An ATM in England has replaced its Welcome screen with the Windows 7 Professional login screen, asking for a username and password instead of your PIN. According to The Register, this particular machine is located in Manchester, which is known for its bars and music scene, and often required cash transactions back in the day. However, anyone who tries to get their Pounds from this particular machine will be in for a surprise, as the display seemingly wants you to log into your Windows account before you can enter the four- or six-digit code you need to get money from your debit card.

Windows 7 is arguably one of the best versions of the ubiquitous operating system, cleaning up the mess left by Windows Vista, and second only to Windows XP. However, this OS is 17 years old right now, meaning it should be old enough to drive. It was launched in 2009 to the general public but was succeeded by Windows 8 in 2012. Still, it soldiered on for a few more years, losing mainstream support in 2015, before Microsoft finally dropped extended support in 2020.

But even though it’s been six years since Windows 7 was out of circulation, that does not mean that it’s already completely erased from commercial and industrial applications. Some businesses follow the ethos of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” which apparently stands true for these cash dispensing machines. Using an old operating system that no longer receives updates might feel dangerous, especially for an ATM. However, the bank likely didn’t bother replacing the system because it’s probably not connected to the public internet.

The Windows login screen isn’t supposed to reveal itself on an operating ATM, but this likely happened because of an update (likely not from Microsoft, but from a third-party provider) or a software crash that forced the machine to reboot without the bank’s IT services noticing it. The bank’s administrator needs to log in to Windows first, either remotely or through the terminal at the bank's ATM, before customers can start withdrawing money from it. Unfortunately, that means you won’t be getting cash from that particular machine, even if you’re desperate and have tried logging in with your username and password.

Microsoft has been gradually making it harder to activate Windows (and other products) without an internet connection. Most recently, it started clamping down on local accounts that could bypass OOBE sign-in, and now we're seeing reports that another legacy method has been retired. Phone activation, where you could call Microsoft to activate Windows & Office, no longer works, as Ben Kleinberg demonstrates in a new YouTube video.

Now, it'd be reasonable to assume that something as archaic as calling to activate your license had probably been sunset long ago. However, you'll be surprised to learn that Microsoft still lists it as a viable method in its support docs. This is particularly important for people on older operating systems like Windows 7, who expect an offline alternative to Microsoft’s now-online-only activation systems.

Moreover, this ordeal was necessary for Ben because he was using an OEM key that could not be activated directly within Windows 7, as the activation servers for that version are effectively dead. The video shows that calling the listed number plays an automated message saying “support for product activation has moved online.”

After the call, he also received a text message containing a link to the modern Microsoft Product Activation Portal we know today. Upon visiting the site, Ben was required to sign in with a Microsoft account, which immediately defeated the purpose of activating the call.

Initially, he couldn’t get the confirmation ID on his iPhone using Firefox, but switching to Safari on his laptop resolved the issue. This wasn’t a device-specific problem, just a browser-related hiccup. Eventually, Ben acquired the numbers he needed, and both his copy of Windows 7 and Office 2010 were successfully activated.

The video concludes on a bittersweet note, highlighting that call activation is effectively dead. However, users can still access the portal on a computer or phone to complete the process. Ironically, the entire reason for calling Microsoft in the first place was that Ben couldn’t activate Windows 7 from within the OS, but now that a website exists, there’s no need to call anyway.

Unfortunately, a Microsoft account is required, which Ben complained about and mirrors the concern many users have, even in the latest Windows 11 builds today.

A bootable Windows 7 install that consumes a mere 69MB of disk space has been shared online. Veteran Windows Insider and code sleuth Xeno is behind this feat of Windows system file configuration and pruning. However, those interested in this OS release are warned to file this achievement under “fun proof of concept rather than something usable,” as work will need to be done for it to support most Windows software packages. Intriguingly, Xeno hints they might actually follow through on this.

Above, you can see proof of the working Windows 7 system by way of a desktop screenshot. You can also expand the embedded Tweet to find a link to download the installer (a 7zip compressed 40.4MB file hosted by Archive.org). Inside the downloaded archive, there is a small VMware virtual disk and an accompanying configuration file.

Windows 69?

Xeno is upfront with telling people, “you will need to provide your own system files to get even some of the most basic programs running,” using the 69MB Windows 7 release, as it stands.

Despite the severely sharp scissors used to create this release, Xeno wryly notes that “at least the genuine check is still intact,” alongside a screenshot showing Microsoft’s OS bellyaching that “This copy of Windows is not genuine.”

Useful version on the way?

While we aren’t sniffy about software or hardware tinkerers doing things that are impractical, or even silly, Xeno has been prompted by another Twitterer to tweak ‘Windows 69’ and to develop a more usable release.

Currently, “virtually nothing can run due to critical missing files such as common dialog boxes and common controls,” admits Xeno. However, they went on to hint that an adjusted version of the OS, with enough core system files to appeal to users wanting to run older games and apps, might be on the way. “There seems to be genuine interest in this,” notes Xeno, likely inspired by the response to this release.

On casual inspection of the 295 files in the installation, we noticed a dozen or more of these look like log files, which could easily be discarded. Xeno also mentions in the Tweet thread that “there is definitely a ton of room you can save,” with further pruning efforts.

Judicial tinkering, given time, might or might not be enough to balance the addition of the necessary files to make this a more practical Windows 7 release. Who knows, it might even be able to stick roughly at the same size. Stay tuned, we’ll see if we get a number of Tiny11-style Tiny7 releases.

Microsoft released Windows 7 in October 2009. The excitement was palpable. So many people stuck with Windows XP through the Windows Vista era. But this time was different: Windows 7 promised to be a worthwhile upgrade from Windows XP, complete with a shiny hardware-accelerated "Aero Glass" style that looked and felt smooth. Everyone I knew loved it — and wanted it.

Fixing the mess that Vista left

After Windows XP, Windows Vista was a mess at launch. The push to make Windows XP more secure had dragged developers away from Project Longhorn, which was the original successor to Windows XP. Longhorn was axed, and Microsoft started from scratch on Windows Vista.

When Microsoft released Vista, it had lots of problems. "Windows Vista Capable" PCs didn't run the operating system well — it was the subject of a class-action lawsuit — and the operating system itself had endless security prompts that Apple famously mocked.

The software just wasn't ready: Windows Security prompts were worse because many Windows desktop apps weren't designed with Windows Vista's new User Account Control (UAC) security in mind, as most people just ran everything as Administrator on Windows XP. And Windows Vista's new driver architecture, while an improvement, ran into problems when paired with drivers that weren't quite stable and ready for it yet.

But that was eventually fixed. Microsoft polished a lot of these problems with Windows Vista's Service Pack 1, and the industry's hardware and software improved. Toward the end of its life, Vista was much more inoffensive than it was at launch.

Still, branding is everything. Despite efforts to challenge public perception, like the Mojave Experiment marketing campaign — where Microsoft sat people down in front of Windows Vista and told them it was a different operating system, and they were impressed — Microsoft wasn't going to get PC users to upgrade en masse to Windows Vista. Microsoft needed new branding. Enter Windows 7.

The Windows 7 launch hype

I remember being excited for Windows 7's launch. Hey, with the benefit of hindsight, we can be honest: While PC users like myself said we were happy with Windows XP, in the years before Windows 7's launch, we were wishing for more.

Yes, Windows XP did a great job. But by 2008 and 2009, it felt outdated. Apple had its shiny Mac OS X with hardware-accelerated Quartz graphics. Linux users had Compiz. (I ran both Linux and Windows at the time, and I remember how dated it made Windows XP's desktop interface feel.)

As for Windows users, we had either Windows XP — which felt great back in 2001 when it launched — or Windows Vista, which felt like a mess. Even if it was okay near the end, who was going to buy a Windows Vista license for their Windows XP PC that worked fine?

I remember I had a friend who installed the beta version of Windows 7 before its official release. He used it, and he said it was stable — even in beta form! He shared screenshots. It looked amazing. I was excited as we counted down to the release.

Windows 7 promised to polish up the experience and deliver on Windows Vista's hype: A more modern driver stack, sleek desktop graphics with Aero Glass, and big security improvements without being harassed by constant security pop-ups.

How Windows 7 quietly polished up Vista

The real trick Microsoft pulled off was in taking Windows Vista and improving it. With a new name, a new design, and a new creative story, Microsoft delivered "a new version of Windows" that kept the best bits of Windows Vista in a stable, polished form.

Windows 7's Aero Glass interface is widely loved to this day, and many people were not happy when Microsoft replaced it with Windows 8's flat colors. But Windows Vista also launched with Aero Glass. Windows 7's Aero Glass was just better and more polished: Especially on early Windows Vista PCs, the glass interface could feel slow. Windows 7 gave it a visual polish — more restraint and less over-the-top highlights — along with a performance boost that made it feel smoother. Our own Tom's Hardware testing, conducted way back in 2009, said: "Should you want to improve your Windows-based system, now is the time to change up to the next-generation edition". It didn't just feel smoother; Windows 7 was a bona fide improvement.

Windows Vista also introduced the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) It was an all-around upgrade from the Windows XP display driver model (XPDM) WDDM modernized the display driver system — not only did it make Windows Aero Glass graphics possible, but it also improved security, performance, and stability. With WDDM, display drivers can crash and restart without blue-screening Windows.

For example. And you can update display drivers, installing that new graphics driver for your GPU, without rebooting Windows. WDDM 1.0 launched in Windows Vista, and Windows 7 shipped with WDDM 1.1. It was more polished and had better performance, but it was a continuation of the work Microsoft started in Windows Vista.

Windows Vista introduced User Access Control (UAC), but Windows 7 improved upon it significantly, which Windows still uses to this day. The idea? Programs you use shouldn't be able to run roughshod over your entire operating system without permission. Windows 7 didn't abandon it, but Windows 7 had better default settings with fewer nags — and third-party apps were more aware of UAC, so they didn't trigger UAC prompts as often, either.

Plus, Microsoft introduced a User Account Control slider that persists even into Windows 11 today. Windows Vista made UAC notifications an on-or-off toggle, but Windows 7 let you dial down the security warnings — and started with them more restrained than Vista did.

Windows 7 was also the first Microsoft OS that managed to break down the 64-bit barrier for the company, thanks to adoption. While Windows XP launched as a 32-bit operating system, and eventually, Microsoft released a strange "Windows XP 64-bit edition" operating system that few people used. That edition was actually based on Windows Server 2003 and wasn't as compatible with drivers and software.

For Windows Vista, Microsoft offered 64-bit versions of Windows Vista alongside 32-bit versions — but lots of hardware devices didn't have 64-bit drivers available at Windows Vista's release. By the time Windows 7 launched, 64-bit Windows was ready for prime time. Windows 7 PCs generally shipped with a 64-bit version of Windows if the hardware supported it, manufacturers had shipped hardware drivers, and most applications worked great.

Windows Vista was also packed with other features — an instant file search system that indexed your hard drive, security features like BitLocker driver encryption, and modernized power management and networking features. These were all polished up for Windows 7's release, where many PC users experienced their benefits for the first time.

Windows 7 made some big changes from Vista

But Windows 7 wasn't just Windows Vista with a new coat of paint. There were some big changes — and new features naturally came alongside it, many of which are still used in Windows 11 today.

Windows 7's taskbar was a big change for both Windows XP and Windows Vista users. Microsoft called it the "Superbar" as it combined the functionality of the Quick Launch toolbar (for launching apps) and the traditional window switcher. It's the same taskbar design modern versions of Windows use today: Icons that either launch an app or switch to its running windows.

Another brand new feature was 'Aero Snap'. While Microsoft just calls it "Snap" today, the window-snapping feature arrived in Windows 7 with Aero branding. The ability to drag a window to the left or right side of your screen (or press the Windows key along with the left or right arrow keys) was a huge UI improvement at the time, and it's still one of the best things about multitasking on Windows today. Yes, before Aero Snap, Windows users needed third-party utilities for this — such as FancyZones, which many still use today, or they had to painstakingly resize individual windows.

Windows 7 also ran significantly faster on the same hardware than Windows Vista did. Performance improvements touched basically every part of Windows: Reduced operating system memory usage meant applications ran better and with less paging.

Windows 7 booted faster, with many background services launching only when needed or after the desktop became usable, ensuring the startup process was less heavy. The Aero desktop interface was optimized to feel faster and more efficient, so the Aero Glass desktop now felt as slick as it looked, not like something that was making your GPU hitch for unnecessary fancy effects. Under the hood, lots of other low-level changes translated into big improvements in how Windows 7 felt to use.

But, it's not all about home-users, Windows XP was widely deployed across the globe by IT teams for businesses, who steadfastly insisted that there was no way they could upgrade because their critical applications required Windows XP.

So, as a response, Microsoft shipped the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions of Windows 7 with something called "Windows XP Mode." XP Mode was an easy-to-install virtual machine solution — powered by Windows Virtual PC — that provided a virtual Windows XP environment that ran in a window — no need to install and configure Windows XP in a different virtual machine solution or worry about the Windows XP virtual machine's licensing. Even for people who never used this feature, the headline "Windows 7 offers a Windows XP mode, if you want it" just made people feel like Microsoft was listening.

Windows 7 was a much-needed return to form

Windows 7 was ultimately just a more polished and refined version of Windows Vista — with lots of great new features, but with the same core. After Windows Vista's release, many people swore they would stick with Windows XP — forever. Many felt like Windows Vista was a mess and Microsoft needed to rethink everything.

While Microsoft never asked people to forgive Windows Vista, the company did present a more polished version of its vision for the future of Windows. That was Windows 7. And, with Windows 7, Microsoft changed people's minds. That modern version of Windows with its new security features and GPU-accelerated desktop turned out to be something people actually wanted.

After Windows 7, the future was looking bright for Windows. I remember being excited to see where Windows went next. Unfortunately, Microsoft followed up Windows 7 with Windows 8, and Microsoft's next big move was deleting the Start button and attempting to build an iPad-style interface on top of Windows. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how that went down among desktop users.

But, when Windows 7 was released, we didn't know Windows 8 was coming: Windows just seemed like it was improving in a way everyone could appreciate. It was a great time to be a Windows user, and it was another high watermark for Microsoft in the storied 40-year history of the operating system.

Windows 7 can run natively on the Steam Deck, according to operating systems enthusiast Bob Pony on Twitter/X. Why this is something that needed to be done is another question. The answer, which many readers may sympathize with, is likely just because it can be done. We note that Pony has a particular penchant for Windows Vista, so perhaps we should prepare for that Steam Deck + unlikely OS announcement next.

Windows 7 (2009) and the Steam Deck (2022) are divided by an approximate 13-year gulf, so it isn’t surprising that they aren’t the most comfortable bedfellows. Immediate evidence of technical difficulties in this marriage is evident in Pony’s screenshot – the Windows 7 display is stuck in an inappropriate portrait mode.

Pony reveals some more details about the Windows 7-on-Steam Deck feat in the ensuing discussion. Apparently, there are few, if any, issues running this OS on the CPU portion of AMD’s Van Gogh APU. However, “the drivers won't install under Windows 7 as its integrated graphics is basically custom-made and drivers for it only work under 10/11,” the equine OS enthusiast explains.

Other replies in the thread ask for Windows XP and even the peculiar by any metric Temple OS to be tested out next. But we think any further steps down the Windows OS ladder will take some time. It is hardly satisfactory if Windows 7 can’t even be tweaked into landscape mode yet…

Pony shared a video demonstrating Windows 8.1 on the Steam Deck two years ago. The Metro-skinned OS ran pretty well, with full touch functionality. If this cadence is to be maintained, any Vista on Steam Deck achievement won’t be shared until 2027.

Windows 10 will be retro soon

A Windows bug-finding enthusiast has highlighted that the latest Insider Build in the Windows 11 Beta and Dev channels plays the Windows Vista startup sound as it boots to the desktop. However, Xeno's observation wasn’t of an intentional slice of nostalgia aimed at the long-suffering Insiders. Microsoft Senior Program Manager on the Windows Insider Program Team, Brandon LeBlanc, admitted it was “an actual bug” after a bit of joking around.

The latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build is 26200.5651 (Dev Channel) and the timing of its release coincides with Xeno’s initial Tweet. This OS preview was heralded as bringing features such as new Copilot+ PC experiences, a new Recall export function, a bigger clock/calendar in the notification center, and more.

If the Microsoft exec’s statement is correct, no one intended to change the default startup chime to the one used across the Windows Vista and Windows 7 eras. So the surprising retro refrain is an actual ‘known issue’ in the latest flight.

Joking aside

Other Twitter/X users jumped in on the initial post by Xeno that highlighted the incongruous startup sound. At one point LeBlanc joked that the ‘issue’ was precipitated after he “went in and had some fun with the sound files in Windows and thought folks needed a blast from the past.”

It was then suggested the Windows 95 startup sound would be a good choice for the impending 30^th anniversary of its launch (August 24). But LeBlanc continued to make mirth, stating he couldn’t find that correct .WAV file for that OS release. With his official responsibility as a Microsoft exec in mind, LeBlanc must have felt it necessary to then make clear he was joking, and the startup sound mix-up was “an actual bug.”

Apple’s Vista?

Starting up a Windows 7 PC used to be slower for users who favored simple solid color backgrounds over extravagant desktop wallpapers. The delayed startup issue was present back in 2009, for about four months, when Windows 7 was the newest OS on the block. This bewildering phenomenon recently caught the eye of Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen, who ponders over the underlying code problems in his latest Old New Thing blog post.

Chen is a solid color deskto pbackground devotee, favoring a bluish-green background hue, and has retained this preference since Windows 95. I had always been the same, until SSDs became affordable - eschewing bitmap wallpapers for simple, clean, solid colors – thinking that it would also be easier on my meager RAM and the spinning rust. Sadly, this wasn't the case between the launch of Windows 7 in June 2009 and sometime in November the same year. Yes, Microsoft ironed out this wrinkle after about four months of Windows 7's reign.

Back in June 2023, Microsoft officially announced it had deprecated support for its New Technology LAN Manager authentication protocol, which debuted in 1993 with Windows NT 3.1. It advised users to upgrade to Windows Negotiate but unfortunately, modern TLM vulnerabilities are still targeted at machines from Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 to Windows 11 Version 24H2 and Server 2022, and 0Patch recently discovered a new NTLM vulnerability that allows credential hijacking from merely viewing an infected folder, not even requiring the file to be directly opened.

While newer versions of Windows like Windows 11 will likely see a patch for this exploit in the coming weeks or months, older versions of Windows like Windows 7 are in particular danger. Windows 10 should still see a patch, but with 10's support due to end in October of next year and a paid support plan being required to extend it past that, the risk of issues like these remaining unpatched in the final release only increases.

This zero-day NTLM authentication exploit isn't the only one found and reported to Microsoft by 0Patch recently — 0Patch also mentions three non-NTLM zero-day vulnerabilities and three other NTLM-related "won't fix" vulnerabilities as vulnerabilities it has patched in Microsoft's stead in its original blog post. These patches will all remain free until Microsoft releases its own patches — which they won't at all for "won't fix" vulnerabilities, or for versions of Windows that are no longer being supported or covered under a paid support extension plan. We've covered 0Patch in the past for providing an alternative to Microsoft's support model, on this note.

Fortunately, 0Patch notes in the comments of its official post that an attack exploiting this particular NTLM authentication issue has yet to be seen in the wild. Some existing security solutions may even automatically block these issues as they arise — but there's no guarantee that all or even most of the impacted users will have such mitigations in place.

Additionally, the actual patch ("micropatch") only addresses a single vulnerable NTLM instruction. So in theory, installing it should be pretty harmless... but this is still an unofficial security patch, so you can choose what to do according to your own discretion. Hopefully, Microsoft addresses this and other vulnerabilities in official updates sooner rather than later — if networking credentials being stolen from even just viewing an impacted folder in File Explorer it is quite a scary possibility.

Valve has finally totally dropped Windows 7 and 8 compatibility with its latest Steam client update, meaning the last holdouts using these operating systems will need to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11 (or switch to Linux or Mac) to continue gaming. According to the Steam Client Update (h/t PCGamesN), "This version of the Steam client will no longer run on Windows 7 or Windows 8. Users on these OS versions will not automatically update to this new version of the Steam Client."

This development has long been expected, especially as Microsoft has stopped supporting both operating systems for years now, with Windows 7 reaching end-of-life in January 2020 and the same happening to Windows 8 in January 2023. Steam said that it would stop releasing updates for these operating systems as of January 1, 2024, but users could still use the platform without technical support.

However, the November 5 Steam Client Update means that you can no longer use the latest version of the Steam client on your Windows 7 or Windows 8. You should still be able to continue gaming on your system as long as you don't forcibly update Steam, though how long that remains possible remains to be seen.

Despite its age, Windows 7 (which launched in 2009) still has 0.28% of Steam users as of the October 2024 Steam Survey. That's a small number by percentage, but Steam has 132 million active users as of June 2024, so that could equate to around 350,000 people. If you’re one of the few who refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11, you can still continue using the latest version of Steam by switching to Linux or SteamOS (or a Mac).

The latest Steam Client supports macOS 10.15 Catalina and newer, and Apple usually lets you update your Macs and MacBooks for several years. So, an iMac, Mac, or MacBook from 2013 onward should suffice, as far as the OS requirements go. Alternatively, you could install Linux on your old Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC. Steam supports distributions based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or newer; it’s also easy and free to upgrade to a newer Linux OS if you already have a computer running an older version.

Windows 7 was one of the more well-regarded Windows versions to ever come out. That’s why it’s still in use by hundreds of thousands of people today. But as all good things come to an end, so must Steam support for this esteemed operating system. Besides, there are plenty of documented security holes in Windows 7 so it's not exactly a good idea to keep using it while connected to the internet.

Per a recent update to Microsoft's Deprecated Windows features page, Legacy DRM services utilized by Windows Media Player and Silverlight clients for Windows 7 and Windows 8 are now deprecated. This will prevent the streaming or playback of DRM-protected content in those applications on those operating systems. It also includes playing content from personal CD rips and streaming from a Silverlight or Windows 8 client to an Xbox 360 if you were still doing that.

For those unfamiliar, "DRM" refers to Digital Rights Management. Basically, DRM tech ensures that you aren't stealing or playing back pirated content. Of course, piracy still exists, but these days, most officially distributed movies, TV shows, games, etc., all involve some form of DRM unless explicitly advertised as DRM-free.

DRM does seem like harmless piracy prevention on paper. Still, it hasn't been all that effective at eliminating piracy— and where it is implemented, it mainly punishes or inconveniences paying customers. It is an excellent example of DRM's folly. Now, anyone who had previously opted into Microsoft's legitimate media streaming ecosystem with Windows 7 and 8 is being penalized for buying media legitimately since it will no longer work without them being forced to pivot to other streaming solutions.

The loss of Legacy DRM services is only the most recent deprecation on Microsoft's chopping block. Paint 3D is set to get a permanent axing in November, and somewhat frighteningly, even Control Panel seemed to be in the crosshairs for a little while there. Fortunately, Control Panel is safe for now— but seeing basic Windows Media Player functionality being killed off for older versions of Windows leaves an unmistakably bitter taste in the mouth. If Microsoft fancies itself a media company, it must keep legitimate media playable in its purchased software.

Whether you need to access your BIOS/UEFI, reset your PC, boot from an alternate drive, restore a system image or perform other boot-related tasks, Windows Advanced Startup menu is the place to go. It’s particularly handy when fixing BSODs or other Windows errors. There are two ways to get to this vital capability, one for Windows 10 (see next screenshot) another for Windows 11 (see screenshot after that):

• Windows 10: Start > Settings > Update &Security > Recovery

• Windows 11: Start > System > Recovery

⚠ Save Your Work First ⚠ : Restart Follows 

Don’t click the Windows 10 “Restart now” button until you’re good and ready to restart your PC. Why? Because as soon as you click that button, there’s no going back. Your PC will restart immediately thereafter. Windows 11, OTOH, provides a warning that includes a “Close” option so you can change your mind. But it’s good practice to save all work and close important apps before electing this option in either OS. Once the restart occurs, the next thing you’ll see is the “Choose an option” on-screen menu shown here:

Of the options listed, two are dead simple to explain. Continue proceeds with a normal Windows boot, as if you hadn’t clicked the “Restart now” button before the reboot. Turn off your PC shuts the PC down, and turns off its power supply. Indeed, these two options are available even if you don’t use the Advanced Startup menu in Windows.

Now, let’s discuss the other two options which are of greater interest to those seeking to work on or repair a Windows installation:

• Use a device: Shows all potentially bootable devices on the PC, from which you can pick a boot target. If you want to boot from a USB device, you should connect that up while the PC is rebooting after electing the “Restart now” option. Note also that it’s a good idea to disconnect all other devices except monitor, mouse and keyboard and whatever external drive you’d like to boot from (usually a flash drive, or some other form of USB-attached media: either a properly-formatted, bootable SSD or HDD.
• Troubleshoot: This option leads to two choices. The first one Reset this PC reinstalls Windows, but allows youo to keep or remove your personal files. It’s like the option of the same name that appears in the Recovery menus for Windows 10 and 11 in earlier screenshots above. The second one is Advanced options: it’s home to the real action when it comes to Windows recovery and repair. Here’s a screencap of that menu, followed by explanations for the items listed thereupon:

🛠 Startup Repair

Automatically reboots the PC and runs a canned sequence of startup repair diagnostics (and fixes, if those diagnostics find anything they can deal with). Also logs its activities to C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt, where srt stands for startup repair tools. Occasionally, these tools can help. My own experience has been that the startup repair from Macrium Reflect is more capable (and more likely to fix real-world problems) than these tools.

🛠 Startup Settings

This provides access to the same kinds of startup options that appear in the msconfig.exe tool while Windows is running. The options on my test machine’s screen read:

1. Enable low-resolution video mode (msconfig.boot.base video)
2. Enable debugging mode (turns the OS-level debugger on, seldom used except by developers)
3. Enable boot logging (msconfig.boot.boot log) tracks all actions during Windows boot-up and writes them to C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt
4. Enable Safe Mode (msconfig.boot.boot options.safe boot) boots a variety of reduced runtime environments for Windows to block out third party apps and startup items
5. Disable driver signature enforcement: stops Windows from blocking unsigned drivers, and allows them to run (good option when troubleshooting wonky drivers)
6. Disable early-launch malware protection: stops anti-malware software from interfering with the Windows boot and startup processes
7. Disable automatic restart on system failure: causes Windows to pause when a BSOD or system crash occurs. Normally, Windows will restart as soon as the post-crash data collection activities complete. This option lets you keep the BSOD message on screen as long as you like.

🛠 Command prompt

Opens a Command Prompt window from the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) that lets you do anything and everything you might want to at the command line to the Windows installation on your normal boot/system drive (C: on most systems). I use this all the time to manage and delete otherwise inaccessible OS files, and to run offline image management on troubled, misbehaving or damaged Windows images. You can tell this is different from a normal command prompt because WinRE runs from the X: drive (a RAM disk it sets up) and the prompt reads “X:\windows\system32” as a result.

🛠 Uninstall updates

If your PC has been updated recently, and the previous Windows installation has aged out, you’ll get this option instead. It will let you uninstall the latest quality update or feature update (if available). You’ll be prompted for a password for a valid login account before this option is allowed to proceed.

🛠 UEFI Firmware Settings

This option appears on systems with UEFI boot environments (most PCs purchased after 2010 will include this option). This gets you into the modern equivalent of the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) known as the Unified Extensive Firmware Interface (UEFI) that defines your PC’s basic startup and runtime behavior.

Use it to enable or disable devices, turn boot security on or off, and manage your PC’s startup behavior, boot disk selection and order, and much, much more. On my Lenovo PCs, if I strike “Enter” before the Windows boot-up balls start spinning, it also takes me into UEFI settings. Methods vary from maker to maker, but there’s almost always a way to do this during the first moments of boot-up on a Windows PC. This specific menu option is handy (and I use it frequently) because this option puts me directly into UEFI without having to get the timing right. On especially fast PCs, this can otherwise be tricky to impossible.

🛠 System Restore

This option runs the Window’s built-in System Restore utility and lets you pick a restore point to which you’d like to return your PC. As I write this story, my test machine gives me the option of picking restore points that are between 1 and 7 days old. I don’t recommend this option except in dire cases, because restore points are neither as reliable or robust as a good image backup from a third-party tool like Macrium Reflect, EaseUS ToDo Backup or AIOMEI Backupper. On many/most Windows PC you may be required to enter a recovery key to decrypt a Bitlocker-encrypted drive as part of this process.

🛠 System Image Recovery

If you click the “See more recovery options” at the bottom of the Advanced options menu, you will see an additional entry. Labeled System Image Recovery, it lets you point to an image recovery file if a readable one may be found on an external drive. Here again, I’d rather use a third-party image recovery file from one of the applications mentioned in the preceding bullet (or something like them).

Advanced Startup Lets You Use Important Tools

This boot option in Windows (10 and 11) is incredibly useful. It offers access to a wide range of repair and recovery tools – including bootable repair environments for the Windows Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (aka DaRT, which works for both Windows 10 and 11). This environment is worth getting to know, and playing with, so you better understand how it works and what it can (and can’t) do. With that knowledge in mind, should Windows get weird, you’ll be able to put it to work without having to climb a learning curve at the same time you’re trying to solve real-world problems.

More Windows Tutorials

• How to Fix a Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)
• How to Fix a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE Error in Windows
• How to Fix CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED Errors in Windows
• How to Fix Windows with a Repair Install
• How to Make Windows 11 Look and Feel Like Windows 10
• How to Make a Bootable Windows USB Install / Recovery Drive
• How to Get Windows 11 for Free (or Under $15)

Valve has halted its official support for the Steam launcher on older Windows operating systems 7, 8, and 8.1 from Jan 1, 2024, marking the end of an era for these obsolete platforms. As such, these operating systems will no longer receive security updates or support. 

For now, Steam might continue to work with these older operating systems. Valve announced the retirement as its launcher depends on some software vendors' security patches. More specifically, Steam relies on a version of Google Chrome that's not supported on Windows 7. As you'd expect with such announcements, Valve recommends that users jump to Windows 10 or newer. 

Better now than never, if ever?

Microsoft stopped deploying updates and providing technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020. Even though Windows 8 and 8.1 weren't as popular, the operating system giant stopped rolling out security updates and technical support for those platforms in January 2023. 

These security patches are vital because malicious programs can affect multiple apps and launchers, requiring companies to add safeguards. Security researchers also find vulnerabilities in both hardware and software, which are then corrected through Windows updates.

The end of support for these operating systems won't impact many Steam users. December's Steam hardware survey shows these operating systems represent between 0% and 0.01% of Steam users worldwide. However, Windows Server 2019 is still supported as Microsoft will keep rolling out security updates until Jan. 9, 2024, impacting about 0.06% of Steam users.

Epic Games supports Windows 7 for now, but given the lack of security updates for the operating system, it probably won't be long before other launchers move on, too. Windows 10's support is scheduled to end on Oct. 14, 2025, with Microsoft later having a paid support subscription. 

Over 96.40% of Steam users are on Windows, while MacOS and Linux have a negligible share in comparison. It will be interesting to see if newer users would migrate to Windows 10, Windows 11, or any of the Linux distros. Arch Linux Ubuntu 64-bit is a home for 0.15% to 0.14% of Steam's user base.

Microsoft says it has closed an installation path that allowed Windows 7 and 8.X owners to upgrade to Windows 10 and 11 for free. An official statement to this effect was posted on the Microsoft Device Partner Center communications portal earlier this month and spotted by Windows Central.

One of the things that Microsoft did differently with the introduction of Windows 10 in 2015 was to make the new OS a free upgrade for existing users of older OSes. Specifically, it used this free carrot to tempt OS sticklers wedded to the popular Windows 7 release.

The offer officially ended on July 29, 2016. However, PC enthusiasts and DIYers noticed that Microsoft's activation servers continued to be happy with people deciding on an overdue update. People could even download fresh Windows 10 and 11 ISOs and install them straight onto machines using 'spare' Windows 7 or 8.X keys from old systems. On September 20, 2023, this grace period finally came to an end.

The company explains its newly enacted Windows upgrade policy as follows: "Microsoft's free upgrade offer for Windows 10 / 11 ended July 29, 2016," it says. "The installation path to obtain the Windows 7 / 8 free upgrade is now removed as well." However, Windows 10 users can still upgrade to Windows 11 for now.

In addition to the above notice, Microsoft sought to remind those interested in Windows 11 of the operating system's minimum system requirements. Tom's Hardware regulars will be well aware of the arbitrary Windows 11 install restrictions concerning processor generatioTPMs, andl as the more usual recommendations about RAM/storage. Furthermore, we have documented several ways to get around the Windows 11 minimum system requirements. Some third-party Windows 11 distributions, like tiny11 from NTDEV, have built-in OS requirements dodges.

The Upgrade Window Remains Ajar

Windows Central tested whether Microsoft's new statement on the closure of the free installation path for Windows 7 and 8.X users had actually come into effect. In short, it found that "these older keys still activate the production builds of Windows 11." It's difficult to be certain how long this upgrade window will remain ajar in the wake of the recent official statement from Microsoft.

NTDEV has been pushing the limits of the Windowsverse again. The developer’s latest escapade is dubbed “Winception.” We understand the drive to try and run Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7 (plus DOS) all at once, but it takes a particular person to pull off such a feat.

According to NTDEV, the ‘nested virtualization’ demonstration pushes current technology to its limits. The dev’s Twitter/X thread about the nesting provides some insight into the method behind the madness.

If you’ve watched the video, you have probably already noticed that the VMWare Workstation was the virtualization software of choice. Unlike other PC wranglers’ experience, NTDEV says that VMWare worked best for him. For example, NTDEV said Hyper-V would exhibit freezing issues after three layers of nesting. VirtualBox was also a dead-end, at two layers deep.

NTDEV sagely admitted his own experience might vary from that of others, as his system was based around an AMD CPU with a modest 16 GB of system RAM. When asked about the secret of his Wincepton success by Tom’s Hardware editor on Twitter/X, NTDEV again mentioned the CPU, thanking the AMD Ryzen architecture for supporting nested virtualization. He was utilizing a laptop powered by a high-end Ryzen 7 5800HS (Cezanne) processor with eight Zen 3 cores, 16 threads, and a boost clock speed up to 4.4 GHz.

When you have a Winception system with four or five OS layers (depending on where you start your count), things can get pretty slow. In his system’s Windows 7 instance, NTDEV checked CPU usage, expecting it to be relatively high. However, CPU usage was only 15 to 20% within Windows 7. It was the last in line for system resources and definitely couldn’t be described as responsive.

Lastly, it was observed that as you move up the layers of virtualization, everything gets a little more fluid – no surprise there. In the video, NTDEV claims that Windows 10, for example, “works just as fast as the host OS.”

NTDEV managed to grab many headlines in recent months with his Tiny11 and Tiny10 lightweight repackaged Windows OS distributions. The developer’s Winception is almost as exciting but is undoubtedly more of a project that exists solely as a novelty.

Intel has published a new whitepaper (PDF) that envisions simplifying its processor instruction set architecture (ISA). The main thrust of the proposed move would be to pare back the extensive legacy support and go 64-bit mode-only with a new and simplified 'Intel x86S' architecture. Several technical benefits are outlined in an Intel developer blog post. In summary, the legacy reduced x86S architecture removes outdated execution modes to benefit upcoming hardware, firmware, and software implementations.

Many contemporary PC users who enjoy using the latest Windows applications and games will have moved to 64-bit Windows during the Windows 7 era. This coincides with the time when system RAM amounts above 4 GB became commonplace (a 32-bit OS can only address 3.2 GB of RAM), and 64-bit applications and games started to become mainstream. So, with the current Windows 11 OS being 64-bit only and apps and games sucking up gigabytes of RAM, it seems reasonable for Intel to want to consign architectural considerations spanning all the way back to the original 8086 chip to history.

"Intel 64 architecture designs come out of reset in the same state as the original 8086 and require a series of code transitions to enter 64-bit mode," Intel explains with regard to its legacy support. "Once running, these modes are not used in modern applications or operating systems."

So, it is easy to understand there will be benefits from architectural pruning, and the complex booting process outlined above would be the first benefit observed by users of new Intel x86S chips. What are other benefits to users and developers? Intel provides the following bullet points:

• Using the simplified segmentation model of 64-bit for segmentation support for 32-bit applications, matching what modern operating systems already use.
• Removing ring 1 and 2 (which are unused by modern software) and obsolete segmentation features like gates.
• Removing 16-bit addressing support.
• Eliminating support for ring 3 I/O port accesses.
• Eliminating string port I/O, which supported an obsolete CPU-driven I/O model.
• Limiting local interrupt controller (APIC) use to X2APIC and remove legacy 8259 support.
• Removing some unused operating system mode bits.

For those interested in running older OSes and software on the latest Intel hardware, Intel suggests that there are mature virtualization-based software solutions and that users can employ virtualization hardware (VMX) "to deliver a solution to emulate features required to boot legacy operating systems." Ardent retro computing fans will also collect and use old PC systems for running their ancient software libraries. Earlier this week, we noted that there are new Intel 386 and Intel 8088 portables being developed and sold online.

Those who think that they will be impacted by the proposed Intel 64-bit mode-only x86S architecture transition should take a closer look at the linked whitepaper, which Intel appears to have published to gauge user/developer reaction and potentially gather feedback.

EDIT 12/19/24: Clarified x86S is 64-bit mode-only.

Gaming PC handhelds are on trend in 2023, but we have just spotted a somewhat niche device tailored to deliver gaming delights to PC DOS / Windows retro gamers. Primarily targeting DOS and early Windows games, the new Hand 386 ticks a lot of boxes for ancient PC gaming on the go. Highlights among the specs of this Nintendo 2DS form factor device include a "true 386 processor core" running at 40 MHz, 8GB of RAM, 1GB of storage, and a built-in screen, keyboard, and battery.

The Hand 386 has a lot of attractive qualities, according to the product pages on AliExpress, but the listing also raises lots of questions. This product seems to be new, and at the time of writing, there are no customer reviews to provide third part insight. However, its performance in Tyrian 2000 by Epic MegaGames looks pretty slick in the video embedded below. Tyrian 2000 can be grabbed for free via GOG.com, but it offers a Windows 7 or newer and MacOS X compatible version.

AliExpress doesn't share screen dimensions, but from using ruler tools in PhotoShop and knowing overall dimensions, we estimate the screen at five inches, diagonally. We would also assume it is a 640 x 480 resolution screen. From checking the video demo, the screen seems to be adequate.

It is suggested that users install operating systems such as MS-DOS 6.22 or 7.1, and pick between Windows versions spanning v3.1 to Windows 95. Remember, though, the reign of Windows 95 was chiefly during the era of the much more powerful Intel Pentium CPU. Gaming screenshots shared in the listing hint that the Hand 386 would be adept at gaming in classic titles like Commander Keen, Planet X3 and the original Doom.

The Hand 386 is listed at $195 on AliExpress, and it says that the estimated delivery (if ordered today) would be June 7.

Book 8088, Compact Retro Notebook

If the Hand 386 is too modern for your retro gaming (or computing) tastes, we also spotted the Book 8088 notebook. This portable is offered up in the more traditional clamshell laptop form factor, and is powered by an Intel 8088 CPU, with room for the optional 8087 FPU.

Like the Hand 386, the Book 8088 offers pretty good specs for the era to which it harkens back. Key specifications include 640KB of RAM (ought to be enough for anyone?), 512MB of CF-card IDE storage, CGA graphics, and optional Yamaha audio. This portable is only recommended for running DOS, versions of Windows up to 3.0, and games / apps from that era.

The Book 8088 also retails for about $195, with an estimated delivery of June 7.

It's almost the end of the road for Steam on some Macs. After announcing plans to stop supporting Steam for Windows 7 and 8, Valve today announced it will drop support for Macs running macOS 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra. The company made the announcement in a short blog post on its support site.

While the older versions of Windows will get dropped in Jan. 2024, the older macOS versions will get the boot earlier in Sept. 2023. Starting Sept. 1, 2023, the Steam Client will no longer run, and you'll have to update to macOS 10.13 High Sierra in order to play any games that run through Steam on your Mac.

Valve is dropping support for macOS El Capitan and Sierra for the same reasons it's dropping support for Windows 7 and 8: because "core features" of Steam use an embedded version of Chrome, which won't work on these older operating systems. 

"In addition, future versions of Steam will require macOS feature and security updates only present in macOS 10.13 and above," the unsigned blog post reads. 

This change will probably affect far fewer users than the Windows announcement, as Macs aren't nearly as popular for PC gaming. In the March 2023 Steam Hardware Survey, macOS and OS X consisted of just 1.41% of systems running Steam — and of the majority of those Macs were already running macOS 13.2.1 Ventura, which is the latest version. In fact, the oldest version even captured in the survey was macOS 10.15.7, an update to Catalina, and consisted of less than 1% (of the 1.41% of macOS/OS X users). So, yeah — these changes are likely to affect very few people.

Of the Macs in that survey, 54.88% were running systems with Apple Silicon, while the other 45.08% were still on Intel. El Capitan was released in 2015, with Sierra following in 2016. Security updates for those OS versions ended in 2018 and 2019, respectively. 

With free updates each year, there's little reason for Mac owners to not upgrade, as long as their system is still supported. Apple stopped supporting 32-bit applications in 2017, with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which led to tons of Steam games becoming incompatible with macOS. 

That said, there's probably some people who will be affected by this announcement. But it looks like Valve is ready to modernize, even on this relatively minor platform.

Steam, the world’s most popular PC gaming client, community, and store, will shut its doors to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users next year. The cut-off date for Windows upgrade holdouts is January 1, 2024. To be clear, from January 2024, Windows 10 will be the oldest Windows OS that is compatible with the Steam Client.

In a short blog post on Windows 7 and 8 support today, Valve states that users will have to upgrade to a newer version of Windows “in order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam.”

Some reasoning behind the support policy is revealed. It turns out that the newest Steam features “rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome” that offers limited functionality on older Windows versions. It is thus at least partly due to this software embed that Steam must enact a Windows 10 or newer policy. However, with the transition now set in stone, future versions of Steam are also set to rely on feature and security updates that are only present / destined for Windows 10 or above.

While it is somewhat sad that Valve is dropping support for the older Windows OSes, we must remember that Windows 10 was launched in July 2015. At nearly eight years old, with widespread use in schools, homes, and businesses, it is long past any teething troubles. It is admittedly more of a heavyweight than Windows 7 and 8, but there’s a Tiny10 lightweight version of it (and Tiny11 version of Windows 11) for those worried about the impact on their hardware resources.

In the latest Steam Hardware Survey, Windows accounts for 96.4% of gamers. Windows 10 and 11 are by far the most popular versions, with 62.3% and 32.1% of users, respectively. Meanwhile, earlier versions of Windows (7 and 8.1) add up to just 1.9% of all users — and continue to slide in the popularity stakes. There are even 0.09% of surveyed Steam PCs that are still running the 32-bit version of Windows 7.

Those with old machines that users resolutely want to remain Steam connected may be tempted to switch to Linux, or even HoloISO — a PC version of the portable Steam Deck’s SteamOS. However, please remember that despite large strides in game compatibility made since the arrival of the Steam Deck, there are still some Linux and PC Steam games wrinkles.

Regardless, Valve is set to move on from the Windows 7/8 era. Windows 7 originally released in 2009 and was well received (especially compared to its Vista predecessor). Windows 8 came out in 2012, and many disliked the new Start Screen along with other aspects. Windows 8.1 followed a year later, with an attempt to right the wrongs of Windows 8.

Microsoft officially discontinued support for Windows 8 in January 2016, while Windows 7 reached end of life in January 2020. Windows 8.1 joined them at the start of this year. As such, it's understandable that Valve would want users to upgrade to Windows versions that are still supported by Microsoft.

Microsoft has admitted that it has erroneously been offering Windows 11 updates on ineligible devices. The software and devices maker’s newest OS has a long way to go to catch up with Windows 10, so it is keeping the pressure on with promotions, ads, and upgrade offers. However, in its efforts to boost Windows 11 adoption, it seems that Microsoft has been mistakenly dangling the upgrade carrot in front of owners of ineligible systems. Thankfully, Microsoft’s above described Windows 11 upgrade offer issue has now been fixed.

“Some hardware ineligible Windows 10 and Windows 11, version 21H2 devices were offered an inaccurate upgrade to Windows 11,” wrote Microsoft in the most recent update to its known issues and notifications portal. “These ineligible devices did not meet the minimum requirements to run Windows 11. Devices that experienced this issue were not able to complete the upgrade installation process.”

Affected systems were running Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 11, version 21H2; Windows 10, version 21H2; and Windows 10, version 20H2. Microsoft says it first became aware of this upgrades issue on Thursday, and pats itself on the back for putting a sticking plaster on this self-inflicted wound “on the same day.”

Breaking down a user’s will enough that they submit to the Windows 11 upgrade process, then snatching it away, isn't ideal. Moreover, this process could have wasted some considerable time for end users, chaperoning them through the upgrade process only for it to be unable to complete. We don’t know exactly how far the upgrade process progressed before it was halted, and whether the previous installations were in any way impacted, potentially causing even greater inconvenience. However, one Windows user reported that the sizable updater files started downloading in preparation for installation.

According to the latest StatCounter figures measuring website visitors worldwide, Windows 11 users account for approximately 18% of desktop Windows users. Windows 10 users make up 69% of users, and some people are still holding tightly to Windows 7 ( 9.5%), but hardly anyone now uses Windows 8.X or Windows XP and is active on sites StatCounter monitors. Pondering over the StatCounter chart for the last year it looks like the point where Windows 11 eventually passes 10 is still a long way off.

Microsoft must hope that compelling new devices with Windows 11 preinstalled and the end of support for Windows 10 Home and Pro in October 2025 will accelerate the changing of the guard. Windows 11 might have got off to a rocky start but it gained some important tweaks in December, when it was reported its gaming performance issues had at last fully been addressed.

In other recent Windows 11 news, we reported that the OS is soon going to get a proper search box on the taskbar. However, Microsoft was again ruffling feathers with its decision to show watermarks on systems running Windows 11 despite not meeting all the hardware requirements.

We’ve been reading about the demise of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser for years. Once Microsoft launched its new Edge browser in mid-2015, we knew the writing was on the wall for its underperforming and oft-maligned predecessor. Now, Microsoft is finally ready to sever ties with Internet Explorer 11, at least on some versions of Windows 10. And sadly, the breakup is happening on Valentine’s Day; what a pity.

“All remaining devices that have not already been redirected from IE11 to Microsoft Edge are scheduled to be redirected with the Microsoft Edge update scheduled for February 14, 2023,” wrote Microsoft in December 2022. “The change to use Microsoft Edge update to disable IE is intended to provide a better user experience and help organizations transition their last remaining IE11 users to Microsoft Edge. As a reminder, IE11 has been out of support since June 15, 2022.”

Microsoft officially retired and ended support for Internet Explorer 11 in June 2022. Today, Microsoft is taking the extra step of permanently disabling Internet Explorer 11 via an update to its Edge browser. Curiously, Microsoft says that this long-expected death is only for “certain versions of Windows 10.” Versions of Windows 10 that are saying goodbye to Internet Explorer 11 include:

• Windows 10 client SKUs
• Windows 10 IoT
• Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-Session

The following operating systems using Internet Explorer 11 aren’t affected by the Valentine’s Day massacre:

• Windows 8.1
• Windows 7 Extended Security Updates 
• Windows Server SAC
• Windows 10 IoT Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)
• Windows Server LTSC
• Windows 10 client LTSC
• Windows 10 China Government Edition

Given the protracted, Monty Python-esque death of Windows 11, it’s likely that most Windows 10 users have already made the switch to Edge or some other competing browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. And even for those clinging to the old browser for legacy applications, Edge still offers an Internet Explorer compatibility mode.

For customers and businesses that have made no effort to switch to Edge or Internet Explorer Mode in Edge, Microsoft gives this warning: “If your organization still has dependencies on IE11, you must take steps now to complete your transition before February 14, 2023, or risk business disruption at scale when users lose access to IE11-dependent applications.” Welcome to the brave, new IE-free internet.

Update, January 11: It has come to our attention that despite reports, Windows 7 does not support Secure Boot. Microsoft confirmed the screenshot going around, which shows a VMWare machine with Secure Boot options on a Windows 7 host is not indicative of Windows 7 getting the feature. Secure Boot was added in Windows 8.
--
Pour one out for Windows 7, the 13-year-old operating system that is no longer receiving any security updates. It briefly appeared, however, that Microsoft has left one big goodbye present for security-conscious users.

Windows 7 technically reached the end of the line on January 14, 2020, but those in enterprise and education could get Extended Security Updates through today. It really seems like this is the time for most people to upgrade — but for those who don't, Neowin reports that Microsoft has added UEFI and Secure Boot to the antique OS. This was later disproved to be confusion due to virtual machine settings.

Secure Boot uses PC firmware to check that all software and firmware drivers used at boot are properly signed by  the OEM and manufacturer. It's pretty late for a feature like this to show up in the OS, but it could be a decent last gasp for organizations that refuse to update to Windows 10 or 11.

Neowin saw the talk of Secure Boot on the Chinese-language CSDN forums. Some people have had some issues enabling UEFI and Secure Boot, and it seems they got stuck at the startup logo due to certain display drivers that need updating. 

Windows 11 requires a PC be Secure Boot enabled if you're upgrading from Windows 10, and most OEM PCs come with it set up.

For those of you stubbornly holding onto Windows 7, it will continue to work — but you will no longer get any patches for new or existing vulnerabilities. Windows 8.1, which no one will really miss, also hits the end of support today (and, unlike Windows 7, will not be getting an Extended Security Update program).

It's unclear how many of Windows' 1.5 billion users are currently on Windows 7 or 8.1. But if you happen to be on one, it's probably time to update to Windows 10 or 11, for safety's sake.

This story was originally published on January 11, and updated on January 10 with additional information.

Today, you can't buy a new x86 processor that runs at under 1 GHz, with most mainstream desktop CPUs carrying base clocks that are well over 2 GHz or even in the 3 GHz range and boosting up much higher than that. However, back in the 1980s and 1990s, processors that operated at just a few MHz were common, with the original IBM PC clocking in at just 4.77 MHz itself.

Could one run a modern Windows operating system on a CPU with such a low clock speed? Developer and popular YouTuber NTDEV has proven that you can, booting and using Windows 7, which launched in 2009, on a Pentium-S processor that was downclocked to just 5 MHz. That's a full 995 MHz below the 2009-era OS's 1-GHz minimum requirement. The test system also had just 128MB of RAM, which is way short of Windows 7's 1GB minimum requirement.

In a YouTube video (embedded below), NTDEV shows the system, which is actually a virtual machine running in the 86Box emulator,  boot up into Windows 7 Ultimate, launch a program which shows its 5.00 MHz clock speed and even run Notepad. By the way, if you follow the sped-up time counter in the video, you'll note that it takes more than 28 minutes for the Windows 7 desktop to appear!

In the video, you can see NTDEV power on his virtual machine which POSTs as a Pentium-S running at 50 MHz with a 128MB of RAM. However, it has been downclocked to 5 MHz, a low speed which NTDEV told us he achieved by editing 86Box's source code. 

NTDEV boots the system and is given a choice to use Normal or Safe modes. He chooses Normal mode, but it actually boots into Safe mode, showing all of the .sys, .dll and .exe files as they load. NTDEV told us that, as part of the hacking process, he edited the BCD (boot configuration data) so even choosing Normal mode results in Safe mode booting. 

To get Windows 7 to boot and run with such a slow CPU, NTDEV told us that he had to disable a ton of system resources, which he accomplished by running Safe mode and disabling most drivers and services to the point where only three services are running at boot. He also had to address an issue with the logonUI.

"When going below 50MHz the login screen (logonUI) doesn't want to load," NTDEV told us. "So in order to get to a command prompt, I had to put the OS in a pseudo-OOBE state by modifying the registry and deleting everything in the c:\windows\system32\oobe folder, so that it wouldn't load."

The OOBE (out of the box experience) is the one you get when running a Windows installer and it doesn't have a Start menu or Windows Explorer. However, the command prompt is usually available during OOBE and you can usually get it by hitting Shift + F10.

We noted that the desktop NTDEV shows in the video has no Start menu, there's no wallpaper and the windows themselves have a very simple theme; there's no way Aero transparencies would work here. To launch a program, WCPUID / Real Time Clock Checker, NTDEV has to type its shortcut name into the command prompt.  He later does the same to launch Notepad.

Perhaps what's most impressive about this whole video is that NTDEV is able to, at one point, have four different programs running: the command prompt, WCPUID, Winver (showing the Windows 7 version) and Notepad with some text in it. So this is a fairly-stable environment. 

NTDEV told us that he has actually run Windows 7 at a clock speed as low as 3 MHz, but that it wasn't functional enough to make an interesting video. He said that he has actually run Windows 7 with as little as 36MB of RAM in the past, but went with 128MB to make the sample system not need the page file (virtual memory), but the system actually used about 70MB during his demo. 

The virtual machine also uses a lot less storage space than the 16GB listed in Windows 7's system requirements. NTDEV said that the entire install uses less than 1GB and the .wim file disk image for the OS is less than 350MB.

Now that he's gotten Windows 7 to run at 5 MHz (or even 3 MHz with less to do), NTDEV says he's looking at ways to get Windows 10 or Windows 11 to run on a processor that's slower than 1 GHz. He's already managed to get Windows XP to run at just 1 MHz.

He said that the 28-minute plus boot time for the 5 MHz Windows 7 system is far from the slowest he's experienced.

"It's nothing compared to Windows XP on 1 MHz," he said. "That thing took 3 hours to boot!"

Loongson has become yet another Chinese GPU designer as it rolled out a new chipset with built-in graphics capabilities for its quad-core 3A5000 and 16-core 3C5000 processors. The new iGPU has capabilities comparable to graphics chips from 2004 ~ 2005, but it offers sufficient performance in office workloads. 

Loongson's 7A2000 bridge chip (aka chipset) integrates an OpenGL 2.1/OpenGL ES 2.0-compliant GPU that works at 400 MHz ~ 500 MHz, supporting up to two displays with a 1920x1080@60Hz or 2560x1440x30Hz resolution over two HDMI connections (or an HDMI and a D-Sub/VGA connection).  

Based on data from Loongson, the GPU scores 300 FPS in GLMark2, a benchmark from 2004 ~ 2005, and 1,800 FPS in Glxgears, a performance testing program from 1999 ~ 2000. Unfortunately, the manufacturer does not disclose which operating system it used or how it compiled the benchmark. In addition, it is noteworthy that the GPU does not support even basic DirectX features and, therefore, can't even Windows 7. 

The iGPU is said to be an in-house design, and we are not surprised by this since both Arm and Imagination have inexpensive GPU IP blocks that offer a much more sophisticated feature set. However, developing a low-end in-house GPU may make a lot of sense for Loongson. 

The 7A2000 chipset is designed for Loongson's 3-series processors that use proprietary LoongArch architecture and therefore require an operating system and software that support this architecture. Instead of rewriting third-party drivers for Loongson's platform, designing a low-end GPU and developing drivers in-house may be easier. At the end of the day, Loongson's customers are various government or local authorities-run organizations that see China-developed IP as a huge benefit even if it is years behind equivalents designed in Europe or the U.S.  

Other features of the 7A2000 core logic include PCIe 3.0, SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, GbE PHY, UART, and even GPIO if someone wants to connect something fancy to a Loongson-based platform.  

Another notable improvement of the 7A2000 mentioned by Loongson is the fact that the CPU and chipset are now connected using a HyperTransport 3.1 32-bit interface at 3.2 GT/s, which improved PCIe bandwidth by 2.4 times as well as SATA read/write performance by 82%/97% when compared to the previous generation Loongson 7A1000 chipset. 

Loongson says that multiple motherboard makers and ODMs have already developed numerous boards featuring a quad-core 3A5000 processor with a 7A2000 chipset and a 16-core 3C5000/3C5000L CPU with a 7A2000 chipset.

AMD has launched a new Adrenalin Edition version 22.6.1 driver for Windows 7 that fixes a problem where users couldn't install driver software for powerful modern RDNA 2 GPU-based products "such as the Radeon RX 6900 XT." Unlike contemporary AMD drivers, this legacy release also supports Radeon GPUs going back to the HD 6000 series (2010).

First of all, many readers might be wondering why AMD is releasing a Windows 7 driver in mid-2022. Windows 7 mainstream support ended back in January 2020, but there are still a significant number of users of this legacy OS, and some are still receiving Extended Security Updates (ESU) via a paid service from Microsoft. Some of these folk might be sticklers for the old OS, but want to make use of AMD's latest and greatest GPUs. Windows 7 ESU updates won't last forever though; Microsoft will cease this extended service in January 2023.

As we don't run any Windows 7 systems anymore, we don't know which modern graphics cards were facing the failure to install driver issues AMD mentions in its release notes. In the notes AMD says that a particular fix in the new driver addresses an issue where "AMD Radeon Software may fail to install on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon RX 6900 XT." This makes one wonder about issues with the likes of the RX 6950 XT, for example.

Later in the release notes it is revealed that AMD has prepared a dedicated version of this new Windows 7 driver for exclusive use by owners of the Radeon RX 6400 and Radeon RX 6500 XT (both feature Navi 24 GPUs). 

Users of Windows 7 might be appreciative of AMD's extended support efforts, but the red team acknowledges some irritating known issues open. For example, enhanced sync still causes some games to black-screen, and there may be intermittent Radeon performance metrics misreporting.

Current Windows 10 and Windows 11 Radeon drivers don't have support extending back beyond the Polaris GPUs – so the Radeon RX 400 series (2016) are the oldest supported products. The latest Radeon Software: Adrenalin Edition release for Win 10/11 is version 22.5.2. However, if you have Windows 10 64-bit and want extended legacy hardware support (going back to the Radeon HD 7000 series, from 2012), there is an AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition version 22.6.1 version available for you too, if you search AMD's driver site.

At the BUILD developer conference, Microsoft announced that third party widgets will be enabled in Windows 11 beginning "later this year." Widgets are a handy way to present bite-sized bits of information without hogging screen real estate. They're easy to summon and dismiss, letting you quickly check some news or other real-time information and get back to your main task(s).

At present, Microsoft is the sole provider and publisher of Windows 11 widgets. This obviously limits the scope of the offerings, but there are still some useful widgets designed to show snippets of news, to do lists, weather, traffic, your Outlook calendar, and stock prices, as well as providing a mini slideshow of photos from your OneDrive cloud storage. However, most if not all of the existing widgets won't work if you use a local account to sign into Windows 11, rather than a Microsoft account.

Later this year, Microsoft is going to open up the widget building experience for third party developers. Widgets in Windows 11 are powered by Microsoft's Adaptive Cards platform. Due to this, developers will be able to easily create widgets with actionable buttons, texts, graphics. The new third party widgets will be companions to installed Win32 and PWA apps.

One attraction of the Adaptive Cards platform is that it can leverage the "capabilities of touch, pen, voice, and AI, to create features that increase engagement and differentiate your apps with more natural interactions for your customers," explains Microsoft. Windows 11 widgets are resizable and repositionable, but in this newest OS they live on a quick popup overlay with a vertically scrollable menu summoned by a taskbar button, and they can't be placed randomly and stick to your desktop.

What third party widgets would readers like to see arrive? We'd appreciate a local media / music player widget, a streaming audio / radio widget, a sticky note widget, and a system info widget (CPU utilization, temperature, etc.) Other welcome additions would be some of Google's apps in a compact widgetized UI, and perhaps a Twitter feed.

Microsoft Widgets: Some History

Microsoft's history of implementing widgets in Explorer began in the days of Windows Vista with the appearance of the Windows Sidebar, which evolved into Windows Desktop Gadgets with the advent of Windows 7. As noted by Wikipedia, Windows Vista would ship with eleven gadgets for its sidebar, while Windows 7 broke the gadgets out of the sidebar for positioning anywhere on the desktop and introduced some widget favorites like the Media Player and Stocks ticker. Third party developers could share widgets online via Microsoft's Windows Live Gallery until Oct 2011. Widgets were dumped by Microsoft in July 2012 due to inherent security vulnerabilities.

In Windows 8, Live Tiles were a pretty adequate widget functionality surrogate. With the Metro UI you basically got quick access to all the widgety information you might desire at the press of the Windows key, thanks to that full screen 'Metro' style Start Menu.

With the demise of live tiles, moving from Windows 10 to 11, Microsoft introduced widgets in the newer OS as a way to facilitate the convenient streaming of little nuggets of info to appropriately-sized portions of our screens. Now we are seeing the Windows 11 widgets embrace the wider world with third party app companionship being telegraphed at BUILD.

Star Citizen developers CIG (Cloud Imperium Games) have officially killed off support for Windows 7 and GPUs older than Nvidia's GTX 700 via its release of Alpha 3.17 which now requires DirectX 11.1 to operate. The API change was necessary as the massive game studio continues to transition Star Citizen to its new Gen12 rendering engine and eventually to the Vulkan API.

Star Citizen has been in development for a very long time -- in fact, the 700 series just launched when CIG first introduced a playable part of the game known as the Hangar Module back in 2013. Since that time, the scope of the Star Citizen project has increased massively, and as a result, changes made to its engine have been extensive. To the point where CIG's Star Citizen community began calling it the "Star Engine," due to how the sheer amount of features that have been added to the engine.

The New Gen12 Renderer & Why Windows 7 Support Stops With Alpha 3.17

Gen12, is what CIG is dubbing its new game rendering architecture (and should not be confused with DirectX 12). In layman's terms, the goal of Gen12 is to optimize the entire rendering pipeline within Star Citizen to make it more performance-oriented.

During CIG's CitizenCon2951 event, Gen12 was described as a more independent rendering architecture, allowing objects to directly communicate with the render pass responsible for it. This means Gen 12 can be seen as a renderer with multiple pipelines. With different rendering tasks operating on their own. 

This is quite a substantial change from the old "legacy" rendering system that is still being used today in Star Citizen, CIG describes it as having one universal pipeline through which all tasks and objects required for rendering an image have to travel through. This in and of itself creates a bottleneck, as work has to be done synchronously, or one stage at a time.

The engine Star Citizen originally ran on was Crytek's CryEngine, the same engine that powers the Crysis series. But in 2015, CIG swapped Star Citizen to the Amazon Lumberyard engine instead to advantage of Amazon's Web Services and the advanced networking features built into Lumberyard.

Gen12's feature set will be crucial for smoother gameplay in the Star Citizen universe as CIG continues to rely on streaming tech for the entirety of the game. Due to the immense scale of solar systems and planets and moons, Star Citizen's engine streams entire worlds in and out of system memory in real-life gameplay -- and soon that will expand to entire solar systems. This needs to be done with a stable frame rate and no loading screens, which is what Gen12 and Vulkan will help to do, among other things.

As a consequence of Gen12, CIG says it will be very flexible to develop, and best of all it will allow the engine to be highly optimized for multi-threading. This is not even counting Star Citizen's Vulkan API implementation coming later which should expand Star Citizen's multi-core capabilities even more.

The only bad news with Gen 12 is its implementation for DirectX, which requires the newer 11.1 feature set since Vulkan implementation is still in development. Partial DirectX 11.1 support did come to Windows 7, but the complete package is unsupported with the same applying to GTX 700 series GPUs or older. To play the game, you'll need a Maxwell class graphics card and Windows 8 or newer.

This requirement has only come up now because Alpha 3.17 is the first Star Citizen version to begin using Gen12 features. Previous patches were still based entirely on the legacy renderer which allowed people to use Windows 7 and older hardware.

Windows 7 Support Could be Coming Back

The good news is that Windows 7 support could be coming back to the game sometime in the future, thanks to Vulkan support. CIG plans to ditch Microsoft's DirectX API outright, and replace it with the Vulkan API which does support Windows 7. But Windows 7 isn't the only OS that could benefit from the API change. CIG has confirmed that native Linux support will be coming to the game aswell, which should improve performance immensely for the users who are running Star Citizen today through translation APIs such as Proton or Wine.

But, as it goes with Star Citizen development, we have no idea how long that will take. What we know right now is that Gen12 development is the priority, and Vulkan development will take a back seat until it is completed. Since Gen12 is only now being implemented into the live build of the game, we suspect it'll take over a year at the earliest before Vulkan becomes functional in Star Citizen's Alpha environment.

Nvidia has surprised us by releasing a new graphics driver for Kepler GPU users. Support for these users via the regular GeForce Game Ready Driver releases ceased last summer. A significant clue to the impetus behind this out-of-the-blue driver release is that it is headlined as a "GeForce Security Update Driver," in the release notes. Nvidia will continue to offer this level of support for Kepler users up until the end of September 2024.

The new driver for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 (all 64-bit) users is called the GeForce Security Update Driver 473.04 WHQL. A driver that covers the same set of updates, for Windows 10 and 11 users, is version 472.98 WHQL. Both drivers were made available, along with release notes on January 31. As a reminder, in case you aren't using a GeForce GPU right now, the current newest officially available GeForce Game Ready Driver, for GPU architectures following Kepler, is version 511.23.

Both new GeForce Security Update Drivers are claimed to deliver patches for "issues that may lead to multiple security impacts." In a security bulletin, published January 31, Nvidia state that the issue is "NVIDIA Omniverse Launcher contains a Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) vulnerability which can allow an unprivileged remote attacker, if they can get user to browse malicious site, to acquire access tokens allowing them to access resources in other security domains, which may lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, and impact to confidentiality and integrity."

Security patches aren't the only reasons to grab the new GeForce drivers. Both the releases, linked above, also include; added support for CUDA 11.4, added support for the GeForce RTX 2060 12GB, and offer the new Nvidia Image Sharpening resolution scaling technology. Moreover, if you download the Windows 10 version of the driver (472.98 WHQL) you will get official Windows 11 support too.

Remember this isn't a Game Ready Driver, so there are no new game optimizations in the driver builds, or none that Nvidia is telling us about. However, one shouldn't really complain, as this release is a nice surprise after the October's Game Ready Driver 496.13 WHQL arrived lacking any Kepler GPU support, as well as dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. The impending removal of Kepler GPU support from Game Ready Drivers was foretold back in May 2021, when the architecture was nine years old.

Used GPU Buyers Watch Out

With the current state of the GPU market, it is hard to get the best GPUs and this means that some PC builders and upgraders will be tempted to go for a used GPU, to make-do until something pleasant happens. We have had quite a few stories of GPU-mining activity being on the wane and the big three ramping up GPU manufacturing, so the tide will turn in this industry with its characteristic cycles, sooner or later.

The state of drivers for Kepler GPUs got some good news today, but it is obviously not a GPU family to buy into right now. Nvidia Maxwell and Pascal Architectures might also be nearing the cut-off feature/support points in coming months, so please bear support lifecycles in mind when looking for "used bargains."

The M.2 form-factor was primarily designed for solid-state drives, but since it uses an industry-standard PCIe interface, an M.2 card can be used for other applications. Last year, ASRock introduced an M.2 graphics adapter, and this week Innodisk launched an M.2-2280 10GbE network card. 

The Innodisk EGPL-T101 M.2-2280 10GbE adapter features a PCIe 3.0 x2 interface and is based on a Marvell AQtion controller supporting speeds up to 10 Gb/s over Cat6/Cat6A copper cables. In addition, the module consumes no more than 2.5W, so it can fit into tightly-packed environments that do not have proper ventilation without the risk of overheating. 

Innodisk primarily positions its EGPL-T101 module as a solution for systems used for machine vision, high-resolution imaging, and gaming. However, it can also be used for various home theatre PCs (HTPCs) and high-performance storage systems to take advantage of fast network transfers. 

As for compatibility, like other 10GbE adapters powered by an AQtion controller, the EGPL-T101 comes with drivers that work with Microsoft Windows 7 and later as well as Linux Kernel 3.10 and later. 

Innodisk says that the EGPL-T101 module will be in mass production this month, so expect it to hit the market early next year. Unfortunately, we have no reference point for M.2-2280 10GbE network adapter pricing. But since Marvell's Aquantia AQtion-based PCIe 3.0 cards are pretty widespread and start at around $100 at Amazon, we expect Innodisk to charge a premium for the M.2 form-factor.

I've been rather happily running and benchmarking graphics cards with Windows 10 since just after it launched in 2015. Microsoft tried to encourage people to upgrade by initially offering Windows 10 for free, plus it was the only OS with support for DirectX 12. Portions of DX12 were eventually backported to Windows 7, and you can still get Windows 10 for cheap, but now Windows 11 (see how to get Windows 11 for free or cheap) is the new kid on the block. So how does it perform, specifically with games? That's what we wanted to find out, so we grabbed the two best graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia and put them to the test.

Let's be clear: Change for the sake of change doesn't go over well with me, and Windows 11 puts a new coat of paint on the worn-in and comfortable feeling Windows 10 house I've been living in since 2015. A new coat of paint would be fine, and I'm not necessarily averse to that. But in the process, it seems as though the UI designers felt a need to rearrange the furniture, switch around the drawers, and clean house on a bunch of functionality that I actually like.

We've covered some of the worst Windows 11 changes, and how to fix them. Ultimately, two months after release, our Windows 11 launch impressions remain largely unchanged, and we're discovering even more disappointing aspects to the OS—like the Windows 11 SSD issues, which apparently still persist. With that in mind, I wanted to verify that Windows 11 doesn't impact graphics card performance before switching to the new OS. Of course, that switch is still in the works since I'll be shifting to an Alder Lake Core i9-12900K system for GPU reviews in the near future. And of course, using Alder Lake is one of the only good (sort of) reasons to switch to Windows 11, thanks to the new process scheduler that integrates with Intel's Thread Director hardware.

What if you're not using Alder Lake, though? I took my current GPU testbed, which is now about three years old, and did a clean install of Windows 11 on a new Crucial P5 Plus SSD for testing purposes. I tested basically the fastest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, the Radeon RX 6900 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and I also retested those cards on Windows 10 using the latest drivers and updates. (Yes, technically the 3090 is a bit faster and has twice the VRAM, but it's close enough and the 3080 Ti tends to be more readily available.) That means running the AMD 21.21.1 and Nvidia's 497.09 drivers, with a complete driver cleanup (via Display Driver Uninstaller) between testing. Here are the results of the 14 games I used for testing.

If you were looking for yet another reason to hate on Windows 11, this is obviously disappointing. For those who are more open-minded, though, this is good news. Windows 11 may not be any faster at games than Windows 10, but neither is it any slower. Of course, we tested Windows 11 with VBS disabled—that was the default after a clean install on our test hardware. There has been some concern that VBS defaults to enabled on clean installs, but so far it looks like it needs to be explicitly enabled, which is likely only something you'll see from large OEMs and business PCs.

Across our 14-game test suite, the overall performance difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11 at three resolutions was less than one percent. There was one instance where Win10 was 4% faster (RTX 3080 Ti in Far Cry 6), and Assassin's Creed Valhalla was consistently 3% faster, but a few minor anomalies are to be expected. Sometimes Windows 10 was a bit faster and sometimes Windows 11 came out ahead, but in practice there wasn't any significant change.

The minimum fps (technically 99th percentile frametime converted to fps) results show a bit more variability, but that's always the case. Here we see an instance (Strange Brigade on the RTX 3080 Ti) where Win10 beat Win11 by 10%, and there are a few other cases of 5% differences, but a single frame or two rendering slowly can easily skew the results. That's why we don't place as much emphasis on minimum fps.

Interestingly, the RX 6900 XT was far more consistent in its performance across the two versions of Windows, where average fps was within 0.3% overall, and the biggest differences were still less than 2%. Even the minimum fps only had up to a 5.5% difference, and in that case, it was Windows 11 coming out ahead.

If you prefer seeing things in chart form rather than the above tables, here's a gallery of all 45 of the 1080p, 1440p, and 4K results. (Note: The above table uses the geometric mean for average, where all values are given equal weight, while the 14 game average charts below use the arithmetic mean and can skew due to "outlier" results.)

While these results are boring in general, they're good news because I'd hate to see the new OS penalize or benefit performance. Hopefully, Microsoft will walk back some of the UI changes, or maybe I'll just need to execute my own workarounds. Either way, my new Alder Lake build will basically require Windows 11, plus retesting all the GPUs on our new 2022 test suite. So that's how I'll spend much of January, I think.

If you're curious, I'm planning on using the following games for the coming year of graphics card reviews: Borderlands 3, Dirt 5, Far Cry 6, Flight Simulator, Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Watch Dogs Legion. Note that seven of those use DirectX 12, with Red Dead being the sole Vulkan representative—and there are no DirectX 11 games in the list. I'll also use a somewhat different suite for ray tracing tests: Bright Memory Infinite, Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Fortnite, Metro Exodus Enhanced, Minecraft, and Watch Dogs Legion, with the goal being to use games that show some real visual benefits from enabling ray tracing. (Feel free to comment below if you think I've missed any game that warrants inclusion.)

Valve has updated its Steam Hardware Survey with the latest data from November 2021. Perhaps the most interesting piece of information is that Windows 11 now accounts for 8.6% of all surveyed PCs, up from just 1.9% in October. We'll also look at the data on the best graphics cards and best CPUs for gaming to see what else has — or hasn't — changed.

Quick disclaimer: Valve has never fully disclosed how its sampling and data collection is done, and many have questioned its validity, but we still think the information is interesting even if we don't have confidence intervals or margins of error.

Windows 11 Picks Up Steam

The biggest news for this update is that Windows 11 usage among surveyed gamers accounts for 8.3% of all PCs. That might not seem like much, but the OS has only officially been out for two months, so that's a pretty fast uptake and more than quadruple the number of Win11 users in October. By comparison, only 2.7% of all surveyed PCs ran OSX, and 1.2% ran some flavor of Linux. Of course, Windows 11 still has a long way to go, with Windows 10 sitting at 83.4% of surveyed PCs. However, it's now surpassed Windows 7, which sits at 3.3%.

It will also be interesting to see how these breakdowns change once the Steam Deck launches. That could cause a spike in Linux usage, but Steam Machines never made much headway, and it's not clear how many Steam Decks have actually been sold.

Nvidia Continues to Dominate the GPU Landscape

Moving on to the graphics card breakdown, we're going to pull the data from Steam's API usage page, as that lets us see GPUs that account for less than 0.15% of the total. There's plenty of fuzziness in these numbers, but we've elected to use the DirectX 12 figures (which, interestingly, sum up to about 90% rather than the expected 100%). That omits a lot of older Intel GPUs, which we feel is reasonable considering the number of DX12 games and how poorly those older GPUs perform. Here's our adjusted breakdown of the numbers from the past several months.

We've included the past several generations, more or less, and you can see that despite some gains in overall share, Nvidia's GTX 10-series graphics cards remain the most popular GPUs by far, followed by the GTX 16-series, RTX 20-series, and RTX 30-series. AMD's most popular GPU series (on Steam) is still the RX 500 cards, which basically match Nvidia's GTX 900-series in terms of market share. The RX 6000-series, meanwhile, still accounts for a bit more than half a percent of surveyed PCs.

Nvidia's RTX 30 cards continue to gain ground, and at this rate, we can reasonably expect RTX 30 to surpass RTX 20 within the next month or two. That's despite the continued difficulty of finding any of the latest graphics cards in stock at reasonable prices. Our latest look at GPU prices on eBay indicates many models are still selling at close to double their MSRP.

Of course, that mainly applies to desktop graphics cards. While some have apparently tried to build GPU mining farms using laptops, the costs and risks of killing the hardware are too significant to go that route, so gaming laptops with the latest RTX 30 GPUs are pretty reasonably priced by comparison. Corroborating that, according to the survey, the single most popular RTX 30-series GPU is the "Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU," which now represents just over 2% of all surveyed PCs. Meanwhile, the RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti laptop GPUs only account for 0.42% and 0.38%, respectively. The RTX 3070 comes in just behind the laptop 3060, though, with 1.99% of the market.

The most popular individual GPUs continue to be the GTX 1060, GTX 1650, and GTX 1050 Ti, with the RTX 2060 coming in fourth place. Perhaps that's part of the reason we're getting an RTX 2060 12GB refresh. Hopefully, the price and availability of that part will prove to be more than a token effort to meet the demand for new graphics cards, but I'm not counting on it. AMD's single most popular GPU is still the RX 580 from 2017, coming in at position 13.

You can check the rest of the numbers yourself, if you'd like, but one final interesting piece of information is that AMD APUs with integrated Vega graphics solutions account for just 2.67% of all GPUs. Likewise, Intel graphics solutions (again, the DX12 requirement eliminates anything older than Skylake chips from 2015) represent just 3.73% of surveyed PCs. Intel might account for the largest number of graphics chips as a whole, but in terms of Steam gamers, UHD Graphics 620 only comes in 29th place. We'll see if the upcoming Arc Alchemist can do anything to change that in 2022.

AMD CPU Continue to Gain Market Share

Given Intel just launched the Alder Lake Core i9-12900K and related CPUs, they're not yet part of the survey. That should change in the coming months, but unfortunately, the Steam Hardware Survey provides virtually zero insight into what specific CPUs people are using — we don't even know the generation of CPU. What we do know is the overall market share, and we can also see data on the number of cores and clock speeds, but that's not particularly helpful given the different architectures.

That's unfortunate, as we'd love to see how Ryzen 5 5600X compares to Core i5-11400 as an example. Prior to Alder Lake, we rated Ryzen 5000 series CPUs as being the better overall choice in our AMD vs. Intel CPUs faceoff. It would be very interesting to see how many PCs are running the top-rated processors, but that's not happening.

What we do know is that AMD CPUs accounted for 31.53% of surveyed PCs, compared to 68.45% for Intel (and 0.02% for "MicrosoftXTA," a new addition to the survey). That represents a 0.69% increase in market share for AMD and a commensurate drop for Intel. Outside of an unexplained drop in August (statistical variation?), AMD CPU share has been steadily increasing for much of the past year thanks to Ryzen and Ryzen 5000 in particular.

The other data point we can gather from the CPU aspect of the survey is that the vast majority of PCs are still running 4-core and 6-core CPUs. Together, those account for 68% of all PCs, with 8-core CPUs representing another 16.5% and 2-core CPUs still surprisingly accounting for just under 12%. 10-core, 12-core, and 16-core CPUs combined only represent 2.32% of surveyed PCs, with 12-core (most likely Ryzen 9 3900X and 5900X) accounting for about half of that number.

I feel bad for anyone using a 2-core CPU, as it's been more than a decade since I regularly used a dual-core processor. Most are probably on laptops, though, which is a bit more understandable. Intel didn't move to 4-core CPUs and above as standard for its ULV parts until 8th Gen Coffee Lake parts in 2019, and Core i3 parts with only two cores are still being sold in the 11th Gen Tiger Lake family.

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 over five years ago, it took drastic steps to ensure that users swiftly adopted the new operating system (much to the chagrin of Windows 7 users, in particular). According to Bleeping Computer Microsoft seem to be taking the same approach with Windows 11 with its latest update, KB5005463, that was pushed out to Windows 10 users via Windows Update last week.

KB5005463 includes the PC Health Check tool, which determines if a Windows 10 system meets the minimum system requirements to install Windows 11. Previously, the PC Health Check tool was only available as a separate download from Microsoft's Windows 11 landing page, which attests to its "optional" status for users.

By rolling it into KB5005463, Microsoft is essentially saving Windows 10 users a bit of time if they are interested in upgrading to Windows 11. For its part, Microsoft says that users can simply uninstall the update if they are bothered by its presence. However, it's not that simple, according to BleepingComputer. 

Users who have tried to uninstall the app manually indicated that the PC Health Check tool reinstalls itself the next time the PC checks for updates. Attempting to uninstall the KB5005463 presents an incorrect error message: "The update KB5005463 is not installed on this computer."

If you're adamant against having the PC Health Check tool installed on your system, BleepingComputer has instructions on editing your registry to prevent it from repeatedly reinstalling. But it should be noted the app itself is relatively harmless. Its primary task is to check for Windows 11 compatibility, and it does not run automatically at startup. In other words, it's primarily out of mind and out of sight.

Microsoft rolled out a limited release of Windows 11 on October 5th, and most eligible Windows 10 PCs should have the update by the first half of 2022. However, for those who plan to stick with Windows 10 for the long haul, there's no rush to upgrade to Windows 11 – Microsoft says it will continue supporting the legacy operating system through late 2025.

Windows 11 has some interesting new features, but its UI is polarizing. If you're like me, you downloaded a Windows 11 ISO and did a clean install on a test machine, but don't like the new version of the Start menu because it takes up more screen real estate and makes you click a button to see a complete, alphabetical list of all your apps. 

Fortunately, with a third-party app and possibly a registry tweak, you can get a different style of Start menu that's closer to the look and feel of Windows 7 than Windows 10 and gives you lots of options. There are a few different utilities out there but I tested with the three most popular: Open-Shell (formerly Classic Shell), a free open-source app, StartAllBack and Start11, which cost $4.99 each and have a lot more functionality.

Below, I'll show you how to replace the Windows 11 Start menu with any of these third-party utilities and make sure they appear in the right place. 

Best Windows 11 Start Menu Replacement

Of the three Windows 11 Start Menu replacements, each has its pros and cons. Open-Shell is clearly the worst, because it doesn't automatically integrate into the Windows 11 taskbar, forcing you to use a registry hack that messes up the search function. It also looks only like a Windows 7 menu, not the more recent Windows 10 style. However, it's also the only free option.

Available for $4.99 with a 30-day trial, both StartAllBack and Start11 give you a variety of features, including the ability to have a more Windows 10-style menu and to center or left-align it.  

Start11 has a "Windows 10 style" option that looks the most like Windows 10's Start Menu, including its tiles area. It also gives you more design options such as the ability to set a texture behind the taskbar. And it lets you move the taskbar to the top of the screen, something that requires a really buggy registry hack otherwise.

StartAllBack's menu looks much more Windows 7 like and it does not let you move the taskbar, but  it allows you to set a number of options that are otherwise only available as registry hacks: ungrouping taskbar icons, enabling Windows 10-style context menus and bringing the ribbon back to File Explorer. 

However, if you choose Start11,  you can do all of these except ungrouping taskbar ions by following our tutorials on how to get a full context menu and how to get Windows 10's File Explorer in Windows 11.

How to Use StartAllBack to Replace Windows 11's Start Menu

1. Download and install StartAllBack from its official website.

2. Select a theme. I recommend Proper 11. All of the menus have a Windows 7 size and layout but Proper 11 has more rounded corners and the Windows 11 Start button.

The StartAllBack Start Menu has its own search box built-in that functions a lot like the Windows 7 search. You can also click the search icon on the taskbar and get Windows 11's search feature.

3. Select Icon size from the Start Menu tab if you want smaller or larger icons. You can also increase the number of icons on the menu here.

4. Select Never from the Combine taskbar buttons menu if you want your icons uncombined. Otherwise, you can select "Always, hide labels" or "When taskbar is full." Uncombined taskbar buttons show you a button for each window, even if you have multiple windows of the same program (ex:  your web browser). 

5. Select Windows 10 Ribbon UI from the Explorer tab if you want to get the ribbon menu in File Explorer.

6. Check Classic context menus on the Explorer tab if you want the full context menus.

On the taskbar menu, you can change the Start button, center the icons or enable dynamic transparency which makes the taskbar transparent except for the foregrounded button. The Start Menu tab allows you to control which icons appear on it. 

If you need to go back to the StartAllBack settings menu after closing it, you can find it in the Windows Control panel.

How to Use Start11 to Replace Windows 11's Start Menu

1. Download and Install Start11 from its official site.

2. Choose a Start Menu style. I recommend Windows 10 style, but Windows 7 style is fine too.

Windows 10 Style looks very much like the Windows 10 Start Menu, including the tiles area. These aren't live tiles that update themselves, but most tiles were never live tiles anyway.

3. Select a Taskbar size from Taskbar tab. Medium is the default size but you can choose small or large.

4. Select "Align Top" from the Primary monitor or Secondary monitors menu if you want the taskbar to appear on the top of the screen. If not, leave it at "Align Bottom."

5. Click Restart explorer if you've changed the taskbar size or alignment.

On the Start Button tab, you can replace the default button with a custom image. On the Taskbar tab, you can set the transparency level, apply a texture or position the icons in the center of the taskbar.

Left Aligning the Taskbar Icons

Both StartAllBack and Start11 give you the ability to left-align your taskbar icons as part of their control panels. However, if you're going to use Open-Shell, the only free option , you need to align your taskbar icons to the left using Windows 11's Settings menu.

Also, if you don't install any third-party utilities, you may still want to put your icons on the left, because that gives Windows 11 a much more traditional feel than it has by default. 

To shift your taskbar icons to the left:

1. Right click on the taskbar and select Taskbar settings.

2. Open the Taskbar behaviors menu.

3. Select "Left" from the Taskbar alignment menu. 

Using Open-Shell

Open-Shell is a free, open-source utility that gives you a Windows 7-style Start menu and a ton of options for customization. However, this is our least-recommended option, because it requires you to use a registry hack that enables the classic taskbar, but breaks search.

Getting started with Open-Shell is as easy as downloading the latest version from Github and installing it. Just make sure you choose the right Start button icon. Open-Shell gives you a choice of a couple of Start buttons or the option to upload your own image. However, I found that the custom button images I uploaded were often invisible or parts of them were invisible until I clicked on them.

Your Start button icon appears on top of the Windows 11 Start button, but if the one you choose doesn't completely cover it and you click an uncovered part, it will launch the Windows 11 Start menu. 

The most reliable Start button icon is the default "Aero" button which is a circular shell icon. On our PC, it covered the complete Windows 11 Start button, but if I clicked in the blank space to the left of it rather than directly on the button, I still get the Windows 11 Start menu. The larger, rectangular Start button can solve that problem, but it may cover over parts of your other icons.

Another possibility is to uncheck Replace Start Button in Open-Shell's options menu and use the classic taskbar hack (see below) and then you'll get a clickable, Windows 10-style Start button.

Enabling Classic Taskbar

If you've installed Start11 or StartAllBack, the programs will automatically enhance your taskbar with some options so we recommend that you skip this section. However, in order to get Open-Shell to use a Windows 10 Start button icon, you need to enable the classic taskbar in the Registry. This taskbar looks and feels a little bit more like the Windows 10 taskbar and has a Search box and a Task View button. 

However, neither of these works. The Search box does absolutely nothing when you click on it and the Taskview, in my experience, almost always crashes, causing icons even of open apps to disappear temporarily, so in other words, don't click it , or better yet, hide it, which we'll show you how to do.

1. Open Regedit. You can launch it by hitting Windows + R and typing "regedit." Click Yes if prompted.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell\Update\Packages.

3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value by right clicking in the right window pane and selecting New->DWORD (32-bit) Value.

4. Rename the value to UndockingDisabled.

5. Set UndockingDisabled to 1.

6. Close regedit and restart Windows 11. The classic taskbar will be there, but you'll notice on the left side that the clock, audio and networking icons are missing. 

7. Launch the notification icons control panel by hitting Windows key + R and entering shell:::{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} then hitting Ok.

8. Click "Turn system icons on or off." 

9. Toggle Clock, Volume and Network to On. The icons will now appear on the left side of the screen.

10. Hide the "Task view" icon (optional). Since this function tends to crash, I recommend hiding the button by right clicking on the taskbar, selecting Taskbar settings and toggling Task view to off.

11. Hide the search box (optional). Since the search box doesn't actually work, your best bet is to hide it by using Regedit to navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search and setting SearchTaskbarMode to 0 and then restarting Windows. The good news is that   the Start menu replacements have their own search boxes built in.

In the end, you will have a taskbar that works with any of the utilities and looks a bit more Windows 10-like. You'll also have the Windows 10-style File explorer and right-click, jump-list menus that look like Windows 10 and have all the options on them.

Overall, though, we recommend using StartAllBack or Start11, both of which can properly align themselves on the taskbar and prevent Windows 11's native Start menu from appearing. If you want to do even more to give your Windows 11 a classic look, see our article on how to make Windows 11 look and feel like Windows 10.

Microsoft has released another Windows 11 Preview Build for Windows Insiders to test on the beta channel, version 22000.194. This new build features new updates for the Snipping Tool, Calculator and Clock, plus introduces a new system requirement for virtual machines that is necessary to install Windows 11 on Hyper-V clients. If you are updating to the new preview build from Windows 11, this build is known as cumulative update KB5005635.

The new system requirement for virtual machines is known as Generation 2 VM support. This is what Microsoft calls its second generation of virtual hardware for Hyper-V, and it is significantly updated from Generation 1. Generation 2 supports the latest PC hardware standards including UEFI, TPM, and Secure Boot, and new disk formats, all of which gen 1 systems do not support. Bare in mind, this only affects Hyper-V clients and no other hypervisors. All you need to do with other hypervisors is ensure the physical hardware supports the Windows 11 system requirements.

New Snipping Tool

The Snipping tool has been completely refreshed from its original incarnation in Windows 7 (which you can still access in Windows 10), and it also has a couple of extra features. The app's layout is identical to the original version, but the classic interface that originated with Windows 7 is now replaced with Windows 11's modern UI. Plus, a new toolbar now appears at the top of the screen whenever you create a new snip. Its buttons have the same features as the "Modes" menu in the classic Snipping Tool, including Freeform Snips, Window Snips and Fullscreen Snips.

An editing window also appears whenever you create a new snip, which is a feature that was originally in Windows 10's Snip & Sketch tool but has now been moved to Snipping Tool and given a facelift. This editing window gives you access to tools like highlighters, pens, erasers and cropping to further customize your snips.

The Windows 11 Snipping Tool is technically the third image capturing tool Microsoft has developed since Windows 7. We had the original Snipping Tool that came with Windows 7 and Windows 8, then starting with Windows 10 we got the "new" Snip & Sketch tool that was available from the Microsoft Store. Both Snipping tools have always existed within Windows 10, allowing you to choose between "new" and old.
The Snip & Sketch tool was somewhat of an improvement over the original Snipping Tool. It has the same features, but the different UI arguably made it more difficult to use. When you first opened the Snip & Sketch tool, all you were treated to was a single button for creating new snips and an arrow to the left with another menu for choosing delayed snips. Functionally it was fine, but the interface was a bit clunky compared to the original.

Strangely, Microsoft has barely done anything with the Snip & Sketch tool since. We presumed that Snip & Sketch was a replacement for the original, but Microsoft never acted on it. Instead, they have surprised us with this new version of Snipping Tool designed for Windows 11. In this latest Windows 11 preview, if you try finding the Snip & Sketch tool on the Microsoft Store, it will automatically open the new Snipping Tool instead.

Calculator & Mail Apps

The Calculator has also received some major updates. The app now includes a theme setting to choose between dark and light modes, and Microsoft says the app has been rewritten in C# so that more people can contribute to it on GitHub.

Finally, Microsoft has freshened up the Mail & Calendar app to look like Windows 11 with some new visuals and a new light mode and dark mode, to match Windows 11's new themes.

Known Issues:

Unfortunately, Microsoft has not patched the taskbar and start menu issues from the previous beta channel build. The issues include the taskbar and start menu completely disappearing if you upgrade to Windows 11 from another OS.

If you find yourself having these issues, the workaround is to go to Windows update, uninstall the latest cumulative update, then reinstall it by checking for updates.

Also, a new issue has emerged where you cannot enter text when using the Search function from the start menu or taskbar. The simple way to fix this is to press win + r so the Run box will open, then close it.

For mpre info on bug fixes and more known issues, check out the Windows blog post here.

The WinDbg (Windows Debugger) tool has been around  and helping users diagnose their BSODs and individual program crashes since the days of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. But learning WinDbg requires climbing a learning curve, and it takes a little while to figure out how things work. Ditto for learning to drive its command-heavy interface. However,  Microsoft has offered an alternate version based on UWP that is more automated and much, much easier to learn and use. 

UWP WinDbg will help you with all of the different dump file types that Windows creates to capture error information, and it makes visualizing and examining their contents simple and straightforward. Before I explain where and how to grab WinDbg Preview, let me explain a bit more about what it does, starting with dump files.

An Anatomy of Memory Dump File Types

You can read more deeply on this topic in the MS Docs item “Overview of memory dump file options for Windows.” According to that reference, Windows can create any of these memory dump file types when a provoking error occurs (quoted verbatim):

• Complete memory dump: captures the entire contents of system memory when a stop error (BSOD) occurs. It includes data from processes running when the dump was collected. To use the complete memory dump option, your paging file must be configured on the boot volume to be 1MB larger than physical RAM installed (on my PC, for example, with 16 GB or 16,384 MB, that means 16,385 MB). I seldom bother with this kind of dump file because it takes up copious space on the boot/system drive, and my desktop doesn’t do that much paging activity anyway. Conventional wisdom is that you can set this up if you need a complete memory dump should Microsoft or a third-party vendor ask you for you. Otherwise, they consume too much space.
• Kernel memory dump: records only kernel memory, which is memory that’s allocated to the OS kernel and the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), and to kernel-mode drivers and other kernel-mode programs. As MS itself says “this dump file is the most useful.”
• Small memory dump (64 KB): Captures minimal information about an error. For stop errors, for example, it grabs the stop message plus its parameters and associated data. It also grabs a list of loaded drivers, the processor content block for the processor that stopped, information and kernel context for both the stopped process (EPROCESS) and the stopped execution thread (ETHREAD). Finally, it also grabs the kernel-mode call stack for the thread that stopped. By default small memory dump files reside in the %SystemRoot%\Minidump folder.
• Automatic memory dump: contains the same info as a kernel memory dump, but is created when Windows manages page file size (that is, paging file is set to System managed size). Windows can monkey with the paging file size if a crash occurs and the paging file can’t capture all the information needed to obtain a complete kernel memory dump snapshot. See this Docs item for more details: Automatic Memory Dump.

The 10,000-foot view of what WinDbg and WinDbg Preview do is to open Windows files that end in the dumpfile .dmp extension. Both tools will let you explore those files in considerable depth. WinDbg Preview is preferable because it makes the job of exploration much easier. But first, here’s how to grab and install a copy of WinDbg Preview.

Download and Install WinDbg Preview

Like most UWP programs, WinDbg Preview is available from the Windows Store. Thus, you can search for “WinDbg Preview” inside the store, or simply follow this link. Either way you’ll see the following information come up inside the Windows Store on your PC as shown below.

To download the program, click the Download button. Once it finishes downloading, an Install button will appear. Click the Install button to get it installed on your PC. Once that happens you can fire off the program through the Start menu by typing “WinDbg Preview.” This brings up the info shown in the lead-in graphic for this story. Click that icon, and the program will load. 

Finding .DMP Files on Your PC

You may be surprised at how many .dmp files reside on your Windows 10 or 11 PC. You can use Explorer to suss them out for you. I prefer Voidtools Everything, a free and very fast file indexing and search tool. 

When I used Voidtools Everything, the app came up instantly with 82 such files on my C: drive; it took Explorer nearly 3 minutes to come up with the same list. Once you have such a list, you can get ready to plug a specific .dmp file into WinDbg Preview by right-clicking a filename while holding down the left Shift key. This adds the line “Copy as path” to the context menu, which is what you want to do so you can tell WinDbg Preview exactly where to find the .dmp file you want to examine more closely.

For the purposes of this story, I picked a dump file from File Explorer out of simple curiosity. I chose the file named explorer.exe.9736.dmp with a complete path specification of "C:\ProgramData\Norton\LocalDumps\explorer.exe.9736.dmp" (the quotes are automatically included when you make the context menu selection Copy as path).

Plugging a DMP File into WinDbg Preview

Open the program and you’ll see a generic layout appear.

So far, there’s really nothing to see or do just yet. Next, click the File menu at the upper left (already highlighted in blue). This produces the File options menus, as shown below. Here, you’ll select the item that reads “Open dump file” (fourth from the top, under the Start debugging heading).

If you grabbed the full path specification as I explained in the previous section you can paste it into the File name box and it will take you right there. If so, remove the quotation mark characters (“) at the head and tail of the string as shown. Or, you can navigate to some dump file of your choosing. Pick such a file and it will show up in the File name: field.

Click the Open button, and WinDbg Preview will load the file and all of the supporting DLL and symbol files it needs to make sense of its contents. This can take a while, along the lines of 1-2 minutes. Next, a display like the one shown below appears. This is where the magic happens, where you must click the link at the center of the middle pane labeled !analyze -v. (Note: I’d used the old WinDbg tool and tried entering the command myself manually, but it didn’t work. The link, however, works fine. Click it!)

The analysis process also takes a while, and will show countless progress bars as the program loads and links to various symbol tables (pdb files), dlls and so forth. Once it’s finished you see text results in the center pane, and a list of related threads in the lower-right pane.

Decoding the Exception Analysis

The text at the head of the center pane has a line in it that reads “This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.” That’s your clue that analysis might turn up something interesting. Once you click the !analyze v option, the program will conduct an analysis and write its results into that same center pane.

I will now reproduce a key section from that center pane to illustrate what WinDbg Preview found. It occurs in the EXCEPTION RECORD info for the explorer.exe process.

This information tells us that Explorer.exe tried to access an invalid or inaccessible memory location. Thus, we’re looking at some kind of programming or data access error in the application itself. This does not indicate user- or system-caused problems, so all one can do is to accept the error, and hope that MS gets around to fixing whatever caused it.

Note: when you finish using WinDbg Preview, click on File, then Exit. If you don’t exit the program it will make you pick up where you left off the next time you open it. Good housekeeping!

Mozilla/Firefox Crash Report

Next, I loaded up a file from the Firefox “Crash Reports” folder to see what it could tell me. It’s more or less certain to include information about a Firefox problem. This time, the initial inspection reports that “The dump file has a breakpoint exception stored in it.” 

The !analyze -v function doesn’t have much interesting to say. Likewise for clicking on the Exception record itself (!.exr -1). Lesson learned here: not all .dmp files have useful things to say to PC users. This one is bound to be sensible only to Firefox developers. I do wonder why, though, a production browser has any working breakpoints left inside.

Partition Wizard DMP File

I found a mystery .dmp file at the root level of my C: drive, named pw10-debug.dmp. As soon as I opened it up and ran the analysis I saw partitionwizard.exe appear as the faulting process. It shows a memory access error almost identical to the one from explorer.exe earlier on. Very helpful in showing me that this is old news, and something I don’t need to keep around any longer.

Do Your Own Explorations

Once you get WinDbg Preview running on your PC you can point it at any .dmp files you might find. It should at least let you figure out where a .dmp file came from, and whether or not there’s any cause for concern. WinDbg Preview just got promoted to the top of my list of error analysis tools. Count on me to start including information gleaned using the tool in my upcoming and ongoing series of BSOD stories. Stay tuned!

Microsoft has given us a sneak peek into the UI re-design for its Paint and Photo apps. These apps forgo the current Ribbon style UI, which was introduced with Windows 7, replacing it with the new fluent design language seen in Windows 11. 

Microsoft plans to replace all of the apps built into Windows with this new fluent design language, including apps you wouldn't think of like Notepad. Microsoft's goal with the new UI changes is to bring uniformity to Windows 11, to ensure that all of the apps built into Windows 11 feel and look the same.  

The new design aesthetic for the Microsoft Paint app is apparent from the current Windows 10 version. All the icons have been refreshed to feature a circular design with a black and white color theme to match Windows 11's aesthetic.

The disappearance of ribbons is also apparent, with the File, View, Save, and arrow buttons featuring a more plain but modern theme with no visible edges or boxes around the text and icons.

Changes to Microsoft's Photos app are more significant compared to the Paint app. The static bar on top of the image is gone, replaced by a floating bar with all your tools such as magnify, delete, favorites, crop, and more.

Microsoft has also gotten rid of the "Edit & Create" and "Share" wording, replacing those with icons, giving Photos a more linear theme.

Another feature that's new to Photos is the gallery at the bottom of the image. Before, you had to go back to your Photos collection to see all your images, but now you can preview multiple images at a time from the gallery while looking at your main image in full screen.

Microsoft's Photo and Paint apps are the first we've seen to get the new UI elements. Soon, we'll see this new fluent design language extend all the way down to all of Microsoft's built-in apps.

Pi Labs has released version 2.1.0 of its eminently customizable operating system, Twister OS, with a new theme inspired by Windows 11's redesigned user interface. It's called Twister 11, and it makes it even easier for Raspberry Pi owners to make it seem like they're experiencing the next generation of Windows before it debuts.

Twister OS is a fork of the official Raspberry Pi OS that offers a variety of built-in tools, from an x86 emulator that makes it easier to run certain software on Arm devices to an array of popular multimedia apps, but it might be most known for shipping with an assortment of themes modelled after other operating systems.

Those custom themes can be used to make a Raspberry Pi look like it's running Windows or macOS. Some of its existing themes were modelled after Windows 95, Windows XP, and Windows 7 to appeal to people nostalgic for Microsoft's legacy operating systems. Twister 11 is all about looking to the future of Windows instead.

Here's a quick peek at the theme from YouTuber Leepspvideo:

Note that it's already possible to install Windows 11 on a Raspberry Pi using an experimental build developed by the Windows on Raspberry community. That build has notable limitations, however, such as the inability to use wireless networking or GPIO pins. Twister 11 can provide a similar aesthetic to Windows 11 without those drawbacks.

Yesterday, Microsoft patched a major vulnerability within multiple Windows versions known as the “PrintNightmare” exploit, allowing attackers to execute malicious code remotely through the Windows Print Spooler service. The update patching this vulnerability is called KB5004945 and should be installed as soon as possible if your Windows 10 PC or device is connected to a printer.

More specifically, this vulnerability can run code with system privileges, effectively giving the attacker full system access to your PC. Including deleting files, installing apps, and creating accounts with full user rights.

The vulnerability affects not only Windows 10, but also Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2019 and even Windows 7. In fact, Microsoft is even going to provide a patch for Windows 7, thought that OS is now out of support.

To get KB5004945, all you need to do is check for Windows Updates and you should receive the cumulative patch immediately. If you need to download the patch manually, you can download it from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Traditionally, we think of Windows as the operating system for the masses and that each new version is a no-brainer upgrade, even for those with older PCs. Right now, after six years on the market, Windows 10 makes up 78 percent of all Windows installs with Windows 7, which launched in 2009 (12 years ago!) taking second place at 16 percent. Windows 10 grew this fast because there was absolutely no reason not to upgrade. It works on every PC that runs Windows 7 or 8, it’s free (see how to get Windows 10 for free or cheap) and it has a slew of new features. 

Microsoft didn’t make Windows 10 a free and easy upgrade just to be kind. The company wants to spend its time supporting the latest OS and it wants people using features like the Microsoft Store and Edge browser. It wants developers using its latest SDK to make groundbreaking apps that help the platform grow.

But Windows 11 changes all that, leaving a significant number of Windows 10 computers -- even high-end workstations from just three years ago and possibly current Surface Studio  -- out in the cold, because they won’t meet the minimum requirements, which have changed significantly for the first time since Windows 7 launched in 2009. 

To be fair, these new requirements, particularly requiring TPM 2.0 functionality (more on that below) and DX12 GPUs, are designed to provide a higher minimum baseline of security and performance than we’ve seen before. And Microsoft even seems like it’s expecting a significant number of users to stay on the current OS, having recently announced that it plans to support Windows 10 through 2025.

Update (6/26): Since we originally published this article on Friday morning, the situation has gotten more opaque as Microsoft spokespeople have said that, if a CPU is not on the company's compatibility lists, it may not work with the final release of Windows 11, even if it otherwise meets standards. Also, the company edited a document which had said that TPM 1.2, rather than the newer TPM 2.0 would be acceptable so that now only TPM 2.0 is mentioned.

This is a sea change for Microsoft, because the company has previously prioritized new OS adoption over most else. In fact, the company was likely disappointed when it took two years longer than expected to reach 1 billion active monthly devices for Windows 10. With Windows 11, it’s going to take a lot longer and, as with Android devices, there’s likely to be more computers running older operating systems than the latest one for years and years to come. That’s bad news for users and developers. 

These new minimum requirements don’t look too strenuous at first glance. According to Stephen Baker, vice president at analyst firm NPD, less than 4% of PCs sold in the last year have storage drives that were 64GB or smaller and the amount of systems with less than 4GB was “inconsequential.” In other words, almost all 2020-era new PCs would fit the bill, even if they don't have one of the best SSDs.

However, most people don’t buy a new PC every year. In fact, according to Baker, the average replacement cycle for computers is 4 to 5 years. And I’m sure we all know people or have computers in our homes that are older than that. 

You might think that the only computers affected by these changes are netbooks or sub-$200 laptops like the Dell Inspiron 3000 series (circa 2018) and Amazon VivoBooks, some of which had 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage quite recently. However, even a major workstation CPU that came out in 2018 will likely not be able to run Windows 11 and it's quite possible that any PC processor older than 8th Gen Core Intel or AMD Ryzen 2000 series will not be supported in the final release.

For example, Intel’s Xeon W-3175X, which launched in Q4 of 2018 for $2999 and sports 16 cores, drops into a platform that does not come with built-in TPM support. You can purchase a motherboard that has a TPM header and add a TPM chip after the fact, but many systems don’t have this by default. It’s hard to argue that a massive HEDT (high end desktop) system from less than three years ago should not be able to run Windows 11.

 TPM: A Deal Killer for Some 

The problem for most users is not the RAM, storage or GPU requirements, but the need for TPM 2.0, a feature most consumers don’t even know about that isn’t present on many computers from just a few years ago and is disabled on a lot of current-generation systems too.

A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) provides a secure way to store encryption keys, certificates and other sensitive data in hardware. For example, if you use Bitlocker encryption, TPM is what prevents someone from being able to just remove your hard drive, stick it in another computer and read the data.  

In a blog post, Microsoft explained its rationale for the TPM requirement saying:

“PCs of the future need this modern hardware root-of-trust to help protect from both common and sophisticated attacks like ransomware and more sophisticated attacks from nation-states. Requiring the TPM 2.0 elevates the standard for hardware security by requiring that built-in root-of-trust.” 

And, to be fair, TPM 2.0 is hardly brand new. Starting in 2016, Microsoft required that “all new device models, lines or series” of devices come with TPM 2.0 implemented and enabled by default. However, clearly, that only applied to the company’s partners making OEM laptops and desktops, because many current motherboards come with TPM disabled by default and some recent high-end chips don’t have it on board. The good news is that, if you have a processor from the last three to five years, there’s a good chance you can enable TPM in the UEFI BIOS and solve this problem.

CPU Limits 

Though it seems likely that preview builds of Windows 11 will install on any machine that meets the on-paper requirements of TPM 2.0 with secure boot, a 1-GHz 64-bit dual-core CPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage space, Microsoft has hinted that any processor that's older than an 8th Gen Intel Core series CPU or AMD Ryzen 2000 chip may be left out in the cold.

Microsoft posted official AMD and Intel CPU compatibility lists, which omit processors that came out as recently as 2017 and are still actively sold. For example, Microsoft's own Surface Studio 2, which can cost up to $5,000 and is still made and sold, tops out with a 7th Gen,  Core i7-7820HQ CPU. While it's possible that these compatibility lists aren't the final word for when Windows 11 launches, a company exec has strongly implied that they are.

Speaking on Twitter,  Microsoft VP Steve Dispensa wrote that "Windows 11 is only supported on the CPU list I posted above. There are more requirements than just TPM 2.0 support (and all supported chipsets should have TPM 2.0, so that's not generally a blocking requirement)."

Even if earlier CPUs would work, there a lot of PCs on the borderline here that don’t have TPM capability. Senior Writer Michelle Ehrhardt reports that her Core i7-6700K that she bought in 2016 did not have a TPM option in the motherboard BIOS so she’s probably out of luck. Some motherboards offer the ability to add a physical TPM module as an upgrade but who is going to do that?

Also note that there will be no more 32-bit Windows. So, if you have an old netbook with a 32-bit processor, there is no way it will run Windows 11.

 Incompatible GPUs 

Where Windows 10 required only DirectX 9 support, Windows 11 demands that your GPU handle DirectX 12. DirectX 9 is a standard that goes all the way back to 2002 when it debuted on Windows 98, Me and XP, but version 12 is only from 2015. 

Now, to be fair, Nvidia GPUs as old as the Fermi (GTX 400), AMD chips as old as Graphics Core Next (Radeon 7000) and integrated Intel graphics going back all the way to Haswell (2013) work with DirectX 12. But if you were thinking of throwing Windows 11 on your Viliv N5 UMPC, a personal favorite of mine which runs on a low-power Atom processor from 2010, you’re out of luck. 

Bifurcated Windows  

At some point it was inevitable that Microsoft would stop supporting older hardware. However, even if the CPU compatibility list grows to include older models, the TPM requirement by itself may force a lot of people with even four year old PCs to either stick with Windows 10 or upgrade to new computers.

The cynic in me says that Microsoft and OEMs are looking for reasons to drive a new PC upgrade cycle. But it’s also inevitable that, to guarantee a decent user experience with graphical features like rounded edges and translucent window widgets or modern security features like secure boot, you need to up your requirements. Just don’t expect to see Windows 11 hit 1 billion active devices any time soon. 

Note: As with all of our op-eds, the opinions expressed here belong to the writer alone and not Tom's Hardware as a team. 

AMD announced in a blog post that its Radeon Adrenalin driver 21.5.2 will be the final graphics driver to support all GPUs predating the RX 400 series and APUs predating the Ryzen 2200G and 2400G. All of these SKUs are now considered legacy models and have long since fallen off our list of the best graphics cards. The same will also apply with Windows 7, as AMD also cut support for the older OS with 21.5.2

This announcement comes hot on the heels of AMD's latest Adrenalin driver, 21.6.1 that was just released yesterday and is the first official Radeon driver to not support these legacy devices and Windows 7.

For the remnant of users still clinging onto HD 7970s, R9 290's, R9 390X's, and R9 Fury's, it's a sad day to see driver support ending for these GPUs. But the move was bound to happen, just like Nvidia cutting the cord on Windows 7 support and all Kepler GPUs later this year.

If you're still using these older GPUs, especially during a time where the GPU shortage is still a big problem, you don't have to worry about upgrading immediately simply because AMD cut support. Your card should still function properly and game fine, unless you want to play a brand new title that happens to have a bug with older drivers.

Once GPU prices return to normal, it would be best to consider purchasing a newer graphics card. The lack of driver updates can potentially leave you open to security vulnerabilities that won't be patched on legacy cards, plus Windows 11 should arrive in the not too distant future, and may only have limited driver support on older GPUs.

Sayonara, old GCN cards. It's been a healthy run, but now it's time to retire to the dust heap of graphics card history. Our R9 Fury X cleary got a head start on the dusty part.

Windows 7 users might finally decide to upgrade soon. Windows Latest today reported that a leaked build of Windows 11 suggests Microsoft plans to offer a free upgrade to the next significant update to the operating system when it debuts.

A caveat: This is based on a configuration package in a leaked build of an operating system that hasn't officially been announced yet. Microsoft's plans could have changed, or it may have planned for the upgrade to be paid all along. 

Windows Latest said its claim was "based on the configuration keys found within Pkeyconfig (product key configuration package) in the leaked build of Windows 11." Those keys suggest Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users will be able to upgrade at no cost.

That upgrade path would make sense. Microsoft offers a free update to Windows 10, too, and that promotion is still valid even though it was supposed to end in 2016. Anyone with a valid key for Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 can take advantage of that offer.

Microsoft continues to sell licenses for Windows 10, of course, but the free upgrade from a prior version of Windows reinforces the platform's status as an operating-system-as-a-service on top of which the company's real money-makers are built.

Charging for Windows 11 when Windows 10 was a free update would come as a surprise. So would requiring systems running Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 to install a free upgrade to Windows 10 before installing a free upgrade to Windows 11.

Windows 7 users have been on borrowed time—Microsoft officially dropped support for the operating system in January 2020. Windows 8.1 will follow suit in January 2023, and Microsoft plans to stop supporting Windows 10 in October 2025.

We should know more about how Windows users, from those relying on a version released over a decade ago to those running the most recent update, will be able to upgrade to Windows 11 after Microsoft's announcement on June 24.

The time has finally come. Nvidia announced earlier today that it would stop supporting its Kepler-based graphics cards on older Windows operating systems with its next GeForce R470 driver. You won't find Kepler on the list of best graphics cards, but plenty of gamers still own one. As a result of the change, they'll no longer have access to new day-zero drivers.

The GeForce R470 driver, scheduled for August 31, is the last driver to support Kepler graphics cards that debuted back in 2012. Owners of Kepler graphics cards will continue to receive critical security updates until September 2024. However, they will lose out on Game Ready driver upgrades, including performance uplifts, new features and/or bug fixes.

Additionally, the GeForce R470 driver also marks the end of support for Microsoft's Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems. The same conditions apply to users of the aforementioned operating systems. They are eligible to receive critical security updates through September 2024 but do not qualify for Game Ready driver updates.

Therefore, the future GeForce R495 driver, which goes public on October 4, will be the first GeForce driver to arrive without support for Kepler-powered products and pre-Windows 10 operating systems.

We've attached a list of Kepler GeForce gaming graphics cards that are affected by Nvidia's latest move.

• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Z 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Ti 
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 (192-bit)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Ti OEM 
• Nvidia GeForce GT 740 
• Nvidia GeForce GT 730 
• Nvidia GeForce GT 720 
• Nvidia GeForce GT 710
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 690
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 680
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 670
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 660
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 650
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 645
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 640
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 635
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 630

Widespread flaws affecting Wi-Fi have been disclosed to the public by security researcher Mathy Vanhoef nine months after he tipped the Wi-Fi Alliance off about the problem. The vulnerabilities, reported by Gizmondo from a site set up by Vanhoef exploit mistakes in the implementation of Wi-Fi standards, and can affect any Wi-Fi device no matter how old, and running any level of security including WPA 2 and 3. 

The ‘fragmentation and aggregation attacks’ - FragAttacks for short - are 12 different vulnerabilities that see Wi-Fi devices leak user data if probed in the right way. Three of the flaws are baked into the Wi-Fi standard itself, while the others flow from programming errors in specific products. The flaws have likely been lurking since Wi-Fi was first released in 1997, as even the venerable WEP protocol is vulnerable - though you really should have moved on from WEP by now, as it’s easily broken. 

By taking advantage of the way some routers accept plaintext during handshakes, for example, or the way some networks cache data, intruders could intercept personal data, or even direct users to fake websites. Vanhoef talks us through the attacks in this YouTube video, remotely controlling a smart plug and compromising an outdated Windows 7 PC.

“The biggest risk in practice,” Vanhoef writes, “is likely the ability to abuse the discovered flaws to attack devices in someone's home network. For instance, many smart home and internet-of-things devices are rarely updated, and Wi-Fi security is the last line of defense that prevents someone from attacking these devices. Unfortunately, due to [these] vulnerabilities, this last line of defense can now be bypassed.”

There is some good news, however: most of the flaws are hard to exploit, patches are available for many devices, including three from Microsoft going all the way back to Windows 7, and from all major router manufacturers (though not all models have received new firmware yet). At the time of writing Vanhoef said he wasn’t aware of any attacks in the wild using the exploits. This could be a good time to ditch your service provider’s router for the latest and best routers.

Nvidia just released a new Game Ready Driver, version 465.89, earlier this morning. This driver update comes with several new features, plus an assortment of bug fixes and more game support.

The highlight of the new driver is the addition of Resizable BAR support on all desktop RTX 30 series products. Before, this technology was limited to just the RTX 3060 12GB, but now it has filtered down to all Ampere products. (Fingers crossed that it will also land on RTX 20 series products in the future, but that might be hoping for too much.)

Resizable BAR is a feature built into the PCIe protocol that allows the CPU to access all of a discrete GPU's frame buffer or VRAM, whereas before CPUs were limited to accessing small chunks (256MB) of VRAM at a time. This optimization can improve frame rates in some games by up to 10%, but currently game support is limited as the tech has only recently been adobted by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.

Another feature added to this driver is 'Windows Virtual Machine Beta' support on all
of Nvidia's currently supported GPUs. Simply put, this feature allows your physical Nvidia GPU to interface directly with a virtual machine as if the card was directly connected to the VM. This will allow for full GPU acceleration in a VM environment, allowing you to do things like run older video games in say a Windows 7 virtual machine, if the game can't run on a native Windows 10 device.

Game Ready

Also coming in this new Game Ready driver are a bunch of updates to game support. Nvidia notes DLSS support for the upcoming Outriders RPG, and an update to Rainbow Six Seige that adds Nvidia's Reflex technology to the game.

There's also support for Dirt 5's new ray-tracing update, support for Evil Genius 2: World Domination and Kingdom Hearts.

Bug Fixes

Here are all the additional bug fixes addressed in this driver update. For the rest of the updates pertaining to this driver, check out Nvidia's blog post here.

• Pixelated Smoke in Rainbow Six Siege running the Vulkan API.
• A game crash on RTX 30 series when playing X4 Foundations with the Vulkan API.
• Blue screen crashes when pairing Samsung's Odyssey G9 with a HDMI TV.
• Another blue screen crash on the RTX 2060 specifically, when gaming and watching YouTube simultaneously.
• In Sunset Overdrive, display random green corruption might happen when enabling depth of field.
• Realtek's DisplayPort to HDMI 2.1 protocol converted clock limited to 600Mhz.
• GPU power consumption may be high in idle conditions when using some high refresh rate G-SYNC monitors.
• Screenshots taken with GeForce Experience are washed out when HDR is enabled.

Last week, Nvidia released a new and exclusive noise-canceling feature called RTX Voice for the company's GeForce RTX 20-series products. However, a Guru3D forum user discovered a workaround to get the feature working on non-RTX graphics cards, even on Windows 7.

The simple workaround consists of running the RTX Voice installer normally until an error message pops up that tells you the application isn't supported on your graphics card. Although the installation doesn't go through, the installer unpacks all the necessary files to a temporary folder called "NVRTXVoice" in your C: drive (C:\temp\NVRTXVoice). 

Here's where the magic starts. As explained by the forum poster, you need to open the RTXVoice.nvi file with a text editor with administrator privileges. The file is located inside the NvAFX folder (C:\temp\NVRTXVoice\NvAFX\RTXVoice.nvi). Once the file is open, you just need to delete the "constraints" section.

After removing the entire "constraints" section, proceed to save the file and run the setup.exe application. RTX Voice should install without any hiccups.

So far, the Guru3D user has been able to get the RTX Voice feature to work on a GeForce GTX 1080 and Titan V. However, multiple user reports reveal that the workaround appears to work on all GeForce GTX 10-and 16-series graphics cards. Unfortunately, the GeForce 900-series experience mixed results.

RTX Voice utilizes AI to perform noise-cancellation duty and depends heavily on the Tensor cores that are innate to Nvidia's Turing-based GeForce RTX 20-series graphics card. The latest discovery raises the question on whether RTX Voice really requires Tensor cores. As things currently stand, the feature seems to run smoothly on just CUDA cores. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if RTX Voice has any performance impact on GeForce graphics cards that lack proper Tensor cores.

Nvidia will likely patch the workaround now that the secret is out. If you're interested in enabling the feature on non-RTX cards, you might want to keep a backup copy of the Beta installer (Ver. 0.5.12.6) just in case.

It's starting to seem like Microsoft can't update anything without breaking it. Windows Latest reported yesterday that Windows Defender, the built-in antivirus tool for Windows 10, stopped functioning properly after it was updated recently.

The report indicated that Windows Defender--which is set to be renamed Microsoft Defender as it expands to additional platforms--has shown an error message to multiple Windows 10 users. Windows 7 and 8 users don't appear to be affected.

That error message reads: "Items skipped during scan. The Windows Defender Antivirus scan skipped an item due to exclusion or network scanning settings." Either those scans are failing, or the error message is being shown when it shouldn't be.

Failed scans could potentially expose Windows 10 users to security risks. An incorrect error message could also erode trust in Windows Defender, though, which might lead Windows 10 users to install antivirus software they probably don't need.

Luckily it seems like Windows Defender's offline scans are working as intended, so Windows 10 users should probably use that option until this problem is resolved. Microsoft explained how to use Windows Defender offline in a support article.

Microsoft today announced that Windows 10 has been installed on more than 1 billion (yes, with a "b") active devices around the world since its release in July 2015.

The company said that "over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices." We're a little suspicious about the one-to-one ratio Microsoft cited, and the company's decision to say those people "have chosen Windows 10," but it's still an important milestone.

• How to get Windows 10 free -- or at least for cheap
• The best ways to get Microsoft Office free (or under $50) 
• Nvidia delays GTC news likely about Ampere

Of course, it probably didn't hurt that Microsoft officially dropped support for Windows 7 in January. That change forced Windows 7 users to decide if they would use an unsupported operating system, upgrade to Windows 10 or switch to another platform. Upgrading to Windows 10 was probably the path of least resistance.

Windows 10's growth can't all be attributed to Windows 7's demise though because the operating system was already approaching the 1 billion active user mark. It reached 700 million users in September 2018, 800 million users in March 2019 and 825 million users in May 2019. Now it's found another 175 million in less than a year.

Its breadth helps in that regard. Microsoft said that "Windows 10 is the only operating system at the heart of over 80,000 models and configurations of different laptops and 2-in-1s from over 1,000 different manufacturers." It's also found in the company's Mixed Reality platform and Xbox consoles, and a version of it, Windows 10X, will be in upcoming foldable devices.

Windows 10 will only continue to branch out from there. Microsoft said:

"Reaching a billion people with Windows 10 is just the beginning. We will invest in Windows not only within Windows 10 for PCs but also across many other Windows editions, serving diverse customer needs including Windows IoT, Windows 10 Teams edition for Surface Hub, Windows Server, Windows Mixed Reality on HoloLens, Windows 10 in S mode, Windows 10X and more."

Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Katri Kulmuni wants the European Union (EU) to develop its own operating system and web browser, as reported by AP News this week. Kulmuni argued that this would "make our continent less vulnerable" and lower its dependence "on a few companies."

This news does not come as a surprise, as there have been long, ongoing debates about the security risks of the global IT infrastructure being hugely dependent on two big giants. 

“In practice, being self-sufficient in the cyber world means, for example, creating a European operating system and www-browser. The EU could also act as the issuer of digital certificates,” Kulmuni said.

Kulmuni's hopes of an EU-specific OS and browser are also tied to cyber security concerns. She noted that in this space the U.S. and China are better-equipped. 

The EU isn't the only body concerned about security risks from tech companies, of course. The Trump administration has its eyes on Huawei, worried about 5G developments at the Chinese manufacturer due to concerns of espionage. Other countries in the EU, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, also have trepidation about Huawei.

According an AV-Test report shared Tuesday, most antivirus vendors have not announced an official end-date for their support for Windows 7, which hit end of life (EoL) on January 14. However, many will support the operating system (OS) for at least another two years.

Google was one of the first to announce that its Chrome browser will support Windows 7 at least until July 2021. Now antivirus vendors are promising even longer support timeframes with no official end date in sight. That means that two years could very well turn into three or four, depending how popular Windows 7 remains.

It’s not too out of the ordinary for antivirus vendors to support a dated OS for this long because the more time passes, the more vulnerable Windows 7 will be. 

If you want to find out how long your antivirus will support Windows 7, see the full list here.

Many Users Are Still on Windows 7

Businesses and personal users, (including overclockers) that have stuck to using Windows 7 make up a quarter of the total Windows installed base, even after Microsoft announced that it officially ended support for the OS. The Windows XP situation seems to be repeating itself. Back when Microsoft officially ended support for that OS, about a quarter of Windows users kept the OS for a few more years. 

Microsoft is also going to continue to support service systems that use Windows 7 until 2023. 

That said, it’s possible Microsoft will still provide an update to Windows 7 if there are serious vulnerabilities. It has already done this for Windows 7 and also did so with Windows XP. 

Should You Use Windows 7 for Another Two Years?

Windows 10 has been long criticized for some of its UX issues and the seemingly bad quality and assurance that ends in a stream of bugs accompanying major updates. Another issue has been Windows 10's pervasive tracking, including some enabled by default and others you can't even disable. As such, it's understandable why some people may not be in a hurry to switch to Microsoft's latest OS. 

However, unless you've implemented a bunch of additional protections on Windows 7 that you're confident can generally keep you just as safe as software patches would (browsing in a Linux virtual machine, for instance), then relying on antivirus software won't be enough.

Antivirus programs will mainly protect you against malware that's already been in the wild for some time and discovered by antivirus companies. However, even then malicious actors could exploit OS/kernel-level bugs to cripple antivirus protection. 

Therefore, most people should consider switching either to the latest Windows 10, which you can still get for free by upgrading from a Windows 7 license, or switch to a different OS from another vendor (Linux distros, macOS, Chrome OS, et cetera). 

Microsoft released one last update for Windows 7 before officially dropping support for the operating system (OS) on January 14. Unfortunately, it seems that the update might not have been the send-off Windows 7 users hoped for because Windows Latest reported today that it replaced their desktop wallpapers with a black screen.

Numerous Windows 7 users have complained about these issues on Reddit and the Microsoft forum. Some people said the black screen only appeared once; others said it replaced their desktop wallpaper every time they rebooted their machine. It's not clear how widespread the problem actually is.

But it would be hard to deny that it's a funny error. Windows 7 could be considered a dead OS now--although organizations can pay for additional updates--so maybe the PCs merely switched to black screens to pay their respects. Although, that would admittedly be a terrifying concept, so maybe it's best not to dwell on it.

It's possible that these black screens were instead caused by problems with the activation server used to make sure people paid for their copy of Windows. Some reports from Windows 10 users claiming to have encountered the same problem support that theory; why else would both Windows 7 and 10 both be affected?

Windows Latest noted that many Windows 7 users have also complained of the update in question, KB4534310, failing to install. Some might see that as Microsoft adding insult to injury. Others might find it fitting that even the last update for Windows 7 should have a few bugs for people to contend with. Everyone mourns in their own way.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and while many are throwing out Windows 7 since it reached end-of-life (EoL) this week, there’s at least one group of tech enthusiasts who plan to continue using the outdated operating system. Professional overclockers don't care that Microsoft will no longer issue security updates or patches for the OS it debuted in 2009. Instead, they prefer Window 7's lighter footprint, which allows for speedier benchmark results.

“We care more about performance than security,” professional overclocker Joe Stepongzi, also known for Bearded Hardware, explained to Tom’s Hardware. “It’s all about bleeding-edge performance. Windows 10 is quite large and excessive compared to Windows 7, so I see Windows 7 [still] being used to gain some points in some benches.”

Allen “Splave” Golibersuch also uses the OS for competing because it's a “low-resource platform."

“It is highly tweaker-friendly, and its longevity has led to many smart people cracking the bits that help it be so speedy. There’s no bloat built in, like Cortana et cetera,” he told Tom’s Hardware. “Nothing is more frustrating than when you are chasing a world record on liquid nitrogen cooling, and Windows 10 starts doing an automatic update -- even when there is no Internet connection!”

The general perception is that legacy benchmarks run better on the platform for which they were originally designed. In fact, some of the benchmarks overclockers use to compete, such as the PCMark Vantage and PCMark 05 PC benchmarks, won’t run properly on Microsoft’s latest OS. 

“PCMark Vantage requires debugging to get working, and PCMark 05 doesn't run on Windows 10 at all,” pro overclocker Charles Fugger told Tom’s Hardware. 

Splave also plans to keep using Windows 7 for certain benchmarks and certain platforms.

“Current-generation AMD, for instance, does not have very good support for even Windows 8, let alone Windows 7. Ryzen Master [overclocking software] will not even install. Intel X299 Windows 7 is definitely my go-to OS for performance,” Splave said. 

Stepongzi will also continue leveraging Windows 7, which he described as being “great for performance” ever since its release. However, he does suspect that eventually newer PC platforms will lose the ability to support Windows as new drivers come with newer hardware releases. 

Of course, these tech extremists know all about Windows 10. In fact, all three of these pro overclockers have Windows 10 on their personal computers. But for competitive overclocking, Windows 7 offers less bloatware and overhead than its younger sibling, and 32-bit benchmark applications favor older OSes, as Fugger put it.

It’s even commonplace for overclockers to use Windows XP, which came out in 2001 and hit EoL in 2014, for benchmarks, including wPrime, a multi-threaded benchmark for x86 CPUs, and SuperPi -32M, for testing speed and stability. 

“An example of that is ... SuperPi XS, where we can see the performance reduction on every OS, including Windows 8 and Windows Vista,” Fugger said. “Windows XP is the best OS for SuperPi, and overclockers will go to great lengths (very far beyond normal) to install Windows XP on modern hardware. I am understating the ‘great lengths,’ -- this is a trade secret to some people.” 

So if you’re mourning Windows 7, perhaps you can take some solace in knowing that there are some overclockers out there who will be using it for a long time to come.