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Latest Windows 10 Update Causing Audio Issues

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Microsoft hasn’t been terribly impressive lately when it comes to Windows 10 updates.  In fact, it’s fair to say that they’ve been a complete mess.  Just recently, they’ve issued updates that have deleted user files and caused crashes after creating incompatibilities with keyboard drivers. Now, (courtesy of the most recent Windows 10 update), many users are reporting that they’ve got no sound due to corrupted or incompatible audio drivers.

The company has made hasty corrections to their previously botched updates and patches, but as yet, there has been no official word from the company about a fix for the audio driver issue. The legions of Windows 10 users aren’t happy about it, and are taking to social media to express their displeasure.

All over Reddit and Twitter, dissatisfied Windows 10 users are up in arms about the string of shoddy updates that have created more problems than they have solved.

Since Microsoft hasn’t released a fix for the latest debacle, the company’s massive user base has begun investigating and have come up with a workaround.

In a nutshell, if you’ve installed the latest Windows 10 update and lost your audio as a result, go into your device manager and look for an audio driver that has “SST” as part of the name.  If you find one on the list, right click that device and select “Update Driver.”  Once the driver has been updated (which may require a system restart), your audio functionality should be restored.

As mentioned at the start, this isn’t the first time the company has issued a botched update, and the problems only appear to be getting worse over time.  It seems clear at this point that Microsoft doesn’t have enough support staff to identify and prioritize bugs reported by their army of beta testers.  Until that changes, we can expect issues like this to continue.

New Windows 10 Update Pulled For Unintended Data Deletion

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Microsoft is having problems, and those problems are spilling out onto the company’s massive user base.  In a highly unusual move, the company pulled its latest Windows 10 update after receiving numerous complaints from users about missing files.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the company has had problems with updates to their OS.  Back in April, the company delayed a planned update because at the last minute, Blue Screen of Death issues were discovered.  In another instance, they had to rush out a patch after an update to fix Chrome and desktop freezing issues that impacted more than half a billion machines.

These issues have led many to begin questioning the company’s QA/QC process.  It’s a fair question, because the issues described above are far from trivial, and should have been caught.

At the core, it appears that the main problem is communication. Research has revealed that these issues were caught, they simply weren’t flagged for review because they didn’t get a sufficient number of upvotes by the beta testing user community.

Windows 10 represents a significant departure from the company and a new era of openness.  While Windows 8 was designed with little to no user input, Microsoft opted to open the Windows 10 development process up, relying on more than ten million beta testers to try out their new features and solicit feedback on.

Unfortunately, there appears to be a few gaps in their process, and those gaps are allowing serious problems to go un-noticed until they are in the wild.

Another problem is that because the company is relying so heavily on their massive beta test group, they phased out their dedicated Software Test Engineering staff. This was during a massive round of layoffs that came about a year ahead of the Windows 10 release.

Apparently, the decision to remove the STE group from the equation was premature, and given the recent flood of problems, the Windows 10 feedback program appears to be in need of a serious overhaul.

Microsoft Is Changing How Searches  Will Work

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Change is coming to the way Microsoft handles search across its ecosystem.  If you use the home edition of Office, you’re not likely to notice, but if you use Office 365, the changes will be significant.

Here’s what’s happening:

First of all, the search bar will get bigger, taking a more prominent and visible place on your screen’s real estate.

Second, anywhere the company utilizes a search box (from their Bing search engine, to the OS itself, to Teams, Office and more), the plan is to provide a unified and consistent look that is intended to improve the overall user experience.

The box itself is getting a makeover and will soon start offering suggestions based on your previous search behaviors.  For instance, it may present you with a list of frequently used email contacts or documents that you’ve recently edited, with the list updating dynamically as you begin typing a term into the search field.

In addition to that, you’ll soon be able to search for commands within a given application, so instead of hunting around on the menu bar for the function you’re looking for, the search box will take you right to it, showing it among the search results.

If you’re signed into your Office 365 account, the search results will also include any documents you have saved in OneDrive or SharePoint and relevant conversations in Yammer and Teams if you use those.  It also may feature contacts from your company directory.

Most significantly, since the Bing search engine is itself a search box, those results will be displayed alongside relevant webpages.

If you’re curious to see it in action, it is currently available today as an opt-in beta/preview mode for corporate users.  It’s also available in both Outlook and SharePoint mobile apps.  The general public will be able to see it in action as soon as the second quarter of 2019, when the new functionality will be expended to Office Home, Office Desktop and Windows 10 itself.

Windows 10 Adoption Continues To Grow

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Windows 10 is far and away the fastest growing version of the OS in the company’s history.  It recently hit an installation base of a staggering 700 million devices after about three years on the market.

Note that these installation figures include installs not just on PCs, but also on Surface Hubs, Xbox, HoloLenses and smartphones.

Unfortunately, as impressive as that number is, it falls well short of Microsoft’s original estimate of a billion installs in three years.

The smaller than expected number of smartphone installations is the key reason behind the shortfall.   Initially, the company had envisioned these devices adding several hundred million installations to the total count. However, when Microsoft switched gears and decided to abandon the smartphone market, it was inevitable that they would fall well short of their original target.

It matters because part of Microsoft’s pitch to developers was the massive (projected) size of the Windows 10 market.  Now that the official numbers are in, and the final count is some 30 percent lower than anticipated, part of that appeal is understandably gone.

Even so, a market made up of 700 million devices is certainly nothing to sneeze at and developers are heavily invested in the platform, so it would make little sense for them to abandon it now.  Not to mention the fact that the number of installations is expected to continue to grow at a healthy clip for the foreseeable future.

Inside the Windows ecosystem, 43 percent of Windows PCs are currently running Windows 10, with another 45 percent still running Windows 7.  Given that support has officially ended for Windows 7, it’s all but guaranteed that Windows 10 will ultimately reach one billion installations. It will probably  reach a bit more than that as users continue to slowly migrate away from Windows 7.

At the end of the day then, although Microsoft’s time frame was a bit too aggressive, it looks like they’re going to hit the magic number.

Microsoft Outlook is Rolling Out New Design Changes

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Microsoft is making some long overdue and welcome changes to Outlook to include the Windows and the Web-based version.

People who use either one will now see a “Coming Soon” option that allows users to toggle between the version they’ve got now, and the new and improved version with the changes.

As to those changes, they fall broadly into three groups:

Better Organization – The improved Outlook offers intelligent technology, specialized icons, visual changes and a “highlights” feature that are all designed to help you manage your time better and provide a greater level of focus on your daily and weekly activities.

Improved Speed and Efficiency – The redesign is sleeker and faster. Using it will allow you to schedule meetings, read and act on emails and write new emails much more quickly than the old version.

More Customization – Hotmail users know only too well that Outlook on the web has lagged behind its competitors in terms of customization, and the redesign seeks to change that. Microsoft is playing a bit of catch up here, but any improvements on this front are welcome indeed. Among other things, you can now apply additional themes, personalize your inbox and simplify the ribbon.

There’s no word yet on how long the new features will be offered as an opt-in option, but of course, at some point, the company will mandate the change.

On balance, these are good changes. Perhaps more modest than long-time users would like to have seen, but again, any changes to one of the oldest email systems still around have to be counted as a positive.

Kudos to Microsoft for keeping Outlook reasonably up to date, and here’s hoping that the user base embraces them. which we hope hope will encourage the company to make additional improvements.

Microsoft Allowing More Time For Major Windows 10 Updates

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Microsoft has been making two major Windows 10 releases every year, giving businesses 18 months before they need to move to the next update. This plan and schedule is part of the company’s “Windows as a service” paradigm, designed to ensure that Windows 10 gets new features, as opposed to the company’s former practice of a new Windows release every three years.

In most respects, the new paradigm has to be regarded as the superior approach, but unfortunately, the pace is a bit too fast for some businesses. High level executives have pushed back, asking for more time and flexibility to update the OS, so they can be sure that business critical apps work with the latest update.

Microsoft has heard, and more importantly, they’ve listened. However, business owners didn’t get everything they wanted. Here’s the scoop:

The company is planning to release a series of cloud-based tools that will make app compatibility testing easier, and has agreed to give IT admins more time to update. As things stand now, all currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 (Enterprise and Education editions) are supported for 18 months. The company is expanding that to 30 months, but only for their September release. The March updates will still only be supported for 18 months.

While not a perfect solution, it does give everyone some of what they wanted. Businesses will have an extra year to apply the latest features if they stick to the September cycle, while firms that don’t need the extra time can simply continue on as they are.

Jared Spataro, the Corporate VP of Microsoft 365 summarized the changes this way:

“You’ve been talking, and we’ve been listening. We recognize that it takes time to both upgrade devices and operationalize new update processes. Today’s announcements are designed to respond to your feedback and make it easier, faster, and cheaper to deploy a modern desktop.”

On the whole, this is very good news indeed.

Microsoft Is Keeping Classic Skype, For Now

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Microsoft recently found itself on the receiving end of more than a little user rage when they made significant changes to Skype, with the release of version 8.  The company’s original plan was to model Skype 8 after several different social media services, but the users found the new interface to be both annoying and frustrating.

On the face of it, Skype 8 boasts a number of impressive enhancements, enabling users to screenshare inside calls, connecting with up to 24 users simultaneously and sharing up to 300MB of files via the Skype application itself.  Plus, it offers free HD video.

Unfortunately, users weren’t pleased with the fact that the redesign relied on a single window. This makes it impossible to multitask with separate conversations occurring in different windows. Some of the new features lacked professional polish (like emoji’s and @mentions).  These features would be fine for a consumer grade app, but the desktop version of Skype is something that businesses rely on heavily, and those features are of little value there.

It caused such an uproar in the Skype user community that the company abandoned their plans to end support for Skype 7 on September first, and re-branded it as “Skype Classic,” leaving it in place for the time being.  Ultimately, the feeling is that “Skype Classic” will be killed off at some point, but for now, Microsoft has chosen to listen to their user base and continue offering support for it.

The future, however, is uncertain.  While the temporary stay is useful, it is not yet known how long that will hold. The company might intend to go back to the drawing board where Skype 8 is concerned and re-think some of their design decisions to make the new version more palatable to Enterprise users.  Time will tell.

Automatic Mobile Picture Sync Coming To Windows 10

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Microsoft has made numerous ventures into the smartphone ecosystem, but so far, they’ve only been met with limited success.  This time, they’re trying something a little different.

Instead of making their own Windows-based phones, they’ve created a “Your Phone” app that syncs your phone with your PC.  The app is still in testing and is slated to be released sometime in October.

At present, while there are two versions (Android and iOS), the Android version is currently more limited than the iOS version.  The Android version works like this:  If you take a picture with your Android smartphone, it will sync automatically to your PC, allowing you to access or edit the image in something close to real time.

With the iOS version, you can surf the web on your phone, send the web page to your phone and pick up surfing where you left off.  That’s much handier, because among other things, it allows you to start watching a streaming video on your phone, then switch to a bigger screen for a better viewing experience.

In addition to the development of this new app, Microsoft is taking steps to try and bolster the popularity of its Edge browser.  Coming soon will be a biometric sign-in for Edge, which gives users a password-free method of signing into websites in hopes of keeping at least some percentage of users from switching their default browsers to Chrome, Firefox, or some other option.

At present, the changes are interesting, but not compelling.  We expect that Microsoft will continue heavily investing in integration, however, in a bid to increase its presence in the market.  Whether their latest efforts will bear fruit remains to be seen, but from what we’ve seen so far, the early versions of the Your Phone app show promise.  Kudos to Microsoft, and here’s hoping these first steps lead to even greater integration and an improvement to the overall experience down the road.

Microsoft Working On Delay Feature For Windows 10 Update Installs

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If you’ve used Windows 10 for any length of time, you’ve probably had this happen to you.  You’re right in the middle of working on something important, and all of a sudden, your OS decides it would be a great time to install some updates!

In response to user complaints, Microsoft introduced a “snooze” feature that allowed users to delay the installation of upgrades.

However, this sparked as many complaints as it silenced, because unfortunately, it causes more frequent device reboots. Now, Microsoft is trying again.

According to Dona Sarkar, Window’s Insider Chief:

“We heard you, and to alleviate this pain, if you have an update pending, we’ve updated our reboot logic to use a new system that is more adaptive and proactive.”

The company is using machine learning to accurately predict when the best time to restart the device is.

“We will not only check if you are currently using your device before we restart, but we will also try to predict if you had just left the device to grab a cup of coffee and return shortly after,” Sarkar says.

So far, the company has limited itself to internal testing, but the early results have been promising.  As of now, the new model should be available to Windows Insiders (Redstone 5 and 19H1 updates), which will give company engineers a much broader pool of feedback which will allow for additional fine-tuning.

It’s too early to tell if this is indeed the solution to the problem, but if it is, it will finally put an end to one of the most frustrating aspects of using Windows 10.  We have to say, we’re impressed with the changes in the company in recent years. Kudos to Microsoft for taking action and being responsive to their user base.

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