Category: Windows

Zip archives are widely used on today’s Internet and on desktop computer systems. The Zip archive format is popular and used for distributing files, programs or saving space.

Archives contain one or more files. A Zip archive needs to be extracted, which is called unzipping.

Windows 11 supports the Zip archive format by default. It can extract contents of archives on the system. A third-party tool, like WinZip, WinRar or 7-Zip, is not required anymore for that purpose.

While it is a useful feature, it is far from perfect. Current versions of Windows 11 may be used to create and extract Zip archives. Windows 11 supports extracting other archive types, including Rar.

Last year, I ran benchmarks to find out how well the native functionality compared to that of popular archive apps. While it works, its performance is much slower than that of the tested third-party tools.

How to unzip files in Windows 11?

You may use the File Explorer context menu to extract archives. The option is available for all supported archive formats, including zip and rar.

Step 1: Open File Explorer on the system and navigate to the folder that contains the Zip archive. It may be in the Downloads folder if you have downloaded it from the Internet.

Step 2: Right-click on the Zip file and select the Extract all option from the menu that opens.

Step 3: A window opens. You may change the location the files will be extracted to. The default is a folder that matches the archive file’s name in the same location as the archive.

The option “show extracted files when complete” opens that folder. It is enabled by default, but can be unchecked.

Select Extract to unzip the archive to the selected folder. The process may take a while to complete.

How to view the contents of Zip archives

You may also open archives on Windows 11 before you extract them. This is useful if you want to see the files of the archive or access some of the files.

Double-click on the Zip archive in File Explorer to display its contents. File Explorer lists all folders and files that it contains.

You may browse them or use the built-in search feature to find specific files.

Your Options:

• Double-click on any file to open it. This works only for files like .txt or .png that have a viewer on the system.
• Right-click on a file or a selection to get options to copy, cut or delete it. Copy may be used to extract only the selected files. Cut is like copy, but it removes the file from the archive. Delete removes the file from the archive.
• Select the “extract all” button in the toolbar to extract all files. This works similarly to extracting archives using the context menu.

Tip: You may edit the path in File Explorer to view any archive directly. Just add the archive’s name and file extension to it, e.g. C:\Users\Martin\Downloads\Test\iview466_plugins_x64.zip

Use of third-party tools to unzip files

Third-party archive apps offer several advantages over the native functionality of Windows 11. Apart from the already mentioned speed, which translates to minutes or hours saved when extracting and creating archives, third-party apps support advanced features.

Advantages include support for additional archive formats, better archive creation support and more.

Extracting archives works identical once the third-party app is installed on a Windows 11 device.

Right-click on the archive and select the extract option. If you have installed WinRAR, you select WinRAR > Extract Files.

Command line and PowerShell options

Most Windows users do not need to extract Zip archives from the command line or PowerShell. The process is not faster. In fact, most users may find it complicated, as it requires parameters.

Still, some may find the information useful.

Command Prompt

Open a Command Prompt window in the location of the archive file. If you are in File Explorer, replace the location path with CMD and press the Enter-key. This launches a Command Prompt window in the location.

Now run the command tar -xf ARCHIVENAME, e.g. tar -xf iview466_plugins_x64.zip.

This extracts the archive to the current directory.

PowerShell

You may open a PowerShell prompt from Start. Just open Start, type PowerShell and select the result.

Navigate to the folder of the Zip archive using the CD command.

Once there run the command Expand-Archive ARCHIVENAME to extract it, e.g. Expand-Archive iview466_plugins_x64.zip.

Closing Words

Third-party software offers several advantages over the built-in Zip extraction capabilities of Windows 11. In fact, the only advantage Windows 11’s native functionality has is that it is available immediately.

If you extract archives regularly or need advanced options, then you may want to use third-party tools for that.

Now You: do you use archive apps?

Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system supports a wide range of color settings. Users may customize the color for window borders and title bars, the Start button and the taskbar.

Microsoft distinguishes between color modes, which refers to dark, light and custom modes, and individual color settings of each mode. This has not changed in the recently released Windows 11 version 23H2 update.

The very first choice that users of Windows 11 have to make is whether to enable light, dark or custom mode.

Here is how they differ:

• Light Mode — designed to work well during daylight hours and in bright environments. This mode supports accent colors for window title bars and borders.
• Dark Mode — designed for low-light environments, e.g., at night. Changes the colors of the Start Menu, Taskbar and Action Center, supports changing colors for windows borders and title bars.
• Custom Mode — custom settings that may mix Dark and Light mode settings.

Changing Color Modes on Windows 11 devices

Follow these step to set the color mode on a Windows 11 system:

1. Open Start and select Settings. You may also use the keyboard shortcut Windows-I to open the Settings app this way.
2. Select Personalization in the sidebar menu and then Colors on the page that opens.
3. Activate the menu next to “choose your mode” and pick one of the available options. These are light, dark and custom.

Changing Light Mode colors

Select Light under “choose your mode” to enable light mode. If the mode was set to custom or dark, you should notice a return to lighter colors immediately.

Scroll down to Accent color. You may set it to manual or automatic. Set it to manual to pick one of the listed “recent colors” or “Windows colors”, or select “View colors” beneath the options to pick a color from the entire color range.

The selected color is set automatically. Note that the option to show the accent color on Start or the taskbar is disabled in light mode.

You may enable or disable “show accent color on title bars and windows borders” to show the selected color there.

If you set the color to automatic, Windows picks the color based on the wallpaper or open applications. Some users may find this confusing, as the color changes regularly when automatic is selected.

Changing Dark Mode colors

Dark mode supports a wider range of color options than light mode. It is unclear why Microsoft decided to restrict light mode in this regard.

After you have selected Dark as the preferred color mode on the system, you may also set the accent color to manual or automatic. The same color options are provided in this regard.

The accent color is shown on the title bars and windows borders by default. You may also enable “show accent color on Start and taskbar” to show it there as well.

Custom Color Mode

This mode gives you the option to set light or dark color modes for Windows and apps individually. You may set Windows to dark mode and apps to light mode, or vice versa.

How to configure less distracting color settings

Depending on how you configure colors on Windows, you may get a colorful system or one that is not as distracting. If you work on Windows 11, you may want to tone down colors on the system.

You may do so in all three color modes. The main recommendation is to disable all other features that Windows supports.

These are:

• Transparency effects — these make Windows and surfaces translucent.
• Show accent color on Start and taskbar — to show the taskbar and Start in a single color that uses the selected color mode as its base.
• Show accent color on title bars and windows borders — to hide accent colors on windows.

It does not really matter which accent color you select, or if you set it to automatic or manual, if you disable all other settings on the page.

Now You: what is your preferred color mode?

Microsoft announced a dedicated Copilot key for Windows recently. Yusuf Mehdi himself announced the “year of AI” and the introduction of the Copilot key for Windows 11 PCs. Microsoft and several OEMs will ship upcoming devices with the key on the keyboard.

Information about the key is scarce at the moment. While Microsoft did publish a blog post on its Windows Experience blog about the key, it revealed little about its functionality.

Mehdi revealed on Twitter that the key would “enable one-click access to Copilot” and Microsoft’s rather lengthy post does not provide any additional information on the functionality it provides besides that.

Microsoft does compare it to the Windows-key, which it introduced almost 30 years ago. This key, also controversial at the time, introduced a number of new shortcuts on Windows.

Microsoft’s own Surface devices and devices by OEMs such as Dell will feature the new Copilot key.

The Copilot key: what we know

A short clip of the key that Mehdi posted reveals its location next to the right Alt key and the cursor keys on a keyboard for a mobile device. What Mehdi failed to mention is that it sits in the place of the right Ctrl-key on the keyboard.

Tom Warren posted a screenshot of a Dell keyboard with the key. It too replaced the Ctrl-key on the keyboard. It appears that Menu functionality is still available as well, albeit not directly when pressing the key.

The removal of the right Ctrl-key introduces a problem for users who use it. There does not seem to be a replacement option and it is unclear if users may map Ctrl again to the Copilot key to restore the current functionality.

Functionality-wise, all that Microsoft revealed was that you get access to Copilot when you activate the key.

Obviously, Copilot itself needs to rise to the occasion as well. It is severely lacking at the moment. It takes to long to process input and anything that you write is submitted over the Internet to a Microsoft server.

Is there more to it?

If the entire functionality of the key is to launch the Windows Copilot interface, then it is quite the redundant feature. The existing shortcut Windows-C opens the Copilot interface already. Users may also click on the Copilot icon to launch it.

What happens to the key when users deactivate Copilot? It is a dead key then? Will Windows 11 map it to Ctrl automatically? Or will it reactivate Copilot even?

It is certainly possible that the key adds just the launch option, which would demonstrate Microsoft’s dedication to AI. It may be great for the stock price and initial usage of Copilot, but it would be lacking functionality-wise.

If that is indeed all there is to the dedicated key, it is a missed opportunity. If Microsoft uses it as another key for shortcuts, it might interest more users.

From launching dedicated AI tools, such as image generation, to creating summaries of open documents or webpages with a simple shortcut.

If Microsoft wants to please everyone, it would even introduce a setting to remap the key to Ctrl.

Closing Words

The coming days and weeks will provide us with additional information about the key and its uses. While many OEM keyboards will include the key, it is uncertain if the majority of standalone keyboards will support it.

Now You: what is your take on the key?

When Microsoft launched Windows 11 in late 2021, it did not only block millions of Windows PC owners from updating to the operating system, it also made the use of Microsoft Edge mandatory for certain operations.

Want to open support articles? Edge is required. Web search results? Edge is required. Links to articles and other content in Widgets? Edge is required.

Setting another browser to the system default did not change any this.

Then came MSEdgeRedirect. An open source tool that promises to redirect hardcoded content for Edge to another browser. While Microsoft did try to make the tool unusable, it did survive.

A new version of MSEdgeRedirect is now available. It comes just a week after the integration of Europe Mode. Europe Mode enables everyone to set the geographic location of the operating system to one of several European countries.

Along with the change come abilities to remove Microsoft Edge and Bing Search, and gain control over other areas as well.

The newest update as another redirect option to the application: the ability to redirect MSN Discover content to another browser.

MSEdgeRedirect: modes explained

The application supports a wide range of redirect options. Before you get access to these, you need to select the mode of operation. There are three main options to choose from:

• Europe Mode — This mode makes native changes to the system to set the region to a country in the European Economic Area. It gives you more control over Windows and includes the option to remove Microsoft Edge for good.
• Service Mode — The application runs in the background to pick up any Edge link and redirect it to the desired target. Quite taxing for the system (developer says 1-10% CPU usage while running).
• Active Mode — Runs the app instead of Microsoft Edge when links specific for Edge are opened.

If you picked Service or Active Mode, you may configure redirects on the next screen.

All Redirects

The application supports all variants of Microsoft Edge — Stable, Beta, Dev and Canary — and may do its magic regardless of which variant is installed.

Here is the list of available redirects:

• Bing Discover — content that “Bing” believes is of interest.
• Bing Search — web searches using Windows Search.
• MSN News (Alpha) — news content displayed as a widget in Windows Widgets.
• MSN Weather — weather content displayed on the taskbar and as a widget.
• Bing Images — images provided by Bing.
• PDF Viewer — change from Edge to another PDF viewer on the system.
• Bing Chat — option to redirect Bing Chat.
• Disable Windows CoPilot — turn the feature off.
• Redirect Windows Store ‘Apps’ — don’t open them in the Microsoft Store.

You may configure all of these individually. Note that replacements vary depending on the type of content. Usually, you get multiple options to choose from, including a custom option.

Verdict

MSEdgeRedirect is an open source tool that gives users control over certain functionality that Microsoft decided to restrict. There aren’t any technical limitations for these restrictions. It appears to be an attempt by Microsoft to push its services over others, even at the expense of user control and choice.

Apart from not using these services, which works really well, you might give MSEdgeRedirect a try if you use some of them.

The latest version is available on the project’s GitHub repository. Note that you may get a SmartScreen security warning when you run the program on Windows. It is safe to use, so don’t worry about that.

Now You: do you use Windows 11?

Upcoming versions of Windows will include a new repair feature that Microsoft calls Fix problems using Windows Update. The feature, which was first spotted in January 2023, uses the capabilities of Windows Update to reinstall Windows.

Since it adds another repair option to Windows, you may wonder how it differs from existing options. In this article, we will take a look at the feature and highlight the differences to existing solutions.

First the basics. The option is located under System > Recovery on Windows 11 devices. You find the option to “fix problems without resetting your PC” there. This option attempts to troubleshoot and fix issues directly without any reinstallation or resetting.

There is also “Reset this PC”, which reinstalls Windows and allows you to keep personal files, and “go back”, which tries to uninstall the most recent Windows update.

Fix problems using Windows Update explained

Fix problems using Windows Update is the new addition on the page. When you select the option, Windows will download files from Windows Update to reinstall itself.

A core difference to Reset this PC is that you get to keep personal files, installed applications and settings. In other words, it stays away from any user files and customizations and focuses on restoring the operating system itself.

Microsoft confirmed this when it announced the feature back in July 2023 on its Windows Insider blog.

The description of Fix problems using Windows Update reads: “Reinstall your current version of Windows (your apps, files and settings will be preserved)”.

Microsoft explains: “This operation reinstalls the OS that you have and will not remove any files, settings, or apps. The repair content is displayed on the Windows Update Settings page with the title appended with “(repair version)”.”

The main purpose of the feature is for “keeping the device secure and up to date” according to Microsoft. The company admits however that the new feature can be useful in multiple scenarios besides that.

The option may be useful in the following scenarios (among others):

• When updates fail to install over and over again using Windows Update.
• When part of the system is damaged, e.g., after a malware attack.
• When other issues are experienced related to Windows features.
• If you delete core apps that you somehow can’t restore any other way.

Closing Words

Microsoft has not yet announced when the new feature will land in Stable versions of Windows. Potential targets are the next Moment update, which rumors say launches in February 2024, or the next feature update, which will come later in 2024.

The new feature is an option. It does not take away any existing options but adds a new one that some users may find useful. Whether it will be indeed useful in many different scenarios remains to be seen.

Now You: which reset/reinstall option do you use when things are broken?

UCheck is a software updates checker for Windows. It is a freemium product, which means that it is available as a free, limited version, and a commercial version. The price of the commercial version starts at $12 per year.

Earlier this week, I reviewed WingetUI, an open source program to install, uninstall and update software programs on Windows. UCheck promises similar functionality, but the free version is limited to updating and uninstalling software on the system.

The Premium version, available for $12 per year, adds the installation of software, scheduled scans, email support and Enterprise use to the mix. There is also a Technician’s version, which adds scripting, portable configs and license.

The free version of UCheck was used for this review.

UCheck Free overview

The program is available as a portable and setup version. The interface displays the three main sections, updates, installed, and download, on start. Free version users see several “upgrade” links and offers there as well.

You may want to visit the program settings before you run a scan. The General section reveals that Telemetry data is send by default and that the program is configured to run on startup. You may disable both options there. There is also an option to scan apps that start on Windows automatically, which is an interesting feature.

The settings are also home to exclusions, which accepts folders and files, and custom locations, which can be used to include portable software programs in the scanning.

Activate the Scan button in the main interface to find out which installed (and portable) programs have updates.

The program lists the number of programs with updates, as well as the number of installed programs after the scan.

Select “pending updates” to take a look at the list of outdated programs UCheck discovered during its scan.

Programs are listed with their name, company / developer, location on the local system, and the current and latest version. Filters and a search are supported to display only some results.

The Action menu lists options to update individual programs, to skip this update, and to add them to the list of exclusions. The free version supports batch updates, but you need to start UCheck Free with elevated rights for that. There is a button in the interface that does that.

You may now check one or multiple programs and activate the “update selected” button to download and install updates for the selected applications in one operation. Note that there is no “select all” checkbox, which would make things comfortable.

It is unclear where the downloads come from, as this is not revealed by the application. The database is community powered, which explains why it is large and well maintained.

Comparison to winget and WingetUI

When you compare UCheck to winget, you will notice that UCheck supports more programs than the default winget database. Winget detected about 20 programs with updates on a test system while UCheck over 140.

One reason for that is that UCheck includes the Downloads folder of Windows by default. Depending on use, it may store a large number of applications.

WingetUI is easier to use, there is no doubt about that. It suffers from the same lack of a larger software database though. Another difference is that both “wingets” support the installation of portable programs, which is reserved to paid versions of UCheck.

UCheck does include information about available Windows Updates though.

Closing Words

The end of SUMO, probably the best software updates monitor for Windows, has left a hole. UCheck comes close to what SUMO offered, but you may need the commercial version to really take advantage of some of its features.

The program could use a few usability features, such as an option to check all / uncheck all programs in the updates listing. Nothing major, but these would improve usability for some users.

All in all, UCheck is a well designed program that delivers exactly what it promises. The Premium version is worth a subscription, as it adds scheduled scans and some other features to the app.

Now You: do you use software updaters?