Windows 10 refuses to go gentle into that good night With just days remaining until Microsoft discontinues free support, Windows 10 still accounts for 40.5 percent of the Windows desktop market, At the same time, Windows 11 adoption remains at just 48.94 percent. The figures come from the Statcounter tracking code, which is installed on more than 1.5 million sites. While not …
Indeed.
Businesses obviously have zero memory, otherwise they would have ditched Windows long ago.
Users don't care, they just want a computer that works. Now that more and more things are being done via smartphone, I honestly wonder where Borkzilla is going to keep its revenue flowing from.
Not that I care, though. This pile of DRM-infested shit deserves to die whatever manglement says about its precious, precious Excel pie charts.
What should they have learned? Because there was a major difference between those and the 10 to 11 switch. When XP and 7 ended support, you could update the machines to another version of Windows without replacing the hardware. If it was 7 to 10, they probably ran just as fast if not faster because some resource improvements were made during that period (I'm not sure where 8 fell in relation to those because I, like everyone else, took one look at the initial version of 8 and decided I could skip this one because 7 had many years of support left). If it was XP to 7, the machines probably felt slow if they were from the early 2000s, because modern computers were substantially faster, especially if you were waiting until the last moment of free support in 2014. If you thought they were good enough, you could still use them. That is no longer the case.
What businesses learned with the expiration of those updates is that Microsoft eventually stops supporting an operating system, but not that hardware is forcefully ejected.
TPM is a unique identifier for your machine that is accessible to the OS. When combined with telemetry it forms an index to store your computing habits more efficiently.
It makes Microsoft more money by putting all of your rich creamy data into one convenient bucket. Convenient for them, of course. You won't see a dime.
Yes, it's also used for 'security.' MS based security they can circumvent as will.
Many server boards don't even come with TPM module. As I just bought one and there wasn't a TPM module on board and there wasn't even one available in retail.for it. So still need to use Intel PTT or the AMD version that baked in newer CPUs . And TPM only enables to use of BitLocker and secure boot, both arent critical for general users. Iits more for enterprises and user that wish to encrypt their data.do yes. It's a scam..it would be easy for MS to let PC users use Win11 if the user does not use SB or BitLocker. I wonder with PTT replacing the CPU it will still boot Win11 when BitLocker was enabled.
Sometimes laptops need their own variant of the OS. I bought a used Dell Latitude 5480 with Windows 10 from a refurbisher. It ran well but wouldn’t update. I worked out that the refurbisher had installed the bog-standard Windows 10 when it needed the Dell-specific one. I downloaded it from their website, installed it and now the updates work. I’m reluctant to install Windows 11 with the Rufus hack in case there are similar problems.
Directly from Microsoft, Windows 10 was supposed to be "The Last Windows" you have to install, as it was supposed to be "Windows as a Service" after that.
Our org has moved to Linux for almost everything - with a pair of Win10 VMs for Visual Studio - that's it.
We are not feeding MICROS~1\BORG_AI any further.
"With just days remaining until Microsoft discontinues free support"
The Reg appears to have chosen to ignore the fact, but Win 10 EUS updates are available to all* non-business users for another year. The only** caveat is you need to have a MS account to qualify.
* May not apply in some Regions - dunno - but Europe/UK are well served by this.
** But you may need to jump through some technical hoops if you run Win10 Home, as activating EUS requires an account with local admin rights, which could be a faff for non-techies running Win10 Home edition (No "Local Users & Groups" snap-in!)
I never give my real D.O.B when signing up for anything online, unless its for banking or to a government service which I need to provide correct details.
Certainly there is no way Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google are having any of that info. As that exactly the sort of details, if leaked are a gold mine for identity theft and it not something they need to know to allow me to get some software updates, send an email or post on social media.
I keep getting a pop up on my phone from Google saying I need to enter a D.O.B to comply with some regulation or other, I just swipe it and it goes away for now. If they eventually force me to enter a D.O.B i won't be using my genuine one.
Outside of Europe the updates are gated behind even more arbitrary requirements - either do a cloud backup with OneDrive, pay with Microsoft Rewards Funbucks, or pay with money. Sure it's free to use cloud backup, but it looks like MS is determined to make sure as many users as possible remain unprotected.
They could just turn on the updates. They're already giving them out for free.
As a personal user, here's what I'm hoping will work to keep my i5 DDR3 PC viable for a few more years:
1) Activate Windows ESU https://massgrave.dev/
2) Use Legacy Update https://github.com/LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate
I'd love to switch to Linux but it just doesn't have the all applications I like to use.
It's not a case of Linux not "having" your applications, but a case of your applications not "having" Linux (support or workarounds)
Complain to your application vendors
Also out of curiosity: What applications? Many of us here may be able to suggest workarounds (e.g. Wine, Proton) or alternatives that you haven't tried
If it's a Yubikey then you can do that on Linux. Other hardware tokens may vary of course
As for your MD's "special software", I find that most crusty old software e.g. that released for WinXP etc, runs far better on Wine than it ever did on Windows.. Exceptions being anything that requires its own special kernel-mode rootkitdriver, which may well be the case for "government" apps .. This is why so many governments have a crusty airgapped XP box lurking somewhere.. It might be appropriate to stick it in a virtualbox VM, without network access of course
Nope, no can do. The certificate is only available on vendor specific USB key (they sell the key, why do you ask?).
The software only works on Chrom* on Windows as it uses a 'special' addon, previously known as an ActiveX control (remember those?). Of course they could 'save' the certificate on their cloud, after all nothing runs locally and do the signing there*, but .... 'it's too complicated and not secure' (qoute from their response) so they generate the documents on my machine, sign them, upload them to their cloud then upload them to the governement servers.
Ditch them and look for another company? Next best one uses only MS SQL.
----
* the accounting software does just that, I can work on Windows, Linux, Android, Apple....
"- special software for an MD, compatible with Romania's SIUI."
If your government requires you to give money to a foreign company, it is probably worth asking your elected representatives what the fuckity fuck they think they are playing at. Also ask whether said government is willing to provide a free computer for you to use to run their cretinously broken pile of shit software, without compromising your own IT security.
flyby11 has been brilliant on unsupported machines. some dating back over 10 years. I actually drew the upgrade line where the pcs were dual core and so far only two out of 80 or so have been proved to be difficult to force an update but have been earmarked for replacement. Whilst i'm aware that a future update could cause issues, it does mean that the clients computers have been given a lifeline and once prices fall to reasonable levels again, will be replaced.
Once you make the switch to Linux, you will soon wonder how you ever got along without it. It will spoil you.
The only app missing is a Quickbooks type app, but other than that, from office to development, to graphics, to CAD, to audio, to video processing, to ... whatever, it's all there and much, much, more. I've run Linux as a primary desktop and server OS for (?) ... 23 years now. I also have many windows boxes, and have had during that 23 year period, and don't really have a gripe about that either, but returning to windows as a primary OS would be as limiting as trading in your latest car for a horse-and-buggy again.
Not worth the grief, just load Linux and be done with it. Load it on a new SSD if you will and pull and save your windows drive in a drawer (for emergencies). It won't be long before it's just a forgotten drive in a drawer somewhere.
Just had another full screen Windoze 11 advert - on one of my customers' machines that doesn't have the required TPM module (over 10 years old). That's now the 4th time by my count.
The longer this debacle continues the more I'm certain that M$ doesn't care about customers and only cares about their bottom line and the ongoing access to other people's data for their own purposes.
at the office, we are not going to Win11.
1. Win 10 machines which must be used will be moved to the 'special' network, which has no external access and is extremely locked down. There are other legacy machines already there. Legacy hardware/software will be replaced ASAP.
2. All other Win10 machines will be converted to Ubuntu.
3. New machines going forwards will be Ubuntu or Mac. Note that I have several quotes from Lenovo for desktop and laptop systems which ship with Ubuntu preinstalled, not Windows anything. HP (ick) and Dell (double ick) have been less forthcoming. It would appear that the future, around here at least, is Apple and Lenovo.
4. We are also moving on from MS server solutions. Our old WinServer 2016 and 2019 systems are being replaced by nice new hardware, running Linux server software. We like ADDS and GPOs... just not enough to stick with them unsupported, or to pay extra just because MS wants 2016 and 2019 gone. We will have all servers replaced by December.
5. the only real reasons to keep MS Office were Excel and Outlook. Excel is being replaced. Outlook... well, MS just 'increased security' on Outlook; older Mac systems are getting notifications that some accounts, notably Gmail accounts, require that the user update to the latest version of macOS. Simpler solutions for most legacy Macs were to delete Gmail accounts from Outlook or just to delete Outlook. As the legacy Win10 systems are locked down with no external access, the Outlook problems do not affect them. The last remaining MS Office installs will be on machines which are locked away from external connections and which will never, ever, be upgraded. (They will also never, ever, see MS adware.)
Congratulations, Sad Nad. You have succeeded in making this company Microsoft-frei, or at least it will be in the foreseeable future. Good job. Do carry on. Apple, Ubuntu, and Lenovo sales should send you a gift basket.
Lenovo is a non-starter for us, being a Chinese company. Our US government contracts would never allow it. Some of Dell's server lines offer RHEL or Ubuntu as options, but I haven't seen anything besides Windoze on their workstations...
I am curious: does your shop use Active Directory for user management? If so, what are you moving to?
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I have both physical and virtual PCs running Windows 7 and XP, still connected to the Internet, and they have never had any problems. Mainly because I know better not to do shady stuff or visit some websites.
I can do things with them that I cannot with any flavor of those "penguins". Reg readers can keep their less than 5% home market share OS.
You clearly don't know better that to have outdated operating systems connected to the internet.
Keeping legacy systems up and running for select services or applications offline, or on a closed network, sure, this makes sense.
Having them on the internet, does not.
Curious what things you claim can do on them that you cannot on a more modern OS, not just from MS but Linux or Mac?
...notice a big update on their personal Win10 machines a few days ago?
Not the usual shenanigans, this was a good couple of hours and several reboots to install. I assumed MS must be force-feeding me a Win11 upgrade so once it was finally done the first thing was a "winver". No, still Win10 so what was all that about?
No I won't be upgrading that machine. It has a supported CPU but a non-upgradable 4GB memory. If it hadn't been a convertible for under £200 I wouldn't have bought it.
I didn't, but you can find a history of which updates were installed at which times. Given the general frequency they come through, if there was one big update, tracking it down is probably as simple as finding the only thing that installed on that day. You can then find details about what was in the update using its identification number.
A re-post of what I put onto yesterdays article
There are plenty of articles on how to get Win11 onto supposedly incompatible hardware, but for those that don't want to do the research, try this as a starters for 10 (pun intended).
Get hold of Rufus and use that to create a Windows 11 memory stick from the original MS installation media - details on the Rufus web site. It can inject the relevant registry punches to bypass the TPM/CPU checks, bypass the MS account requirement and and turn off Bitlocker to name but a few. Alternately, you can make these reg punches before just installing vanilla Win11.
Once the install stick has been created, if you have WinAeroTweaker is installed, remove its policies, since that can cause some update failures. Its easy to re-install at the endo.
Run set up from within Windows 10, and hope for the best. Some articles say to choose the option of defering updates to after the install.
If it fails at 75% of doing updates, then rolls back to Win10. Remove your AV whilst you install, then put it back on afterwards. I had this one one machine, but on reflection, it might have been the problem detailed below instead ..
Once Win11 has installed and started updating, you might get some compatibility issues, or it might be fine. I've had both outcomes.
I had one machine that was a bit flaky, it would restart the desktop / explorer interface every so often, or hang on right click operations., This was some add-on software, so use Nirsoft's ShellEx to find the offending add-in and disable it. Mine turned out to be some old Vista search add-ons that were still present in 11 after the upgrade. No idea whilst they remained through Win10.
Then its just a bit of customisation.
Move the start menu to the left side - right click on task bar, task bar behaviours, alignment = left.
Turn on the older right click menus with reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve
Disable Windows recall with a privileged command prompt and run DISM /Online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Recall
Install WinAero Tweaker and turn off the things you don't like - adverts, telemetry, etc.
I've done this successfully on a handful of machine, not because I want Win11, but because I don't want to be in the lack of patches wilderness and in any case, much of my time will be in Debian anyhow.
Others are saying that some updates don't work aferwards, but I'v seen updates flowing in just fine.
This works for sure, buy not for enterprise that has compliance audits.
I upgraded three of our still very powerful W10 desktops that had been flagged as non-W11 upgradeable.
I used the Rufus method you described and it was a straightforward upgrade.
2 days later the security team got in touch to say the machines had flagged up as non-compliant and were not allowed to run W11.
It annoys me so much that MS are throwing BS requirements at W11. These desktops are Core i7s, 64GB ram, Nvidia quadro cards, 2x 1TB SSDs.
They still absolutely fly along!
We've got 40 of these machines, all heading to charity on October 14th. And we're replacing them with 40 new desktops at £2600 each.
"This works for sure, buy not for enterprise that has compliance audits."
...which may go some way to explaining why MS have started to go soft on consumers but are sticking with the rigid approach for businesses. They know that (medium and large) businesses can't use the tricks.
Look, I wish it was as simple as ditching Windows forever, but the simple, brute fact of the matter is that Microsoft has lock-in on its products.
Everyone scoffs at the plebs using Microsoft Office, but that's literally what's keeping everyone in the Enterprise on it. Yes, you could migrate to FLOSS alternatives, and I'm sure they're very good, but it takes a series of incompatibilities, some of them deliberately introduced by Microsoft, to spook enterprise users who don't use it. It requires work, and costs money, migrations can fail, and company IT orgs are conservative on that regard.
Plus, Microsoft isn't obligated to make it any easier for people to leave — they have no reason for letting people go into other platforms. They get to force people to upgrade, and the ones left behind will be told that it's their own damn fault for not keeping up with the times and justifying Microsoft's inaction and abandonment.
Furthermore, everyone in their industry uses Windows, and they transact their work in Microsoft products, so why are they leaving? That is the the last, great moat that companies have to face when leaving Microsoft — the other companies they do business with are with Microsoft, too, and they're not leaving. It's why Adobe still has a market, as well — where it dominates, it has ways of keeping their customers locked in to abuse at their pleasure.
Pretty much the only thing you can do is to get governments to terrify Microsoft execs by subjecting them to criminal liability on monopolization and force them to allow inter-operation and “paths to exit” for enterprises and consumers. Then you'll get some action.
It doesn't even have to be very much — even the threat of criminal charges kept Microsoft quiet and docile long enough for Google to come to power. Even two weeks in jail, with the ability for underlings to narc on their bosses to get better deals, will cause them to fold faster than pita bread.
And doing it to Microsoft will signal to others that they can't do the sort of shenanigans that were almost commonplace during these past four decades. You just need to do one, and the others will fall in line, as Voltaire would say, “pour encourager les autres”.
Of course, considering how cozy Microsoft and all the other big tech companies are with the many, many, many repressive, undemocratic, reactionary and corrupt regimes around the world… that's not going to happen, true. All I'm saying is, neither will voting for your wallet, or worse, expecting others to do so.
"Everyone scoffs at the plebs using Microsoft Office, but that's literally what's keeping everyone in the Enterprise on it."
I don't believe it. I think it is the central management provided by AD. Linux has perfectly good options for stuff like web, email and Office software. In most cases they are probably more familiar than the MS equivalents because they don't get buggered by "UI experts" every couple of years.
But keeping the entire fleet under consistently enforced policies? Well, yes, you probably can do that on Linux but hardly any of your IT admins will be familiar with the ways and means. AD is what they know.
According to MS, Active Directory is a thing of the past, to be replaced as soon as possible with MS Entra ID.
Something that is totally unsuitable for properly managing users & devices.
Now, as End User Computing manager for an international group, with 45 years of experiences around personal computers, I am really ready to retire as soon as possible and let the shit hit the fan...
I don't believe it. I think it is the central management provided by AD. Linux has perfectly good options for stuff like web, email and Office software.
Yes to web and email, but only because their offerings there are so incredibly poor. IIS, Outlook and Edge? LOL. LMAO.
With office automation? Oh no. There are one or two features that keep people locked in. In word processing, it's the (many many) undocumented elements of formatting that can randomly break documents, and Track Changes and Comments. I know law and publishing that live and die by that, I'm afraid. With spreadsheets, it's the formulas. And it's worse there, because you can't be sure that the many idiosyncrasies that Excel and the XLS format has that might be crucial, and once again, there's the whole change tracking and commentary functionality that sees some use, but not as frequently as in Word. You can't access these with Linux, outside of using Office 365 on the web, and even then you've got limitations. Oh, and probably WINE, I guess.
No one really gives a shit about PowerPoint. Worse case scenario they'll just switch to PDF and present that way, that works well enough.
The trouble isn't that it's not compatible at all, but that there's a small random amount of breakage that happens, and companies are reluctant to add another platform to support. And Microsoft is attempting to handle Linux differently than they handled Mac OS — instead of maintaining a separate version of Office that randomly breaks things and inserts unwanted invisible nonsense (I hate you, Word for Mac OS), they're just neglecting Linux completely and relying on other tools to ensure that access is given to end-users at all, while making no effort (or negative effort, you can never tell) that compatibility or functionality breaks at random.
The goal isn't to move directly against non-Windows users. The goal is to give the impression of neglect and hope the random breakages cause companies to stay away.
I bought my Lenovo computer in October, 2014. I upgraded the memory and also went from Iron hard drive to SSD. The machine runs flawless and is perfect for my needs. I can't upgrade to Windows 11 and I cannot afford a new computer. What's next for people like me?? (Located in USA)
As a small business, we were able to move away from Microsoft about 10 years ago. We're now solidly Apple only and never regret that move for a minute. The cost saving in downtime alone has paid for our machines over and over. We retain a few spare machines with Windows 11 just for testing. The ironic thing is we have a warning on all of these machines telling us we need to update Windows 11 but the machines will not accept the update. In other words, buy more Windows machines that work with the current flavour of Win 11. Naw. Not going to do it.
I am sick and tired of Microsoft attempting to strong-arm me into products I don't need or want, and trying to snoop all sorts of data ..I just don't trust them any more.
If it was "hey we have these cool services..would you like to..." rather than "If you want windows you will submit and register an account, and we WILL forcefully install services/products that you never asked for..." Then we will not even allow you to run the computer that you just bought
