Microsoft scrubs Windows 7 PCs of upgrade nagware

Microsoft has begun yanking the long-lambasted "Get Windows 10" nag software from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs, according to a support document.

The document posted to Microsoft's site Tuesday said that the company was fulfilling a pledge that it would remove the promotional code and content after the free Windows 10 upgrade offer expired at the end of July.

Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet.com first reported on the removal of the pitches yesterday.

Served to Windows 7 and 8.1 users via Windows Update, the removal process strips seven previous updates that were force fed beginning in early 2015. "This update removes the Get Windows 10 app and other software related to the Windows 10 free upgrade offer that expired on July 29, 2016," the accompanying support document stated.

The most notable, and noticeable, of the seven earlier updates installed the "Get Windows 10" app -- shortened to "GWX" -- which was first used to "reserve" a copy of the free upgrade, but then later morphed into a pest that, after numerous refreshes by Microsoft, ended up self-scheduling an upgrade without user approval.

During the final months of the one-year upgrade offer, Microsoft pushed its promotions to the limit, and beyond, by duping users into thinking that they had rejected the upgrade when, in fact, they had unknowingly authorized it.

Microsoft only stepped back from the practice after a flood of complaints, and then only a month before the upgrade offer expired.

Shortly after the upgrade offer ended, Microsoft sent instructions to Windows 7 and 8.1 devices to stop displaying the GWX nags.

Although some -- including Computerworld -- speculated that Microsoft might retain GWX on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 devices to market the $120 to $200 Windows 10 licenses, those concerns were unwarranted: Microsoft did remove GWX.

In early August, Josh Mayfield, the software engineer who created GWX Control Panel, a tool designed to eliminate all upgrade pitches, was unsure whether Microsoft would make good and remove GSW. "At the moment we're not certain whether Microsoft will kick off another nag-em-to-death upgrade campaign, or what form a future campaign would take," Mayfield wrote on his blog. "It's just too early to say whether it's really over for Windows 7/8.1 users, or whether the settings GWX Control Panel puts in place are enough to protect against any future Microsoft efforts to get you onto their new platform."

Even so, Mayfield outlined the steps necessary to remove his GWX Control Panel from a PC.

Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users eager to rid their machines of the Windows 10 promo-ware should look for the update labeled KB3184143 in Windows Update, then instruct the service to download and install it on their PC.

Opera's free, unlimited browser VPN is ready for secure surfing

In April, Opera added a free, unlimited VPN to the developer edition of its browser. Now, the company has brought that same capability to the stable version of its Opera 41 desktop browser.

While some other VPN services charge for letting you surf anonymously across the web, Opera’s service is both free, unlimited, and built right into the browser. There are no restrictions on bandwidth, though you’ll have just a few locations to choose from when deciding on your VPN endpoint.

A VPN works by providing a secure, encrypted tunnel between your computer and a website or remote server—Opera uses a 256-bit AES encrypted connection.  Another advantage is something Netflix users have known for years: By choosing a foreign endpoint, a user can virtually “place” himself in that country, allowing his PC access to content that would otherwise be off limits. (Netflix has moved to crack down on this practice, however.)

Why this matters: Opera represents just a tiny fraction of the browser market, but the company has been impressively aggressive in rolling out customer-friendly features: native ad blocking, battery saving, and more. In some ways, the company is the T-Mobile of the browser world, attempting to upend more-entrenched competitors by giving customers a number of tantalizing free features. 

How Opera’s new VPN works

To enable the new VPN service, first ensure you have the latest version of Opera. If you don’t see the VPN icon in your address bar, you will need to make sure the VPN option is toggled on in Settings. Now click the VPN icon in the address bar to reveal its settings. 

Mark Hachman

To enable the VPN, first make sure it’s turned on in the Settings menu.

You will see that the VPN service is on, as well as how much data has been transferred this month. You can select from a list of five locations for the endpoint, including Canada, Singapore, and Germany. You can also select an “Optimal” endpoint, which allows Opera to select the VPN endpoint based on the network speed, latency, location, and server capacity.

Don’t be surprised if your bandwidth drops as a result of enabling the VPN, however. 

A test of Opera’s VPN endpoints reveals drastic differences in page load times, as measured by Opera’s own internal tool.  

As we proved during the Olympics, however, using a VPN does have its benefits. While broadcasters such as the BBC ask visitors to confirm whether they’ve paid their TV license fee, other sites, like the CBC, don’t seem to mind.

Is it truly private?

One concern, however, is whether your surfing habits will be truly anonymous. Opera was purchased by a Chinese conglomerate earlier this year, and there will always be some portion of the internet that believes that the Chinese government is peering over the shoulder of every Chinese product. 

When asked for comment, an Opera spokesman specified that the VPN is a no-log service, which means that no user data is collected. “The service is provided by SurfEasy Inc. which is a Canadian company that has not been acquired by the Chinese conglomerate,” he added in an email. “SurfEasy acts under strict Canadian privacy laws.” 

“While Opera has been purchased by a Chinese company, the browser will continue to be owned by a Norwegian company, which acts under Norwegian and European privacy law.,” the spokesman added. “This means very strict regulations regarding use of private data.”

SurfEasy also offers a paid service for Chrome and other browsers, which provides unlimited bandwidth for a monthly fee. Historically, the paid service has offered a greater number of endpoints and faster performance.

Do you have to use Opera’s new VPN if you use the browser? Nope. In fact the performance penalties suggest that enabling Opera’s new VPN on a 24/7 basis probably doesn’t make sense. But when you need to, combining private browsing (CTRL + Shift + N within Opera) together with the new VPN tunnel is a pretty good assurance that your online activities won’t be tracked.

How to tell if your Galaxy Note7 is safe to use

Samsung is offering detailed plans for how you’ll be able to tell the difference between a faulty Note7 or one that’s safe to use.

Big blue S

The company says the new barcode features a white sticker with a large, blue “S” at the top right corner and a small, black square on the bottom. If your Note7 box has the big blue "S", it should be safe.

Samsung

Look for the new label on the safe versions of the Galaxy Note7.

Check your IMEI

A Samsung recall site also has a tool to lookup a phone’s IMEI number so you can certify that a new phone is safe. You probably don’t need to double check if you’ve been an issued an official recall by Samsung, but this will be important later on as people begin to resell and trade around devices. 

Green status bar

What's more, Samsung has confirmed to ZDNet that the new, safe Note7 units will feature a green battery icon in the status bar, instead of the usual white.

What about refurbished phones?

We’ve also yet to hear what Samsung plans to do with the glut of phones it’s bound to receive since the recall extends to every single Note7 purchased. The company said the problem is with the battery itself. The following statement from Ars Technica says, “Based on our investigation, we have learned that there was an issue within the battery cell. An overheating of the battery cell occurred when the anode-to-cathode came into contact which is a very rare manufacturing process error.”

So it’s possible there could be some massive fire sale later on of refurbished models, but we haven’t had any indication of how that will turn out, or how you'll be able to tell if a refurbished phone is safe.

How To Quickly Start & Stop Windows Services Without The Task Manager

Windows and the apps installed on your system run lots of different services in the background. Most of these services are essential to the OS or the app’s working and they are best left to do what they are meant for. If however you find you need to monitor, start, and stop a particular service running in Windows frequently you might not want to repeatedly go through the Task Manager to do so. My Windows Service Panel is a free and open source app that lets you select Windows services you want to monitor and stop/start them from a dedicated panel.

Install My Windows Service Panel and run it. It will check to see if MY SQL server is running on your system or not but that doesn’t have much to do with anything. Click the cog wheel button at the bottom right and you will go to the Select Services Window panel. Here you can see a complete list of services that were running and are still running on your system. To add a service to the main panel for monitoring, turn the switch next to the service’s name in the ‘Selected’ panel On. In the screenshot below, we’ve decided to monitor Adobe Acrobat Update Service and Apple Mobile Device Service.

The services you selected for monitoring will now appear in the main panel complete with an On/Off switch, and their current status i.e. Running or Stopped. To turn a service Off, you need only turn the switch next to it Off. The ‘Running’ status of the service will change to ‘Stopped’.

My Windows Service Panel is, as the name implies, a dashboard dedicated entirely to Windows’ Services. More importantly, it lets you choose the services it should display so that you don’t have to go through long lists of services in the Task Manager simply to know their current status or to turn them On/Off. For anyone testing or troubleshooting an app or the OS, this is pretty handy.

Download My Windows Service Panel

How To Troubleshoot And Fix The Windows 10 Start Menu

The Start Menu in Windows 10 is of the most problematic features of the OS. If it works well for you then you’re lucky but there are hoards of users who have a dysfunctional Start Menu that fails to open, fails to launch apps, doesn’t let you pin apps, gets stuck, and won’t let you access the list of all installed apps, among other things. Those with a buggy Start Menu deal with a very essential feature on their desktop being useless. Users employ different hacks to fix the problem but no one hack has been able to track down and fix the problem for everyone and many fixes that work for some users often do not work for others. Microsoft knows there’s a problem and has released a  tool called Windows 10 Troubleshooting Tool that aims to troubleshoot and fix problems with the Start Menu.

The Windows 10 Troubleshooting Tool looks and works like the the default troubleshooter in Windows but specializes in fixing whatever is wrong with the Start Menu. This might include registry entries, problems with a particular user account, and more. All you have to do is run it and allow it to scan your Start Menu for problems. If you have complete trust in Microsoft, because why wouldn’t you, click the ‘Advanced’ option and allow it to automatically implement any fix it deems suitable.

The tool will scan the Start Menu for problems and like the troubleshoot tool on Windows, it will tell you what’s wrong and if a possible fix for it is available.

If you’ve ever used the built-in troubleshooting tool in Windows to identify problems such as no connectivity despite being connected to a working WiFi connection, you know that the tool doesn’t always manage to figure out what’s wrong and the same can happen with this tool as well. It is still worth a shot if your Start Menu is acting up.

The tool can do with improvements and by improvements we mean adding options to troubleshoot Cortana, Windows Search, and Action Center all of which are plagued with bugs just as much as the Start Menu is.

Download Windows 10 Troubleshooting Tool (Direct Download Link)

How To Find Which App Is Using Your Webcam

Controlling which apps can access your webcam is pretty simple in Windows 10. You can easily edit the list and revoke an app’s access to your webcam if you feel it isn’t safe. Windows 10 explicitly has you grant apps access to your webcam so you’re safe for the most part. Of course, this is for the good, trustworthy apps that have verified publishers or that come from the Windows Store. Apps that are malicious or that you might have unknowingly downloaded when downloading other apps are an entirely different story. If you suddenly find the little light next to your webcam turned On but can’t figure out which app is using it, there’s a very simple way to track it down. It requires an app called Process Explorer and the built-in Device Manager. Here’s what you need to do.

Run Device Manager and locate your webcam in the list of devices. It will likely appear in the Imaging Devices group but can be listed in a different group, depending on your hardware.

Find the webcam in Device Manager, right-click it, and select Properties.

Go to the ‘Details’ page and in the ‘Property’ drop-down, select ‘Physical Device Object name’. In the Value section, right-click the name, and select ‘Copy’.

Now, download and install Power Explorer. Run it and hit Ctrl+F. In the ‘Process Explorer Search’ box that opens, paste the physical device object name you copied for your webcam. Give it a few minutes and Process Explorer will show which currently active process is using the webcam.

In the screenshot below, you can see ‘chrome.exe’ as the process that is using the webcam. If you’re dealing with a malicious app, it’s likely going to have a name that makes it difficult to identify which app it belongs to. Use the Task Manager’s expanded/detailed view to look for it.

It’s also worth mentioning that if your browser shows up in the list, the culprit might be a malicious website you have open in your web browser. Web browsers normally ask permission on a per-website basis before letting a website use your webcam but malicious websites will likely have found some way to circumvent this. That’s what makes them malicious.

This method will work in Windows 7, 8/8.1, and 10.

Download Process Explorer