Tag Archives: Windows
Microsoft drops support for Windows XP
After supporting Windows XP for more than 12 years Microsoft announced that they will be dropping the support for Windows XP on 8 of April 2014. After that date Windows XP users will not receive any updates through windows update and technical support from Microsoft will no longer be provided.
In addition to the above, Microsoft announced that they will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download for Windows XP users on the same date.
This is an important announcement since a Windows XP holds more than 10% of the users in the current market.
Since the upcoming security issues will no longer be fixed after the 8th of April, current Windows XP users should strongly considering moving to a newer Windows version, mainly to either Windows 7 or the Windows 8 version.
Posted in Microsoft, Tech News.
Tagged Microsoft, Windows, Windows XP
Windows 8.1 Update 1 to be released this spring (2014)
Joe Belfiore has mentioned in the Windows blog page that Windows 8.1 Update 1 is currently scheduled to be released this spring.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue to deliver innovation and progression with an update to Windows 8.1, coming this spring.
Not much information has been released yet as to what changes the new update will bring to the users, but based on the things pointed out in an official post it seems that desktop user experience will be one of the main things they want to improve.
- We’ll enable our partners to build lower cost hardware for a great Windows experience at highly competitive price points.
- We are making improvements to the user interface that will naturally bridge touch and desktop, especially for our mouse and keyboard users. We have a number of targeted UI improvements that keep our highly satisfying touch experience intact, but that make the UI more familiar and more convenient for users with mouse/keyboard. Don’t worry, we still LOVE and BELIEVE IN touch… but you’ll like how much more smooth and convenient these changes make mouse and keyboard use!
- We are enhancing support for enterprise customers via a few tweaks, particularly including features that greatly improve IE8 compatibility in Internet Explorer 11, which is especially critical for web-based line of business applications. Additionally, we’re extending mobile device management capabilities and making deployment easier.
As a desktop user I welcome any chances aimed to improve the functionality for keyboard and mouse users and I am eager to see what the update has in store for us.
What kind of features/improvements would you like to see in the new update ?
Windows 8.1 is now available
As scheduled Windows 8.1 is now available to download for free for all Windows 8 users. The upgrade is available through the store app on Windows 8 or by navigating to windows.com/buy.
Windows 8.1 comes with new features as well as improvements to the old ones. For more information as to what Windows 8.1 has to offer visit What’s New in Windows 8.1.
Posted in Microsoft, Software Releases.
Tagged Microsoft, Windows, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 release date confirmed
The release date for the Windows 8 free upgrade (also known as Windows 8.1) was confirmed a few days ago by Microsoft.
Windows 8.1 will become available through the Windows Store on October 18th.
For those that are not aware what Windows 8.1 is all about feel free to read more details about the features Windows 8.1 comes with at What’s New in Windows 8.1
Posted in Microsoft.
Tagged Windows, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
Clear all Windows event logs
Windows logs a lot of information in the event logs to make it easier for users to troubleshoot potential problems with their system.
Each event log category has a default limit of 1028 kilobytes. Because of that it is possible for a category to store a few thousand entries dating back a few years. In my case I had entries that were older than 5 years. Obviously this might make it a bit harder to go through the logs, especially if you want to view the logs that were created after you made some particular change to the system which you want to verify that it did not cause any issues.
Sadly, there isn’t a default option to clear all the event logs at the same time and clearing up one category at a time is very time consuming due to the number of categories that are available. Luckily we can create a .bat file to do the work for us.
Open up your favourite text editor, insert the snippet below and save it with the extension .bat. You can give it any name you want. Then simply run the file as administrator and it will clear up all event log entries for you automatically.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | @echo off FOR /F "tokens=1,2*" %%V IN ('bcdedit') DO SET adminTest=%%V IF (%adminTest%)==(Access) goto noAdmin for /F "tokens=*" %%G in ('wevtutil.exe el') DO (call :do_clear "%%G") echo. echo goto theEnd :do_clear echo clearing %1 wevtutil.exe cl %1 goto :eof :noAdmin exit |
Posted in Software Tips.
Tagged wevtutil, Windows, Windows event log
