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I've used a computer running Windows 7 to file our federal taxes for several years. Microsoft will stop support and security updates on January 14, 2020. We always file as soon as we get all tax forms (usually early February). Wondering if we would be safe doing the same one more time. Thoughts?

Hail of notifications incoming... just be thankful 8 passed you by Updated Windows 7 holdouts have been warned to expect a notification suggesting that perhaps an upgrade might be in order.Matt Barlow, corporate veep for Windows, has promised Windows 7 users are to receive a "courtesy reminder" that support is running out for the venerable OS as 14 January 2020 looms large.Barlow also noted that Office 2010 ends its support run shortly thereafter, but for now the focus is on Windows 7.The helpful notifications will doubtless send a shiver of déjà vu down the spines of users who found themselves...

Article title: "Disclosing vulnerabilities to protect users across platforms" ... The second vulnerability was in Microsoft Windows. It is a local privilege escalation in the Windows win32k.sys kernel driver that can be used as a security sandbox escape... We strongly believe this vulnerability may only be exploitable on Windows 7 due to recent exploit mitigations added in newer versions of Windows. To date, we have only observed active exploitation against Windows 7 32-bit systems. Pursuant to Google’s vulnerability disclosure policy, when we discovered the vulnerability we reported it to Microsoft. Today, also in compliance with our policy, we are publicly...

Windows Server 2012 admins should crank it up to 11 Microsoft has warned that it isn't only Windows 7 for the chop in 2020. Unloved Internet Explorer 10 will be joining it. Finally.Internet Explorer 10 first appeared back in 2012 and in 2016 Microsoft made a concerted effort to kill the thing by focusing its support efforts on Internet Explorer 11. Anything not Edge-related or without "11" after it would no longer be supported.However, not every operating system was capable of actually running Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft infamously restricted its Edge browser to Windows 10 (and later iOS and...

If you get an error code that starts with 0x8024, the Windows Update Troubleshooter can help resolve the problem. Make sure you have internet access, then download the Update Troubleshooter version that matches your version of Windows. Download Update Troubleshooter for Windows 10 Download Update Troubleshooter for Windows 7 and Windows 8

Activation server fiddling on day of monthly update... really? Microsoft has said that activation errors seen by Windows 7 users should not be chalked up to Tuesday's patch, but rather were an entirely different cockup.Windows Activation Technologies is the Jiminy Cricket of Windows 7, chirping at you if it thinks you might not be paying for your licensing. Combining Jiminy with the Key Management Service (KMS) on Windows 7, as many enterprise customers likely do (even though Microsoft wishes they wouldn't), hasn't caused too many headaches.Until this week.A tweak to the Activation Servers saw happily licensed Windows 7 users suddenly...

Quality Assurance? We've heard of it Microsoft has doubled down on efforts to persuade users to migrate to Windows 10 by breaking Windows 7 networking for some.Windows Server 2008 R2 is also affected.While the last few monthly updates for the soon-to-be-obsolete OSes featured a known issue affecting an "unknown" number of "problematic configurations" that require manual reinstalls of network drivers, January's monthly update seems to have upped the ante somewhat.2019's treat has seen some users finding their shares are now inaccessible, with RDP and other connectivity also suffering.The issue, which affects both the bonzer monthly roll-up (KB4480970) and the more...

More than three years after its release, Windows 10 has passed Windows 7 in market share. That means more desktop computers are now running Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system than any other OS, according to Net Applications. The milestone is a nice way for Microsoft to end 2018, even though the company surely was hoping it wouldn’t take this long for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7.Windows 10 adoption started out very strong, but slowed quickly as the months progressed. Microsoft was aiming for 1 billion devices running Windows 10 in two to three years but backpedaled on that...

But there's still a long way before Windows 7 can be laid to rest MICROSOFT could see Windows 10 finally catch up to evergreen Windows 7 by the new year if this months market share figures are anything to go by.The monthly numbers from Netmarketshare show 40.88 per cent of desktop users on Windows 7, with Windows 10 at 37.44 per cent, just 3.44 behind as we head into the busy period of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Santa's subsequent annual giveaway.Third place goes to the latest version of macOS, with version 10.13 on 6.08 per cent. Windows 8.1 is fourth...

StatCounter and NetMarketShare are the two primary OS market data sources. Both those sites paint a somewhat different picture regarding Windows 10’s and Windows 7’s market share for desktops and laptops. NetMarketShare highlights that Windows 7 still has the largest user base, but the latest StatCounter data shows that Windows 10 is pulling further ahead of Windows 7.StatCounter’s latest data for July 2018 shows that Windows 10 now has a 47.25% market share, which is just about its largest ever figure to date. Windows 7‘s percentage share has dropped from 39.63% to 39.06% on StatCounter’s graph. Thus, Win 10‘s...

Need Trump Rally Video that will play on Explorer 12, in Windows 7

Howdy folks. A few years ago, I purchased a refurb Dell PC through Staples. Today, I'm stuck in the infinite startup-and-repair loop. With the refurb PCs, they don't supply physical media. I made a bootable USB on my laptop, but that doesn't work. I can repair only if I have an installation disc. Now, if I had purchased this software directly from MS, MS would allow me to directly download the ISO image after inputting my product key on the website. I have the product key -- the refurb company put a new label on the side of the PC....

OS-detection services disagree on which Windows reigns Web analytics outfit StatCounter last week trumpeted news that Windows 10’s market share overtook Windows 7’s for the first time in January 2018. But other ratings services didn’t find the same result.StatCounter’s assessment of Windows version market share for January 2018 suggested that Windows 10 scored 42.78 per cent of Windows’ market share, as measured by worldwide internet. That compared to 41.86 per cent for Windows 7.Here’s a pretty graph showing the trend.StatCounter’s trend lines for Windows version market share. Click here to embiggen Before you figure out how to start selling champagne...

Long a mainstay of the old-fashioned Windows interface fan club, Classic Shell’s developer Ivo Beltchev has thrown in the towel, releasing the code to SourceForge Hundreds of millions of downloads just doesn’t cut it, apparently. Ivo Beltchev, who first released the Start Menu replacement in 2009, has decided it just isn’t worth the effort any more. Yesterday he posted this on his official web blog:After months of deliberation, I have decided to stop the development of Classic Shell… There were few factors that led to my decision: Lack of free time.Windows 10 is being updated way too frequentlyEach new version...

I am in need of a new computer. I gotten the blue screen of death three times.I am not very savvy on operating or even on understanding a lot of the technical stuff. I know I don't want Windows10 because my wife has been struggling with it and I don't handle frustration well. I also don't like the idea of "renting" software with potential contract changes every year. I have heard that there are outlets that sell laptops with Windows7. That's what I've been using for years and it is where I'm comfortable. I'd like directions on where I might...

The market share of Windows 10 is rising and, if the numbers by known analyst firms turn out to be true, Windows 10 might have a greater market share than the all-time popular Windows 7. According to the numbers by Statcounter, the total market share of Windows 10 as of September is 39.3% which isn’t much less than that of Windows 7 (43.99%). Also, the market share graph in the case of Windows 10 is constantly rising, it saw a bump of 1.43% between August and September. By looking at the graph, it’s visible that there has been a decline...

Looks like Microsoft’s Windows 10 is growing very slowly now. Last month Windows 10 market share had grown by 1%. The new report by NetMarkeShare revealed that Windows 10 share has increased to 27.99% from 27.63%. Good news is that Windows 10 market share is still increasing but very slowly.Windows 8.1 market share dropped to 6.07% from the 6.48%, Windows XP’s share also decreased slightly. On the other hand, Windows 7’s market share dropped slightly to 48.43%.Image Courtesy: NetMarketShare.com Although Windows 7’s market share is dropping, Windows 10 is still far behind to over take the former. Windows 10’s market...

For a quick minute, it looked as though a strain of ransomware that was seemingly stolen from the United States National Security Agency (NSA) was going to be a major problem for PCs around the world, and in particular Windows XP systems. Microsoft even made the unusual move of releasing an emergency patch for Windows XP even though it stopped supporting the legacy OS a long time ago. But now a week after the initial WannaCry outbreak it's been discovered that Windows 7 PCs were the hardest hit. A researcher for Kaspersky Lab posted a message on Twitter saying "the...

Mark your calendar: Microsoft's promise to cut off Win7 and 8.1 support for the latest PCs will cause howls of pain next month Events of the past week have drawn into sharp focus the likely result of next month's patching cycle. If you have a Windows 7 or 8.1 PC that you bought, built, or upgraded in the past year or so, it would behoove you to understand exactly what Microsoft plans. Many people -- I'll raise my hand here -- thought that Skylake-based computers would continue to receive Windows 7 and 8.1 patches until the respective end-of-life. We are...

Technology giant Microsoft is blocking Windows 7 and 8.1 updates on Intel's seventh generation Core i3, i5 and i7 AMD's seventh generation processor (Bristol Ridge) and Qualcomm's 8996 processors. While trying to scan and download updates through Windows Update, error messages appear saying, "Windows could not search for new updates" and "code 80240037 Windows Update encountered an unknown error." As explained in Microsoft Knowledge based article the errors occur as the new processor generations require the latest Windows version. For those on Windows 7 and 8.1, Microsoft recommends updating the devices to Windows 10. In response to the matter a...