Free Republic

Ok all after doing the latest Microsoft Windows "Update" my Bluetooth speaker is not working(I use it for music/YouTube) I even went and purchased a new Speaker(nothing). It says it is paired and connected. O and YES I AM LOGGED IN(for all you SMARTA$$E$ out there). Any help will be appreciated.

I need some help from you computer gurus. Just powered up my Toshiba laptop a little while ago and began surfing. Suddenly a tone started beeping and a message filled the screen saying a malfunction had been detected and gave a toll-free number to call to get help from a technician (yeah, right). Underneath that message is a screen saying that Windows 8.1 64-bit Defender encountered an error code: 0x80016CFA. Can't close the windows, and powering down the laptop fails, it just powers back up. I sure could use some help FRiends.

On the verge of Windows 10's release, its predecessor has quietly moved into the #2 spot for market share among operating systems. Windows 8.1 has now overtaken Windows XP, the one time king of all operating systems, but it's something of a hollow victory as Windows 7 still leads by a wide margin. According to Netmarketshare, as of June 2015, Windows 8.1's usage has increased to 13.12% among all operating systems, while XP sits at 11.98% and Windows 7 still accounts for a dominant 60.98% share. These three OS' also represent the only three with double digit market share. The...

Microsoft's head of Windows Insider program, Gabriel Aul, has confirmed that Windows 10 will require a fresh install on Windows devices older than Windows 7.Revealed in a reply from his Twitter account, Aul wrote that there won't be any full upgrade paths as these will be solely available for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users.It makes sense given that some of them might be on older filesystems (e.g. FAT32). That's also assuming that Windows 10 will run on these systems, which although they may have enough resources (RAM/CPU) to power Microsoft's newest OS, may well run into compatibility issues with...

Windows 8.1 showed strong growth in October, and an easy upgrade path to Windows 10 could hold the key. As Gregg Keizer at Computerworld reports, Web usage numbers from NetMarketShare state that usage of Windows 8 and 8.1 went from 12.3 percent of the market in September to 16.8 percent, up 4.5 percent, in October -- a huge jump, by any metric. At the same time, Windows XP usage fell off a cliff, from 23.9 to 17.2 percent, down 6.7 percent. While industry pundits offer several reasons for the tectonic shift, several points seem to have fallen through the cracks,...

Everyone is well-aware by now that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have not seen the impressive adoption rate of their predecessor. Yet the duo had a particularly good run last month, finally passing 15 percent market share together, according to the latest figures from Net Applications.More specifically, Windows 8 gained 0.29 percentage points to 5.88 percent while Windows 8.1 gained 4.25 percentage points to 10.92 percent. Together, they owned 16.80 percent of the market at the end of October, up from 12.26 percent at the end of September. It’s certainly a big jump, and Windows 8.1 is finally in...

<p>Windows 8.1 carved out more of the desktop OS market last month, though its progress remains slow.</p> <p>For the month of August, Windows 8.1 eked out a 7.09 percent market share based on all the desktop OS traffic seen by Web tracker Net Applications. That number was up slightly from 6.56 percent in July, 6.61 percent in June, and 6.35 percent in May. Still in use among many people, Windows 8 scored 6.28 percent of the market last month.</p>

May was the seventh full month of availability for Microsoft’s latest operating system version: Windows 8.1 continues to grow slowly while Windows 8 remains largely flat, allowing the former to finally pass the latter in market share. At the same time, Windows 7 has managed to climb back over the 50 percent mark, while Windows XP still has more than 25 percent of the pie, despite support for the ancient OS finally ending in April.The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have gained a combined 0.40 percentage points (from 12.24 percent to...

Friendlier to PC users than its prececessor, Windows 8.1 continues to eke out a higher share while Windows 8 slips downward. Net Applications Windows 8.1 is now more dominant than its predecessor, at least based on all desktop OS traffic seen by Net Applications.For the month of May, Windows 8.1's share inched up to 6.35 percent from 5.88 percent in April. That gave it just enough of a nudge to steal third place from Windows 8, which earned a 6.3 percent share, down from 6.36 percent the prior month.Windows 8.1's gradual ascension over its predecessor in the desktop market should...

Continued support for Windows XP was discontinued by Microsoft recently, so many PC people may now be migrating over to Windows 8. One thing newcomers will notice missing in the latest version of Windows: the Start menu! If you’re feeling instantly lost without the old Start menu, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Thousands of PC fans would argue that the Start menu offers a more compact, concise, customizable listing of programs and files than the tile-filled Start screen. Microsoft scoffs at that idea. It points out that every time there’s a new version of Windows, there’s an instant spike in...

In what is surely the most customer-antagonistic move of the new Windows regime, Steve Thomas at Microsoft posted a TechNet article on Saturday stating categorically that Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for Windows 8.1, starting in May. Call this the "let them eat cake" approach to support for Microsoft's flagship operating system. ... Yes, you read that right: With three weeks left until Windows 8.1 end of support -- until the next round of security patches appear with Windows 8.1 not included in the party list -- Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to get Windows 8.1 Update...

Summary: Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Word and Publisher are patched, some products for the last time. Today Microsoft released four security updates for Windows and Microsoft Office. These will be the last publicly-released updates for Windows XP and Office 2003. A total of 11 vulnerabilities were addressed by these updates, including seven for Windows XP and four for Office 2003. Separately, Microsoft released fixes for Internet Explorer 10 and 11 to address vulnerabilities fixed by Adobe in the Flash Player bundled in the Metro versions of IE. Among the vulnerabilities patched is a critical error in the handling of RTF...

Windows XP, Microsoft Corp.’s beloved seventh major operating system and arguably the company’s most successful, was left to perish on Tuesday at its creators’ hands. It was 12 years, seven months old. ~snip~ Windows XP’s funeral, a private ceremony held deep within Microsoft, was quiet. In lieu of flowers, Microsoft urged customers to donate to Windows 8, one of Windows XP’s grandchildren.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has announced that it has abandoned a version of its Firefox web browser for Microsoft's Modern, or Metro, Windows 8.1 user interface. Although the Firefox web browser for Windows 8.1 Metro has been two years in the making, and in spite of a public beta released last month, Mozilla has decided not to release that version of Firefox, with Windows 8.1 users invited to continue to use the desktop edition. In a blog post on Friday, Firefox VP Johnathan Nightingale cited apathy as one of the driving factors, explaining, "On any given day we have, for instance,...

Windows 8.1, after four months of its October 2013 debut, has finally managed to overtake other operating software including Windows Vista and Mac OS X recording a slow, but steady initial growth. According to latest latest data coming from Net Applications Windows 8.1 holds a market share of 4.30 percent to become the fourth most popular operating system in the world. According to the statistics, Windows 7 with a share of 47.31 percent, continues to be the number one OS version followed by Windows XP which is still powering 29.53 percent of desktop computers worldwide. MicrosoftÂ’s modern operating system, Windows...

Summary: Here I take a look at the Windows 8.1 Update 1 build that leaked onto the web earlier this month. I've made no bones about the fact that I have a strong dislike of Windows 8, so even I was quite surprised by the fact that I was pleased by what I saw. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A few days ago a Windows 8.1 Update 1 internal build leaked onto the web, and given the fact that I'm really curious as to the direction in which Microsoft is planning to take Windows in, I decided to take a look. I've made no...

Software giant Microsoft is rumoured to be intending to release the next update to its Windows operating system suite in April 2015. It is apparently currently codenamed 'Threshold' within Microsoft, although once released the client operating system will be called Windows 9. This is likely to be an attempt by the firm to differentiate the new OS from Windows 8, and its later iteration Windows 8.1, which experienced disappointing sales and poor user feedback. Among the changes rumoured to be part of the new release is the return of the Start menu, which was controversially left out of Windows 8...

Answer........ as i stated in begining ,. you can go to windows 8.1 by store as well in case you have to restore the system to windows 8 or the drive i replaced here as well Question will the new system image be Windows 8 or 8.1 ? Problem I wanted to make a system image copy after update to Windows 8.1. You can not use Windows System Image Backup on some Dell and other brands due to the way the disk has been partitioned. Dell Backup and recovery latest version will make one for you. This outsourcing of tech...

Windows 8/8.1 has topped 10% market share for the first time, apparently picking up a few users from among those who are finally leaving Windows XP behind. According to Web analytics firm NetMarkeshare, users of all versions of Windows 8 amounted to 10.49% of Internet users for the month of December, up from 9.25% in December. This as users of Windows XP have dipped from 31.22% to 28.98%. While the showing for Windows 8/8.1 is a milestone, it is also part of a gradual trend. Since last February, use of the operating system has risen 7.82 percentage points while XP...

Windows 8.1 is now the fifth most popular desktop OS, at least as recorded by Web tracker Net Applications. For November, Microsoft's latest version of Windows snagged 2.64 percent of all desktop OS traffic recorded by Net Applications. That number was a healthy gain from the 1.72 percent seen in October and the 0.87 percent in September. The rise also pushed Windows 8.1 just ahead of Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks with a 2.42 percent share and just behind Windows Vista with a 3.57 percent share. Windows 8.1 popped up in June as a preview edition before officially launching in...