Microsoft

If you’re interested in buying one of Microsoft’s new games consoles -- either the ultra-powerful Xbox Series X, or the diminutive, and more affordable Xbox Series S -- today is the day to get your pre-orders in to avoid disappointment.

There’s a lot of demand for both consoles right now, but persevere and you should be able to get one from the links below.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has taken the extraordinary steps of issuing an emergency alert about a critical vulnerability in Windows.

CISA issued the warning to government departments, saying it "has determined that this vulnerability poses an unacceptable risk to the Federal Civilian Executive Branch and requires an immediate and emergency action". With Emergency Directive 20-04, the CISA requires agencies to install the August 2020 Security Update to mitigate against a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Netlogon Remote Protocol.

If you have installed KB4568831 for Windows 10 on your Lenovo ThinkPad, you may well have encountered the crashing issues caused by the update. Those affected by the problem have been hit by SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error messages, and 0xc0000005 Access Denied messages in log files and memory dumps.

Microsoft has now acknowledged that there is an issue and has offered details of a workaround -- although you may want to think about whether you really want to follow the mitigation advice because of the security implications.

It won’t come as any surprise to most of you to hear that the next big feature update for Windows 10 is very nearly ready for release.

Microsoft believes that Build 19042.508 (KB4571756) is the final release for Windows 10 20H2 (October 2020 Update as it’s also known) and is going to begin rolling it out to those users on the Release Preview Channel from today.

It’s that time of the week again when Microsoft rolls out a new Windows 10 build to Insiders on the Dev Channel.

Build 20215 introduces dark theme search results for insiders who have the system theme set to dark.

Since adopting the Chromium engine for Edge, Microsoft has been eager for people to move away from the legacy version of its web browser.

To help ensure compliance with its wishes, the company has released the KB4576754 update which forces the installation of the new Microsoft Edge and removes the old version. With the update being mandatory, anyone wanting to avoid Edge will have to take action.

Microsoft Office is one of the most popular pieces of software in the world, and the fact that it is so widely used means that it is often targeted for malicious reasons. Just as viruses tend to target Windows rather than macOS or Linux simply because of the sheer number of people using the operating systems, so Office's popularity means that it can often be attacked by malicious files as well.

But Microsoft has a way to offer protection. In addition to the Windows Defender anti-malware tool that is built into Windows, the company has now just released a public preview of Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office.

In a brief statement issued late last night, Microsoft revealed that it was out of the running to buy TikTok’s US operations.

US President Donald Trump claims that TikTok (and other Chinese apps) pose a threat to national security and his administration has set a September 15 deadline for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, to either sell US operations or shut them down.

Four-hundred-and-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Microsoft Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft released new Intel microcode updates this week to address certain flaws in Intel processors.

Dev Channel Insiders are in for a treat this week. Windows 10 Build 20211 introduces a number of new features, including adding Search to the Default Apps pages in Settings.

There’s a big new change for users of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) too -- you can now attach and mount a physical disk inside of a WSL 2 distro.

Another month, another Patch Tuesday. Earlier this week Microsoft released a series of updates for Windows 10, including KB4571756, a cumulative update designed to fix a range of security issues.

But many people installing KB4571756 have found that the update breaks Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. Microsoft is yet to acknowledge this as a known issue, but many people are experiencing "Element not found" errors in WSL 2 as well as seeing the message "Process exited with code 4294967295".

Whether you are just starting out or an Excel novice, the Microsoft Excel 2019 Bible is your comprehensive, go-to guide for all your Excel 2019 needs. Whether you use Excel at work or at home, you will be guided through the powerful new features and capabilities to take full advantage of what the updated version offers.

Learn to incorporate templates, implement formulas, create pivot tables, analyze data, and much more.

We have written a lot about Windows 10 here on BetaNews, and many of these articles have been about problems introduced by new updates. For some time now it has felt as though the updates and patches that are released have not been fully tested, and users of the operating system are being used as guinea pigs when Patch Tuesday rolls around each month.

There is, of course, the argument that Microsoft has an impossible task when it comes to ensuring that patches and updates do not cause problems for people with near unlimited combinations of hardware and software. But that's little consolation if it's your system that gets borked by a patch.

Windows 10 is a good operating system, for the most part, but it’s not without its problems -- I covered just some of these here on the eve of its 5th birthday at the end of July. It seems every new update Microsoft rolls out these days introduces fresh annoyances. No wonder millions of people are still sticking with Windows 7, even though that OS is no longer supported.

For many people, Windows 10 is the operating system they have to use, but not the one they want to. With that in mind, it's not hard to see the appeal of this remastered Windows 7 2020 Edition.

Earlier in the year, Intel announced that it had completed software validations on fixes for a series of security flaws affecting many of its processors discovered a couple of years ago. Now Microsoft, in conjunction with the chip-maker, released microcode updates for Windows 10 to fix these issues.

The four problems are connected to the now-infamous Spectre and Meltdown flaws from 2018. They relate to problems with the speculative execution function of many chips, and could allow for sensitive data to leak.