In a little more than one year from now, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. The operating system has been on sale for nine years. It currently accounts for approximately 65% of desktop market share.
As I have written, the security and hardware requirements for Windows 11 mean I cannot upgrade most older computers, and you will need to purchase a new computer. Some new computers may require additional memory. In all cases, I will contact you after I run a detailed Windows 11 readiness check and schedule a preliminary review of your requirements before next year’s deadline.
Now, if you see a screen like the one below, please stop what you are doing. Please DO NOT CLICK the Get it button, and call me. You should NOT see this screen — unless Microsoft changes the code in the background in the upcoming months. If you do see this screen, something is wrong, and I would like to learn what it is and how to correct it.
In mid-March 2024 I landed in a quandary. There are 18 months until Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 in October 2025. Until now, I have planned to migrate my clients’ computers to Windows 11 because that is a standard industry approach.
In addition, Microsoft stated that Office 2016 and 2019 would also go out of support in October 2025. Without a long-term replacement (e.g., Office 2024), Microsoft has forced me to consider establishing a Microsoft 365 subscription for every client requiring any Office application because there is no alternative.
Well, call me gob-smacked when I learned that Microsoft is planning a Windows 12 announcement by mid-2025 and the probability of a non-subscription version of Office 2024 before the end of this year.
Unfortunately, I did not obtain this information directly from Redmond-based Microsoft. Instead, I read about these offerings in various blog posts and Reddit forums. And – I’ve got to admit – that is NOT how I want to operate my business.
I will convey what I know about this situation as clearly as possible.
In October 2025, Windows 10 will no longer receive any further updates, and I will no longer support computers with that operating system. If I can upgrade your computer’s Windows 10 operating system to Windows 11, I will discuss the implications of performing that upgrade with you. If your computer cannot run Windows 11 (mainly because it is too old), I will discuss replacing it with new hardware, possibly a new monitor, and even a new printer.
In the past, I was strict about replacing your computers when they reached the end of their five-year warranty. However, I have been lax about upgrading your hardware for the past few years. Because of the pandemic’s effect on the global supply chain and the resulting lack of computer components, I give most clients an extra year’s grace on replacement. Sometimes, I let things go out for a full seven years. But, as I have regrettably learned, when a computer breaks now — and is required immediately — getting a replacement when you don’t have a warranty can cost more than six times the cost of an extended warranty.
Microsoft isn’t planning to announce Windows 12 until mid-2025; therefore, I will not consider that option for any client. As I see it, this will be an offering I could only recommend well into 2026 — after I put it through at least six months of testing on my lab computer.
As far as Microsoft Office is concerned, I will have to hold my breath, and I hope you will join me on a small adventure. The retail price of the home user version of Office 2021 is $150, and the retail price of the business edition is $250. A one-year subscription to Microsoft 365 is $70 for home users and $150 (at a minimum) for business users. I’m asking you to throw that money away in October 2025 and then purchase the Office 2024 version. According to all accounts, the price for each version will be approximately 10% higher.
Of course, I would prefer you to spend a one-time charge for up to five (or more) years of software use than to subscribe to an annual reliance. However, if you must purchase a new Windows 11 computer, I will work with you to obtain a solution that best fits your needs and keeps your expenses within reason.
If you do not have a fierce requirement for a Microsoft product, I will point out that the free LibreOffice product suite will let you work with your Office files with close to 100% fidelity. I will also let you know there is a learning curve, so if you don’t like change, stay with what works for you.
One aspect of my business that never ceases to amaze me is how hardware and software vendors can make sudden changes that affect vast numbers of clients and end-users with little notice. The two I write about this month are significant; however, they are not representative of the entire industry.
Intuit
Intuit is the maker of QuickBooks, the accounting software many individuals and businesses use to manage their finances. There are three desktop versions of QuickBooks: Pro, Premier, and Enterprise. In 2001, Intuit released a cloud-based version of QuickBooks, which purported to match the desktop versions. Often heated discussions on various forums show this effort has fallen short of expectations for those who are used to the desktop product.
Intuit has had a strict support policy for QuickBooks. It states that support for the current product is valid for three years from when it was issued. For example, Intuit released QuickBooks 2022 in September 2021. It will receive support until the fall of 2024, which means Intuit will publish updates and fix problems with its code during those three years. Anyone who purchases the product can call Intuit’s QuickBooks Support to resolve problems with installation and program errors. Help for how to use QuickBooks is relegated to website forums and accountants. After three years elapse, add-ons to QuickBooks will no longer function. These include Payroll Services, Online Backup, and Online Banking.
For the Pro and Premier versions, you used to be able to go to the Intuit website, Amazon, or a big-box store and purchase the software. You’d either get the CD/DVD and a license key or the license key along with a download link. That software purchase gave you three years of support. The Enterprise version was always an annual subscription.
Last year Intuit changed how you can purchase the product. They have implemented a subscription service for the Pro and Premier versions. (I predicted this more than a year ago for some of my clients.) You must buy the product every year if you wish to continue to use it. To make matters just a little bit worse, you can no longer purchase the Pro version from the Intuit website by clicking a Buy Now button. Intuit removed that option this year. You must call the Sales phone number at the top of the page.
As I learned last month, when you call, the sales agent, using a script, will push you to choose QuickBooks Online. If you say no to that option, they will attempt to get you to upgrade to the Premier version. And if you continue to say no, the sales agent is tasked to offer you additional for-fee options to the Pro version (e.g., Payroll Services, Online Backup, and Online Banking). All in all, not a pleasant buyer’s experience, certainly not one conducive to further purchases – except now, everyone who uses QuickBooks is a captive for a higher priced, not necessarily better, product every year.
Microsoft
Most people probably know Microsoft makes Office primarily consisting of Word, Excel, and Outlook. You might also know that Microsoft has made Office available as a cloud-based offering – in many forms and with different names – since 2010.
Over time, Office was installed from diskettes (6 in 1990), CDs, DVDs, and – most recently – using a license key and a download link. These are known as perpetual licenses. They are valid for as long as you use the computer on which you installed the program. For several years, Microsoft hinted there would come a day when they would stop issuing those product versions. That day is now more visible and inevitable. Last month one of my colleagues reminded me that Office 2013 is going out of support in April 2023. While I wasn’t surprised that a ten-year-old product was ending, what surprised me was the end dates for Office 2016 and 2019. Look a look at the chart below.
Offering
Start
Mainstream End
Extended End
2013
Jan 9, 2013
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 11, 2023
2016
Sep 22, 2015
Oct 13, 2020
Oct 14, 2025
2019
Sep 24, 2018
Oct 13, 2023
Oct 14, 2025
2021
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 13, 2026
Not applicable
Please note that the last day of support for Windows 10 is also October 14, 2025.
What is someone with a perpetual “Home and Student” or “Home and Business” version of Office supposed to do? The only solution is to purchase a subscription to the appropriate cloud product, as follows:
Consumer (Student):
Microsoft 365 Personal
$69.99 per year
Business:
Microsoft 365 Apps for business
$99.00 per year
I will distinguish between an individual purchasing a “Microsoft 365 Personal” or “Microsoft 365 Apps for business” subscription on the Microsoft website versus a business subscribing its staff to Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium via my Microsoft partner program, NCE. Individuals must create a Microsoft Account (a unique-to-Microsoft email address) to purchase the license because Microsoft will save your credit card information. I can provide subscriptions for businesses through NCE that get are included on their monthly bills.
While it is going to be relatively easy to create a FirstName.LastName@Outlook.com email address for individuals (unless your name is Bob Smith), Business accounts – for actual businesses – must go through NCE to ensure the default “onmicrosoft.com” administrator account gets created. After that, it requires several administrator steps to link the business’ legal website name to the product.
By October 14, 2025, Microsoft will (most likely) require a Microsoft Account to access any new Windows 11 computer. If so, then you must use the same email address for Office!
I can’t say I’m looking forward to these changes because if they are difficult for me to adjust to, they will probably play some havoc for the clients I support.
Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE) on June 15, 2022, as announced in May 2021.
Starting with Windows 10 version 20H2, which Microsoft released in October 2020, if you attempt to use IE, Windows will prompt you to use the Microsoft Edge browser. You must make an explicit choice to deny that to continue to use the Internet Explorer browser.
Note: If you want to know what version of Windows you have, type the word winver in the Windows Search box (next to the Start button in the lower left-hand corner). The resulting “About Windows” window contains the version and build information.
The critical point to all of this is that Microsoft will jettison some outdated, still risk-prone software in favor of its new Edge browser, built on the same base as Google’s Chrome.
What does that mean for you? If you have an Internet Explorer icon on your desktop, it is time to delete it. Similarly, if you use IE to browse the web, you should transfer your Favorites (bookmarked websites) and your saved user IDs and passwords over to Edge or Chrome.
While Microsoft will provide a hybrid form of IE under Edge’s covers, the rest of the world has moved on. According to W3Schools, the internet’s most extensive tutor of web-based material, Chrome held the lead in usage with a commanding 81% of the market. Edge came in second with 6.6%, and Firefox held on with 5.5%. I am, and probably always will be, a stalwart fan of Firefox (at least until Mozilla stops supporting it).
In the upcoming months, I am hopeful that companies whose websites contain code explicitly built for Internet Explorer will remove that code to strengthen the security of their website. However, if they don’t, your browser should automatically switch to IE mode in Edge. But I won’t be surprised if bad actors make multiple attempts to figure out how to take over those websites to try to introduce malware to the unsuspecting.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft officially released Windows 11 on October 5, 2021. In a blog post, the lead project manager expects the operating system successor to nearly seven-year-old Windows 10 to be widely available by the middle of 2022. I’ll admit, the “geek” in me couldn’t resist the siren call of a shiny new object. So, I spent less than half an hour downloading the 5.1 gigabyte file and an equivalent amount of time creating a virtual machine environment (running under Hyper-V) on a test Windows Server.
The installation was speedy compared to previous versions of Windows, even though the source file was on a USB drive. The initial phase after installation, commonly referred to as the “out-of-box experience” (OOBE, pronounced “oo-bee”), was pleasant and easy. No muss and no fuss getting to the initial Windows 11 desktop.
Here is a brief overview of some of the new features in the latest iteration of the Windows operating system.
First and foremost is that the Windows Taskbar is now in the center of the screen. I’ll call this blatant effect mimicry (or stealing) of Apple’s Dock, found in all Mac devices since 2001. This change may not be creative, but it is certainly different. This is especially apparent when for more than two dozen years, ever since Windows 95, Windows users have been accustomed to moving their cursor to the lower, left-hand corner to access the Start menu. Now it is in the “home” position – meaning the left-most spot – on the Taskbar. Now when you click it, the Start menu opens in an entire window in the center of your screen instead of sliding up an extensive menu. According to Microsoft, this sleeker, more straightforward screen gives you a better overview of the available features and programs to make it easier to accomplish your work (or play). Over time, the apps you use most frequently will take their place in the Recommended section.
New to Windows 11 is the confluence of several individual components that Microsoft thought would be useful to consumers. This item is Widgets, which includes news headlines, weather, stock information, and sports. Each item displays current information based on your location. You can change the size of each widget and customize it by clicking the three-dot menu icon in the upper right corner. You can add more widgets based on your preferences to the display. The privacy implications of all the Widget telemetry exchanged between you and Microsoft is a discussion for another newsletter. Also, I don’t know the corporate equivalent of this feature, nor if Group Policy can eliminate it.
Another change is what Microsoft is calling Snap Layouts and Snap Groups. In Windows 7, you could snap one window on each side of the screen by clicking on the window’s Title bar and rapidly moving it to the right or left. Windows 10 maintains this capability, and Microsoft expanded the concept with the Task View (described in the August 2019 edition). The purpose of this new functionality is to let you design how many open windows you want at one time, what they should contain, and where you want them to be positioned. For instance, you might wish to have an Excel spreadsheet open on the right-hand side of the screen, and your email client and an internet browser open, stacked one above the other, on the left-hand side. You can then save this layout to a named group and call it up when you want all three apps to open at once. Windows 11 gives you the ability to resume where you were working when you click on the link to the layout.
As you might have guessed, having all these apps open simultaneously (never mind saving their condition to restore them quickly) is going to require more memory than ever before. Most of you have been very comfortable working with 8 GB of RAM (memory). In some cases, I have given “power users” 16 GB of RAM. If you plan to use this feature extensively, I may have to double the amount of memory in your computer. Only time – and practical usage – will let me know if this will be a problem in search of a hardware solution.
The last element of this first peek at Windows 11 is Microsoft Teams integration. Teams is Microsoft’s equivalent of Zoom or WebEx. Working from home – or from anywhere, really – will continue to be part of our culture for the foreseeable future. Microsoft fully believes that a dispersed workforce is inevitable, so it placed this icon in a prominent position. After all, what could be easier than clicking on an icon to launch a discussion with co-workers or colleagues? I expect that as time goes by, probably with the first annual Feature Update, Microsoft will provide more integration with the corporate version of Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Over the next two years, I’ll be giving you more information about this new operating system. But, as I’m sure you realize, it is still Windows. Most of you use the operating system for probably opening a browser to get your mail and see what’s going on with your friends, family, and organizations on Facebook. All the bells and whistles don’t mean much to you – I get it. It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t feel the same way.
I received a phone call from a client who said that her laptop was running exceedingly slowly — even more so than usual. So I remoted in to take a quick look. I found a new icon on the taskbar that looked like a fat, folded Sunday newspaper. By way of definition, the taskbar contains the Start button, icons for pinned and running applications, and a system tray area that contains notification icons and a clock.
When I hovered my mouse over the icon, the tooltip said it was the Windows 10 News and Interests news feed. Once clicked, it opens a pane that displays various widgets that contain current news, weather, stock prices, and more based on your location. The initial download of all this “stuff” caused my client’s perception of slow response on her laptop.
I searched Google and after reading several articles, I learned how to eliminate this icon from appearing. Therefore, I am writing this article to teach you how to do the same thing when it “miraculously” appears on your computer.
But first, let’s be clear about one thing. Not one of you went and asked the folks at Redmond to install this. You didn’t explicitly agree to get the news, weather, and more on your desktop. And you certainly shouldn’t need to try — on your own — to figure out just how the heck to get rid of this intrusion. I don’t know what they were thinking. (Can you tell I’m annoyed by this nonsense?)
Here are the steps you can take to get rid of this and regain control of your taskbar:
Right-click on any blank section of your taskbar. This will open the taskbar menu.
Left-click the News and interests banner. This will open a fly-away menu.
On the fly-away, left-click Turn off. This should disable this “feature.”
Now, I’ve read reports that the icon just shows up again after the computer is restarted. If you experience that, please let me know.
While you’re at it, if you see an icon that resembles a wristwatch, right-click that and select Hide. I don’t believe anyone needs the Meet Now function, a Skype quick meeting setup feature. If you still use Skype, you are usually talking to one person. When you need to engage with more people for discussions, you are most likely using Zoom (or Microsoft Teams).
In March 2019, Microsoft introduced the public preview of a new cloud-based form of the Windows Operating System. It is called Windows Virtual Desktop, or WVD. It is a desktop and application experience that runs in Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Now, after a full year of pandemic use, Microsoft has improved the overall aspects of building and maintaining the desktop for IT Solutions Providers. For those who use the desktop, that experience has been significantly overhauled as well. You wouldn’t know you are using a cloud-based virtual desktop if you didn’t click a unique icon to run it.
What does all this futuristic technology mean? Well, for one thing, by the end of this year, I hope to offer WVD as an alternative to full-fledged desktop solutions along with Azure as a server replacement. In a few years, the typical five-year desktop and seven-year sever hardware refresh may fall by the wayside for small businesses. That’s because it will no longer be about how much RAM or the version of the CPU in a physical computer. Instead, it will be about the number of IOPS (input-output operations per second) and the overall internet speed at your business location.
The primary advantage of WVD is that you can access your business desktop from any device with a web browser. The login process uses multi-factor authentication for security. You connect to your business’ Active Directory server, which contains your user profile information. You get access to the full range of Office applications via Microsoft 365 and standard desktop applications like Adobe Reader and even QuickBooks.
One of the primary tasks Microsoft had to face at the start of the pandemic was to provide a “near-desktop” experience for millions of people suddenly working from home. They implemented new technology to enable fast access to user profiles via a recently purchased company called FSLogix. At sign-in, a user profile container is dynamically attached to the computing environment. The user profile is immediately available and appears on the system exactly like a typical native user profile. (In English: your desktop, files, and favorites are all there, just the way you expect.)
The one drawback to deploying all this cloud-based functionality is, the smaller the business, the higher the monthly cost per person. That’s because to use WVD, you need an Azure server — and that cost is the same whether you have two people in your office or ten. However, the monthly cost for a two-person office could be $200 per person, while at a ten-person office, that cost could go down to $50 per person. Note these figures are examples, and actual prices require careful calculation.
There is a vast educational factor involved in implementing this new technology stack. Previously, I would go to the Dell web site, configure a server with minimal specifications and have it shipped to my office for about $1,000. I would then use my Windows Server licenses (courtesy of my Microsoft partnership) to load up a base system. I’d create virtual versions of the servers and desktops to develop various end-user scenarios, implement the appropriate security settings, and thoroughly learn how things worked before deploying any of them at any client site.
Microsoft will let me do something similar with Azure and WVD. Still, it requires using their facilities to spin up the environment, build the desktops, create the simulated users, and test how everything hangs together. I am already in contact with a leading vendor that is willing to assist building the requisite cloud structures in this new format and help me price and deploy environments to clients. I would much rather work with a Sherpa to climb a mountain like this than do it on my own.
Over time, I envision many small business owners who want to keep their staff working from home will switch to using WVD to provide Windows desktops in those remote locations.
The “black screen” problem in Windows 10 shows how nothing sometimes matters quite a lot. Seeing nothing except a black screen where the desktop and its icons usually appear is disconcerting because you don’t know what the computer is — or isn’t — doing.
I am an experienced Windows user, and when I encounter a black screen, I know at least two things immediately. First, just like you, I know that something is wrong with my computer. And second, because nothing is visible, I can assume something is not quite right with the graphics interface and the operating system.
As a start, that may be enough, but what most of you want is to get your desktop back. In this article, I’ll guide you through the methods I’ve found to fix this annoying problem.
Occasionally, you’ll start Windows and end up with what’s called a “black screen with a cursor.” Just as it sounds, this means the display is entirely black, except that the mouse cursor appears on that black background. The cursor might track your mouse’s movement even though it’s moving over a completely black screen.
In my personal experience, the black screen with a cursor occurs far more frequently than a black screen by itself (no cursor). The presence of a cursor that responds to your mouse’s movement is a good sign — even in the midst of a bad situation. It indicates that Windows is still working (partially) behind the scenes, and that the mouse driver can still track the cursor position on the screen. This means there’s an excellent chance that the desktop can be restored to regular operation using a few well-known key combinations.
Two keyboard combinations can (usually) restore normal operations
Both combinations involve pressing multiple keys simultaneously. This means using one finger to press the first key and holding it down, using a second finger to press the second key and doing likewise, then more of the same for a third key — and one of these two combinations requires adding a fourth and final key as well.
Attempt 1: Restart the graphics driver
This four-key combination tells Windows 10 to stop, then restart any graphics drivers that happen to be running. For your first attempt, do this: Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B. I usually do the first three keys with my left hand, then press the letter B with my right index finger.
If you see the rapid flashing of the disk activity light, that’s a good sign. Sometimes the screen will return to regular operation a few seconds later, showing that the driver has reloaded and is now running successfully. Sometimes, nothing else will happen after the disk activity light stops flashing, so it is on to the second attempt.
Attempt 2: The three-fingered salute
This is a familiar key combo to anyone who has used Windows for a long time: Ctrl + Alt + Delete.
Even when the first attempt gets the graphics driver going, it still won’t light up the screen. And sometimes, when that’s the case, this key sequence will repaint the screen to show you the secure log-in options. If that screen does appear, click “Cancel,” and your desktop should reappear.
Attempt 3: Forced restart
If the cursor is absent, these key combos often won’t help (and sometimes they don’t help even when the cursor is present). In those cases, there’s only one thing to do next: forcibly turn off your computer. This means holding down the power button – for at least the count of 10 – until the device completely shuts down.
After a moment, press the power button again to turn on your computer. It should typically start with no black screen. If the screen remains black after you’ve gone through these steps, you need to call me!
Nobody wants to see a black screen on Windows 10
If you ever encounter this disturbing situation, you now have a pretty good idea of how to fix it yourself. In most cases, reloading the graphics driver or restarting the computer will do the trick. In other cases, there’s no choice except to let me know so that I can work through some of the more advanced troubleshooting sequences.
In mid-January 2020, Microsoft issued advisory ADV200001 warning of a vulnerability in the scripting engine of Internet Explorer. Yes, I know, that’s gibberish to most of you. It means that there could have been an attempt to execute code in attack mode via that browser. How? You could have received an email with a link that explicitly opened Internet Explorer (even if it wasn’t your default browser) and been sent to a malicious web site specifically designed by bad guys. If exploited successfully, the attacker could have gained access rights to your computer. As Microsoft put it at the time: “An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”
That’s very bad (I’d segue into the Ghostbusters
“don’t cross the streams” theme about the definition of the word “bad,” but I’m
sure you get the idea).
At the time, Microsoft did not have an immediate fix. As of February’s “patch Tuesday,” they announced one with the heading “Security Advisory CVE-2020-0674.” Microsoft will be patching desktop operating systems from Windows 7 clear through the latest version of Windows 10, plus a slew of server operating systems.
The Network Operations Center will be testing this set of
updates for the next seven days. If the patches pass those tests, then
the updates will be available for all of you by the end of next week. In
the interim, I have only one thing to say: DO NOT USE INTERNET
EXPLORER, USE ANOTHER BROWSER! There are several to choose from, for
example, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera (which I didn’t recall as being
around, but it still exists) or Brave (which I’m sure you’ve never heard of),
heck there are probably some of you who use Edge in Windows 10 (heaven help
you). If you’re not sure what browser is your default, write to me and
I’ll let you know.
But let’s get down to the meat of this: If Microsoft announced the problem on January 17 and only released the solution on February 11, the bad guys had a considerable amount of time to take advantage of the vulnerability, and yet the world didn’t come to a screeching halt. But I don’t – for one minute – want to suggest that you not patch a known vulnerability. What I recommend, instead, is a moderate amount of common sense. And the best way to implement that would be to stop using the problem-plagued browser, even after your computer receives the patches.
Bottom line: this exploit is explicitly for IE
– so to avoid any possible unpleasantness, don’t use it.
Simple really.
There is a feature of Windows 10 that some people might find useful. It is called Task View, and it has the ability to create multiple desktops.
To activate Task View, click its icon — a large rectangle with two smaller rectangles flanking it — in the Windows Taskbar just to the right of the Search box. When you do, Task View (and its associated feature Timeline) opens.
At the very top of the screen you’ll see a “New desktop” button, and beneath that, thumbnails of all of your currently running applications arrayed against the desktop so you can quickly see what you’ve got running. You can click any thumbnail to switch to that application or press the Esc key to leave Task View and return to where you were.
Beneath that you’ll see Timeline, with thumbnails of documents you’ve worked on over the last thirty days. For all businesses and most home users, I have disabled this feature to afford you more privacy. Microsoft tracks this information, and I do not feel comfortable providing them with more telemetry than necessary. However, if you think this could be useful, let me know and I can tell you how to reactivate it.
Now, if you were used to using the Alt-Tab key combination to cycle through open applications in Windows 7, you can still do that as well, but Task View adds a couple of extra twists. If you hover your mouse over any thumbnail, a small X appears in its upper-right corner. You can click the X to close that application.
Task View also lets you create multiple virtual desktops, each with different Windows applications running on them. To create a new desktop, open Task View and click “New desktop” at the upper left of the screen. You can run a different set of Windows applications inside the new desktop. For instance, you could dedicate one desktop to your Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Outlook, and Excel, and another desktop to handle your various browser applications, and another for your accounting software.
To switch among these virtual desktops, click the Task View icon and click the desktop to which you want to switch. You can keep creating new desktops this way and switch among them.
Let me know your reactions to using this new Windows 10 feature by posting a Comment.
