A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. CrowdStrike is widely used by many businesses worldwide to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread fast as businesses based in Europe started their work day.

UK broadcaster Sky News could not broadcast its morning news bulletins for hours this morning and showed a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, impacting flight departures.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it’s assisting airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines due to communications issues. “The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines,” says FAA spokesperson Jeannie Shiffer in a statement to The Verge. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Berlin airport also warns of travel delays due to “technical issues.” The issues have also impacted many 911 emergency call centers in Alaska. One airline in India has even turned to handwritten boarding passes due to the outages.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz in a post on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

CrowdStrike says the issue has been identified, and a fix has been deployed, but fixing these machines won’t be simple for IT admins. The root cause appears to be an update to the kernel-level driver that CrowdStrike uses to secure Windows machines.

While CrowdStrike identified the issue and reverted the faulty update after “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts,” it doesn’t appear to help machines that have already been impacted.

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues. The workaround involves booting affected Windows machines into safe mode, navigating to the CrowdStrike directory, and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers or even for Windows laptops deployed and used remotely.

“Our entire company is offline,” says one Reddit poster, while another says 70 percent of their laptops are down and stuck in a boot loop. “Happy Friday,” says one Reddit poster. It looks like IT admins worldwide will have a long day.

In what appears to be a separate outage, Microsoft is also recovering from several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services. The root cause of those issues was “a configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads.”

Bowden’s report introduces the possibility of a deviation from the anticipated Windows 12 release, shedding light on Microsoft’s contemplation of a new update codenamed “Germanium.” Contrary to expectations, this update might not align with the speculated Windows 12, as Microsoft strategizes to avoid further fragmentation of its user base.

The potential reason behind this strategic shift lies in the challenges faced by Windows 11 since its launch in October 2021. Despite the announcement of Windows 10’s end-of-life date and the provision of paid security updates until 2028, only 28.6% of current Windows users have migrated to Windows 11. Introducing Windows 12 in 2024 could exacerbate the situation, creating more complications in user adoption.

Microsoft’s decision to extend support for Windows 10 until 2028 gives users the option to delay upgrading, contributing to the slow adoption of Windows 11. The company faces the risk of Windows 12 meeting a similar fate if introduced prematurely. Currently, a mere 400 million out of 1.4 billion Windows users have transitioned to Windows 11, citing hardware requirements and skepticism about the new operating system’s performance as key reasons for the slow adoption.

Bowden’s report hints at a new operating system in development named Hudson Valley, which might internally be considered a substantial upgrade akin to a new version of Windows. However, the uncertainty lies in Microsoft’s branding and marketing strategy for this potential evolution of Windows 11.

One noteworthy aspect highlighted in the report is a shift in Microsoft’s update strategy. Under the previous leadership of Panos Panay, Windows moved away from annual updates, opting for major updates every few years supplemented by periodic small updates. According to Bowden, the current leadership at Microsoft is contemplating a return to the annual major feature update model, a decision that could have significant consequences for users, especially those constrained by older hardware.

The report implies that Hudson Valley might indeed represent a reimagined Windows 11, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence. If this speculation holds true, the anticipated release in 2024 could bring forth a Windows 11 iteration enriched with advanced AI functionalities, including the likes of Copilot and other recent developments by Microsoft.

This potential strategic shift aligns with industry trends emphasizing the integration of AI into operating systems to enhance user experience and support. Microsoft’s renewed focus on AI-driven features could mark a significant step forward in the evolution of Windows, offering users a more intelligent and intuitive computing environment.

In summary, the much-anticipated Windows 12 may not see the light of day in 2024 as Microsoft navigates the complexities of user adoption and hardware limitations. Instead, the tech giant appears to be gearing up for a substantial evolution of Windows 11, centered around artificial intelligence, with Hudson Valley potentially being the harbinger of this transformative update.

As the tech landscape continues to evolve, Microsoft’s strategic decisions in the coming months will undoubtedly shape the future of its operating system and impact the millions of users within the Windows ecosystem.

As it happens every month, these patches are here to address several security issues.

This time around, Redmond has resolved 66 vulnerabilities in its software, 10 of which are critical. What’s even more concerning is that, according to the company, at least 6 of these flaws are being exploited in the wild.

This means you are recommended to deploy these patches as soon as you can.

That said, judging by the number of addressed vulnerabilities, the November 2022 Patch Tuesday cycle is rather on the light side. The count is down from the 81 vulnerabilities that Microsoft fixed in October that just went by.

They are more in line with the 67 security flaws the company addressed in November 2021.

It’s just that the number of exploits known to be used by cybercriminals is rather critical. This is the first time that such a large number of vulnerabilities have been known to be used by malicious actors, at least in more than a year.

And this makes it even more important for users of Microsoft software to patch their devices as soon as possible.

Windows 10 users are directed to download their respective patches for version 1507, 1607, 1809 as well as the more recent versions 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2. All other versions of this older operating system have reached end of support.

Windows 11 users, meanwhile, have updates available for version 21H2 and the latest version 22H2.

If for some reason, you are still rocking Windows 7 on your computers, then you can also get your hands on updates as part of the ESU program that Microsoft has for enterprise customers. Home users, in this case, are not getting new updates.

These new updates are available via the typical channels like Windows Update, WSUS, alongside the Microsoft Update Catalog for manual downloads.

Gaining 1.83 points last month, the OS has now climbed to a 15.44% share, up from 13.61%.

And in doing so, it is within touching distance of the mark where 1 in every 6 users of desktop operating platforms in the world are now using the latest and greatest version of Windows. Microsoft certainly would have liked this number to be higher, but it will take it.

These latest figures arrive from none other than StatCounter which has published its monthly report tallying the numbers up until the end of September 2022.

And they reveal that Windows 11 now sits tightly as the second most popular version of the operating system thanks to this steady climb. It now sits 5.83 points higher than the now-dead Windows 7, which still commands 9.61% to its name.

Windows 10, on the other hand, remains unreachable with its 71.29% slice of the pie.

Three other versions of Windows split the remaining breadcrumbs: Windows 8.1, 8, and XP. Windows 8.1 currently holds 2.51% of the market, while Windows 8 has a negligible 0.69%.

Windows XP, still, surprisingly, has 0.39%.

All these figures combine to give Microsoft a commanding share of 75.93% of the global desktop market. This may be substantially lower than the dizzying 90%+ that the platform had to its name back in the heydays, but such are the times we live in.

This leaves Apple macOS with 15.74%, Linux with 2.6%, and ChromeOS with figures of 2.38%.

Despite PC shipments riding much higher than they had been at pre-pandemic levels, unit sales practically dropped off a cliff during the past couple of quarters. So much so that even Intel and AMD fired off warning flares not too long ago.

And for a company like Microsoft, this decline was too step to overcome.

As a result, Windows OEM revenue was down a massive 15%. The software titan had only predicted a decline to the tune of high single digits, but demand for PCs and laptops took a much bigger dive than anticipated, making this a rare miss for Microsoft.

Redmond says that this 15% is actually offset by 5 points of positive impact from the Windows 11 revenue deferral from the previous year, hinting that things may be much worse than believed.

It did net $50.1 billion in revenue in this first quarter of its fiscal year, beating Wall Street estimates of $49.7 billion, so that is good news.

More good news is that Surface and device numbers were up 2%, also beating expectations. Of course, these figures came well before the launch of the Surface Pro 9 and the Surface Laptop 5, so we will have to wait and see what kind of performance they pull off in the second quarter.

Otherwise, things were business as usual for the technology titan, which witnessed double-digit growth across Azure, LinkedIn, Office 365 Commercial, Office consumer products, and Dynamics.

Microsoft returned $9.7 billion to shareholders in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 through share repurchases and dividends, a decrease of 11% compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2022.

The company warns of the typical industry trade winds, competition, as well as COVID-19 related setbacks to manufacturing, shipping, and logistical issues.

Chrome and Firefox both kept working and getting updates for the old platforms, even as Microsoft forged ahead with Edge and dropped support for old browsers.

But if you are still rocking these operating systems, then listen up. Google has announced its intention to end support for Chrome early next year on both these older versions of the operating systems—the fan favorite Windows 7 and the problem-solver Windows 8.1.

The search engine giant made this formal in a post on its Chrome Help Blog:

“You’ll need to ensure your device is running Windows 10 or later to continue receiving future Chrome releases. This matches Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 7 ESU and Windows 8.1 extended support on January 10th, 2023.”

This is in line with the tentative release of Chrome 110 on February 7, 2023, and Microsoft’s looming retirement date for Windows 8.1.

While Google Chrome will continue working after the update — and well, old versions of the web browser will continue to be available on several websites that host them — it will no longer receive any feature updates and security patches on devices powered by these operating systems.

This retirement, therefore, increases the risks that users and businesses face falling prey to online attacks if they continue to use Chrome on Windows 7 and 8.1.

And there are hundreds of millions of them out there.

Windows 7 may have reached the end of support back in January 2022, but it still commands a 10.68% share of the desktop market worldwide. Windows 8.1, on the other hand, holds a measly 2.7% slice of the pie. All figures via StatCounter.

With this in mind, it makes sense to start preparing for the migration if you are one of these users.

Right about now.

Things have been moving quickly, with additions like listing processes that prevent a file from being deleted, an OCR tool, and even a Screen Ruler.

Two new features are now in development, one of which at least is sure to please regular users of the app.

Future updates to the program will finally add settings backup capabilities and the ability to edit the hosts files on your system.

The Settings backup feature, as the name suggests, lets you export all your customizations to a dedicated file, which can then be used to restore settings from another. Microsoft is also adding additional options here, like automatic backups and restorations.

You will find this new backup option in the General tab alongside the option to specify where PowerToys should store its backups.

That’s a settings addition, but PowerToys is also getting a new toy for editing hosts file. This is a very welcome addition, as current versions of Windows have no built-in tools for working with hosts, and a dedicated utility for this should come in real handy.

As you can imagine, the hosts editor in PowerToys allows you to work with the file and make your edits without the need to use good old Notepad.

The tool will allow you to add new entries, reposition, disable, filter, and ping existing addresses. You will also be able to add comments to each entry for extra convenience and to keep track of things.

No information yet on when these two new PowerToys features will become available in the program, but they should not take too long to arrive.

And how good-looking it is depends on your tolerance for change.

Initially, this user interface design was thought to be one of those many prototype creations that designers behind Redmond walls continue to work on. After all, Windows 11 itself is rapidly evolving, more so at the UI level that the company continues to refine and polish.

But when Zac Bowden got wind of it, he confirmed that this is likely an early UI exploration prototype that Microsoft is working on for the next version of Windows.

The software titan is hard at work on the next iteration of its OS, which some believe to be Windows 12, while it is internally referred to as Next Valley. We know that the company has returned to a three-year development cycle for Windows, which means that this next release may be here sometime in 2024.

Bowden talks about how he’d already seen this design (above), shown in a brief cutaway at Ignite 2022.

According to his sources, the UI briefly shown off at Ignite yesterday is representative of the design goals that Microsoft hopes to achieve with the next version of the OS.

And since the UI mockup shown during Ignite was of very low quality, Bowden went ahead and recreated the design to provide us with a better idea of what it is supposed to look like:

Hmm, very Interesting!

He says that he has seen different variations of this design layout, including one that houses the system icons and system elements along the top in a translucent bar instead of simply floating on the desktop, as illustrated in the image below.

And since things are at a very early stage, the company is readying more sweeping UI changes that were obviously not shown at Ignite. These include a new lock screen, login prompt, notification center and more.

Apparently, Microsoft aims to achieve an interface that is better optimized for touch without diminishing the experience for mouse and keyboard users. The idea is to scale this new UI across desktops, laptops, and tablets for factors, foldable displays included.

All said and done, these are still very early days for Next Valley, and this is just Microsoft exploring. The real interesting question is why such a confidential prototype ended up in the main keynote of a high-profile conference.

Guess we all know the answer to that!

These arrive alongside the Windows 11 2022 Update that took flight a couple of days back.

The software titan has highlighted two big changes that you will immediately notice in this new and improved servicing process following the launch of this first major update for the OS. And they apply to both feature updates and monthly updates.

For starters, Microsoft emphasizes how it has significantly reduced the size of Windows updates, which, in return, has resulted in faster installs.

Redmond claims that for some users the updates are reduced by up to 450 MB on the feature updates side of things. On the monthly update side, Microsoft says that it reclaimed hundreds of MB of disk footprint to give back to the user.

So far, so good.

But this next improvement is equally important considering the world we now find ourselves in.

With climate change starting to wreck things across the planet, Microsoft is now monitoring carbon footprints. This will allow the company to ensure that Windows attempts to update during times when there are a greater number of clean energy sources, like wind, solar, and hydro, available.

The software titan says this should result in reduced carbon emissions as Windows PCs worldwide move away from energy sources based on fossil fuels—at least during the update process.

Overall, this is good, responsible behavior from Microsoft on two of the most pressing optimizations the Windows platform needs when it comes to servicing.

You can read all the technical details about the size savings and the environment savings if you want.

Microsoft has made available the September 2022 Patch Tuesday updates, with this latest release now live for users of myriad Windows operating systems—everything from the newest OS in Windows 11 to a classic favorite in Windows 7.

And as part of this release cycle, the company has fixed no less than 62 vulnerabilities in its software.

While the number may seem big, it is actually really low, representing a 50% decline from August. This makes it a neat little progress as far as resolving security flaws via patch releases for the software titan.

In fact, this actually represents the smallest number of vulnerabilities that Redmond has resolved as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday cycle this year.

Just five of the released patches have the Critical severity rating, which once again represents a massive 70% decline from the previous months.

However, some vulnerabilities should be monitored, particularly if you are an IT admin tasked with maintaining a network of devices.

Prime among them are two 0-day flaws that are actively being exploited in the wild. Security experts say this should be a priority for system administrators, and they should begin patching their fleet of computers as soon as possible.

One of these is CVE-2022-37969, which has a CVSS score of 7.8. This is on the lower end of things because this vulnerability can only be exploited locally. That is to say, an attacker must already have access to a system and the ability to run code there.

But still, it is a good idea to keep all your systems up-to-date, vulnerability or no vulnerability.