPU, GPU, storage, and networking status and activity. Lots of pop-ups for news, weather, games, media and other interesting services. There’s more here, in fact, than I want or need on my desktop.

Here are the four elements I use all the time on nearly all of my Windows 10 and 11 PCs and laptops (they appear in-line at the right-hand side of my left-screen’s desktop; here I stack them 2×2):

Clockwise from top left, these are:
1. Clock gadget: shows machine name and time (with seconds)
2. Control gadget: provides ready access to shutdown and restart, even in RDP sessions (very handy)
3. Network Meter: shows int/ext IP addresses, in- & out-bound network activity (on graph and numerically)
4. CPU Usage: shows overall CPU and memory consumption, along with per-core activity levels.

So far, I haven’t seen Windows 11 widgets that come close to matching this kind of capability with minimal overhead and effort required for installation and use. I’ll keep my eyes on widgets as they develop and evolve. But so far, the old-school gadget still beats the new-school widget three ways from Sunday. Stay tuned: this may change!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Deciphering PowerShell History Commands

Whoa! I just spent an enjoyable half-hour learning about the various PowerShell command line history viewing and editing tools. This comes courtesy of OhMyPosh creator Jan De Dobbeleer (@jandedobbeleer) on Twitter. Deciphering PowerShell history commands, in my case, involved a fair amount of interesting play and learning in a Terminal session. As you can see from the lead-in graphic, I had fun manipulating my command history (and then, updated OhMyPosh to catch up my test system).

When Deciphering PowerShell History Commands, Do This…

The operative way to understand PS history management is as a series of prefixes to “-history” at the command line — namely:

  • get: shows current PS command line history as stored for display
  • clear: clears current PS command line history
  • add: allows you to import a predefined command history from a file

There’s a lot more to managing history than you might think, as described in this MS Learn reference on the Clear-History command. Indeed you can tailor the history based on commands by number (from top or bottom of the history list, using -Count and other options) or by content (using the -CommandLine option and string-matching facilities).

Wait! There’s an Add-History, Too

You can save a representative command history by piping get-history into a CSV file. Later on, Add-History lets you import that file’s contents to imbue the current command history into your current PowerShell context. See this reference for more info.

Working with PowerShell history commands is great fun, actually. I’d suggest visiting the afore-linked references to take things for a spin. I find it useful to clear the history after such learning adventures (or after making mistakes at the command line that I’d just as soon forget…).

 

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Canary Dev Gain Enhanced Webp Support

Here’s an interesting change in the bleeding edge versions for Windows 11. Indeed, Canary Dev gain enhanced Webp support for images of that type. It does require visiting the MS store on one of those platforms to download and install the Webp Image Extensions app shown in the lead-in screencap. After that, a number of interesting options present themselves. Let me explain … and illustrate!

What Canary Dev Gain Enhanced Webp Support Means

Thanks to Sergey Tkachenko at WinAero, I learned about this yesterday. What I didn’t realize was how widespread webp support has already become across the Windows 10 and 11 landscape. As you can see, the following image — prosaically named bunny.webp — shows up just fine inside WordPress (and by extension, most web browsers).Canary Dev Gain Enhanced Webp Support.bunny

Say hello to bunny.webp!

Indeed, it turns out that in addition to Photos and Edge, webp also works in Corel PaintShop, Snagit Editor, Paint, IrfanView (though I did have to download and install a plug-in DLL for Webp) and more. And it worked on Windows 10 as well as 11. It’s just that the Windows Photos app (and possibly Edge for some users) couldn’t handle webp before installing the afore-mentioned Store app “Webp Image Extensions.”

What Is Webp Anyway?

Webp is yet another compact, accurate image format. A Google design, it made its debut in 2010 but didn’t go widely public until April 2018 (when the vendor released a stable “supporting library” for the format — See Wikipedia). Looking at the bunny above, I see that Webp has some characteristics in common with the XML-based SVG graphics format. That said, it also supports captured photos, animation, tiling, advanced meta-data and more.

Visit Google’s WebP page for the official line on this format, which is gaining wider acceptance and use. As Google explains “WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster.”

This was an interesting exercise for me, and a good learning experience. Worth digging into for IT and web professionals alike, if you haven’t dug in here already…

Note: Webp does NOT work in Photos in Windows 10 or Window 11 (versions with numbers lower than those for Canary or Dev channels, 25357 and 23451, respectively). Outside the OS umbrella, though, Webp seems to work in browsers and image apps and applications of all kinds.

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

P16 Manifests LSASS Bug

The Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service, aka LSASS, handles security policy enforcement for that OS. With KB5023706 (installed on 3/14) on my mainstream Windows 11 PC, some have shown interesting side-effects. My P16 manifests LSASS bug shown in the lead-in graphic.

Basically, it falsely asserts that LSASS protection is turned off (see text in red box). How do I know it’s actually running? As I searched the System log in Event Viewer, I found a message indicating the “LSASS.exe (process) was started…” as part of that system’s last boot-up. According to this discussion of that very issue at BleepingComputer.com, this indicates that LSASS protection is enabled and working as it should be.

P16 Manifests LSASS Bug.evt-viewer

The Event Viewer (System Log) reports a successful start of LSASS.exe as part of the OS boot-up process. It’s working!

What To Do If Your P16 Manifests LSASS Bug

Of course, this applies to all Windows PCs of all kinds. That said, the afore-linked BleepingComputer story explains a couple of Registry hacks that will fix such spurious notifications. MS will probably get around to fixing this sooner or later. Meanwhile, I’m not concerned about false security flags. Indeed, I’m content to wait until it’s corrected in some future update.

It sounds like a serious error. And it would be a major security hole, if the notification were true. But since it’s simply a false positive, and I’ve proved to myself that things are working as they should be, I’ll live with it.

This problem has been in play for some while now (BleepingComputer reports it goes back to January 2023). If I search for “Local security authority protection is off” at ElevenForum.com, I see hits as far back as March 1, 2023, on this topic. All are unanimous in flagging this as a false positive not worth corrective action.

But that’s the way things sometimes go here in Windows-World. Take it under advisement if you see the “Yellow bang!” in Windows Security on your Windows 11 PC. Cheers!

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Winget Just Keeps Chugging Along

I’ve started a new writing and editing gig with TekkiGurus.com. I’m contributing 3-4 articles a month on Windows 10 and 11 topics, and providing input and feedback on their overall desktop OS coverage. Just recently, I started a series of stories for them on the Winget package manager for Windows. I’ve been using it daily for about a year now, and  I have to observe that Winget just keeps chugging along — and getting better all the time.

What Winget Just Keeps Chugging Along Means

Take a look at this morning’s results on my Windows 10 production PC (see lead-in graphic above). It just updated VS Enterprise 2022, TeamViewer, and Chrome, in under 2 minutes with only minimal effort from yours truly. I seldom encounter winget issues — and when I do, they’re nearly always easily resolved.

What continually suprises me is that using winget for updates is often faster than the in-app (or in-application) update facility itself. Visual Studio 2022 made an interesting case in point just now, when it updated that hefty environment (nearly 400 MB to start it going, and over 150 packages as the process worked to completion). It finished in well under 2 minutes on this aging desktop PC (i7 SkyLake, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB Gen 2 PCIe SSD).

Where Winget Falls Short Is Not Its Problem

I do still use other tools to keep my apps and applications updated. But that’s not winget’s fault. As I discuss in my March 17 post here, winget relies on developers to provide package manifests for their software so that it can do its install/update/query/uninstall things.

The list of items for which I have to use other tools includes some apps or applications that seldom get packages (Kindle, Zoom, Box, Dropbox, and others) or that have none (AFAICT). I encourage all developers who don’t already update winget manifests as they push updates to get in that habit.  (See this MS Learn item “Create your package manifest” to dig into that semi-automated YAML and PowerShell-based process.) It will make everybody’s lives easier in the Windows admin world — including mine! ‘Nuff said…

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin

Missing Advanced Startup Gets Explained

Here’s a real Homer Simpson moment for you: Doh! I just figured out why I can’t find the Advanced Startup option on some of my Windows 11 PCs (see lead-in screen-cap, then compare to the next one below). It came when I checked a reference on running that ability from the command line. Simply put: the missing Advanced Startup gets explained as a local-remote distinction. It shows up when accessing a device directly, but not via Remote Desktop.

Now you see it, now you don’t (vice-versa, actually…)

Quick Note Means Missing Advanced Startup Gets Explained

I referred to a pureinfotech story to figure out how to get to advanced startup when it didn’t show up as in the lead-in graphic. Turns out the explanation appeared in a “Quick Note” in a discussion of accessing Advanced Startup via Settings → System → Recovery. It reads:

Quick note: The Advanced Startup option in the Settings app isn’t available through a Remote Desktop Connection.

And wouldn’t you know it? I was accessing a test PC via RDP (Remote Desktop Connection) at the time. Sure enough, as soon as I broke the remote session and logged into that same machine via the local keyboard, the Advanced Startup entry made itself available. Doh again!

Command Line Method Works Remotely, Tho…

The old standby shutdown command at an administrative command prompt still works, even in a remote session. For the record, that syntax is:

shutdown /r /o /f /t 00

Those switches work as follows:
/r  Restarts the computer after shutdown
/o  Goes to Advanced Boot options menu
/f   Forces running applications to close sans user warnings
/t   Waits 0 seconds before restart (works immediately)

So now I finally understand why the Advanced Startup item under Recovery sometimes goes missing on me. It MUST be run locally to work. Can I get one more Doh!?

Facebooklinkedin
Facebooklinkedin