Windows Scams Part 2

Microsoft has finally had enough of the Windows scammers. Apparently it generates about 1.5 billion dollars a year. 

 Microsoft has a special digital crimes unit and they have received over 11,000 calls a month about fake security issues and many Windows users have lost quite large sums of money.

So Delhi police raided various call centres that have been linked to these scams. 16 were carried out this week and earlier this month, another 10 locations were raided.

The raids were due to Microsoft filing complaints with police in New Delhi about these so  called Windows Call Centres.

Its nice to know that Microsoft actually does do something about it. And this should encourage more people to report these scams.

According to the New York Times some people caught out by these scams ended up paying $1000 for the fake support. 

Mind you according to the BBC, last year one person in the UK lost £1200 pounds to these con-artists.

Well hopefully we will get less of these nuisance calls.

Windows Update Part 6, no it really is Part 6

Is it true surely not. Has Microsoft finally fixed the fix for the fix..... . It looks like the Windows 10 October update is finally coming to a computer near you soon, its only six weeks late.

Microsoft seems to have fixed the problems now. But rather than rolling it out in one go, they are going with a somewhat staggered approach with its deployment.  

John Cable (Director of Program Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery) stated in his blog on 13th November 2018;

 "In addition to extensive internal validation, we have taken time to closely monitor feedback and diagnostic data from our Windows Insiders and from the millions of devices on the Windows 10 October Update, and we have no further evidence of data loss.  Based on this data, today we are beginning the re-release of the October Update by making it available via media and to advanced users who seek to manually check for updates.

As with all Windows releases, we will continue to carefully study the results, feedback and diagnostic data before we begin offering the update in phases to more devices in the coming weeks and months."

He goes on to say;

"While the April Update had the fastest Windows 10 update rollout velocity, we are taking a more measured approach with the October Update, slowing our rollout to more carefully study device health data. We will offer the October Update to users via Windows Update when data shows your device is ready and you will have a great experience. If we detect that your device may have an issue, such as an application incompatibility, we will not install the update until that issue is resolved, even if you “Check for updates,” so you avoid encountering any known problems. For those advanced users seeking to install the update early by manually using “Check for updates” in settings, know that we are slowly throttling up this availability, while we carefully monitor data and feedback."

So hopefully if your machine has compatibility issues with a Windows update it won't just apply the update it will wait until your machine is ready. Don't hold your breath as I am sure this will provide Microsoft with new problems, or as a guy I used to work with once said as a joke;

"Didn't you know Windows never has an errors or problems they just call them interesting features" 

So fingers crossed and a quick prayer to the god of computers and we my finally have a pleasant Windows 10 update experience. 

Windows Update part 5

There are so many parts to this story now, its getting a bit tedious.

So Microsoft have issued a fix  to fix the fix that should have fixed the update, I think you get the idea.

 But The Windows 10 1809 update is still causing a few headaches with file operations. A new version is out there for testing by the Insiders.

It now appears there are problems with compressed files, these often have the .zip label.
Its only a problem if you let windows handle them. If you use a program like Winzip or similar then you are OK. 

Personally I have always used a third party program such as  Winzip,  WinRar or the 7-zip (this is the one I use at the moment as it is free) to compress and uncompress files. 

The initial problem with the update that deleted files seems now to be a result of many people using more than one drive in their computer. 

 Its now common practice to install Windows on an SSD (Solid State Drive, think really big USB drive but more like a normal hard drive) and have all the other stuff such as your programs, documents on a standard hard drive. The SSD can be accessed much faster than a conventional drive so it means a slightly faster computer. So why Microsoft haven't caught up with this way of building computers I don't know. You would have thought Microsoft would be on top of things like this. 

I am sure there is more to come on this saga.