Replies

I’m on Reflect Free 8 and have no plans to update to a paid version or a different software for the time being: even in the absence of updates it will continue to be enough to meet my needs (i.e. create backup disk images for my home PC and eventually restore if need be).

While I’m not too concerned about the lack of further security updates, it might be more of concern the fact that according to the Reflect FreeEOL notice:

“Macrium Reflect Free v8.0 supports Windows XP SP 3.0 up to, and including, Windows 10 & 11 version 22H2.
There will be no new features or support for later Windows operating system updates.”

With the upcoming release of version 23H2 for Windows 11, I’m not sure what lack of an update for Reflect Free might mean: I’m under the impression the program should still work just fine with 23H2, but maybe I’m missing something.

Updated both my Windows 11 Pro 22H2 and Windows 10 Home 22H2 machines with November patches (except the latest, boring version of KB4023057) using WUMgr. No issues to report, installation did seem to take a bit longer than usual, specifically in the reboot stage, but we are talking about just a few extra minutes than usual, nothing enormous.

Still no sign of Copilot on the Windows 11 machine (not bad news): just wondering if that’s because EU policies continue to keep that thing from being unleashed on users this side of the Atlantic…

Also, I noticed the Windows 11 machine now has a bell-shaped icon for notifications on the taskbar: I don’t need it, but can’t find any obvious way to get rid of it. I have tried also to entirely disable notifications, but the bell icon stubbornly refuses to disappear even when resorting to that option. Does anyone have suggestions to get rid of the bell icon?

I disable both sleep and hibernation. If I have my computer on, then I’m usually in front of the monitor. If I leave for an extended time, then I prefer to shut it down entirely.

On my previous computer (running Win10) I used to keep sleep enabled, but the system more often than not failed to recover from sleep which required a forced reset. Also, hibernation uses several GB of disk space for the hibernation files: found out just how many after noticing that suddenly used disk space had increased for no apparent reason. Took me a while to figure out the reason and since I don’t have use for hibernation, I saw no reason for it to keep taking over disk space and decided to disable the feature entirely.

I’m probably in a minority, but actually I’ve never subscribed to any cable TV service nor any streaming service. I watch a really limited amount of TV and never felt the need to throw money into any of those services at all, the stuff I can watch through antenna television suits my needs just fine.

2 users thanked author for this post.

SueW, Charlie

[Berserker79]

Now updated also my PC running Windows 10 Home 22H2. Patches installed using WUMgr, the system required only one reboot after the patches finished installing. In particular, the following were installed:

– KB5031356 – 2023-10 Cumulative update for Win10 22H2
– KB5032874 – .NET 6.0.24 Security Update (dated 24/10/2023)
– KB890830 – MSRT update

The system is now at build no. 19045.3570 and everything seems to be working correctly. I did have the search icon reset to a search box, but the system prompted me to confirm whether I wanted to keep that change or cancel and pressing “Cancel” brought back the search icon which was my setting.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Berserker79. Reason: Corrected the KB numbers

Just finished updating my PC running Windows 11 Pro 22H2. Patches installed using WUMgr, the system required only one reboot after the patches finished installing. In particular, the following were installed:

– KB5031354 – 2023-10 Cumulative update for Win11 22H2
– KB5031323 – 2023-10 Cumulative .NET Framework update for Win11 22H2
– KB890830 – MSRT update

The system is now at build no. 22621.2428 and everything seems to be working correctly. No apparent changes to my Start menu and no trace of Copilot (but I’m in the EU so Copilot might have not shown up for that reason).

On the other hand, I just realized that when I access the Settings window a new “Home” section (with annoying nagging to use a Microsoft Account) is shown by default rather then the “System” section. No idea if this is a change introduced with the October updates or something from earlier updates that I entirely missed. Looks pretty much useless btw: in addition to the (unnecessary) MS Account nag thing, this Home section offers access to screen customization settings, Bluetooth device settings and links to access some “Suggested settings”, i.e. stuff we can readily access from other tabs of the Settings window.

Does it make any sense to use this registry key in Windows 11 22H2 Pro if one has disabled “Enable features introduced via servicing that are off by default” in GPEditor?

Thanks for the clarification! I was under the impression that a CPU having ID 0xB0671 meant the microcode version would be one of 0x119 or 0x4119, but now I understand this is not the case.

The Intel processor identification utility reports that the “CPU Revision” in the CPUID DATA section is “10E”, so my system does not seem to have one of the affected microcodes. Looks like I don’t need to worry further about the updates for Windows throwing that unsupported CPU BSOD.

Of course it turns out my i5-13600KF has the problematic microcode version 0xB0671… As per my standard practice I never install preview updates, but am I right to assume that the risk of the “Unsupported CPU” BSOD will manifest when I install the regular September CU?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any helpful suggestion tbh. Looks like something has gone “wrong” with your W10 installation, preventing the updates to successfully install. Assuming you have already tried also using the “Windows Update Health Tools” to see if it can find anything to fix, then if I were in your shoes I’d go for that fresh install and start anew (that is, entirely wipe the SSD and then re-install W10).

I don’t think age of the computer should matter/have anything to do with the problem you are having: a couple years ago I installed W10 on an even older machine than yours: a custom build with an i3-540 CPU running on Vista and that was even before I upgraded RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB and replaced the HDD with an SSD. Despite the computer’s age, W10 installed without problem, albeit I’ll admit that performance was not so good until I increased RAM to 8 GB and updated to an SSD. If the problem you are currently facing has anything to do with hardware, then a defective component might be a more likely explanation than simply the age of the hardware. Still, if the system behaves properly (except for the failure to install updates), i.e. no random errors/reboots/blue screes/weird stuff, it seems unlikely that hardware has anything to do with your problem at all.

Unless anyone else has better ideas, I’d wipe clean the disk, make a new partition and re-install W10 from scratch. Hopefully that will solve the problem for good.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

BTW, just wanted to add that after installing KB5029263 the behavior of the “Print Screen” button was changed to opening the Snipping Tool. Fixed that as soon as I realized that hitting Print Screen did not capture a screenshot as is my preference. So far I did not notice any further change to my settings.

Ok, just updated my Windows 11 Pro 22H2 machine with August updates through WUMgr and the system seems to be behaving correctly as far as I can tell.

Specifically, I installed these updates:
– KB5029263 = 2023-08 Windows 11 22H2 CU
– KB5029650 = 2023-08 .NET Framework CU
– KB890830 = Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool update
– KB5007651 = Update for Windows Security platform (ver 1.0.2306.10002)

No idea why the Windows Security platform update was deemed necessary for my machine, given that I use a different AV/Firewall provider, but went along with it and installed the update.

This month too I had two reboots before the updates finished installing:
– The first reboot was triggered manually by me after the updates were all reported as installed and the system restarted after installation of updates reached 21%;
– Installation of updates resumed shortly after the restart (oddly, it started from 7% rather than 21%) and continued until 30% at which point the second reboot was automatically triggered;
– Installation of updates resumed yet again starting from 30% and all the way up to 100%.

This is exactly the same thing that happened when installing the July updates, but until then the system rebooted only once after reaching the 30% installation point. Anyway, this seems to be a minor hiccup and nothing to worry about (but I thought to share this in case anyone sees the same thing happen).

1 user thanked author for this post.

Perq

[Berserker79]

Well, thankfully I only had one hard drive fail on me and it was many, many years ago, back when we had only mechanical HDDs, SATA didn’t exist yet and SSDs were more sci-fi than reality. I still remember the drive was a Fujitsu IDE drive (an early UDMA33 model and if that sounds unfamiliar to any of you it’s because that’s really old tech by now :)) with a weird 1.7 GB size. Lost everything on that drive back then, today I hope to avoid any kind of disastrous loss like that by creating regular backups should one my SSDs fail.

BTW, regarding “SSDs tend to not warn” about imminent failure, a while back I think it was Will Fastie who posted here about a little freeware tool called “ClearDiskInfo” that can read SMART data and allow a user to see with ease whether there is a risk of an imminent failure. While I guess there is no guarantee that the prediction may be accurate/reliable, it seems better than nothing and I always perform a check once in while to keep on eye on the health of my drives.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Berserker79. Reason: Corrected typo, ooops :)

No idea why KB5028244 failed installation on one of your computers: the 0x8024402c seems to be pretty generic, maybe the download was corrupt and the patch failed to install for that reason. Anyway, like you said, it’s a preview update so no need to worry about it, since the general suggestion is not to install any preview updates.

KB5028937 is the “regular” July .NET Framework update, while KB5028412 is the preview update. Since KB5028412 includes anything in KB5028937, there is no need to install also KB5028937 on the Home Edition computer.

1 user thanked author for this post.

L95

Definitely a head scratcher… Since the July updates do not seem to patch any vulnerability which is being actively and widely exploited, waiting until the August updates will be approved for installation sounds relatively safe (especially if you do not feel like going through more steps of restoring from a backup). Occasionally I’ve had W10 patches failing to install on a given month only to install without trouble the next: hopefully the same will happen for you.