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WINDOWS 11 By Mary Branscombe My advice is to stick with Windows 10 — and turn on the same security features that are the best part of Windows 11. If
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ibe98765, chasrome, Geo, fisher75, CAS, DLivesInTexas, lmacri

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Mary Branscombe wrote:

Until the widget bar works with anything other than personal Microsoft accounts and lets you turn off news headlines that range from intrusive to downright offensive, I suggest avoiding Windows 11 and securing Windows 10.

How to uninstall Widgets in Windows 11

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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windbg

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… or easily block any particular news source:

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LOL if only that actually worked (I have blocked GB News a dozen times only to see more stories from them  and there are dozens of issues in Feedback Hub with thousands of upvotes from other people who find the blocks don’t work for them either)

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I never see anything from three sources I blocked a long time ago.

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part of the problem is that it’s nondeterministic; some people, including those at Microsoft, find blocks work reliably; others of us can block something ten times in a row and keep seeing stories from that source. I have a suspicion that some of the sites attempt to get around blocks – after all, clickbait and outrage clicks are a big part of their business model – and Microsoft appears not to be prepared for that kind of evasion. Either way, the tool shouldn’t have been launched until it was ready and included content controls that work for everyone, including the option not to see news headlines at all.

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sadly, that’s not reliable: If have the GPEdit/registry instructions for completely removing the widget bar in a previous newsletter (it says Arm but works on any Windows 11 system)

https://www.askwoody.com/2023/making-windows-11-on-arm-less-obnoxious/

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Mary,

I’m confused. First you say “making sure that you’ve turned on all relevant hardware security settings“. Then you say “the security features might slow down software or hardware you’re already using — or even cause boot failure”. Why are you recomending something that could lead to boot failures? Could you elaborate on this please?

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Peter Matthews wrote:

Mary,

I’m confused. First you say “making sure that you’ve turned on all relevant hardware security settings“. Then you say “the security features might slow down software or hardware you’re already using — or even cause boot failure”. Why are you recomending something that could lead to boot failures? Could you elaborate on this please?

I’m recommending it because we all need far more security than has been typically turned on. It’s rare that you will actually hit problems and if you do my suggestion would be to replace the software that causes the problem rather than downgrading your security. I’m not Microsoft and I’m comfortable saying that the poorly written drivers, game cheat systems and dodgy third party ‘security’ tools that are likely to cause these issues aren’t worth the problems they cause. Turn them on in Windows 10 and at least you’re not dealing with any problems while trying to learn a new OS!

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Understand – thanks

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Home user. Just as when MS   discontinued  W7 security updates I  continued with the 0Patch micropatch updates with no problems.  I will also  do the same when W10 no longer gets security updates.

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Cybertooth

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Mostly good advice, I think, but the Microsoft links you provided for the recommended security settings read like the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in Beetlejuice. In other words gobbledygook. I’d rather build a new PC than try to wade through that.

Is there plain-English (equals, apparently, non-Microsoft) advice for setting these that is trustworthy?

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my, hopefully trustworthy, advice is to turn them all on; the way they work is somewhat complicated because you need to think about trusted execution environments and enclaves and having services running in the hypervisor under Windows rather than Hyper-V inside Windows, so any explanation of that quickly gets quite technical (it’s a Microsoft source but there are some excellent sessions by Dave Weston explaining this, like this one from 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJnGA4XRaq4)

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I checked out your link to “hardware security settings” – it goes to an MS document that is 1684 pages long. Could you be a little more succinct in settings that we should modify in Win10? Please keep in mind that some of us readers are “normals,” as Mary Jo. F. would say. Thanks.

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