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Perhaps I’ve read this article too fast but I’ve gone over it two more times and I can’t help but feeling that Mr Livingston has overlooked the obvious in his initial complaint that MS Update’s patch KB5032190 made the “Quick Access” area in Windows Explorer disappear.

The update has not made Quick Access disappear, it has simply renamed it to “Home.”  You can even see this in the Figure 2 attachment in his article.  What Microsoft has forgotten to do is rename the context menu commands “Pin to Quick Access” and “Remove from Quick Access.”  They should now read “Pin to Home” and “Remove from Home.”  Indeed, if one right-clicks on any folder and chooses the command “Pin to Quick Access” even now, the folder is, as one would expect, immediately added to the Home (formerly Quick Access) area.

Aside from this unfortunate cosmetic oversight (which will probably be fixed by Microsoft within another update or two), of the issues Mr Livingston brings up, this one is really a non-issue to those who have noticed the new nomenclature.

Regards.

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PBear.SF

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

Not to mention… many third-party anti-virus/security solutions, like Bitdefender (which I use), provide the same Controlled Folder Access method of protecting against ransomware.  So, turning on the feature in Windows Security at the same time would be a duplication of effort — and, basically overkill.  🙂

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PBear.SF

3 users thanked author for this post.

windbg, rc primak, analogkid

I quote the original article:

The only app I downloaded and kept was Mouse Without Boarders, a free app (as are all Garage projects)….

What, we need utilities now to keep squatters out of our mice?!! Why not just hang a “No Vacancy” sign on them?

Seriously, though, what has happened to proof-reading, for God’s sake? [It’s not just Windows Secrets, PC Magazine has been horrible for months now, and even the NY Times lets a few zingers pass by anymore.] But Windows Secrets is one of he worst newsletters to which I subscribe when it comes to silly grammatical and spelling errors showing up in nearly every issue.

I mean, “Mouse without BOARDERS,” instead of “BORDERS”? Come on. Please proof read your articles before you publish them.

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PBear.SF

I’m a little confused about Fred’s procedure for creating a custom recovery disk. He doesn’t really explain the need for the elaborate steps involved to create another copy of the custom recovery image (which I’ve finally got round to creating on my six-month-old Gateway desktop).

I’d be curious to know why one can’t simply have the Recovery Media Creator point to the existing custom recovery image (renaming it to INSTALL.WIM, if that’s necessary, then simply re-registering it with the new name, using RECIMG as before) when using the “Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive” option.

Does the recovery image need to be in the directory C:Win8-Recovery for this to work? And why the use of the obscure (to me, anyway) REAGENTC command instead of just using RECIMG to re-register the image, as we were instructed on how to do when we created it?

Finally, Fred doesn’t say what we’re supposed to do now that we have two identical copies of a custom recovery image on our hard drive (that are taking up quite a lot of redundant space). Which one should we delete (I have the original custom recovery image on my D: partition, precisely so it doesn’t take up space — which is currently 12 GB — on my system partition)?

If we delete the copy, along with the C:Win8-Recovery directory, what tool do we use to de-register that copy and re-register the original custom recovery image, REAGENTC or RECIMG? Or does it matter? (Why are there two different tools that seemingly do the same thing?)

Just want to get this all clear in my head before I actually jump in and try to create a custom USB recovery disk (and make sure I’m not going through a bunch of extra, unnecessary steps).

Thanks to anyone who knows the answers.

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PBear.SF

First off, I think Woody is confusing Hotmail with Windows Live. When I go to hotmail.com, I see this and nothing else:

What Woody is describing as Hotmail is actually, I believe, the Windows Live homepage, where “What’s New with Your Network” appears.

Second, I think Woody is crying wolf over old news. AFAIK, Windows Live has always – provided the user leaves his profile settings open to “all” – harvested as much contact information as it can get its hands on. That’s the way of social networking. But, since I’m such an old fuddy-duddy about such things (and highly jealous of my privacy), I don’t do social networking. So, from the day I joined Windows Live (for the sole prupose of having a Hotmail account) I went into my profile and locked down my account (a royal pain, I agree, with those ridiculous numbers of privacy settings pages scattered around dozens of different places), denying access to “all” in every location and, furthermore, declining every invitation I have subsequently received on Windows Live from anyone I didn’t know, so that – even now – when I go to my Windows Live homepage, links like “What’s New with Your Network” or “People You Might Know” are completely blank (and always have been).

With a little due diligence, people can control their own privacy on the web, rather than expect big companies like Microsoft (who are trying to gear their sites to the habits of the greatest number of users, most of whom want to advertise themselves all over the stratosphere and collect the biggest number of “friends” they can get their hands on) to do it for them. Gearing Microsoft Live (or Facebook or any other such site) toward privacy freaks like us is no way for these companies to get ahead, businesswise.

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PBear.SF