You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen with 7+ Taskbar Tweaker as a result of these changes in Windows 11. I see three options going forward:
- Fix the incompatibility by reimplementing and/or adjusting the code to work with the new taskbar implementation of Windows 11.
- Create a new tool (11 Taskbar Tweaker?) or come up with a new solution to achieve the customization that 7+ Taskbar Tweaker provides for Windows 10 and below.
- Do nothing and give up on taskbar customization for Windows 11.
I’ll do my best to go with option 1 or 2, not 3. I need to get more familiar with the new technology and implementation, and I also want to wait and see whether new customization options are added to the new taskbar in newer builds. For now, I lean towards option 2, but I don’t promise feature parity, and currently I can’t tell when I’ll have something to show.
A simple, easy to use PowerShell script to remove pre-installed apps, disable telemetry, as well as perform various other changes to customize, declutter and improve your Windows experience. Win11Debloat works for both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Tldr: Boot into safe mode, and restart. Voila.
I cloned my 970 Evo Plus to a 990 Pro Put the 990 in place of the 970 and moved the latter to another m.2 slot. Cloned with clonezilla. Booted into windows, but it seemingly booted onto the 970, as it said the 990 had a "collision" (of ids). So, after that I took out the 970.... Got this error. Fix was to boot into safe mode, and it magically worked.
To enroll your PC in the ESU program, you'll need to meet Microsoft's list of requirements and anti-requirements, which we'll summarize here for convenience:
- A PC running Windows 10 Home, Pro, Pro Education, or Workstation with all available update installed.
- An administrator account.
- A Microsoft account. Even if you usually sign in with a local account, you need a Microsoft account to acquire the ESU license.
- The PC can't be in kiosk mode, joined to an Active Directory domain, joined to Microsoft Entra, or enrolled in any kind of mobile device management (MDM), which will cover a lot of workplace PCs. Microsoft has separate ESU programs for businesses, schools, and other large organizations.
If your PC meets those conditions, you'll enroll in the ESU program by opening the Settings app and clicking Windows Update. You should see a status message telling you that Windows 10 updates end in October of 2025, with an "enroll now" link you can click to enroll in the Extended Security Updates program.
These ten features would make users more productive
Tells The Reg China's ability to p0wn Redmond's wares 'gives me a political aneurysm'
Roger Cressey served two US presidents as a senior cybersecurity and counter-terrorism advisor and currently worries he'll experience a "political aneurysm" due to Microsoft's many security messes.
In the last few weeks alone, Microsoft disclosed two major security vulnerabilities – along with news that attackers exploited one involving SharePoint as a zero-day. The second flaw, while not yet under exploitation, involves Exchange server – a favorite of both Russian and Chinese spies for years. //
"This is the latest episode of a decades-long process of Microsoft not taking security seriously. Full stop," Cressey said, acknowledging that the government continues spending billions on Microsoft products. "Anytime there's a major announcement of a Microsoft procurement by the government, the happiest people in the world first are in Redmond and second in Beijing."
Microsoft declined to comment for this story, but did point out that Google Cloud is a client of Cressey's in his consulting work.
It's going to be difficult to fix, they said, and would require a significant code rewrite or trying to use the TPM module to store the biometric data - which might not be possible. They recommended that, if you are using Hello for Business without ESS, then disable the biometrics and stick with logging in using a PIN. //
Using Sysinternal's CoreInfo tool and a webpage from 2011 (yes, apparently 14 years ago if the date is trustworthy), you can check if your computer meets the requirements.
Note: Do execute the correct bitness version of coreinfo.exe. Running the 32-bit version on a 64-bit OS fails to work.
Signing up for Microsoft's ESU program will get you one year of security updates. Look for the enrollment wizard in notifications and Settings to get started. //
Previously limited to Insiders, the program has now been opened to all individual users. "Starting today, individuals will begin to see an enrollment wizard through notifications and in Settings, making it simple to select the best option for you and enroll in ESU directly from your personal Windows 10 PC," Microsoft said in a blog post on Tuesday.
Fight back against Redmond's productivity sinks. //
To disable widgets, right-click on your taskbar, select Taskbar Settings, and then toggle Widgets to off. //
To make the lock screen ads go away, first navigate to Settings->Personalization->Lock screen. Then select Picture instead of Windows Spotlight under "Personalize your lock screen." Finally, select None under "Lock screen status.". //
To disable Search highlights, open the Search menu, select Search settings from the … menu and then toggle Show Search Highlights to off.
dnGrep allows you to search across files with easy-to-read results. Search through text files, Word and Excel documents, PDFs, and archives using text, regular expression, XPath, and phonetic queries. dnGrep includes search-and-replace, whole-file preview, right-click search in File Explorer, and much more.
One of the changes that will be welcomed by many users, but business and enterprise users in particular, is the arrival of a new way to remove all unwanted Microsoft apps in one fell swoop. Via Group Policy, the new Remove Default Microsoft Store Packages policy helps to debloat Windows 11 in a flash. //
Currently available in the preview builds of Windows 11 on the Dev Channel, the Remove Default Microsoft Store Packages simplifies and accelerates the process. With the latest Dev build install, head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > App Package Deployment and you’ll find a Remove Default Microsoft Store packages from the system setting. //
There is a beautifully detailed breakdown of how the policy works over on Patch My PC, where there is also the suggestion that eager tinkerers can experiment with hacking the list of supported apps. https://patchmypc.com/blog/remove-default-microsoft-store-packages/
Last month, Microsoft released a modern remake of its classic MS-DOS Editor, bringing back a piece of computing history that first appeared in MS-DOS 5.0 back in 1991. The new open source tool, built with Rust and simply called "Edit," works on Windows, macOS, and—in a twist that would have seemed unlikely three decades ago—Linux. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/edit-is-now-open-source/
Aside from ease of use, Microsoft's main reason for creating the new version of Edit stems from a peculiar gap in modern Windows. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," writes Nguyen while referring to the command-line interface, or CLI. "32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox.". //
https://github.com/microsoft/edit
At 250KB, the new Edit maintains the lightweight philosophy of its predecessor while adding features the original couldn't dream of: Unicode support, regular expressions, and the ability to handle gigabyte-sized files. The original editor was limited to files smaller than 300KB depending on available conventional memory—a constraint that seems quaint in an era of terabyte storage.
Microsoft will also extend a year of additional Windows 10 security updates to any users who opt into Windows Backup, a relatively recent Windows 10 and Windows 11 app that backs up some settings and files using a Microsoft account. Users can also opt into ESU updates by spending 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, which are handed out for everything from making purchases with your Microsoft account to doing Bing searches. //
FIxed the taskbar with Stardock's Start 11. Restored traditional right click menu with a registry entry . Now it works the way it should have been with the UI and Start Menu. //
Also, your Windows 11 taskbar is hot garbage. Fix it. If you're not sure how, Valinet's Explorer Patcher handles it pretty well; ask him.
How to fix high CPU usage while there is nothing in the Task Manager? //
To use Windows Defender, follow these simple steps:
- Press the Windows Key+I to open “Settings”.
- Select Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection.
- Click “Run a new advanced scan”. In earlier versions, click “Advanced scan”.
- Select “Windows Defender Offline scan”.
- Click the “Scan now” button. This restarts your PC and the scanning process begins. (It’s important to save and close all your work before proceeding).
If this doesn’t resolve the high CPU usage on your computer, try the next solution.
Solution 3: Check if the WMI is hogging your CPU
The WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), also known as the WMI Provider Host process or WmiPrvSE.exe, is a Windows service that helps to monitor various systems on a network. Since it handles a large number of systems, it’s not uncommon for the WMI to run out of control and cause abnormal CPU usage.
Sdelete is short for Secure Delete and it permanently wipes files by overwriting them–sometimes multiple times, which makes recovery virtually impossible. This tool is part of the Sysinternals suite from Mark Russinovich, which now belongs to Microsoft. It works according to the Clearing and Sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M of the US Department of Defense.
To get to the emergency restart option, you need to press the familiar Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard shortcut, known by pretty much everyone who's ever had to fix a Windows PC at some point. This shortcut is designed to work even if your computer is otherwise unresponsive, and gives you access to options for locking your PC, signing out of your account, and bringing up the Task Manager.
Down in the lower right corner, there's also a power button: Click this and you get the standard Sleep, Shut down, and Restart options. However, if you hold down Ctrl and then click the power button, that takes you to the emergency restart page, together with the warning about losing any unsaved data. Click OK, and your computer will reboot itself almost instantly.
If you can get to the screen after Ctrl+Alt+Del, then you'll want to try the normal restart option first—you'll only need to go down the holding Ctrl route if that doesn't work. Presumably, that will be because there's a program or a part of the Windows code that isn't shutting down properly to clear the way for a restart.
Independent researchers have discovered, or should we say rediscovered, a major security vulnerability in Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Previously known as Terminal Services, RDP appears to be designed to always validate a previously used password for remote connections to a Windows machine, even when that password has been revoked by a system administrator or compromised in a security breach. //
The flaw violates universally acknowledged operational security (opsec) practices – and then some. When a password is changed, it should no longer provide access to a remote system. "People trust that changing their password will cut off unauthorized access," Wade said. //
According to Microsoft, the behavior is a design decision meant to "ensure that at least one user account always has the ability to log in no matter how long a system has been offline."
The company had already been warned about this backdoor by other researchers in August 2023, making the new analysis ineligible for a bounty award. Redmond engineers reportedly attempted to modify the code to eliminate the backdoor but abandoned the effort, as the changes could break compatibility with a Windows feature that many applications still rely on. //
brucek brucekMay 2, 2025, 3:30 PM
And on the flip side, RDP doesn't recognize a valid Microsoft Account password that is not cached on the local machine. This can easily happen on a new install where you've only logged in using methods other than the password (PIN, windows hello, etc.) This is a great way to lose an hour wondering why you can't log in because it's so easy to think the problem must be some other configuration problem with setting up RDP or elsewhere in the system. //
FireStormOOOMay 2, 2025, 9:05 PM
This is cached credentials working the same way it had for decades, and it's been configurable by GPO for almost as long. The administrator chooses how long the server will remember stale credentials if it can't reach a domain controller immediately to check. No, the defaults don't make sense for a server that expects 100% availability of your authentication infrastructure.
The Windows Time service (W32Time) synchronizes the date and time for all computers managed by Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). This article covers the different tools and settings used to manage the Windows Time service.
I just got a note from @Microfix that pointed me to an interesting discussion from Ionut Ilascu at BleepingComputer:
After Microsoft ends support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 on January 14, 2020, 0Patch platform will continue to ship vulnerability fixes to its agents.
“Each Patch Tuesday we’ll review Microsoft’s security advisories to determine which of the vulnerabilities they have fixed for supported Windows versions might apply to Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 and present a high-enough risk to warrant micropatching”
Micropatches will normally be available to paying customers (Pro – $25/agent/year – and Enterprise license holders). However, Kolsek says that there will be exceptions for high-risk issues that could help slow down a global-level spread, which will be available to non-paying customers, too.
Many of you know that 0Patch has been issuing quick fixes for bad bugs in recent patches. In all cases, I’ve refrained from recommending them, simply because I’m concerned about applying third party patches directly to Windows binaries. That said, to date, they’ve had a very good track record. Whether they can continue that record with patches-on-patches-on-patches remains to be seen, of course.
I fully expect Microsoft to release patches for newly discovered major security flaws, even after January 14. Whether those will step on the 0Patch patches is anybody’s guess.
Definitely something worth considering….