Category: Software

Windows 11 Quick Machine Recovery

Quick Machine Recovery: automatic Windows 11 device repairs

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Quick Machine Recovery is a relatively new feature of Windows 11 that promises speedier troubleshooting of system failures. Announced earlier this year, the feature has now landed in a recent Windows Insider test build of the Canary channel.

What is Quick Machine Recovery? Microsoft describes it as an automated recovery feature that is designed to detect and fix “widespread issues” on devices running Windows 11. Think of it as an automatic repair option baked into the operating system that, Microsoft claims, is fixing issues faster than you.

How does it work? Microsoft says that Quick Machine Recovery kicks in automatically “if a device experiences a widespread boot issue”. It will enter “WinRE”, the Windows Recovery Environment, and connect to the Internet so that “Microsoft can deliver a targeted fix through Windows Update”.

A blog post on the Tech Community website offers deeper insight on how the feature works:

  • Device enters recovery mode: If a Windows 11, version 24H2 device encounters a critical failure preventing normal boot, it enters Windows RE.
  • Network connection established: Windows RE connects to the network using ethernet or Wi-Fi protected access (WPA), ensuring the device can communicate with Microsoft’s recovery services. Future updates will introduce additional networking configurations for broader support.
  • Incident analysis: Microsoft analyzes crash data from affected devices to identify patterns and pinpoint the root cause. If a widespread outage is detected, an internal response team is activated to develop, validate, and prepare a targeted remediation.
  • Remediation rollout: In this initial release, Microsoft will deliver the remediation via Windows Update, adhering to the update policies configured on the device. Microsoft will safely rollout the remediation.

Microsoft claims that the feature is reducing downtime and the need to fix issues manually. According to the initial announcement, Quick Machine Recovery will be enabled automatically on Windows 11 Home devices, once they install the update that introduces the feature.

System administrators may enable the recovery feature on all other editions of Windows 11, including Windows 11 Pro, Education, and Enterprise. Local admins find the setting under System > Recovery > Quick Machine Recovery.

The feature will send crash data to Microsoft when it triggers, which is certainly something to consider before enabling the feature.

Now You: what is your take on this? Useful feature to get Windows 11 devices faster back on track? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

KeePass 2.59 Password Manager supports Arm64 on Windows now

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

KeePass is one password manager that I’m using regularly on Windows machines for password-related activities. It is a well-designed app that runs locally, but you can extend it with all kinds of plugins and install compatible programs and apps for other operating systems.

A new version of the password manager is now available. KeePass 2.59 is the second release of the year 2025 and it introduces quite a few welcome improvements and changes. First and foremost, if you run Windows on an ARM64 device, like the latest Microsoft Surface Pro devices, then you may install and use the password manager on that device now as well. KeePass 2.59 is therefore the first version of the password manager that supports all architectures that Windows supports.

KeePass 2.59 interface

KeePass 2.59 introduces native implementations of AES-KDF and Argon2 on Windows systems, promising a breathtaking 30-50 times speed increase on systems on which the native support library was not available or disabled. Encrypting and decrypting databases that use the AES algorithm should now also be faster.

Another new feature is a new import and export module for the KeePass KDB-database on Arm64 and Unix-like systems. You find the new option under File > Export in the main KeePass interface. Exports support the default user name and database color now. The root group is now also exported, according to the release notes.

Other than that, support for opening URLs from within KeePass now supports the private modes of the browsers Maxton, SeaMonkey and Yandex, next to the already supported browsers. Also new is that some links are now clickable on Unix-like systems, which may improve handling of them, as you no longer have to use copy and paste for that anymore.

You can check out the remaining changes on the official website. They include several improvements and optimizations for the most part.

Existing users may run the installer to update KeePass to the latest version. A new KeePass 2.59 portable edition is also available for those who prefer it.

Now You: which password manager do you use and why? Feel free to share your thoughts on it in the comment section below.

7-Zip 25.000

7-Zip 25.00 improves performance and fixes security issues

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

7-Zip is a popular cross-platform open source program to pack files and to unpack archives. It is a lightweight alternative to heavier archiving programs and the built-in Windows functionality, that is significantly slower in all benchmarks.

7-Zip 25.00 is now available. You can download the latest version from the official project website or from its Sourceforge repository. As always, just install the new version over the other to upgrade the installation to the latest version.

Tip: check the installed version by starting 7z-Zip on your system and selecting Help > About 7-Zip from the menu at the top.

This is the first release of 2025. The changelog lists several performance improvements for various supported tasks.

Here is the overview:

  • The bzip2 compression speed was increased by 15-40%
  • The deflate (zip/gz) compression speed was increased by 1-3%.

The Windows version of 7-Zip supports more than 64 CPU threads now furthermore for “compression
to zip/7z/xz archives and for the 7-Zip benchmark”. This could improve the performance on Windows systems.

Apart from the mentioned performance improvements, the changelog lists that “some vulnerabilities” were fixed in the latest version. The changelog does not provide any details on those vulnerabilities. Since it is unclear how severe the fixed vulnerabilities are, it is recommended to upgrade to the new version of 7-Zip immediately to protect your system from potential attacks.

Microsoft says Windows 11 is a lot faster than Windows 10 (on newer hardware)

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft published several performance claims that it says demonstrate how much better its Windows 11 operating system is in this regard when compared to its predecessor Windows 10.

Here are the claims that Microsoft is making:

  • Windows 11 PCs have 2.7 more hours of battery life than Windows 10 PCs.
  • Windows 11 PCs are up to 2.3 times faster than Windows 10 PCs.
  • Windows 11 PCs offer up to 3.2 times faster web browsing than Windows 10 PCs.
  • Windows 11 PCs offer up to 2 times faster Microsoft Office productivity than Windows 10 PCs.

Impressive stats. If you dig deeper, you may notice that Microsoft skewed the results significantly by using Windows 10 PCs with older hardware.

While it is fair to say that Windows 10 PCs are, on average, equipped with older processors, memory, hard drives and graphics adapters, it feels a bit like comparing apples to oranges. Yes, you can do that, but it does not really make a whole lot of sense other than to get some impressive sounding performance stats for marketing.

If you have used electronic devices for some time, you know that new device generations are often faster than previous generations. This is true for Windows PCs, mobile devices, streaming boxes, gaming consoles, and most devices that you can buy. If you compare the performance of a Google Pixel 9 with a Pixel 6, you will likely come to the conclusion that the newer device offers better performance. Same is true for PlayStation 5 vs 4, Apple iPhone 16 vs 15, and most devices that you can compare in that regard.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that a Windows 11 PC with an Intel 12th or 13th core processor runs better in benchmarks than a Windows 10 PC with an Intel 6th, 8th, or 10th core processor. That is the exact test setup that Microsoft used to conclude that Windows 11 PCs offer up to 2.3 times the performance of Windows 10 PCs.

To convince users, Microsoft should have used the exact same hardware setup for objective comparison. This way, it could have demonstrated that Windows 11 has the performance edge on the same hardware, if that is the case.

Microsoft’s claims boil down to Windows 11 running better on PCs with hardware that is one, two or more generations ahead of the hardware of the Windows 10 PC. The stats would very likely be not nearly as impressive if the same hardware would have been used.

PicPick

PicPick screen capture tool update adds WebP support

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

PicPick is an excellent screen capture program for Windows. It is free for personal use and you can support the developers by subscribing or buying a lifetime license.

The personal version has a few limitations, mainly that you can’t use it commercially, that it does not support automatic updates, and that it may display ads (you may have a hard time finding them though).

Updates are released frequently, sometimes multiple per month, sometimes less. The most recent update, released today as PicPick 7.4.0, adds support for an image format that is becoming popular on the Internet: webP.

When you capture an image in PicPick after the upgrade, you may now save the capture as a webP image. May be useful to users who need the format or prefer it.

Another handy addition is the ability to scroll horizontally with the mouse wheel by holding down the Shift-key on the keyboard. So, mousewheel without Shift scrolls vertically, mousewheel with Shift horizontally.

The update fixes two bugs next to that. The first fixes an issue that caused PicPick to fail to detect specific windows when capturing. The software supports window captures among many other capturing modes. The second fixes a focus loss issue when using the delayed active-window capturing feature.

You can check pout the entire changelog here. There you also find download links and options to buy the software.

Now You: which screen capturing software do you use and why?

Chrome

Windows 11 blocking Google Chrome? A security feature may be responsible

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Reports about problems to run Google Chrome on Windows started to emerge in early June 2025 on the official Chrome forum. Users claimed that they could not run the Google browser anymore on their Windows devices. Chrome would not start or close itself immediately after start; attempts to fix the issue, e.g., by uninstalling and reinstalling the browser, were unsuccessful reportedly.

The issue affects Chrome on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices according to the reports. While Microsoft has not published an official response to the claims yet, Google did.

A Google community manager confirmed the issue on the official support forum. According to the notice, Google’s support team investigated the issue and discovered that Microsoft Family Safety was responsible for the unintended behavior.

Microsoft Family Safety is a parental control software. Chrome may not start if the child safety software is enabled on the device.

Google provided a suggestion on resolving the issue. The company said that unblocking Chrome in Microsoft Family Safety would resolve it and allow affected users to run the browser again on the Windows machine.

Here is how that is done:

  1. Open the Microsoft Family Safety website, or the mobile app.
  2. Select the affected child.
  3. Go to Windows tabs > Apps & Games.
  4. Unblock Chrome there.

Chrome should run again on the Windows devices after the changes have been made. Note that a parent or legal guardian needs to make the change, as minors do not have access to the administrative options.

Microsoft did provide the same solution to Windows users who reported the issue to the company’s support team.

It is unclear why the parental controls software started to block Google Chrome for some Windows users. Microsoft has not confirmed the issue officially. It is likely caused by a false positive or a bug, one that has the pleasant side-effect of pushing Chrome users to other browsers, for instance Microsoft’s own, Microsoft Edge.

Vanderplanki

Email Backup Software Vanderplanki 3 adds Microsoft Email support

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Do you create backups of your email accounts? A popular solution for that is MailStore Home, which is free and cross-platform. The original founder of MailStore Home has created Vanderplanki, which serves the same purpose.

Vanderplanki can backup email accounts so that you may read messages offline, search across accounts, and more. It lacked some of the advanced features of MailStore Home up until now, namely support for Microsoft email accounts, such as Outlook or Microsoft 365.

The new release, Vanderplanki 3, adds the support. The release notes confirm the addition of support for Outlook.com mailboxes, including Hotmail, Live, and MSN, and support for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Exchange Online accounts.

The feature removes one of the main shortcomings of the email backup solution. Now, with Microsoft email support, it is capable of backing up emails from all major providers.

The new release adds another useful feature. The app fills out configurations for most major IMAP email providers automatically. This improves the process further.

There is still one downside to Vanderplanki at the time of writing. The software is only available in German. In fact, you may be blocked from downloading it, if you do not come from a German-speaking region. It is probably only a matter of time before other interface languages will be supported.

Now You: Do you back up your email accounts regularly? If so, how do you do it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Microsoft publishes PowerShell script to recreate the Inetpub folder on Windows

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

When Microsoft released the April 2025 security updates for Windows, users and administrators started to notice that the update created an empty folder called inetpub on the Windows drive.

Microsoft did not reveal any information about the mysterious folder in first place. This folder was linked to Internet Information Services in the past, but it was created even on systems that never had the feature installed.

It took a few days before Microsoft revealed why it created the folder. According to Microsoft, it was for increased protections. Users should not delete the folder under any circumstances.

Problem was, many did already as Microsoft did not mention any of that in the first days after releasing the update.

A new PowerShell script is now available that will recreate the inetpub folder along with all of its permissions.

Just run Install-Script -Name Set-InetpubFolderAcl in an elevated PowerShell terminal window. It has the following effect:

  • If inetpub directory does not exist, it gets created and default IIS permissions are applied to the directory.
  • If an empty inetpub directory exists, the default IIS permissions are applied to the directory.
  • If inetpub directory exists and only contains the sub-directory DeviceHealthAttestation, default IIS permissions are applied to both directories.
  • If inetpub directory exists and contains any other sub-directories, the script exits without making any changes.

So, if you do not have the inetpub folder anymore, you may run the script to restore it. (via Deskmodder)

How to sort files in Windows using two parameters, e.g. type and size

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

It is easy to sort files in Windows’ File Explorer. Just activate one of the displayed column headers, e.g., type or size, and Windows will sort all files using the selected value.

Select size and files will be displayed from largest to smallest. Click again, and the sort order is reversed.

Did you know that you can add a second sort parameter to this without breaking the first sort order? This can be useful, for instance by sorting all files by type and by size.

This keeps files grouped by typed, e.g., PDF documents, images, videos, while still sorting each individual group by size.

To do so, simply sort files like you always do. Click on a column header to sort by type. Hold down the Shift-key then and click on another header, e.g., size.

You will notice that files get sorted again without breaking the first sort order.

This can be quite useful, for instance when you want to check the largest files of multiple file types.

Now You: have another tip that is a time-saver on Windows or other devices that you use? Feel free to leave a comment down below to share it with everyone.

Microsoft Edit Open Source Text Editor

Microsoft’s new open source Edit application may remind you of the classic MS-DOS Editor

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

If you have used computers for a long time, you may remember MS-DOS and the tools that Microsoft shipped with it. Microsoft developed Edit, an open source command line text editor for Windows as an homage of sorts.

Interested users can download and install the latest version of Edit for Windows or build the app from scratch, if they prefer to do so. Microsoft plans to integrate the editor into insider builds of Windows first before making it available to all users as part of Windows 11. It is also available for Linux.

The big difference to the classic MS-DOS Editor is that Edit has a modern graphical user interface.

Microsoft describes Edit in the following way on GitHub:

This editor pays homage to the classic MS-DOS Editor, but with a modern interface and input controls similar to VS Code. The goal is to provide an accessible editor that even users largely unfamiliar with terminals can easily use.

Edit has a size of just 250 kilobytes and users may run the app without installation.

Here are key features that Microsoft highlights on this Dev blog:

  • Lightweight open source text editor.
  • Supports mouse and text user interface to select all menu options using keys.
  • Support for opening several files and switching between them using Ctrl-P.
  • Support for finding and replacing text. Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-R for that, or select Edit > Replace.
  • Word wrap support.

Compared to established text editors, the functionality is not really special. Notepad++, for instance, supports additional features, such as syntax highlighting, which Edit does not.

Edit on the other hand does not appear to be an attempt by Microsoft to introduce competition to established third-party editors. Microsoft itself says that the main goal of Edit was to introduce a command line text editor for 64-bit versions of Windows, as these come without one (unlike 32-bit versions of Windows).

Closing Words

Edit looks like an interesting protect. It is open source, lightweight, and will one day be included in default Windows installations. That does not mean that you have to use it, but it is an option for users who like these types of editors.

Now You: what is your take on Edit? Will you give it a go? Let us know in the comments.