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Microsoft released the first Windows 10 and 11 Patch Tuesday updates of 2024 earlier yesterday with the January updates KB5034122 and KB5034123 respectively. The updates are meant to address security issues within Windows. The one for 11 also fixes the recent Wi-Fi troubles that led to networks not connecting or the Wi-Fi icon not showing.

Intel has released new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers for Windows 10 and 11 to resolve several network-related issues, such as blue screens of death at heavy network loads, the "No Wi-Fi networks found" message when connecting to Miracast devices, and several other bugs.

Do you want to check the health of your PC's SSD? Here's how on Windows 11.

On Windows 11, you can check the health state of the system (or any other) Solid-State Drive (SSD) installed on your computer, and in this guide, I'll show you how. In the past, you needed to source a third-party tool to check the health of the drives connected to your device, but now, you can check this information from the Settings app. 

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 23H2 and 22H2 (KB5034123). It's the same KB update for both versions of Windows but depending on which version you have, you'll land on a different Build number, either 22621.3007 or 22631.3007.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for January 2024 on Windows Server 20H2, and Windows 10 for the latest supported versions, 20H2, 21H2, and 22H2. The new updates are being distributed under KB5034122, bumping up the builds to 19044.3930 and 19045.3930. You can find standalone links to download the new update on the Microsoft Update Catalog at this link here.

Files, a popular third-party File Explorer alternative, has received a new feature update. Version 3.1 is now rolling out to all users via the Microsoft Store, bringing a few improvements and new features. The update is not as big as the recently released version 3.0, but it still packs a few notable and user-requested changes.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' tops the chart, followed by 'Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire'. ‘'Oppenheimer' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

2024 will be an interesting year for web browsers. Google will make changes to its dominating Chrome web browser that may affect part of the browser's userbase negatively.
 
There is the move to Manifest V3 for extensions, which may impact content blockers, privacy extensions and some other extensions negatively. There is also Privacy Sandbox and the end of third-party cookie tracking, which bakes tracking into the browser directly to give Google even more control over user data while making it more difficult for others to keep up.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at a Copilot hardware button coming to a keyboard near you, Microsoft-branded keyboards rising from the dead, the first Windows 11 preview builds of 2024, a surprising spoiler from Dell about the next Windows 11 feature update, new app releases, and more.

The next feature update for Windows 11 is expected later this spring, only a couple of months before Microsoft ships the next-generation Windows client with a heavy focus on AI. So heavy that the company even made a dedicated hardware key for Copilot. We do not know the exact release date, but Dell might just give us a clue. Of course, if you trust Dell with that kind of information.

By Susan Bradley

It’s time to prepare for the upcoming patching month, and that means it’s time for MS-DEFCON level 2.

Mikhail Parakhin, who was named as Microsoft's new leader of its Windows and Web Experiences team in September, has been responding to online comments and recommendations from users of Windows 11 over the past several days. On Tuesday, he offered an answer to a person's request to make a change to the Windows login screen.
 
The user on X (formerly Twitter) is "ntoslinux". He asked Parakhin if it might be possible to keep the date and time on the screen after users dismiss the Windows login screen. He stated, "This annoys me a lot when I try to wake up my laptop just to check the time(but don't want to login)."

The first week of 2024 has been an interesting one for you if you enjoy a bit of retro Microsoft and Windows news. We covered a cool software utility program dubbed "MSBob" that tries to take inspiration from the failed Microsoft Bob project. The app is still WIP and could become a more polished and useful version later.
 
Aside from that, we also took a small stroll down memory lane all the back to the 1980s as the earliest known version of 86-DOS - the OS that's the forefather to MS-DOS - was unearthed with a photo of the original disk as well.

2023 was a big year for cybersecurity, with significant cyberattacks, data breaches, new threat groups emerging, and, of course, zero-day vulnerabilities.
 
Some stories, though, were more impactful or popular with our 22 million readers than others.
 
Below are fourteen of what BleepingComputer believes are the most impactful cybersecurity stories of 2023, with a summary of each.

We are now officially in 2024, and with the new year, we are looking forward to getting some major new updates on Microsoft's Windows PC operating system. Indeed, we expect the flow of new Windows 11 builds in the Windows Insider Program to start up again as early as next week.
 
One specific issue is something that may get some personal attention from Mikhail Parakhin, the recently named leader of Microsoft's Windows and Web Experiences team. He frequently answers questions and deals with requests from people on X (formerly Twitter).

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' tops the chart, followed by 'Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire'. ‘'Killers of the Flower Moon' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Big on AI, features and updates, but is this enough for Microsoft to convince Windows 10 users to transition to Windows 11?

2023 has been a heck of a year for Microsoft and, more specifically, Windows. Windows 11 has been available for a little over two years now. And contrary to Microsoft's expectations, the operating system's adoption rate is stunted at best.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at the final news of 2023: last-minute security patches, a new tiny11 release, Copilot on Android and iOS, another massive game leak, and more.

X user (Twitter) @NTDEV_ has released a new version of its tiny11 project. tiny11 core for ARM64 is now available for download with notably reduced disk footprint and emulation performance improvements, especially when emulating on x64 processors. It follows the footsteps of the recently released tiny11 core for x86 processors.

If you want to navigate Windows 11 like a pro user, you should know every single one of these hotkeys.
 
Even if you've never used Windows 11 before, you can quickly boot up the computer and easily use it to surf the web, watch videos and play music. All you really need is your mouse to get to where you need -- but if you want to be a Windows power user, and not just a Windows novice, you need to know keyboard shortcuts.

Feature deprecation is nothing new in the Microsoft world. Every now and then, the company stops developing parts of its operating system due to various reasons. In 2022, Microsoft deprecated only two services just to ditch a massive list of components in 2023. Keeping track of everything might be challenging if you do not follow Windows development closely, so here is a recap of every feature Microsoft deprecated in Windows 10 and 11 in 2023.

By Susan Bradley
I’m hoping that the relatively well-behaved December updates are a good omen for the upcoming patching year.

WingetUI, which is a third-party GUI utility tool for managing CLI package managers like Winget, Scoop, Choclatey, npm, among others, received its latest update yesterday. The new update, version 2.2.0, improves the ease of usage and convenience as it now supports WingetUI Widgets which makes it easier to install available package updates.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' tops the chart, followed by 'Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire'. ‘'Killers of the Flower Moon' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Keeping software up to date on your Windows PCs is not a straightforward process. Sure, some programs include their own update checks and even automatic update options. That's the case for all web browsers and many popular programs out there. Then again, there are lots of programs that don't include automatic update options or even notifications when new versions are released.