Category: Software

Windows-11-Upgrader Flyby11 renamed to FlyOobe: new features in the pipeline

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

He has done it again. The developer of several useful open source tools, Belim, has changed the name of another of his applications. The useful open source Windows-11-Upgrader Flyby11 is now known as FlyOobe.

The program itself makes it easier to upgrade Windows 10 systems to Windows 11, especially if the computer does not meet major system requirements of Windows 11. While you can bypass most requirements manually, using FlyOobe simplifies the process significantly as it requires just a few clicks to start the upgrade.

The new name reflects the nature of the program better, according to the developer. Thankfully, that is not all that is new. The latest version includes a few changes already, like improved upgrade logic or automatic compatibility checks before selection of the ISO.

Here is the full changelog:

Improved upgrade logic for bypassing Windows 11 requirements
Automatic compatibility checks before ISO selection
New hybrid UI with dark main window and a light sidebar. Drop a comment: full dark, back to light, or keep the hybrid look?
More intelligent handling of setups with and without Internet
Hundreds of fixes, cleanups, and refinements under the hood
Clippy was killed. Again.
The old FAQ was removed (a new one will appear in the repo soon)
Localizations are currently offline because they no longer fit with the core features. I still need to figure out how to move forward with this

More interesting than that is what is coming next. The developer is working in integrating ISO preparations and bypass patching directly from ISO images into the application.

Means, it is future proofing the program to make sure that it continues to work, even when Microsoft decides to disable the existing bypass options.

With Windows 10 going out of support in two months, it will be interesting to see if the downloads of tools like this will explode. While users may be able to sign up for extended security updates, this is delaying the death by just a year. Enough time for some, but there will be millions of perfectly working Windows 10 PCs in October 2026 that could be used for years or even decades, if their owners would get some help migrating to Windows 11 or Linux, or another option.

Chrome PlayReady DRM

Google Chrome is getting PlayReady DRM support in Windows 11

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Most web browsers support some form of digital rights management (DRM), which is used to play DRM-protected content on the Internet. Services like Netflix, Disney+, and most paid ones use DRM,

The functionality provided by a service may depend on the DRM technology that is supported by the browser. Microsoft’s PlayReady DRM, for example, supports 4K playback at Netflix and other popular streaming services.

Google’s PlayReady DRM, on the other hand, does not. That’s probably the main reason why Google is working on adding support for PlayReady DRM to its Chrome web browser. With it, Chrome users can play up to 4K video streams at services such as Netflix or Disney+.

It may be a welcome addition for users who watch streaming services in the browser, use Windows 11 and have the device connected to a display that supports the higher resolution.

Good news is that you may enable the new feature already, provided that you run the latest stable version of the browser, Chrome 138.

Here is how you do it:

  • Load chrome://flags/#enable-hardware-secure-decryption in the Chrome address bar.
  • Set the flag to Enabled.
  • Restart Google Chrome.

The feature should be supported after the restart. Note that this is still in testing and that you may run into issues after enabling the feature. If you do, try disabling the flag again to resolve those issues. You could also disable it manually, if you do not want to make use of it.

This seems to be coming to Chromium-based browsers in general. If you use a different flavor of Chromium, you may also be getting this new feature, provided that the change is introduced.

Backup App: Here is what you need to know about the transfer to a new PC option

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft has updated the official Backup app of the Windows operating system recently with PC transfer functionality. It is designed to move files and data from an older PC, e.g., a Windows 10 device, to a newer PC.

The new option addresses a common issue that users face when they buy or a build a new PC: how do you get your files, data and settings from the old system to the new?

Microsoft’s transfer option sounds like a good option, as it is baked into the operating system. While it can be useful indeed, it is important to understand that it has limitations.

What is transferred? Microsoft says that you can use the option to transfer “all files”, settings and preferences from one PC to another.

What is excluded? System and operating system files, OneDrive files, installed applications, saved passwords and credentials, encrypted drives with BitLocker.

Are there other limitations? There are three. First, you need a Microsoft account and use it to sign in to both PCs. Second, while you can run the Backup app on Windows 10 and 11 devices, you can only use it to transfer data to a PC with Windows 11, version 24H2 or newer. Also, ARM-based PCs are not supported currently. Third, both PCs need to be connected to the same network.

In other words, you can use it to move files, such as documents or photos, from the older PC to the new system. You may also use it to move settings and preferences, such as your wallpapers, to the new system, provided that it runs the latest version of Windows 11 and is not ARM-based.

Installed applications are not transferred, which is probably the biggest shortcoming. This means, that you will have to install your favorite apps manually and configure them manually as well, unless they offer imports of settings from another device or do so via the cloud.

Some Windows users may find the tool useful, despite its obvious limitations. You can check out a detailed tutorial on how to use the tool on the Microsoft Support website.

Now You: how do you handle migrations from one system to another? Do you use tools for that or a manual approach?

Microsoft trials Adaptive Energy Saver, to enable saving mode on devices with plenty of battery left

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mobile devices like Windows 11 laptops use batteries for power. Keeping an eye on the remaining battery is essential to avoid unexpected system shutdowns due to a lack of power.

Modern mobile devices support battery saving modes. These are designed to save battery while the device is idle or in use. Common tweaks include reducing the screen brightness, powering down devices, or limiting background activity.

Up until now, Windows’ energy saver mode was either turned on or off. Microsoft has started a trial to change that.

What is the adaptive energy saver? It is a new, opt-in mode, for Windows 11 devices that have a battery. The feature enables energy saving automatically to conserve energy, even while the battery is not particularly low.

This happens without changing the brightness of the screen and is based “on the power state of the device and the current system load”. So, I assume this means that if the load is light, Windows 11 might turn on energy saving mode for a bit to save energy. Once more resources are required, it may turn off energy saving mode again.

How this actually works remains to be seen. Since this feature is introduced in test builds. expect some tweaking and testing to find out how well it works.

The feature is disabled by default and in testing in the latest insider builds of Windows 11 only (where it may be enabled for some for testing). You find it under Settings > System > Power & battery. There, under Energy saver, set “always use energy saver” to adaptive to use it.

Both Android and iOS support adaptive power or battery options. Some Android devices support adaptive power saving, which dynamically adjusts power-settings like the screen brightness based on user behavior. Apple introduced adaptive power in iOS 26, which makes slight performance adjustments to extend battery life.

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.