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A few of the 24H2 features mentioned in the article are also available in the latest 23H2 Win11 (possible that some updates are rolled out gradually, though I don’t have “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” selected):

File Explorer “Support for TAR and 7z compression”

File Explorer “Duplicate tab”

Settings Option to “Show seconds in system tray clock”

 

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katiedid

…just a note re the Microsoft authenticator app migration to a new phone.  To automate it as much as possible:

1) On your old phone, from the authenticator app, top-level three-vertical-dots menu, Settings: Backup,  toggle on “Cloud Backup”(“iCloud Backup” on iPhone): sign in to your account if not already signed in. The Backup section should now show your “Recovery account”

2) On your new phone, open a *fresh* Authenticator app.  (If you had already added your Microsoft account to this newly-installed Authenticator app, from the Microsoft account Settings (Cog): “Remove account”.)  The app will offer to add an acct OR recover from Cloud Backup.  Choose recover from Cloud Backup (signed in to the same account.) All the old phone’s accounts will be added.  Then double check that both phones are in sync for each restored account.

From the app’s top-level three-vertical-dots menu, you can “Rearrange accounts” (order) to match your preferences.

 

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Norio

Mark’s solution:

marklang wrote:

first deleting the ssa.gov cookie in my Firefox browser

Deleting the ssa.gov cookie also worked for my Firefox browser.  Prior to that, I was receiving the error:

“Bad Request – Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.”

 

Some additional tips related to Monitor-power standby for Desktop PCs that use S0 Modern Standby:

For my older S3 desktop machines, I like to use a software utility (invoked with a keyboard shortcut) to place the monitor into low-power standby while the PC continues to run operations which don’t require me using the monitor, or if I want to save monitor power without placing the entire PC into low power standby.  (One such utility is Nirsoft’s “nircmd.exe monitor async_off”.)  However, I found that using a utility-induced “Screen Off” state with my Modern Standby PC would cause the entire PC to enter full standby (DRIPS) as soon as the monitor went into standby (also seen in Sleep Study reports as a reason for Transitioning to Sleep.)  This forced me to instead use the monitor’s hardware power button to achieve the monitor-off power savings without going into full system standby, and there are some downsides to that method.

Eventually I learned that if I launched the Windows Media Player (universal platform app, not the old legacy version), and started a song on an endless “Repeat” loop (app volume setting off), the PC would continue to run after utility-induced monitor standby & the only other system hardware to shut down would be the Video subsystem (NVIDIA lights on the vid-card go out & additional power savings register on my UPS power meter – unexpected S0 bonus!)  Everything else continues to run & the monitor & video subsystem properly re-wake with mouse or keyboard use.  Running the Media Player app doesn’t even register as using any measurable CPU on the Task Manager, so you can just keep it running in the background all the time until you want to hit full S0 standby.  (That was how I saved my secondary storage spinning HDD from excessive wear until I finally relegated it to an external enclosure.)  (“SC_MONITORPOWER” is the “Screen Off” entry reason in a Sleep Study report, followed by “Transition To Sleep”, but DRIPS is blocked by the app as an “Activator”.)

Even without the above workaround, oddly, if the monitor goes into standby due to reaching the Windows-configured monitor time-out in the Power Plan, the system doesn’t go into full DRIPS standby, nor does the video subsystem power down – only the monitor reaches low power standby. (“Video Idle Timeout” is the “Screen Off” entry reason in a Sleep Study report, NOT followed by “Transition To Sleep”.)

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AlexEiffel

After owning a couple HP desktop PCs that work flawlessly with S3, I received a new HP desktop PC in the Fall of ’22 that utilized S0.  S3 works so perfectly for my older HP PCs that I was shocked at the new S0 “Modern Standby”, which I considered awful.  I was used to S3 entering standby as soon as asked, but S0 would instead begin running Task Scheduler maintenance tasks – it might take 45 minutes to enter low-power-state “DRIPS” & then restart maintenance tasks again at any time (Microsoft Defender Antivirus scans being a major delay.)  Until I realized what was happening, I wondered “Why isn’t my PC going into Standby!?” or “How long is it going to take for my PC to enter Standby today, if it even does!?”  Then I started keeping tabs on my secondary storage drive, an old-fashioned spinning HDD.  The SMART values were advancing off the charts as the HDD was constantly spun up & spun down as the PC was wakened over & over to do more maintenance tasks.  This HDD was going to be prematurely worn out in months – it already had more statistical “wear” than my S3 PCs HDDs had accumulated in a decade.

I ran ridiculous numbers of “Sleep Study” reports trying to troubleshoot S0 behavior (full of cryptic codes, often with no code-reference to be found anywhere on the internet.)  Eventually I was forced to remove the secondary internal HDD & place it in an external enclosure so that I could control the spin-ups/downs.  Between that & other tweaks I had to make to keep my PC in standby, the machine FINALLY performs in standby as well as my older S3 PCs, with the occasional delay due to Scheduled Tasks that I hadn’t yet tweaked to not run when there’s no internet connection (I can then disable my internet connection prior to standby to avoid “standby maintenance”.)  There is a registry setting that configures a “Network Disconnected” version of S0, but it’s not respected: the system just exits standby to perform connected maintenance and returns to standby afterwards.  This is a very fast PC that can quickly handle most maintenance tasks in the background without breaking a sweat – but takes much longer to run this maintenance in Modern Standby. It’s a shame there isn’t a configurable setting for S0 standby to remain in DRIPS until intentionally woken by a user.

There are registry settings that can alter the PC to S3 standby, but unfortunately HP no longer supports S3 in their more recent PCs’ EUFI/BIOS, so that’s not an option.

Bottom line:  My advice is to never configure a Modern Standby PC with an internal spinning HDD.  I feel bad for laptop owners who additionally have to worry about SO standby causing their batteries to be drained overnight or laptop to overheat if enclosed in a bag.  My experience with Modern Standby is that it might save me a second of “wake time”, at most, compared to S3 standby, and takes much longer to reach a low-power-state (DRIPS) in the first place.  No significant phone-like “instant” perception benefits, just headaches.  I don’t want to even consider all the time I wasted trouble-shooting its behavior.

 

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AlexEiffel, windbg

Aside from Windows Updates & some driver updates, it’s rare that I ever reboot Win11. (May have to kill an Explorer or logout/in for a registry setting to take effect.)

However, there have been a couple situations (at least in the early iterations of Win11) where I couldn’t successfully install (older) software unless it was *immediately* after booting.  This mostly involved installing software that uses older Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables.

 

My checking account at a major bank was repeatedly & frequently breached – money stolen.  Each time, I closed the account & opened a new account.  I also always set up alerts for any transaction so I could review them right away.

I do all the transactions with this particular bank online & never use their ATMs so, after yet another breach, I told them I don’t want a Debit Card with the new account.  It’s been many years since & no more thefts.  While I can’t be sure having a Debit Card was related to the thefts, I’m also not sold on the Debit Card adding much to an account’s security – unless maybe it’s been “locked”, as mentioned in the article?

PS – one of the thieves was caught & prosecuted.  The detective I worked with said the thief admitted to using inside bank employees to obtain account information – he also claimed to average $7k/day between financial fraud & narcotics sales. (Could afford a good lawyer & was released on bail & into the wind before eventually being captured again several months later!)

 

 

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Steve, Fred, windbg, TechTango

A year ago I acquired a new “AX” wi-fi capable router.  One of my PCs had an Intel AC 7260 dual band AC wi-fi adapter (purchased in 2020.)  The adapter works great, but unfortunately there was a known issue that it couldn’t see AX enabled networks unless it had the latest driver package – that fixed the bug.

The problem: Intel’s latest policies seem to be to remove ALL drivers from their support servers for hardware that is considered End of Life/Discontinued.  So just as AX is becoming more available, Intel removed access to the driver package that supports wi-fi networks providing AX (in addition to AC/N and earlier.)  Because of the 7260’s recent discontinuance, the driver package wasn’t even available from any common archive sites.

These adapters may be EOL to Intel, but they are far from obsolete.  Fortunately for hundreds of users of this popular adapter, they were able to obtain the latest driver package from a retired Intel engineer who had made a practice of squirreling away an archive of driver packages as Intel announces their discontinuance.

This Intel policy seems very customer-hostile – how much does it really cost to maintain this small amount of storage so that their loyal customers can obtain drivers from a known trustworthy source?  It seems to be yet another sign of a company in decay.

 

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windbg, Cybertooth

For my Desktop PC, I recently installed a PCIe Gen4 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD Samsung 990 PRO w/Heatsink — to replace a secondary storage internal SATA-III spinning-HDD.  The primary reason for the replacement was neither drive-speed nor price (though the new Gen4 NVMe drive’s benchmarks are phenomenal.)

I moved the previously-internal HDD to an external USB/e-SATA enclosure to use as needed.  Even though the HDD seemed blazingly fast with the internal SATA interface, and NOT otherwise a daily-performance bottleneck, it was being power-cycled to death whenever the PC was placed in “Modern Standby”.   For that reason I will never again use a HDD internally with a “Modern Standby” machine.  My last issue (there were a number of them) with “Modern Standby” solved!

 

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Will Fastie

I also went through a version of the “Something went wrong” Twitter Xperience on Firefox the other day, but not Chrome.  Went through the usual clearing of cookies, checking for tracking protection, etc., before solving it by “unblocking” the site for ads, analytics, etc. screened by the extension “Disconnect”.  Definitely helpful to have multiple browsers that use different extensions.

 

Services like Hoopla, Kanopy, Libby, etc. are nice resources if your library provides them.  But while it’s “free” for library card holders to stream, keep in mind that it’s NOT free for the libraries, as each title you access results in a charge to the library & can eat into the library’s budget.  Yes, we fund libraries through our tax dollars, but if you can find the content from alternate (eg flat-fee) sources, you may save your library some money.

 

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Kathy Stevens

For the security paranoid, regardless of your chosen password storage method, you may want to consider including a “seed” constant that you can easily remember & type.  You include it as part of each of your passwords, but you never record it in your password “database”.  You can enter the constant-seed either before or after each stored variable-partial-password to complete each full-password.  If a hacker/thief somehow captures your recorded password stash, they’ll only have partial passwords without the additional “off-storage” seed.

 

 

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wavy, TechTango

Paul T wrote:

As long as the recovery boot environment contained BitLocker the disk would have been read as usual, because the decryption keys are stored on the disk in plain text. If you used a Linux boot you would not have been able to read the disk.

So if the system drive failed, taking the recovery partition with it, my system backup images on the unknowingly “staged” secondary drive would have been useless.  Troubling…

 

I have a question about the “staged” status when “Device encryption” is On, but not “finished” until signing into a Microsoft account.  If the drive(s) haven’t been encrypted yet, why does it take a substantial amount of time to process the system’s drive(s) after toggling this setting to “Off”?  (I seem to recall the OS indicating that the drives were being decrypted, but am not sure about that.)

It seems to me that the “staged” drives are encrypted but protection not enforced (maybe “Suspended” in BitLocker type terms – which allows a system to be serviced without requiring a key, but leaves the data encryption intact.)

In addition to the “manage-bde -protectors C: -get” command, there’s also an elevated PowerShell command “manage-bde -status” that will tell you “Conversion Status”, “Encryption Method”, “Protection Status”, “Lock Status”, etc., although I didn’t know about this command before toggling “Device encryption” Off, so am not sure what it would have indicated on a “staged” device.

I wonder what would have happened had I needed to use a backup drive-image stored on the system’s “staged” secondary drive to recover my operating system?  (Eg if while configuring my machine, a configuration mistake prevented it from booting.)  When I first came across the “Device encryption” setting (in the “On” state from the factory) it was an unwelcome surprise.  And if I had previously known this status as well as the time consuming “processing” that would occur when I toggled “Device encryption” Off, I would never have stored the huge image files on the system’s secondary drive before toggling the setting off.

 

Oh, I also reported the issue on the Feedback Hub.  Nudge, nudge…