Tag: windows 11

Microsoft divides Windows userbase for a second time

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The last couple of years have been a difficult ride for the majority of Windows users. It all began with the release of Windows 11. Microsoft released the new version of Windows back in October 2021 to the public.

Several months before that release, it made it abundantly clear that Windows 11 would ship with new hardware requirements.

These requirements, particularly the need for a TPM chip and a relatively modern processor, blocked part of the userbase from upgrading to Windows 11 officially.

Granted, enthusiasts found ways to bypass the requirements and upgrade devices to Windows 11, but the majority of users does not know about Rufus or ways to bypass the requirements.

This divided the Windows userbase for the first time ever since Windows came to be. Hundreds of million of devices with Windows 10 cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 according to estimates. Microsoft, at least, gives customers an option to extend support by up to three years, but this comes at a price.

The second divide: Copilot+ PCs

Microsoft is dividing the Windows userbase again, less than three years after the official launch of Windows 11. Now, it is affecting the Windows 11 userbase.

The new Copilot+ PC type has different hardware requirements again. This time, requirements include a neural processing unit for AI processing on the device among other things.

While Microsoft won’t prevent regular Windows 11 systems from upgrading to Windows 11 version 24H2, it will block certain features on these devices.

In other words, if you do not have a Copilot+ PC, you won’t get all the features of Windows 11 anymore. While that is been the case for smaller features, including Auto DRM or DirectStorage, Microsoft is introducing a new dimension here.

Major features, including the controversial Recall feature, but also smaller features, such as features of the default image editor Paint, are Copilot+ PC exclusives. If you do not have one, you won’t be able to use these features, even if you wanted to.

Closing Words

Arguably, the second divide isn’t as major as the first. Windows 11 customers can continue to use their devices at least. Still, with a large number of Windows 10 customers left without any official options from Microsoft, and most current Windows 11 customers without access to many of the upcoming AI features, one has to wonder whether that is the best course of action.

If Microsoft would have known about the rise of AI in 2021, it could have waited with the release of Windows 11 until 2024. Or, it could have allowed Windows 10 devices to upgrade to Windows 11. All of these options were not really practicable from Microsoft’s point of view. It could have done that, but it wanted Windows 11 devices to be on modern hardware only. The rise of AI in 2023 came out of nowhere, practically.

Devices need enough processing power, using NPU chips, to compute certain AI tasks on the device. While it would still be possible to allow devices without AI chips to make use of these features, it would probably be unbearable slow.

In closing, Microsoft seems to have moved itself into a corner with the release of Windows 11 and the enforcement of new system requirements. The sudden rise of AI services and features require another round of adjustments to the system requirements.

Still, this is going to be a problem for Microsoft in the short run. What will all the Windows 10 customers do who cannot upgrade their devices to Windows 11?

Microsoft explains unintentionally why offline accounts are better in Windows

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The release of Windows 10 saw a fundamental shift towards Microsoft accounts. While users got to choose between local and Microsoft accounts in Windows 10, it was clear that Microsoft’s intention was to get customers to use online accounts.

It integrated new features into Windows that required an online account. From OneDrive over the synchronization of settings to the ability to restore an account password.

Microsoft shifted into a higher gear with the release of Windows 11. It enforces the creation of a Microsoft account on first setup now for Home and Pro systems.

Many workarounds do not work anymore, but there may still be options to deal with the user-unfriendly behavior. Still, most users may not know about these and that forces them to create the Microsoft account.

It is possible to create local accounts after the initial setup phase and delete the Microsoft account, but Microsoft has scattered warnings across the system in that case.

Microsoft highlights the advantages of local accounts

The support page “Change from a local account to a Microsoft account” on Microsoft’s official support website lists the advantages of both local and Microsoft accounts.

Here is what Microsoft has to say about local accounts (via WinFuture)

A local account is created on the device and doesn’t require Internet connectivity to sign in. It’s independent of other services, and it’s not connected to the cloud. Your settings, files, and applications are limited to that single device

While that is meant to be discouraging, may of the users who prefer local accounts may beg to differ.

The key here is that local accounts are not known to Microsoft. They work offline and files stay on the local system by default. Users may still sync files using first or third-party tools, but this is completely optional.

Wonder about the advantages of using a Microsoft account? Here are the key features of using a Microsoft account, according to Microsoft:

When you sign in to your PC with a Microsoft account, you’re connected to a Microsoft cloud service, and your settings and files can sync across various devices. You can also use it to access other Microsoft services

So, some settings and files sync when a Microsoft account is used. Using a Microsoft account may also give users access to services that require it.

Closing Words

To break it down: if you prefer privacy, you may want to consider using local accounts. If you prioritize convenience, or use multiple Windows devices, you may find that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

What about you? Do you prefer local or Microsoft accounts on Windows devices?

DoNotSpy11 Update

DoNotSpy11 update adds option to disable Windows AI features

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

DoNotspy11 is a long-standing privacy and tweaking application for Windows. The first update of 2024 introduces new features and compatibility with recent Windows releases.

It is a small tool that you may use to modify Windows settings with ease. It addresses one of the main issues that privacy-conscious users have with Windows: the scattering of privacy-related preferences and policies.

Instead of having to use the Control Panel, Settings app, Registry, Group Policy Editor, and some other tools to improve privacy, it delivers everything in a single easy-to-use interface.

Word of Advice: Windows may throw a SmartScreen error when you try to run the program on your device. This is not because it is malicious or faulty. SmartScreen displays also when a program is new.

Another great privacy tool is O&O ShutUp10++, which I reviewed some time ago.

A short DoNotspy11 Intro

DoNotSpy11 displays all applicable privacy tweaks in the interface. It uses color codes to highlight the safety of tweaks. The following colors are used:

  • Blue — These are safe settings that should not have any ill-effects.
  • Orange — It is necessary to read the description, as they may impact other features among other things.
  • Red — Usually not recommended to change.
  • Gray — These settings have not changed since the last use of the application.

The program suggests to create a System Restore point whenever changes are made. This allows you to go back to the previous state in case something does not work anymore. I never ran into this problem while using the app, but a backup option is always welcome.

Just check or uncheck the available options and hit the apply button in the end to make the change. It is easy to undo changes manually or through System Restore points.

DoNotSpy11 1.2.1.0 Changelog

The update introduces ten new tweaks, including a new Windows AI category. It also adds general compatibility with Windows 11 version 23H2 Moment 5 and Windows 11 version 24H2, which will be released later this year.

The final change adds high DPI support, which should improve visuals on high DPI displays.

As for the tweaks, here is what is new:

  1. AI: Disable Recall (Snapshots) (from build 26100)
  2. Apps: Disable Access to Cellular Data
  3. Apps: Disable Access to Eye Tracking
  4. Apps: Disable Access to Motion / Activity
  5. Edge: Disable Control Copilot Access to Browser Context
  6. Edge: Disable Spell Checking Provided by Microsoft Editor
  7. Edge: Disable Website Typo Protection
  8. Edge: Hide App Launcher on Microsoft Edge New Tab Page
  9. Start: Disable Recommended Section
  10. Start: Disable Website Recommendations in Recommended Section

Three tweaks have been updated. The first two add options to disable Copilot and the Copilot taskbar button on Windows 10 devices. The third changes the disable background applications recommendation from blue (safe) to yellow (read comment).

You can check out the full changelog here.

Do you use tweaking tools to improve privacy or other features of Windows devices?

Microsoft announces changes to Recall in Windows 11 after backlash

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

When Microsoft announced the AI feature Recall in May, it felt confidence in its AI strategy. Recall, a feature that takes snapshots of the PC screen every five seconds, was designed to be the selling point for a new breed of PCs, that Microsoft calls Copilot+ PCs.

A lot depended on Recall. It was the first major AI feature that Microsoft designed exclusively for this new PC type.

The reveal and the days that followed turned out different. Recall was criticized left and right.

Core points were:

  • Windows 11 activated Recall for users automatically and there was no opt-out option.
  • The Recall database was not properly secured.

This would have made Recall one of the most lucrative target in computing history.

Tip: you can disable Recall in Windows 11 in several ways.

Microsoft announces changes to Recall

Recall new setup with opt-out and opt-in

Today, Microsoft announced a series of changes to Recall that “improve privacy and security safeguards”.

  • The setup experience is changed. Users need to make a decision now to activate Recall or keep it disabled.
  • Windows Hello enrollment is required to enable Recall.
  • Proof of presence is required before users may interact with Recall’s database.
  • Additional security layers, including “just in time” decryption, is also enabled.

Closing words

Microsoft plans to ship the updated version of Recall on June 18th to Windows 11 Insider devices. By then, tinkerers will have another go at the feature to see if it is still possible to gain access to the database.

For a company that announced its new “security first” motto shortly before the reveal of Recall, feedback has been disastrous.

To end on a personal note. I still cannot find a use case for Recall. I do not see how it could help me improve my productivity on Windows PCs. Then again, I’m probably not the target audience for the feature.

What about you? Would you use the safer version of Recall?

TotalRecall: search Windows 11 Recall data and return results

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

TotalRecall is a new open source tool for Windows that can be used to run searches across the entire Recall database.

Recall is a new feature of Windows 11 that takes snapshots of the screen every five seconds. It stores them locally and makes them available for processing by the user.

Recall is enabled by default on supported systems. Users may disable Recall, but only after the initial setup. While that may change before public release, and Microsoft would do good to make the change, it is on by default right now.

The feature is officially available only for a batch of ARM64 devices at the time of writing, but it will expand to Intel and AMD hardware soon as well. Plus, there are tools available already to make it work on older ARM devices that do not have a NPU chip.

The data is protected, but unlocked once the user logs in. It is then accessible by the user, but also by System or Admin accounts. In other words, any process that runs as System or Admin may be used to access the data.

It does not take an Einstein to connect the dots here to spot the elephant in the room: malware and spyware will target Recall data. It reveals any activity of the user, with the exception of activity in certain private browsing windows.

Forget tracking, you get a clear picture of a user’s likes, dislikes, webpages, apps, games, documents, financial transactions, online banking, private and public messages on forums and chats, and much more, when you gain access to that data.

TotalRecall

TotalRecall is a third-party tool that makes the data searchable via the command line. Run a search for password, and the tool runs a query to return any user activity associated with the term password.

It saves the search results to a text document on the system. This file provides details on the “captured windows, images, and search results”.

You can limit the search to a specific data range or run it across the entire data.

Here is what the tool does:

TotalRecall copies the databases and screenshots and then parses the database for potentially interesting artifacts. You can define dates to limit the extraction as well as search for strings (that were extracted via Recall OCR) of interest. There is no rocket science behind all this. It’s very basic SQLite parsing.

Closing Words

Microsoft, probably, did not expect to receive that much backlash for Recall. It is anyone’s guess whether Microsoft is going to make adjustments to Recall.

Windows 11 users who buy a laptop that is Recall capable, may want to strongly consider turning it off. While it may be a useful tool in very specific work scenarios, the chance of Recall turning into a nightmare for many Windows users is a real one.

Windows 11 Recall data is not secured properly

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Is the upcoming Recall AI feature of the Windows 11 operating system a privacy nightmare? While the verdict is still out about that, it is clearly problematic on several levels in its current state.

Recall takes screenshots of the computer screen every 5 seconds. The default configuration takes screenshots of pretty much everything. The only exceptions are private browsing windows of popular browsers and DRM-protected content.

Every other activity, including views of financial documents, porn, games, visited websites, messages, and more may be captured.

It saves the data to a locally stored SQLite database. There it is kept until it is either deleted to make room for newer data or deleted by the user.

Users have several options:

  • Disable Recall entirely, which will likely erase the entire database.
  • Reduce the assigned storage size, which will delete older entries.
  • Use the delete snapshots option to delete some or all snapshots taken.

Multiple parties want access to Recall

Since Recall saves a user’s entire work history on a device for three months by default, it will be seen as a treasure trove by multiple parties.

  • Malware actors may find ways to grab the entire database, which is not encrypted when the system is running.
  • Law enforcement, customs, spies, state sponsored hackers may also want access to it.

Recall offers interesting data. Screenshots of one-time messages, or messages that get deleted by the user of the PC. These remain in the database until they are flushed out because of age.

Recall is not all that useful for most Windows users

The idea of searching through the computing activity of the past three months may sound appealing to some users.

In work or research environments, it may be seen as a great feature, provided that Microsoft gets privacy, security, regulatory requirements, and all of that in order before release.

For most home users, Recall does not have a great value proposition.

What problem is Recall solving? How often do home users need to find something very specific on their devices that they have trouble finding using the built-in search or manual searching?

In all of Microsoft’s talks and announcements, the company has not really answered that question.

If you weight this now against the prospect of maintaining a database on your computer that reveals what you have done on it in the past three months, then it is likely that most users may pass on this.

Depending on how it launches, enabled by default, with or without notification to the user, it is probably not going to see the wide use that Microsoft hopes it will have.

Closing Words

Recall is not here yet and things may change before the final release later this year. Most home users who happen to purchase Copilot+ PCs may want to consider disabling Recall to block the feature from recording everything they do on their devices.

I suggest you check out the following thread on Recall for additional information on it and the issues that it introduces.

What about you? Would you make use of Recall, if it would be available on your devices?

O&O ShutUp10++ update

O&O ShutUp10++ update adds more privacy goodness

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The first O&O ShutUp10++ update for Windows 10 and 11 of 2024 is now available. It is an excellent privacy tool to improve privacy through an easy to use interface.

You can check out my full review of O&O ShutUp10++ for in-depth information.

O&O ShutUp10++ 1.9.1437

The new version of the free application is available already. It was released about a week ago. New and existing users may download it from the official project website.

The update introduces new privacy options and also quality of life improvements. As far as privacy options are concerned, here is what is new:

  • NEW: Disable remote assistance connections to this computer
  • NEW: Disable remote connections to this computer

You find these two new options under Local Machine > Miscellaneous at the very bottom of the page.

The remaining changes improve usability of the app. Whenever you make a change, you receive a prompt to create a system restore point. If the feature is disabled, O&O ShutUp10++ may now launch the Control Panel in this case to rectify this.

Existing users may also notice that the start of the app is faster than before.

The configuration file is saved to the start directory now, and it is automatically migrated from previous versions. The file is called OOSU10.cfg and you find it in the same directory that you run O&O ShutUp10++ from. This makes it easier to migrate the configuration to other systems.

The application supports making bulk changes. It distinguishes between recommended, somewhat recommended, and all settings. A click on any of those under Actions displays the number of changed preferences now.

Tip: while these actions sound useful, they are applied immediately. It is better to make changes manually instead.

  1. Select View > Group by Categories to disable the grouping of settings.
  2. Click on “recommended” in the table to sort by recommendation state.
  3. Go through the list from top to bottom and make the changes manually.

Closing Words

O&O ShutUP10++ is an excellent free application for Windows to improve user privacy on the system. It is updated frequently to introduce new privacy options, such as disabling Copilot.

Do you use privacy tweak tools or system optimization tools? Which do you use and prefer?

How to disable Recall taking snapshots of the screen in Windows 11

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Recall is an upcoming AI feature of Windows 11. It takes captures of the screen every five seconds and saves them on the local system. Users may then interact with AI to look up information or process data that has been captured.

Most current Windows 11 PCs won’t get Recall functionality, as a Copilot+ PC is required. These PCs have specific requirements that include a neural processing unit and 16 GB of RAM.

The first iteration of Recall will only be available for specific Snapdragon ARM processors on top of that. With time, Recall will become available for AMD and Intel PCs as well.

Recall Criticism

Windows 11’s Recall feature is not without criticism. Here are the main points:

  • It records a user’s entire activity on the Windows PC, with a few exceptions. This makes it the holy grail for law enforcement, spammers, malicious actors, advertisers and marketers.
  • Recall snapshots require lots of storage. The default is 25 GB on a 256 GB hard drive. While you can drop that to 10 GB, it is still a lot of space. On 1 TB+ drives, the default is 150 GB of storage.

Disabling Recall in Windows 11

There are three options to disable Recall on PCs that support it.

  • Via the Settings app.
  • Via the Group Policy Editor.
  • Via the Registry (not yet available)

Settings app

Disable Windows 11 Recall in Settings
  1. Open the Start menu and select Settings.
  2. Go to Privacy & security > Recall and snapshots.
  3. Toggle Save snapshots to off.

This is all to it. Recall is disabled from that moment on for that user account.

Turn off Recall in the Group Policy Editor

Note: The Group Policy Editor is only available in Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. Home systems may disable Recall in the Registry, which is explained in the next section.

  1. Open the Start menu.
  2. Type gpedit.msc and press the Enter-key to load the Group Policy Editor.
  3. Use the hierarchy on the left to go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows AI.
  4. Double-click on Turn off Saving Snapshots for Windows.
  5. Change the statues from Not Configured to Disabled.
  6. Restart the PC.

Disable Recall in the Registry

Information not yet available, will update once it becomes available.

Recall memories

About Windows 11 version 24H2 Recall AI feature

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

A lot has been written about the upcoming Recall feature of Windows 11 version 24H2. Reserved exclusively for Copilot+ PCs, it will be unavailable to the majority of users who upgrade their Windows 11 PCs to the new version.

Recall, in a nutshell, takes frequent captures of the entire screen and stores them encrypted on the local system. Windows 11 users may then invoke the Recall feature to interact with the saved content.

From searching for specific information over getting summaries of watched videos or telecalls to finding that specific asparagus recipe that you looked at some time ago in Edge.

It is a proactive feature, unlike Copilot’s rewrite feature and others.

Microsoft describes Recall in the following way:

Search across time to find the content you need. Then, re-engage with it. With Recall, you have an explorable timeline of your PC’s past. Just describe how you remember it and Recall will retrieve the moment you saw it. Any photo, link, or message can be a fresh point to continue from. As you use your PC, Recall takes snapshots of your screen. Snapshots are taken every five seconds while content on the screen is different from the previous snapshot.

How Recall works

You use natural language to find something and Recall returns the information separated into text and visual matches.

Windows 11 Recall feature

Recall is shown as an icon on the Windows 11 taskbar and it may also be started using the keyboard shortcut Windows-J.

Recall displays a timeline on start that you may use to check out a specific day. Recall loads and displays the snapshots of that particular day then, allowing you to interact with the content.

Recall Timeline

Search is the heart of recall. You use natural language to find or interact with the saved content.

Type what you are looking for and Recall returns any matching snapshot. The AI feature displays hits from all apps by default, but you can filter results by a specific app to narrow down the results.

The feature distinguishes between close and related matches:

  • Close matches — includes at least one of the search terms or images that represent the search term.
  • Related matches — displays related items, e.g., cannelloni results when you searched for goat cheese pizza.

Selecting a screenshot launches the Screenray feature. Microsoft says that Screenray anayzes the snapshot and enables interactions with elements of it.

The company writes:

What you can do with each element changes based on what kind of content screenray detects. If you select a picture in the snapshot, you can copy, edit with your default .jpeg app such as Photos, or send it to another app like the Snipping Tool or Paint. When you highlight text with screenray, you can open it in a text editor or copy it.

Is Recall a privacy nightmare?

Recall records most activity on a Windows PC when it is active. It is up to the user to enable or disable Recall.

Microsoft has added options to disallow the capturing of specific apps or websites. Some of these are only available in Edge.

Recall does not capture private browsing sessions in Chromium-based browsers. In Edge, the feature may furthermore block captures of specific websites.

In other words, if you use a different browser than Edge, website filtering won’t work. If you use Firefox or another non-Chromium-based browser, everything will get recorded.

Recall runs locally only according to Microsoft. Captures are stored locally and the OCR feature runs local as well only.

The main privacy concerns

Recall runs locally only. The main concern that some users have is that someone else may gain access to the recorded data.

There are several scenarios where this may happen:

  • Malware infections may gain access to the data. This gives threat actors access to a user’s entire activity on the PC. It may include information about financial services they use, online accounts, password managers or security software, and confidential information in Word or Excel.
  • Law enforcement, including border agents, may want access to the information as it highlights (most of) the activity of a user on the Windows 11 device. Users may be coerced into giving state representatives access to their Windows PCs.

It is your choice

You may or may not use Recall. Most Windows 11 users cannot even use it, as their PCs do not meet the minimum system requirements.

If your PC supports it, you may want to ask yourself a simple question: do I really need it? Is it improving may workflows or helping me in another way?

It is a novelty feature, but how often will you make use of it once that novelty factor wanes off?

If you ask me, I won’t make use of it. All my PCs are not Copilot+ PCs and even if they were, I would turn it off as I do not need it. I know where to look when need to find something.

For businesses, it may play a bigger role. Making everything searchable, including video calls and presentations, is certainly useful in some scenarios.

What about you? Will you use the Recall feature when it comes out?

Download Windows ISO images

How to download Windows ISO images (Stable or Insider)

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

You have several options when it comes to downloading Windows ISO images. From downloading them from Microsoft using the Media Creation Tool to using tools such as Rufus to download them.

One of the easiest options to get the latest Insider or Stable ISO images is to use UUP Dump.

It supports:

  • All Windows releases: Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server.
  • All Windows channels: Public Release, Release Preview, Beta, Dev and Canary.
  • Several Windows editions: Home and Pro
  • All architectures: x64 and ARM64
  • All supported languages.

Here is how it works

  1. Open the UUP Dump website in your browser of choice.
  2. Use
    • Search to find a specific build.
    • Quick Options to get the latest build of a specific channel.
    • Recently added builds to see the latest releases.
  3. Select the desired language and click next.
  4. Select the desired edition, e.g., Windows Home and Pro, and click next.
  5. Make sure download method is set to download and convert to ISO.
  6. Check conversion options:
    • Include updates.
    • Run component cleanup.
    • Integrate .NET Framework 3.5.
    • Use solid (ESD) compression.
  7. Select create download package.
  8. Pick a local folder and select save to download the ZIP archive to the local system.
  9. Right-click on the download ZIP file and load the properties.
  10. Select the unblock option and click ok to proceed.
  11. Extract the ZIP archive.
  12. Modify CustomAppsList.txt to select the Microsoft Store apps that you want installed when using the ISO image. Add # in front to block installation and remove # to include the installation.
  13. Run uup_download_windows.cmd to start the process.
  14. Note that Windows may throw a SmartScreen warning.
  15. The process may take quite some time. Wait until you get the notification that you may press 0 to exit.
  16. The ISO image should now be inside the folder.

That is all to it.

Have you downloaded Windows ISO images recently?