Category Archives: Microsoft

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Things that are bad, Windows 10

Microsoft update adventures

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Yesterday I fired up my media PC, booting to Windows 10, to watch some episodic visual media (you know, TV shows) that we refer to as ‘comfort food’ around here.

Imagine my surprise when instead I saw a series of weird dialog boxes pop up on the screen, many of which were blank. Was it some kind of malware? Nope, it was Microsoft Copilot, trying to install itself and going berserk.

I tried following the prompts I was able to see, but those just led to more dialogs, including prompts for a PIN code that I don’t normally use when logging in. On that computer, I had previously given in to Microsoft’s increasingly strident demands that I use a Microsoft account to log in. So the PIN prompt was confusing.

I wish I had taken video of the whole thing. It was both comical and horrifying. My roommate looked on while I tried in vain to close blank dialogs that kept recreating themselves.

Eventually I recognized the Copilot logo on the taskbar for some of these dialogs, and caught enough of one briefly-flashed message to realize that this was Copilot, apparently attempting to install itself.

. . .

Windows 10 marked a major change in the way Microsoft updates the operating system: basically, updates are pushed to your computer whether you want them or not. You can delay them, sort of, but you can never stop them completely.

I have serious misgivings about that, but also about Microsoft’s decision to push Copilot to PCs running a version of Windows that won’t even be supported in a few months. Windows 10 support will end in October of 2025.

. . .

Anyway, once I realized that the barf being spewed in my face by Microsoft was related to Copilot, something in which I have zero interest, I started killing tasks. The ensuing game of whac-a-mole went on for a few minutes before I finally won, and the insane dialogs stopped appearing.

I then proceeded to remove Copilot-related garbage from the Startups list, which I later confirmed did in fact stop this mess from occurring again at the next startup.

That was half an hour of my life that I will never get back. Thanks, Microsoft!

Luckily, I was only booting to Windows on my media PC temporarily, while working on a minor problem with Linux Mint on the same PC. I’ve now gone back to using Linux Mint, and I really hope I never have to boot to Windows 10 again.

. . .

Ever since Microsoft throttled back their own update testing, instead relying on problem reports from canaries (literally how Microsoft refers to people who opt in to receive Windows updates early), the number of problems resulting from updates has increased sharply (full disclosure: I only have anecdotal evidence of this).

Here’s another example of Microsoft update fun: a couple of weeks ago, Outlook stopped working on all PCs at a client’s location. After a lot of troubleshooting, it eventually became clear that a recent Microsoft update had hosed Office. The Office ‘repair’ function fixed most of the PCs, but on one, Office had to be reinstalled completely. Frustrating, annoying, and totally unnecessary.

Come on, Microsoft. You used to be just kind of shitty. Now it seems like you actively hate your users.

Bing, Microsoft, Search

Is this the Google search page?

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The folks at Microsoft are once again demonstrating their creativity in thinking up ways to trick people into using its web search service, Bing.

There’s an old joke about Internet Explorer that was never funny for Microsoft, because it was mostly true: that people only ever used the now-obsolete web browser to download the browser they want to actually use (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) When first installed, most versions of Windows configured Internet Explorer as the default browser. People who wanted to install a different browser were forced to use IE to download that other browser. Once that other browser was installed, the user would make it the default, and never see IE again.

Microsoft has been spanked for forcing their browser on Windows users, and as a result, their efforts along those lines are increasingly sneaky.

The most recent trick involves a special search results page that shows up in Bing (which is typically now the default browser for new Windows installs). When a user searches for ‘google’ in Bing, the results page has more than a passing resemblance to the default Google search page. Presumably Microsoft expects some people to assume they’ve found Google search and use the non-Google search page to perform subsequent searches. But of course they would still be using Bing.

Screen shot of Bing search results page for a 'google' search.
It does look like the Google search page, at first glance.

If you try searching for Google in Bing search, you’ll notice that the tricky results page automatically scrolls down a few lines, which effectively hides the Microsoft Bing header at the top of the page, and makes the trickery more difficult to spot. That also confirms that this is intentional. You can see the hidden content by scrolling back to the top of the page.

Screen shot of Bing search results page showing Microsoft header.
Scrolling up shows the Microsoft and Bing header info.

Microsoft is dancing right up to the edge of the danger zone here, and I admit to being somewhat impressed by this latest trick. They’re not actually pretending to be Google search, which would clearly be a problem. They’ve just done enough visually to make a user think that they’re using Google search, when in fact it’s anything but.

The fact that search alternatives like Bing and DuckDuckGo exist belies the notion that Google has an actual search monopoly. But Google’s dominance is so large, that it must be very frustrating to Microsoft. In a way I don’t mind these tricks, because tiny upstart Microsoft is just doing what they can to compete. But in the end, I have to officially take exception, because no user interface should ever be made to fool the user, unless of course we’re talking about an actual game.

Please do carry on with these shenanigans, Microsoft. They are very entertaining, and they give us something amusing to write about.

UPDATE 2025Jan15: And just like that, Microsoft removed the fake Google Search page from ‘google’ Bing search results pages.

Edge, Microsoft, Things that are bad, Windows

Microsoft’s Edge-related shenanigans continue

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There’s apparently a team of people at Microsoft who spend all their time trying to come up with sneaky ways to get Windows users to switch to Edge as their default web browser. To be clear, I have no direct evidence that such a team exists, but it seems likely.

The latest trick? Automatically importing Chrome bookmarks into Edge, then sneakily running Edge instead of Chrome, presumably in the hope that some users will fail to notice the difference.

In practise, though, I doubt many people will be fooled, because site passwords are not imported along with the bookmarks. They will, I think, realize that something funny is going on when their site passwords are missing.

I wonder how far Microsoft is willing to go with these tricks. They’ve been doing this kind of thing since the early Internet Explorer days, so it’s nothing new. The company has been spanked from time to time for these shenanigans, but those spankings don’t seem to have been much of a deterrent.

Tom Warren over at The Verge has the details of his own encounter with this latest trick.

UPDATE 2024Feb16: The Verge reports that Microsoft has quietly changed this behaviour in Edge, calling it a ‘bug’. Riiiiiiiight.

Edge, Microsoft, Things that are bad, User Interface (UI), Windows

Microsoft can’t stop bugging us about Edge

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They just can’t help themselves. Microsoft’s latest attempt to prevent Windows users from switching away from their browser of choice takes the form of a large panel that appears in Edge when you download another browser.

I suppose that as long as what they’re doing is legal, they’re just being pushy. Still, one could argue that they have an unfair advantage: the user has to use Edge to download another browser on Windows. But regardless of its legality, this behaviour is very annoying.

The Verge posted a useful summary of Microsoft’s recent attempts to steer Windows users away from other web browsers.

At least this latest intrusion seems like a sincere attempt to understand why many Windows users run Edge only to download a different browser. However, there are a few obvious answers missing from the poll:

  1. Edge won’t let me run an ad blocker or a script blocker (not actually true, but commonly believed).
  2. I hate Microsoft, and only use Windows grudgingly. I avoid Microsoft software as much as possible.
  3. I don’t trust Microsoft any more than I have to.
  4. Edge is just another way for Microsoft to shove ads down my throat.
  5. Edge doesn’t support the plugins I want to use.
  6. Windows is already more intrusive than I would like.
  7. I can’t really control how much Edge communicates with the Microsoft mothership.

And of course it could be much worse. Microsoft could nag you every time you start a non-Edge browser, when you start Windows, or even at random intervals. This latest nag screen only appears once, when you run Edge that first and only time you need it, to download a non-Edge browser.

What else will Microsoft try? Will they actually pay any attention to the results of this intrusive poll?

Dear Microsoft: if you want people to use Edge, try making it better than the other available browsers. You know, compete.

Microsoft, Things that are bad, Windows 10, Windows 11

Bug causes clock problems on Windows 10, 11, Windows Server

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A recently-discovered bug in newer versions of Windows is causing bizarre local time shifts.

Keeping accurate time on computers is important for a lot of reasons, many of which are not obvious to non-technical users. Update schedules, scheduled background tasks, synchronization with server and cloud resources, and many other time-sensitive processes depend on your PC maintaining accurate time.

Because it’s so important, and because various factors can sometimes cause a PC’s clock to drift, operating systems use a variety of methods to check and adjust it. The most obvious of these in Windows can be seen in Windows 10 and 11 in Settings > Time & Language. Windows regularly compares the PC’s clock with an Internet-based clock, such as time.windows.com. When a discrepancy is observed, the PC’s clock is updated.

Between a PC’s internal clock and Windows’ time synchronization, most Windows-based computers are able to maintain accurate time.

But at some point, someone at Microsoft decided that Windows needed additional time checks. So they created something called Secure Time Seeding. This function regularly analyzes secure network traffic from a ‘known good’ host computer, and calculates the current time based on what it sees.

Sounds good, right? Anything that makes the clock more accurate is good, right? Well, no. There’s at least one major problem with Secure Time Seeding, which causes it to get confused about the date and time, and can set your computer’s time based on random values. This has been observed to incorrectly change the Windows clock by minutes, hours, days, or more. As you can imagine, this causes all manner of strange problems.

Microsoft’s response to the report of this bug has been disappointing: they are downplaying its scope and effects. And while it’s true that there are very few reports of this happening, the problems it can cause are bad enough that anyone running Windows 10 and up or Windows Server 2016 and up should disable Secure Time Seeding.

To disable Secure Time Seeding on a Windows 10 or 11 PC, follow the instructions provided by Microsoft.

Trying to make sense of the actions and statements of a corporate behemoth like Microsoft is an exercise in futility. It’s possible that they will realize that this bug is actually very bad, and fix it, or they may find a way to limit its effects, or they may change the feature so that it’s disabled by default. But in the meantime, there are potentially millions of computers out there that might start exhibiting strange clock problems for the forseeable future.

Microsoft, Things that are bad, Windows

Microsoft’s empty promises

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I was just talking about a recent announcement from Microsoft, in which they assured the general public that their days of messing around with user settings and defaults on Windows were behind them.

In that post, Microsoft claimed that they are “reaffirming our long-standing approach to put people in control of their Windows PC experience”. Which I called out as baloney, since Microsoft has a long history of reverting user settings and defaults when it suits Microsoft.

That was on March 18. Yesterday, a mere six weeks later, The Verge reported that “Microsoft is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge”.

So this is Microsoft once again changing the way Windows works, to favour their own applications. I’m sure there are workarounds, but I’d be willing to bet that these workarounds will need to be reapplied after Windows updates.

Look, I understand that once a corporation gets to a certain size, it can be very difficult for one hand to know what the other is doing. But as I pointed out in my earlier post, Microsoft has engaged in these problematic behaviours for years. For them to a) claim that they’re innocent; b) “reaffirm their approach”; then c) keep right on doing this stuff… is incredibly annoying.

UPDATE: And the shenanigans continue. As of August 2023, Microsoft is showing annoying popups in Windows 11, urging users to switch to Bing for search. These things are appearing on top of games, presentations, and in other extremely inconvenient contexts. Come on, Microsoft, this is some serious bullshit.

UPDATE 2023Sep11: Ctrl.blog has additional details. It looks like Microsoft’s recent announcements about improving Windows’ behaviour were complete bullshit.

Microsoft, Windows

Microsoft frames long-overdue Windows changes as ‘reaffirming our long-standing approach’

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Here are the first two paragraphs of a recent post on the Windows blog:

“Today we’re reaffirming our long-standing approach to put people in control of their Windows PC experience and to empower developers to take advantage of our open platform.

We want to ensure that people are in control of what gets pinned to their Desktop, their Start menu and their Taskbar as well as to be able to control their default applications such as their default browser through consistent, clear and trustworthy Windows provided system dialogs and settings.”

These changes are very welcome, and appear to resolve some particularly annoying Windows behaviours that users have been complaining about for decades.

But for Microsoft to frame these much-needed fixes as “we’ve always done this, and now we’re just making sure” is rather amusing. Come on guys, admitting mistakes is healthy. Are you saying these issues are new? Because they’re not. Are you saying you were unaware of these issues? I doubt that very much, because people have been complaining about them for years. No, this is just Microsoft public relations attempting to revise history.

What Microsoft is conveniently leaving out is that the worst offenses of this kind (reverting user settings, pinning and unpinning shortcuts, changing default applications, etc.) have always been committed by Microsoft. For example, Windows Update had a very annoying tendency to revert the default web browser to Internet Explorer.

Microsoft has of course run into legal trouble for some of these behaviours. It seems clear that reverting a user’s default web browser to a Microsoft browser in the process of updating the operating system is unfair to competitors. And Microsoft has been forced to stop doing some of those things.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Microsoft truly is committed, now, to avoiding such devious — and incredibly annoying — practices.

Cortana, Microsoft, Windows 10

Cortana

Some technologies seem always to be just around the corner. Every few years, people get excited all over again, about 3D media, virtual reality, voice assistants, hoverboards, self-driving cars, flying cars, artificial intelligence, and other things that always turn out to be more hype than anything else.

I started writing the post below about Cortana way back in 2015, but never published it. I can’t even remember why it never got published, but presumably I just lost interest, and figured everyone else would as well.

For a while there, my main interest in Cortana was the ways in which it was making work difficult for IT staff. My favourite example of that is shown in this video of someone prepping a room full of new computers with Windows 10.

Now, all the excitement about Cortana, along with Amazon’s Alexa, has almost completely disappeared. Cortana is still around in recent versions of Windows, but much of its functionality has been stripped away (and now it’s gone). Alexa is being similarly sidelined, and increasingly viewed as a failure.

Why are voice control tools like Cortana and Alexa failing?

  1. Talking to your computer is amusing for a while, but once the novelty wears off, one can’t help noticing that it’s just as easy (and in many cases much easier) to use your mouse and keyboard.
  2. Privacy issues. Computers are really good at making our lives easier. And that’s good. But some technologies, to be truly useful, need to know about us — a lot about us. The most obvious example is Internet advertising: unless you’re blocking ads and related scripts and cookies in your web browser, the ads you see are based on what advertising networks know — or think they know — about you. And that’s just one example. A lot of what makes modern computers useful is based on this tradeoff between privacy and convenience. Computer ‘assistants’ like Cortana and Alexa rely on what they learn about you to improve their effectiveness. And of course they’re always listening.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote back in 2015:

Cortana limitations

Having a computer you can talk to is one of those things that most of us associate with science fiction. Cortana is Microsoft’s attempt to make that fantasy real. The extent to which they have succeeded depends on your point of view. There are loads of examples of cool things Cortana can do in response to your questions and commands, but they still feel very limited to me. Not to put too fine a point on it, there are some things Cortana is good at, and others it is not. If your idea of talking to your computer is to find out the weather, the time, and stock prices, or set up appointments in your calendar, you might find Cortana quite useful. To my way of thinking, unless I can debate philosophy or sports with a computer, I’m not really interested in talking to it.

That said, there are plenty of examples of useful ways to use Cortana (find some). (Editor’s note: I never found any, although admittedly I didn’t look very hard. I assumed if someone found a killer app for Cortana, I’d hear about it.)

Cortana is also region-dependent and may not be available in your country. If that’s the case, and you happen to be an English speaker (which I can assume given that you’re reading this), you can make Cortana work by configuring the Windows region settings to the US. I’m in Canada, and I’ve been using the US English Cortana for a while, and it works fine. The main difference between the versions is the speech recognition database, so the Canadian version is going to be pretty much identical to the US version. There may be other small difference as well, such as units of measurement. If you do decide to tweak the region settings to use the US Cortana, keep in mind that this will affect other apps as well. For instance, your web browser may tell search engines that you’re in the US, and your search results may be regionally skewed as a result. Still, most apps are more likely to use your location than your computer’s region configuration when doing their thing.

There are other problems. In my tests, the ‘Hey, Cortana’ feature worked for a few days, then stopped responding. Disabling and re-enabling the feature didn’t help.

Cortana is a fun feature, and it’s likely that many of the current issues will be resolved in the near future. It’s worth looking at, and anyone with Windows 10 should probably try it, but it’s not something that should figure prominently in deciding whether to use Windows 10 at all.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Security

Microsoft still has trouble remembering not all users are the same

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Until June 30, Microsoft had planned to disable Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripts in Office applications. VBA is the programming language built into all Office applications.

The change rolled out to beta testers in June. Whereupon Microsoft was apparently deluged with feedback from businesses whose many custom scripts suddenly stopped working.

Microsoft’s about-face was abrupt: on June 30, Microsoft announced that the change would not be rolled out to the general public in June as planned.

Previously, Office applications only popped up warnings about running potentially non-secure scripts, and allowed the user to run them anyway. That override was removed in the version that was being tested.

Incidentally, that earlier change was generally viewed as a good thing by security folks, because it’s well known that malicious scripts in Office documents are an effective vector for malware, phishing, and other nasty stuff.

But business and education users often use extensive custom VBS scripts to manage their work, and suddenly disabling all those scripts was going to be a huge problem for those people.

Once again, Microsoft seems to have completely forgotten that a lot of people use Office applications for their work; that those scripts are often poorly maintained; and that while it may make sense to force ordinary users to stop using VBA, the effect on business users would be much more dramatic.

Microsoft says that they are reveiwing the situation. How about giving these changes some thought before foisting them on us?

The Verge has more.

Update 2022Jul29: Microsoft is once again rolling out this change, with some tweaks to the wording of associated warnings, and a few critical tweaks that make it easier to work around for system administrators.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows 11

Den Delimarsky: Windows Needs a Change in Priorities

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In a recent post on his blog, Den Delimarsky explains why he’s disappointed with the direction Microsoft is going with Windows.

Anyone who reads my own posts about Windows will notice that we complain about the same things. Inconsistent user interface elements, disappearing functionality, changes that nobody wants, advertising, and privacy issues all plague Windows 11, just as they do with Windows 10. But with each new Windows release, the problems are only getting worse.

It’s a good read, and I recommend it to anyone who is considering upgrading to Windows 11. It may also be helpful for people who are stuck using Windows 11, in business and education environments. If you’re using Windows 11 and are only vaguely aware that something is rotten in Denmark, this article may clarify things for you.