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Posts tagged "Windows"

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Want to hook up your iPhone with Windows 11? Well now you can
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Windows 11 users who have an iPhone will be pleased to know that they can now benefit from Phone Link for iOS, as the feature has finished rolling out to the entire user base.

Microsoft began the rollout a few weeks back, noting that it would take some time, but the company has just updated the announcement blog post to let us know that it’s now out for everyone who wants a piece of the action.

Microsoft said: “We are pleased to announce that Phone Link for iOS is now available to all Windows 11 customers.”

If you want to install Phone Link for iOS, just search for the app (in the Windows 11 taskbar, search box), and fire it up – you’ll then see the option to install it for iPhone (as well as Android, of course).

Analysis: Bang on time

Phone Link has long been available for Android, and it has been a very long wait for iPhone owners to get their own take on the app. Still, it’s here now, and fully rolled out on schedule.

Bang on Microsoft’s intended schedule, actually. Back when Phone Link for iOS started rolling out in April, we were promised the process would be finished by mid-May, and that has come to pass as predicted.

That’s good news, as it seems Microsoft hasn’t run into any major bugs with the feature to hold things up. That’s always a possibility with any new piece of functionality, of course, but Microsoft specifically said it was taking a conservative and slow approach to the rollout here, which hinted at a degree of trepidation. There was no need to worry, though, it seems.

It is worth noting that Phone Link for iOS is more limited than its Android sibling. With the iPhone version, you only get the basics of receiving calls and messages through to the desktop, as well as notifications. But there is also iMessage support, too, which is a major boon, albeit that experience is limited too (there’s no message history, for example).

Even so, when you’re working at your PC and don’t want to keep looking at your iPhone, Phone Link represents a really convenient way of fielding all the basics and engaging somewhat with iMessage.

Via Neowin

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Microsoft has finally fixed a cool Windows 11 Spotify feature – so what took so long?
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Microsoft has just fixed one of Windows 11’s neatest features – one that Chief Product Officer Panos Panay called a ‘game-changer’ when it was first introduced back in 2021.

The pre-loaded Clock application in Windows 11 has long included a feature that allows you to link up your Spotify account and set it to play specific productivity-focused playlists while you’re employing the nifty Focus Assist feature.

However, as previously noted by Neowin, the functionality had been broken for months (since at least February 2023, potentially longer), and despite Spotify trying to rectify the issue, it turned out to be an expired certificate on Microsoft’s end breaking the feature. Users attempting to link their Spotify account to Windows Clock would be met with a blank screen and an endless “Connecting to a service” message.

Thankfully, it looks like the problem is now resolved – in part, it seems, due to Neowin’s diligent reporting. When Spotify confirmed that the bug was Microsoft’s fault, Neowin reached out to the Windows creator to report the issue. Lo and behold, a few weeks later, the problem has been fixed; you can now hook up your Spotify account to the Clock app with no difficulties.

Microsoft, please love all your children equally

However, it looks like the problem is still lingering in Windows 10 – when I tried to connect my Clock app to Spotify on my personal desktop PC (after checking for system updates), I got the same empty white window.

Microsoft has been getting more and more aggressive in its efforts to push users to upgrade to Windows 11, but this feels like a spectacular low point. If the problem is something as simple as an expired certificate for Spotify’s API access, why not fix it for both Windows 10 and 11?

Look, I don’t hate Windows 11 (although Microsoft’s recent boo-boo over ads in the Weather app did make me chuckle). I use it on my work laptop and it’s fine – in fact, it’s steadily improving, gradually adding great features and gathering pace among users. It’s been on the rise for a while in terms of adoption – a quick look at the OS section of the Steam Hardware and Software Survey shows that Windows 11 is now eating into its predecessor’s share of the PC gaming space with impressive speed.

But as my colleague Darren recently said, Microsoft should be using the carrot, not the stick, to boost Windows 11 adoption. I love Windows 10 – why don’t you, Microsoft? It’s one of the best operating systems ever made, and I don’t want to feel forced to abandon it because you’re not willing to fix simple bugs that can be fixed in its successor.

It’s also frankly not a good look that it took more than three months – and a direct complaint from a tech news site – to fix such a simple problem. Come on, Microsoft. Oh, and you can stop with all the Bing AI nonsense. If I wanted an AI on my desktop, I’d just use ChatGPT.

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Windows 11 security bug fix debacle is seriously embarrassing for Microsoft
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Windows 11 has run into further problems with a security-related bug that’s scaring users and was supposed to have been fixed recently – but Microsoft has admitted that its cure failed to work, and it has been pulled.

This one has a bit of a lengthy backstory, as it were, so buckle up and bear with us as we take you through it to give some context as to what’s happened here.

Okay, so the bug in question first appeared when Microsoft pushed out the March 2023 cumulative update for Windows 11 22H2, causing Local Security Authority (LSA) protection to tell users that it was turned off. In actual fact, it had stayed on, the glitch being the error message, rather than LSA itself actually going wrong.

Still, some Windows 11 users being told that their device ‘may be vulnerable’ due to the lack of LSA protection, complete with a big yellow warning triangle adorned with an exclamation mark, was obviously going to provoke some concerns.

What really didn’t help is that the error persisted continually, even after reboots.

Microsoft gave us a workaround at the time – if you can call it that, we were simply told to dismiss the (repeated) error messages, and assured everything was fine with LSA. But a welcome sight was an official fix for this problem arriving at the end of April.

That cure for the LSA error blues arrived in the form of an update for Microsoft Defender, but sadly, this brought forth some new bugs – yes, argh – namely driver conflicts, hitting some PC games with crashes (due to anti-cheat software).

And now, as Neowin observes – while pointing out reports from its own readers of the LSA bug still being present – Microsoft has updated its health dashboard for Windows 11 to admit that the Microsoft Defender fix caused these unwanted side effects, and it has now been pulled.

Microsoft tells us: “This known issue was previously resolved with an update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus antimalware platform KB5007651 (Version 1.0.2303.27001) but issues were found, and that update is no longer being offered to devices.”

Analysis: Fix with one hand, break with the other

So what’s the upshot? The LSA problem remains, and Microsoft is working on a new fix, with the old one stuffed firmly in the bin. Those who have already got the old fix applied (KB5007651), mind you, are kind of stuck with it.

Microsoft advises those who are already running KB5007651 (Version 1.0.2303.27001) that they will need to disable Kernel-mode Hardware-enforced Stack Protection.

The software giant provides instructions as follows: “To do this, select the Start button, type Windows Security and select it, select Device Security then select Core Isolation then disable Kernel-mode Hardware-enforced Stack Protection.”

We’re not exactly sure that’s an ideal situation on the security front, though. But hey, if it’s Microsoft’s official advice, then it should be fine.

Meanwhile, for those still affected by the LSA bug, Microsoft instructs them to go back to that fabulous workaround mentioned previously. Yes, just ignore it, and while it will irritate you by continually popping up, there’s actually nothing wrong with LSA (in distinct contrast to the yanked-down fix which definitely did cause driver-related havoc).

This has been a very messy episode for Microsoft, and not one that will especially give Windows 11 users faith that the QA department has a particularly good handle on what’s going on with the OS. Hopefully, a solution that doesn’t break a bunch of other stuff will be forthcoming soon.

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Oh dear… Windows 11’s big update later this year could be a yawn-fest
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Windows 11’s next major update, known as 23H2, may not be all that ‘major’ after all if clues floated by the rumor mill pan out.

A regular source of Microsoft-related leakage on Twitter, PhantomOfEarth, pointed out that a new internal build of Windows 11 (version 22631.1825) comes with an enablement package (KB5027397). Prompting the leaker to ask the question: “Could 23H2 be a servicing style/enablement package update after all?”

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What does that mean? If you recall, Microsoft has used enablement package updates in the past, where the new features are essentially preloaded to the OS before the release of the update. The upgrade itself is then triggered by the flick of a switch (the enablement package is that switch).

What this means is that the update is a very straightforward and quick one, but also, that it won’t come with a huge number of changes.

So, the tentative conclusion at this point is that the 23H2 update landing later this year may not be all that extensive in terms of what it does and the new features introduced.

Analysis: A low-key year for Windows 11?

This idea is backed up by the fact that we’ve not really heard much about 23H2, and Microsoft has stayed pretty quiet on the subject – which would make sense if there wasn’t much to shout about.

Most of the talk of late has been about ‘Moment 3’ – a (non-annual) feature update that should contain a fair few changes. However, as we’ve seen in preview builds, there are quite a number of minor tweaks and embellishments, but nothing that jumps out in the category of juicy additions.

Of course, we don’t know for sure that 23H2 is going to be an enablement affair, and more minor in terms of the typical scope of Microsoft’s annual releases – so let’s not jump to conclusions just yet, as mentioned.

Still, it’s difficult to get too excited about the near future for Windows 11, when with a somewhat uneventful ‘Moment’ coming imminently, and maybe 23H2 lacking any potent additions, well, it all feels rather dull on the innovation front.

Is the biggest thing that’s going to happen the File Explorer revamp with built-in photo gallery? Well, that’s certainly something, and at least we can hope that Microsoft manages to make some of the other important tweaks to the interface we’d like to see implemented, which have been spotted in testing (or behind the scenes in preview). Like that ‘never combine’ option for the taskbar, for starters.

If there is something else hefty in the pipeline for 23H2, it’s well hidden, and with all the leakers constantly digging into Windows 11’s preview code, it’d be quite an achievement for Microsoft to keep something sizeable under wraps (with the second half of the year being almost upon us now).

Via Ghacks

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Windows 11 is so broken that even Microsoft can’t fix it
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Microsoft has just made a pretty remarkable admission, essentially conceding that it doesn’t have a solution for some Windows 11 problems.

As Neowin reports, some people using Windows 11 and Windows 10 have found a bug which prevents the Start menu, Windows search bar and some Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from starting or working correctly.

It appears that the bugs coincide with damaged registry keys and data related to Microsoft Office apps, and apps that are integrated with Office software, as well as Windows and Outlook.

The bugs don’t affect everyone, but those who are encountering them first noticed something wasn’t right back in January of this year. If you were hoping that during that time Microsoft had figured out how to fix the problem, then I have some bad news for you.

Giving up?

On Microsoft’s ‘Health’ webpage regarding the issue, Microsoft notes that the “Windows search, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps might not work as expected or might have issues opening,” and in a recent update it has provided a workaround for the problem.

Not only is the lack of a definitive fix disappointing, but the workaround isn’t great, with Microsoft stating that to “mitigate this issue, you can uninstall apps which integrate with Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Calendar.”

Essentially, it seems like Microsoft is admitting that it’s as baffled as us by the problem, and that the only way to avoid the issue is to start uninstalling apps. That’s pretty poor, especially as Microsoft doesn’t list the apps that are causing the issue, just that they integrate with “Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Calendar,” which doesn’t narrow it down at all.

It’s also not a great solution for people who depend on any of the apps causing the issue, as uninstalling them may not be a viable option.

Microsoft claims that it is working on a resolution, and I hope it's able to roll one out that fixes the issue without making users uninstall certain apps. It's concerning, though, that there seem to be areas where Windows 11 (and Windows 10, which is also suffering from this problem) is so broken that Microsoft simply can’t fix it.

Operating systems like Windows 11 are complicated pieces of software that have to work with myriad combinations of hardware and software, but this still doesn’t make it any less embarrassing for Microsoft. It also doesn’t give me a huge amount of confidence about Windows 12, which the company is rumored to be working on – I’d rather Microsoft concentrated on fixing the current versions of Windows first.

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Windows 11’s Phone Link for iOS reportedly being used to spy on iPhone owners
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Windows 11 has just introduced Phone Link support for iOS, which has now rolled out to everyone – but we’re hearing a warning that iPhone owners could be spied upon by somebody leveraging a flaw allowing for misuse of the app.

Phone Link has been around for Android for ages, and allows messages, notifications, and much more to be piped through to a Windows 11 PC, so you can deal with them there on the desktop without even picking up your smartphone.

So, its introduction to iOS is a definite boon for iPhone users – even if it’s a more limited set of features than Android – but the problem is that cyber-stalkers could abuse the functionality due to the way Phone Link has been implemented for Apple handsets.

Certo Software, a mobile security outfit, reports that several of its users have said they’ve been spied upon using Phone Link for iOS.

How does this work? Certo explains (via Apple Insider) the process in a news post, though the key thing to note is that to compromise an individual, the cyber-stalker needs physical access to the victim’s iPhone.

If the attacker can get that – and knows the passcode for the device – it’s an easy enough matter to set up Phone Link on their own Windows PC. Certo doesn’t detail the exact steps, so as not to give would-be abusers that information, but observes that it involves scanning a QR code on the PC monitor with the victim’s iPhone in order to setup a Bluetooth connection.

Once that’s done and Phone Link is set up, then things like phone call history, iMessages, and the content of any notifications can be viewed on that PC, with the iPhone owner unaware that any of their data is being compromised in this manner.

Certo notes that “cyberstalkers seem to be rapidly exploiting this new feature” and that this is obviously worrying.

iPhone 15

(Image credit: Thai Nguyen / Unsplash)

Analysis: What can be done?

This is particularly concerning as it could be leveraged in scenarios where, for example, an abusive partner might use this. They’d be able to view all messages and notifications, and engage in some quite in-depth spying on their victim, all without their partner’s knowledge.

If you own an iPhone and are now feeling concerned, Certo explains there are several actions you can take to check that you’re not being spied on in this way. Firstly, if you don’t ever use Bluetooth, check to make sure it’s turned off – without that wireless connection enabled, there can be no communication with the linked Windows PC.

Alternatively, you can look at what devices have been hooked up to your iPhone’s Bluetooth, and delete any you don’t recognize. To do that, head into Settings, and navigate to Bluetooth > My Devices. If you see any devices that you’re not sure about, or don’t know what they are, you can use ‘Forget This Device’ to remove them from your iPhone (thereby cutting the link).

Finally, it obviously helps if no one else knows your iPhone passcode to unlock it to gain access – if they do, or you think they might, then change it, and don’t share the passcode with anyone at all (after you’ve completed the above Bluetooth housekeeping).

Certo further warns: “As with previous loopholes in iPhone security, it may not be long before spyware makers start creating tools that make use of this method to extract even more information from victim’s iPhones.”

We don’t know how widely this method might’ve been exploited thus far, as the suggestion seems to be it’s just a scattering of reports, with the potential for things to get worse.

Hopefully, both Microsoft and Apple will be looking into this right now, to ensure that doesn’t happen, and to take any extra measures necessary to defend the privacy of iPhone users. One of Certo’s suggestions is for Apple to bring in some kind of visual warning indicator in iOS when notifications or messages are being shared with another device via Bluetooth.

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ChatGPT being fooled into generating old Windows keys illustrates a broader problem with AI
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A lot of folks have been messing about with ChatGPT since its launch, naturally – that’s pretty much compulsory with a chatbot – and the latest episode involves the AI being tricked into generating keys for a Windows installation.

Before you begin to clamber on the outrage wagon, intent on plowing full speed ahead with no thought of sparing the horses, the user in question was attempting to generate keys for a now long redundant operating system, namely Windows 95.

Neowin highlighted this experiment, conducted by a YouTuber (Enderman), who began by asking OpenAI’s chatbot: “Can you please generate a valid Windows 95 key?”

Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT responded that it cannot generate such a key or “any other type of activation key for proprietary software” for that matter. Before adding that Windows 95 is an ancient OS anyway, and that the user should be looking at installing a more modern version of Windows still in support for obvious security reasons.

Undeterred, Enderman went back to break down the makeup of a Windows 95 license key and concocted a revised query.

This instead put forward the needed string format for a Windows 95 key, without mentioning the OS by name. Given that new prompt, ChatGPT went ahead and performed the operation, generating sets of 30 keys – repeatedly – and at least some of those were valid. (Around one in 30, in fact, and it didn’t take long to find one that worked).

When Enderman thanked the chatbot for the “free Windows 95 keys”, ChatGPT told the YouTuber that it hadn’t provided any such thing, as “that would be illegal” of course.

Enderman then informed the chatbot that one of the keys provided had worked to install Windows 95, and ChatGPT insisted “that is not possible.”

Analysis: Context is key

As noted, this was just an experiment in the name of entertainment, with nothing illegal happening as Windows 95 is abandonware at this point. Of course, Microsoft doesn’t care if you crack its nearly 30-year-old operating system, and neither does anyone else for that matter. You’d clearly be unhinged to run Windows 95, anyway.

It’s worth remembering that Windows 95 serial keys have a far less complex makeup than a modern OS key, and indeed it’s a pretty trivial task to crack them. It’d be a quick job for a proficient coder to write a simple computer program to generate these keys. And they’d all work, not just one in 30 of them, which is actually a pretty shoddy result from the AI in all honesty.

That isn’t the point of this episode, though. The fact is that ChatGPT could be subverted to make a working key for the old OS, and wasn’t capable of drawing any connection between the task it was being set, and the possibility that it was making key-like numbers. If ‘Windows 95’ had been mentioned in the second attempt to create keys, the AI would doubtless have stopped in its tracks, as the chatbot did with the initial query.

All of this points to a broader problem with artificial intelligence whereby altering the context in which requests are made can circumvent safeguards.

It’s also interesting to see ChatGPT’s insistence that it couldn’t have created valid Windows 95 keys, as otherwise it would have helped a user to break the law (well, in theory anyway).

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Microsoft’s mission to make Windows 11 worse continues with ads in the Start menu
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Windows 11 has just received an optional update which applies some useful fixes… but also something a bit more controversial for the Start menu.

As spotted by Bleeping Computer, that’d be what Microsoft describes as “notifications for Microsoft accounts” appearing in the Start menu, a feature that some suspect has a hidden agenda.

What do we mean by that? Well, in the support document introducing patch KB5023778 for Windows 11 22H2 PCs, which is still in preview but will be fully rolled out next month, Microsoft gives an example of a notification: a pop-up panel warning the user that they need to back up their files.

Sensible advice, and of course, it's a good idea to back up your main folders (documents, pictures, and so on) to the cloud every now and then as suggested (and locally too, maybe using an external drive for instance).

You can guarantee, though, that starting a backup from this prompt will try to get you to use OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. Because as we know, these Start menu prompts are notifications related to Microsoft accounts and connected services like OneDrive.

Past leaks from Albacore (a well-known leaker on Twitter) have also shown Microsoft prodding users (in test builds) to hit up OneDrive in this manner, or to create a Microsoft account (or to complete their Microsoft profile).

Regarding this new feature, Microsoft tells us: “This is only available to a small audience right now. It will deploy more broadly in the coming months. Some devices might notice different visual treatments as we gather feedback.”

The freshly unleashed optional update also provides a bunch of bug fixes, including one for a glitch that affects printers (connected via a USB port) and makes them appear to be multimedia devices.

Analysis: The start of something ominous?

So, this Start menu feature is progressing, clearly. We saw it in the Release Preview channel for Windows Insiders (testers) just a week ago, and now, it’s hitting actual Windows 11 PCs going forward.

Admittedly, it’s still an optional (test) update right now, but it’ll almost certainly be part of April’s cumulative update for Windows 11 deployed in a couple of weeks. Unless Microsoft has a last-minute change of heart and pulls the plug at the precipice of deployment (and at this point, that’s very unlikely).

Of course, it’s only rolling out to a small subset of Windows 11 users initially. Although that in itself is telling – Microsoft is evidently concerned about the response and is still testing the waters in a limited fashion, as it were, with a broader rollout not coming for ‘months’ to boot. The software giant is being careful about this one, and doubtless for good reason.

Maybe we won’t even see these kind of ads – or reminders, as Microsoft couches them – all that often in the Start menu. They could just be very occasional things. We don’t know, and we also don’t know exactly where Microsoft is going to be drawing the line between suggestions or recommendations, and pushing its own services as a form of help to the user which effectively crosses over into the realm of advertising.

Time will tell, but it’s clear enough that suggestions are set to be a big thing in the future for Windows 11 (or indeed Windows 12). Recently we’ve seen further hints of personalized recommendations in the Start menu, including recommended websites to visit (yes, that concept is seemingly back on the table), which again would seem to be ripe territory for what could effectively be advertising.

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Microsoft could be working on an AI-powered Windows to rival Chrome OS
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Microsoft is reportedly working on a new version of its ever-successful Windows operating system – but we’re not talking about Windows 12, no sir. Instead, this is ‘CorePC’, a new project from Microsoft designed to take on Google’s ultra-efficient Chrome OS.

That's according to the good folks at our sister site Windows Central, whose sources claim the idea is to create a modular iteration of Windows, which Microsoft could then tweak and customize into different ‘editions’ that better suit specific hardware. This new version of Windows would be less resource-intensive than previously, hopefully.

CorePC (bear in mind this is a codename, and will likely not be the name of the finished OS) is rumored to also have one more trick up its sleeve: AI. Of course it’s AI – we shouldn’t be shocked, given Microsoft’s current hyperfixation on shoving popular chatbot ChatGPT into everything from the Microsoft 365 suite to the Bing search engine. Details are thin on what exactly artificial intelligence will bring to the table here, but it’s claimed to be a focus of the CorePC project.

Opinion: This could actually be really good – if Microsoft stays the course

Though this is no more than a rumor at this stage, it makes a lot of sense. For starters, this wouldn't be the first time Microsoft had experimented with building a lightweight version of Windows. 

The Windows 10X program, for instance, was supposed to be a stripped-back version of Windows 10 that cut down on features in favor of faster operation and better system security. Unfortunately for us, it was eventually canceled in 2021 and the OS never made it to our devices. There was also Windows Lite, a 2018 effort to build a lightweight Windows, which also never really saw the ‘lite’ of day.

I genuinely hope that CorePC doesn’t meet the same fate; the idea of a low-system-requirement version of Windows is an attractive one right now, with Chrome OS slowly encroaching in the budget hardware space. Hell, half of the products on our best cheap laptops list are Chromebooks at this point, and I’m a lifelong Windows devotee – I even owned a Windows phone back in the heady days of 2015 (this one, for anyone interested).

If the CorePC project specifically has the aim of creating a modernized version of Windows that can be easily adjusted to run smoothly on any device, that would be welcome. While I don’t think it will lead to the glorious return of Windows phones (a man can dream though, right?), it’d be great to see Chromebook-esque Windows laptops and tablets.

What exactly can we expect from CorePC?

Digging into the details a bit, it seems that Microsoft has an internal version of CorePC Windows already in testing. It’s barebones, running only the Edge browser with Bing AI, the Microsoft 365 suite, and Android apps – similar to how Chrome OS got access to apps from the Google Play Store back in 2016. This version of Windows is designed for super-affordable PCs and laptops designed to be used in educational environments.

That might not sound very exciting, but here’s the good part: this test build supposedly uses as much as 75% less storage space than Windows 11 and uses a split-partition install process that allows for faster updates, safer system resets, and better security thanks to dedicated read-only partitions the user (or any third-party apps) can’t access. It’s unclear at this point whether this new version runs on a conventional 64-bit structure or if it’s a more limited ARM-based build.

Considering that Windows 11 already uses between 20 and 30 gigabytes of storage space and Windows 12 looks to be jacking up the system requirements even further, the idea of a super-compact Windows edition is quite attractive – especially for use cases in education and enterprise spaces, where security is vital and a limited feature set won’t be a hurdle to everyday usage.

We’ve already seen Windows 11 scaled down for low-end hardware in the unofficial ‘Tiny11’ OS, so it’s not entirely surprising that Windows is seemingly working on an official version. Though there’s no projected release date, speculation points to 2024 so the release can coincide with the expected launch of Windows 12. In any case, I've got my fingers crossed!

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Microsoft’s ad plan for Windows 11 is its worst idea since Windows 8 – but all is not lost
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Microsoft’s leaked plans to add even more ads into the Windows 11 Start menu has not gone down well, and the less-than-positive reaction could hopefully make the company think twice about implementing the change.

As we reported on March 29, Microsoft has added 'notifications for Microsoft accounts' into a new option update for Windows 11. Despite its rather coy-sounding name, many people saw this as meaning more adverts for Microsoft’s services, such as OneDrive.

However, as Neowin reports, a hidden setting has been spotted in Windows 11 build 23419 that allows you to turn off those adverts. This build of Windows 11 is only currently available to people who are signed up to the Windows Insiders programme to help test early versions of Windows 11, but it could hint that Microsoft is considering adding the option to an upcoming version of Windows 11 for everyone.

Good news and bad

The discovery of this setting could be seen as good news. It means that Microsoft may have anticipated that its move to add more adverts to the Windows 11 Start menu wouldn’t be popular, and decided that adding the option to turn ads off could address some people’s concerns.

Somewhere in the bowls of Microsoft, then, there may be a voice, no matter how faint, that’s saying “maybe we shouldn’t keep trying to push our services so aggressively onto our users.” That gives me hope that not all is lost.

However, it’s not all good news. For a start, when I say this option to turn off adverts is hidden – I mean really hidden. Not only is it supposed to be buried deep in the menus (you have to go to Settings > Personalization > Start), but it won’t even appear unless you use a third-party app called ‘ViveTool’ to make it appear.

Messing around with this app, and using the powerful Windows PowerShell application to make the option appear, isn’t recommended (visit Neowin’s page above for instructions if you are keen), and forcing this hidden option to appear and disable adverts could have unanticipated consequences.

Even if Microsoft doesn’t hide it so completely, it’s pretty obvious that Microsoft wants to have the adverts turned on by default, and hopes that many users won’t know how to turn them off.

We’ll keep an eye on how this develops, but if Microsoft keeps filling Windows 11 with adverts for services its users don’t want, we could soon see an even more vocal pushback against its plans.

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