Windows 10 news

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Windows 10 KB5001330 update fails: FPS drop, system crashes reported

According to multiple reports (1, 2, 3, 4) over on the social media sites, Feedback Hub and our comments section, it looks as though there is a growing number of users unable to install the latest Windows update on their hardware.

KB5001330 issues:

Blue Screen of Death (system crashes, boot loop)
Temporary user profile bug.
FPS drop.

Windows 10 feature update: Here's what to expect in the next release

Goodbye again, Flash—Microsoft makes removal from Windows 10 mandatory

The update in question won't remove third-party installations of the Flash player—only versions that have been bundled with Windows itself. The change seems unlikely to significantly impact most people—Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari each ended Flash support by January 1, 2021.

Although Internet Explorer 11 (and the IE mode in Microsoft Edge) supports direct installation of downloaded Flash players as a plug-in, the Adobe Flash Player itself has a built-in "kill-switch" causing it to refuse to play Flash content if the system date is later than January 12, 2021.

In addition to all builds of Windows 10, KB4577586 is available and will be installed as a security update on Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Embedded 8 Standard.

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Windows Defender bug fills Windows 10 boot drive with thousands of files

There are times when it is important to determine what version of Microsoft Defender is currently installed in Windows 10 so you can diagnose a problem or determine if you have the latest version installed.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not make it very clear how to find this information. This tutorial aims to clear up that confusion.

To find the version number for the installed Microsoft Defender in Windows 10, please follow these steps

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Microsoft is starting to roll out its Windows 10 21H1 feature update.

There is only a handful of new features in Windows 10 21H1, including support for multiple Windows Hello-enabled cameras; Windows Defender Application Guard improvements, and improvements in Windows Management Instrumentation via Group Policy. The new Chromium-based Edge browser also is available as part of today's 21H1 release.

Microsoft confirms Windows 10X is dead

Windows 10X was going to appear in 2021 as more of a Chrome OS competitor, and Microsoft had spent years trying to modernize Windows in an attempt to bring a more lightweight version to market. Windows RT first released alongside the original Surface tablet in 2012, and then Windows 10 S arrived in 2017. Both failed to simplify Windows, but Windows 10X had some promising features that will now start to appear in Windows 10 instead.

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Windows 10 News and Interests enabled for everyone in latest update

Starting with last month's Windows 10 preview cumulative updates, Microsoft enabled News and Interests for all users running Windows 10 1909 and later.

However, as most Windows users do not install the preview updates, many Windows 10 devices did not get the new feature until Microsoft released yesterday's June 2021 Patch Tuesday mandatory cumulative updates.

To disable the News and Interests widget, right-click on an empty portion of your taskbar, select 'News and interests,' and then click on 'Turn off.'

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Make way for Windows 11? Windows 10 end-of-life is October 2025

"Windows 10 Home and Pro"—no code names, no minor version numbers—is now listed as retiring on October 14, 2025. "Retiring" is a part of the Modern Lifecycle Policy and means that the retired product leaves support entirely; this does not follow the old Fixed Lifecycle Policy with "mainstream" and "extended" support. Retired is retired—hit the pasture.

For now, it's unclear what a new "Windows 11" means for end-users—there are no guarantees that existing Windows 10 licenses will allow the use of Windows 11, let alone an in-place upgrade. We also have no concrete idea about when new releases of Windows 10 will cease, when the first Windows 11 will be available, or what costs will be.

We do have an educated guess or two, though. Microsoft's generous upgrade policies from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (you can still upgrade for free today!) strongly imply a similar policy for 11, which Microsoft will presumably be keen to get users on. We also don't expect under-the-hood changes as sweeping as the ones that took place between 7 and 10. In all likelihood, in-place upgrades will be available.

Windows 11 announced

There are three key hardware requirements from this morass of information:

Windows 11 requires a 64-bit CPU;
Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0;
Windows 11 requires at least an eighth-generation Intel processor or an AMD processor from no earlier than 2019.

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Microsoft will force update your PCs to Windows 10 21H2 to train its own ML Update model

We started the first phase in the Windows 10, version 21H2 rollout for machine learning (ML) training. We are targeting devices on Windows 10, version 20H2 that are approaching end of servicing to update automatically to version 21H2.

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More than half of PCs can't upgrade to Windows 11 — report

It’s likely that any machine more than a couple of years old will not be compatible with (and therefore not upgradable to) Windows 11. And PCs are even more unlikely to be compliant if they're older, lower-end machines, Gold said.