Windows 10 Security patching ends today, when the last set of scheduled patches arrives sometime in the afternoon. Really? No. Windows 10 will still receive updates to Microsoft software installed within, mostly Office, but other software, probably Edge, will get updates, for now. And ‘Extended Software Updates’ are available until Patch Tuesday of October 2026. See how to sign up for ESU, and if it’s even worthwhile, in the free October issue of PC Updater News, or see back issues and signup to get the news every month.

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Original article: Windows 10 Ends Today: October 14th, 2025.

Your PC drive is a lot like your desk at work– when you get something new to work on, it gets stacked onto a part of your desk until you are ready to work on it. That’s what we call ‘vertical filing’, and you know if you’re guilty of letting that get out of control. Learn how to search for those lost files the OLD FAST way, or get tips to organize a drive.

The March PC Updater News is free, and available to download now. Subscriptions are free.

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Original article: Vertical Filing, Conquered.

The November PC Updater News is ready. This month:

• Turn off the ‘be a Guinea Pig’ option in Windows Update.
• The annual feature update ’23H2′ for Windows 11 has arrived.
• Outlook (NEW) is the modern Outlook Express.

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Original article: Don’t be the Guinea Pig.

Is that email in your morning flood of junk a phish? Or a trojan horse? It is frequently both, as phishing results in the trojan horse being allowed to deliver a load of Greek Soldiers. Or usually malware installation links and scripts. Read more in the July PC Updater News, free.

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Original article: Trojan Phish.

Here’s how to turn off the Whatever: Right-click the Search box, and the menu will pop up as below. Uncheck ‘Show search highlights’. Done.

If anybody knows what that setting changes beyond adding cartoons to the bar, let me know and I’ll update this.

Updated May 21st with the tea cup. And on May 22nd with the Tennis image. And so on…

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Original article: How to Turn off Whatever THAT is….

Translation: “The message that says that Windows is ‘ShuttingDown’ isn’t shutting itself down, so Windows can’t shut down. Do you want to ignore “ShuttingDown” and shut down before Restarting, uh, Anyway?”

In the early days of personal computers, we had MS-DOS, the old Microsoft Disk Operating System. It could run one program and do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking (walking and chewing gum at the same time, or the computer equivalent), wasn’t possible at first. So a program could do this:
Print 'hello '
Print 'world'
And that would reliably print ‘hello world’ on some device, usually a monitor, or a sometimes a printer.

But somewhere around 1994, where we had the model 80386 processors and Windows 3.11, computer chips and software gained the ability to ‘time-share’ so that programs could take turns running on the processor, and could do things without waiting for another program. That makes a few assumptions: All programs involved follow the rules, the operating system does everything right, and the hardware is functioning normally. 

And if it doesn’t, well, we might see ‘worldhello ‘ instead. That’s a very basic failure of a race condition. Each line of code worked correctly, but the results are out of order. Far more likely: gibberish output and broken Windows.

Since then, we’ve gained multi-core processors that can run far more programs at the same time. We have ‘services’ that run in the background, loading the Internet (communications), antivirus, system monitoring, video enhancements, surround sound, backups, phone-homes for both good and bad reasons, and on and on. As I write this, my computer shows 7 programs running, and 60 background processes (mostly services) either working or waiting for things to do.  CPU load is at 2%, so this is normal operation for a modern PC with this year’s specifications.

But what happens if we add a few more antivirus programs and have them monitor all incoming web pages and email? Well, they all try to do things at the same time, and things slow down dramatically. Add some more stuff, like browser toolbars, which mostly run all day long. Or view a web page that  automatically plays videos when you arrive, maybe serveral animated advertisements and a full-motion video. At some point, the software overwhelms what the hardware can deliver, either too much for the processor to calculate or too much internet content to pull down. Pieces are skipped. Videos are time-sensitive; if the image pieces show up out of order, the image looks blocky or garbled. Error messages can occur if the programs involved don’t know what to do with contents that are delayed, damaged, or out of order. Video programs know how to lower resolution or skip frames, so they can self-repair, to some extent.

Error messages, however, are written by humans, in advance. How do we do that? Well, the code is something like this, where lines 2 and 4 are ‘error traps’:

Print 'hello ' (and listen for an error number)
If error number received is 6, display 'Printer wants paper.'
Print 'world'
If any error received, display 'Unknown error after printing.'

OK, so that works unless there is an error that wasn’t expected at the time that it arrived. Most error messages say what the programmer thought was the obvious error that would happen after a specific line in a program. That’s when something happens, not what. It’s a guess.

Now multiply that by those 60 services and 7 programs that are running or waiting. Add some program code with incomplete error traps, or some software phoning home for advertising. The work area (memory) of the computer becomes messy and unstable, as programs receive web content or hardware status messages out of order, as gibberish, or not at all. In a severe case, the computer just locks up. But Windows does a fair job of cleaning up junk in memory, so what you see may simply be unexpected garbage.

So what does this mean for a computer user?

• Error messages tell you more about when something happened than what went wrong.
• Overloaded Windows gets weird.
• Programmers can’t anticipate all delays or every possible error.
• Software doesn’t deal with traffic jams well.
• Waiting for Windows to recover from an error works, sometimes. If you don’t expect miracles.

And for things to do:

• Refresh can help a browser program like Firefox or Chrome when the page looks like junk because it didn’t load completely. Press either F5, or Ctrl-R.
• Rebooting a computer clears memory and work areas. (Washes the blackboard.)
• Uninstall software that is no longer needed.
• Avoid installing software that runs all the time.

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Original article: Why Does Windows Act Weird?.

The lock screen is that first photo that Windows shows on startup, with the login prompt. It shows advertising occasionally, usually for Microsoft Games, and suggests a visit to the Microsoft store, or asks odd questions. That’s an odd location for any of that; they probably got the idea from the Amazon “Kindle with Special Offers”, which does something similar.

To turn off these annoyances, go to Settings, Personalization, Lock Screen, and change the top item, to either Picture or Slideshow. “Windows spotlight” is the setting that shows ads. After making that change, set “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” to Off. Important: This setting is reset by installing some of the larger Windows 10 updates, so re-apply as needed. Bad news if you aren’t running the ‘Pro’ version of Windows: Not all settings of this type are available for ‘home’ users.

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Original article: Taming Windows 10: Turn off Advertising in the Lock Screen.

To turn off this feature, go to the Settings app, Devices, scroll down and set “Let Windows manage my default printer” to Off.

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Original article: Tweaking Windows 10: Don’t Let Windows Manage my Default Printer.

Windows 10 is designed for mobile devices. All apps are background apps, by default. If that’s useful for anyone, great, but I have yet to meet that person. That’s like the early days of Windows, when most services were turned on, by default. It was a security and performance disaster, and subsequent versions of Windows have used more reasonable defaults, until now.

Mostly, Windows 10 is running on desktops and notebooks, and there is a long list of apps pre-installed by Microsoft. Some may be added by the hardware manufacturer, and they run in the background, be default. Maybe that’s a good idea if the app is working for you, providing emergency weather alerts, calendar alarms, stock alerts, anything. But all of them? Just say no.

If you don’t allow these apps to run in the background, they will still run when you start them in the usual way. To turn off these apps, click Start, Settings, type ‘run’ in the Search box, and choose the result ‘Choose which apps can run in the background’. I’ve seen from 16 to over 30 apps listed, all turned on, and none of them are needed to run Windows 10. Turn off most of them–leave them on only if you want them to do something, like gathering alerts.

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Original article: Taming Windows 10: Turn Off Background Apps.

As in most versions of Windows, the Windows 10 Start menu is ignored by most users. It’s usable if it isn’t enormous, but by default, it’s showing far too many apps and advertisements to be useful, and they’re in no order, and include advertising for apps with “in-game purchases”, like CandyCrush. You can drag the icon blocks to any position or order you like, and they’ll dock. But first, delete the blocks you won’t use, by right-clicking on each, and choosing “Unpin from Start”. If you remove enough blocks, the scrollbar will disappear. You can also turn off internet content on items like News, Finance, or Twitter: Right-click any of these blocks, and choose “More >” and then “Turn live tile off”. For any tiles you keep, you can change the size, choose “Resize >” and select an option.

Reminder: Removing these icon blocks does not uninstall the matching apps. To do that, click the start icon, go to the Settings app (the gear), System, Apps & features. This includes both desktop software and so-called ‘modern’ apps. The usual caution applies: There are hardware drivers in that list–lookup anything you don’t recognize before removing it.

There are also settings to keep Windows from adding more tiles and ads to the Start menu. Go to Settings, Personalization, Start. Turn off “Occasionally show suggestions in Start”. You might also want to turn off “Show recently added apps”. These settings are not available in every version of Windows 10.

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Original article: Taming Windows 10: Shrink that Massive Start Menu.