Windows Upgrade Offer Registration Now Available
If you purchase or have purchased an eligible Windows 7 PC anytime between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013 you will be able to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $14.99 (U.S.) which will be redeemable when Windows 8 is generally available on October 26th. If you’re still looking for a PC, check out some of our great Windows 7 PCs. Once you’ve purchased your PC you can come back and register for the offer.
Registration for the Windows Upgrade Offer is only for those who buy an eligible Windows 7 PC between June 2nd and January 31st, 2013.
Here is what you need to do to register for your $14.99 (U.S.) upgrade to Windows 8 Pro:
After buying your PC, go to the Windows Upgrade Offer website to register. It will ask you to select your country (details for the offer vary depending on country). You will then be asked to register with your personal details as well as information about your Windows 7 PC purchase – including date of purchase, retailer, and PC brand and model. You should also have your 25-digit Windows 7 product key that came with the PC handy as you may be required to enter this as part of the registration.
Then starting on October 26th, we will start sending out promo codes via email with purchase instructions. You will be directed to Windows.com where you will go through the online upgrade process with the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant (shown above) as I have highlighted here in this blog post. Once you get to the purchase screen in the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant, it will show the $39.99 upgrade price. However, on the order confirmation page you’ll have a chance to enter your promo code – that price will change to $14.99. Once you make your purchase, your download and upgrade installation begins!
You will have until February 28, 2013 to register for the offer to get Windows 8 Pro for $14.99.
If you experience any issues or have questions – you can click the contact support link at the top of the Windows Upgrade Offer website.
Did you already buy an awesome Windows 7 PC prior to June 2nd (or have a Windows 7 PC not eligible for the offer)? Not to worry! Starting on October 26th, you will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99!
Both the Windows Upgrade Offer and $39.99 upgrade promotion is available in 140 countries worldwide, with 37 supported languages, and 23 supported currencies (we’ve added 9 additional countries over the original 131!).
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Categories: Microsoft Tags: Coupon, MicrosoftWindows, Personal computer, Product key, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows Upgrade Offer
Dealing with Fake Tech Support & Phone Scams
On this blog, we’ve discussed the ways that scammers can attack your PC, through malicious software, rogue security alerts, phishing attacks and more. But the bad guys have now devised a new vector: the phone. I first learned about this when I heard my parents had received a call that they had been identified as having rogue software on their PC. The caller, who said he was from Microsoft, needed to remote access their PC to resolve the issue. Turns out scammers like these were simply taking the time to prey on potential victims by calling them and masquerading as a representative from a trusted institution to trick them into giving up valuable and personal information. Sometimes, as in my parents’ case and others, they even advise installing a remote access code so scammers will have full access to the PC.
We’ve discovered this telephone scam is aimed at English-speaking countries, including North America and the United Kingdom. The callers pretend to be from Microsoft and try to sell the victim something, direct them to a specific website, asked for remote access, to install software, a credit card number, or run a bogus security scan that showed an infection. The Trustworthy Computing Team conducted a survey of 7,000 people, and found that more than 1,000 people had received calls. Of those 1,000 people, 22 percent of people fell for the scam (234 people total), and 184 of those lost money – on average, more than $800.
You can check out some tips for avoiding phone scams here, but we want to remind you will never receive a legitimate call from Microsoft or our partners to charge you for computer fixes. If someone does call you claiming to be from Microsoft:
- Never give control of your computer to a third party unless you can confirm that it is a legitimate representative of a computer support team with whom you are already a customer.
- Never provide your credit card or financial information to someone claiming to be from Microsoft tech support if you did not initiate the call to Microsoft first.
- Ask upfront if you are required to purchase software or pay a fee or subscription associated with the “service.” If there is, hang up.
- Take the caller’s information down and immediately report it to your local authorities. If you think you’ve been the victim of a scam, check out these tips that can help you protect your money and identity.
It’s a jungle out there! Please remember to question any unsolicited email or call. If the email came from somebody in your contact list but it feels suspicious, here is a great article on recognizing phishing emails. Lastly, always keep your PC protected with antivirus software like Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free or software from one of our partners.
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First updates for Windows 8 RTM released
Microsoft posted the first (public) updates for Windows 8:
An update is available to correct tile logo images of files on the All Apps View.
Assume that you add the shortcut for a file to the All Apps View in Windows 8, Windows RT or Windows Server 2012. After you change the file association of the file type, the tile logo image is not updated accordingly in the All Apps View.
KB: An update is available to correct tile logo images of files on the All Apps View
Also Microsoft published the EU browser choice Screen update for Windows 8.
KB: What is the Browser Choice update (KB976002) – Microsoft Windows
Both updates are available through Microsoft Update app.
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Categories: Windows8 Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Personal computer, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Server 2012, Windows Update
New Windows Logo
We have said that Windows 8 is a complete reimagination of the Windows operating system. Nothing has been left unexplored, including the Windows logo, to evaluate how it held up to modern PC sensibilities. The Windows logo is a strong and widely recognized mark but when we stepped back and analyzed it, we realized an evolution of our logo would better reflect our Metro style design principles and we also felt there was an opportunity to reconnect with some of the powerful characteristics of previous incarnations.
It’s a window… not a flag
Microsoft and Windows are all about putting technology in people’s hands to empower them to find their own perspectives. And that is what the new logo was meant to be. We did less of a re-design and more to return it to its original meaning and bringing Windows back to its roots – reimagining the Windows logo as just that – a window.
Let’s look back at a few of the versions along the way.
Full Story At Source
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Categories: Windows8 Tags: Logo, Metro, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Personal computer, Window, Windows 8
Minimizing restarts after automatic updating in Windows 8
Windows 8 team blog:
Windows Update and handling restarts on Windows 8
….we made the following improvements to the Windows 8 updating experience.
WU will consolidate all the restarts in a month, synchronizing with the monthly security release. This means that your PC will only restart when security updates are installed and require a restart. With this improvement, it does not matter when updates that require restarts are released in a month, since these restarts will wait till the security release. Since security updates are released in a single batch on the second Tuesday of every month, you are then getting essentially one restart a month. This simplification helps in three ways: it keeps the system secure in a timely manner, reduces restarts, and makes restarts more predictable.
There is one exception to the rule to wait for the monthly security release, and that is in the case of critical security update to fix a worm-like vulnerability (for example, a Blaster worm). In that case, WU will not wait, but will go ahead and download, install, and restart automatically. But this will happen only when the security threat is dire enough.
WU notifies you of any upcoming automatic restart. Let’s assume that WU has already detected, downloaded, and installed security updates, and now requires a restart. Windows Update will notify you of an upcoming automatic restart through a message on the login screen that will persist for 3 days. Because the majority of update activity occurs in the first three days of the release of each update [see Figure1], we wanted to give you 3 days to allow you to restart at your own convenience. You would restart by selecting “Update and shutdown” or “Update and restart” on the login screen, or by going to Windows Update in the Control Panel. You will no longer see any pop-up notifications or dialogs about pending restarts. Instead, the message appears in a more visible and appropriate place (the log-in screen). The use of the login screen has become ubiquitous even in home environments, as more and more machines become portable.
Here is a timeline view of that experience:
1. A message about the upcoming restart is shown in the login screen for three days or until the PC is restarted (whichever is sooner). This means you now have three days to restart the PC at your convenience. All you need to do is see the login screen once in 3 days to see the message about the upcoming restart and by default the lock screen will appear after 15-minute idle timeout.
2. In addition to the restart notification on the login screen, the Power options on the lock screen will change to “Update and restart” immediately after the update occurs, and will include “Update and shutdown” on days two and three, to make the message even more apparent to you. This allows you to restart your PC at your own convenience.
3. If after three days, the restart still has not occurred, then WU will automatically restart your PC for you. In this case, the automatic restart will happen either at the end of the three-day grace period, or, to prevent data loss if WU detects that there are critical applications open at the end of the three-day grace period, it will wait to automatically restart the next time you login. I’ll address this behavior in more depth in the next section.
4. After the restart has occurred, the message on the login screen will go away and the power options will revert to the original choices. We know people would like Windows to automatically log in after the restart, but we strongly advise against doing so, given the potential security issues with this configuration.
Delay the automatic restart if there is potential of losing user data. If the PC has hit the three-day deadline and still needs an automatic restart, WU will only automatically restart the machine if there is no chance of losing the user’s data. That means, if you are not at your PC (i.e. it is locked), if you have applications running in the background, or if there is potentially unsaved work, WU delays the automatic restart until the next time you come back to your machine and log in. At log-in, you will be asked to save your work, and you’ll see a warning that the machine will be restarted within 15 minutes.
Ensure minimal interruption to user activity. Having a restart notification or dialog pop up in the middle of an important presentation, a game or a movie is not a pleasant situation, to say the least. When attempting to automatically restart the PC, if you are in presentation mode, playing a game, or watching a movie full-screen, WU detects this state, and delays the automatic restart until the next available opportune moment or the next time you log back in to the PC.
The experience for business users. For PCs in an enterprise setting, if no policy has been set by the IT administrator, the updating experience is exactly the same as it is for home users. However, an IT administrator can set a policy to prevent auto-restart after automatic installs (just as in Windows 7). If they set this policy, there will be no three-day countdown and no automatic restart. Instead, users will see a message on the login screen indicating that the PC needs to be restarted, and the message persists until the restart occurs. This informs users that a restart is required while keeping them in control of when to restart.
The experience for users in “notify mode.” I also want to address the experience for users who have chosen to be notified before downloading or installing updates (5.82% of the WU user base from Figure2). For a user in this “notify mode,” a message will be shown on the login screen. If you choose to be notified before downloading updates, you will see the login screen message saying “Important updates are ready to be installed” when updates are ready to be downloaded. If you choose to be notified before install, you will see the same login screen message after updates are downloaded, but before they are installed. In either case, you won’t see the message about a pending restart on the login screen since installation is not automatic.
Cumulatively, these improvements help us achieve the balance we are striving for with Windows Update – keeping the PC (and PC ecosystem) up-to-date, without an intrusive experience.
Full Story:
Minimizing restarts after automatic updating in Windows Update – Building Windows 8 – Site H
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Categories: Windows8 Tags: Blaster, History of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Patch (computing), Personal computer, Windows, Windows Update
