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Is anyone having problems logging into their hotmail/outlook email accounts either by web page(Firefox) or email client(Thunderbird), on windows 7?

Edit - have just updated both to the latest ESR's and still cant log in
face-purple-crying
 
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16309 said:
Is anyone having problems logging into their hotmail/outlook email accounts either by web page(Firefox) or email client(Thunderbird), on windows 7?

Edit - have just updated both to the latest ESR's and still cant log in
face-purple-crying
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I'm surprised Thunderbird even worked for you as of recent. This is the main reason I stopped using outlook email since it has been giving me difficulties with Thunderbird since at least a year ago.

I can login in Firefox just fine though, but I don't use ESR, I'm on 147.0.3.
 
Something positive for a change.

It feels really weird to write something good about Windows, or even about technology in general, these days.

Today's Windows update may be the most worthy installing in a very long time. If it works, that is. Last month's Cumulative failed to install on two out of my five PCs. I wanted the additional dark mode improvements and the new file copy dialog, but the update failed on my primary desktop and on my laptop, two machines that I use the most :(

I may even do a whole new build just for this update. Running the Cumulative breaks some of my customizations, I normally avoid them. I can fix that, but I feel a new clean build may be preferable.

I don't care for the improved Start Menu, it's freaking huge, looks like Windows 8 Start Screen and the categories are useless to me. I'll continue using StartAllBack.

I also enabled the new NVME driver and this worked on all five PCs. The driver is supposed to improve IOPS, not throughput. There is some measurable improvement in CrystalDisk but the only thing that I feel is different under actual use is that large file copies between NVME SSDs seem to be more steady. The copy dialog graph used to be constant ups and downs and now is more even, level. No effect on software and game launch times or boot time as far as I can tell. There are no negative side effects either so I'm keeping it. It probably won't be officially available for desktop use until 26H2, can anyone verify that? Any insider users? Sorry, I don't have the energy to mess with insider builds.

Old NVME Driver vs New.png
 
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SDIO advised me to install the Micron NVMe driver, which caused my NTLite license to become invalid. I’m worried that the new Windows NVME driver will also change my hard drive ID.:rolleyes:
 
Mr. Yu said:
SDIO advised me to install the Micron NVMe driver, which caused my NTLite license to become invalid. I’m worried that the new Windows NVME driver will also change my hard drive ID.:rolleyes:
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Really? Yeah, changing physical boot disk would deactivate NTLite. But a driver shouldn't do this. Weird, I don't know why that happened. A driver should not change your drive hardware ID. Unless Crucial/Micron driver did something weird to their own hardware.

It didn't happen to me when I did this. I'm using the same NTLIte install today as I did last week, before the driver change.

You should be able to preserve your NTLite license, though this may not work if you actually changed the hardware, just if you reinstalled Windows, not sure, really:

G

Thread 'NTLite Features to Avoid License Re-Activation'

NTLite release v2.3.4.8620 (Feb 2022) and later versions have improved license management features, which reduce the need to use license activations for existing systems. To take advantage of those new features, please upgrade your NTLite to the latest release.

Quotes taken from nuhi are in italics.

For version 2.3.4.8620 or later: (New instructions)
  1. License.dat no longer needs to be backed up, unless it's an offline activation.
  2. Server won't spend more activations on the same machine that was activated once (unless there are HW changes)...
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EDIT: though, like I said, real life gains are negligible, so if you have any doubts then don't do this and wait until this is officially released for desktop use.
 
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OK, I was naive hoping for a decent update... This update made CrossDeviceResume un-removable again :(

I've built a new image from scratch. I integrated today's update first, saved the image then removed components, including CrossDeviceResume but it's still there, running in the background. You can turn Resume off in settings but this crap is still running. If you remove the .exe an error pops up after login, like before.

Edit: Interesting, if applied to an existing 25H2 install that already had CrossDeviceResume removed (previous NTLite build) this update does not re-install or re-enable it. Weirdly unusual for Windows Update, no?
 
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After investigation, it is confirmed that this is an OEM-customised hard drive for ASUS laptops, which has a dedicated driver that changes the logical serial number and device identifier, because SamLab cooperates with OEM companies. My desktop computer uses a generic driver and does not have this error.
 
Mr. Yu said:
After investigation, it is confirmed that this is an OEM-customised hard drive for ASUS laptops, which has a dedicated driver that changes the logical serial number and device identifier, because SamLab cooperates with OEM companies. My desktop computer uses a generic driver and does not have this error.
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Oh, wow, I never saw anything like that. I hope that didn't trigger Windows reactivation?
 
OK, I ended up simply applying this cumulative update (kb5079473) to my existing installs instead of doing a clean install from scratch. I built a new ISO, just in case, but I wanted to try simple update first.

I haven't done any Windows updates in couple of years. I would just build a fresh custom ISO and block Windows updates for a year. But I really wanted the new dark mode additions, the new copy dialog box. So, I figured I'm gonna try. Man, what an adventure!

All my five PCs (three DIY desktops, one Dell Latitude laptop, one Dell Optiplex Micro) ran the exact same 25H2 build from January this year. Last month's cumulative update failed on two PCs out of five: my main DIY PC and my Dell laptop. It didn't break anything, it just refused to complete. This update worked on the laptop without any issues but on my main PC it insisted doing a system repair. OK, whatever, I backed up everything, burned my new ISO to a USB disk and prepared for the worst.

The system repair... worked. It took full two hours, but it freaking worked! So un-Microsoft like, weird :) Of course, it reinstalled bunch of crap (Edge and OneDrive and some removed components), but I reapplied my REG files and all NTLite tweaks and removed all unwanted components (luckily this is my main desktop with registered copy of NTLite) and it all seemed to have worked out just fine. The system is clean, stable, no unwated crap, most settings intact.

On my secondary DIY PC it imploded spectacularly though. Same build as the others. I could no longer login when the system rebooted after the update. I have two accounts on my PCs: my own and an extra Admin, just in case, and the built-in Administrator account is enabled too. After this update, both passwords expired and I could not change them, I got "access denied" error. To rub it in, Administrator got disabled. Never seen anything like this. Luckily, I had last night's restore point, so I ran the system restore and I was able to log in again. What the....? Then I ran the update again (it's just a testbench system, so I wasn't risking much) and it worked this time. Some really weird stuff.

It installed on the other two PCs without any drama, one DIY and one Dell Optiplex.

How the hell do non techy people handle this mess? I get it that running Windows updates on heavily modded systems comes with some risks and increases the chances of things going sideways, but I've heard so many horror stories involving Windows updates on vanilla systems just in the last year. This is ridiculous. I guess 30% of the code being AI slop, spat out by halucinating LLMs, will do this to the quality of the system software.

So no more Windows updates for me. I'm going back to my old strategy: new custom ISO once a year, clean install on each PC and no updates for a year other than Defender definitions.
 
Anonymous Internet User said:
OK, I ended up simply applying this cumulative update (kb5079473) to my existing installs instead of doing a clean install from scratch. I built a new ISO, just in case, but I wanted to try simple update first.

I haven't done any Windows updates in couple of years. I would just build a fresh custom ISO and block Windows updates for a year. But I really wanted the new dark mode additions, the new copy dialog box. So, I figured I'm gonna try. Man, what an adventure!

All my five PCs (three DIY desktops, one Dell Latitude laptop, one Dell Optiplex Micro) ran the exact same 25H2 build from January this year. Last month's cumulative update failed on two PCs out of five: my main DIY PC and my Dell laptop. It didn't break anything, it just refused to complete. This update worked on the laptop without any issues but on my main PC it insisted doing a system repair. OK, whatever, I backed up everything, burned my new ISO to a USB disk and prepared for the worst.

The system repair... worked. It took full two hours, but it freaking worked! So un-Microsoft like, weird :) Of course, it reinstalled bunch of crap (Edge and OneDrive and some removed components), but I reapplied my REG files and all NTLite tweaks and removed all unwanted components (luckily this is my main desktop with registered copy of NTLite) and it all seemed to have worked out just fine. The system is clean, stable, no unwated crap, most settings intact.

On my secondary DIY PC it imploded spectacularly though. Same build as the others. I could no longer login when the system rebooted after the update. I have two accounts on my PCs: my own and an extra Admin, just in case, and the built-in Administrator account is enabled too. After this update, both passwords expired and I could not change them, I got "access denied" error. To rub it in, Administrator got disabled. Never seen anything like this. Luckily, I had last night's restore point, so I ran the system restore and I was able to log in again. What the....? Then I ran the update again (it's just a testbench system, so I wasn't risking much) and it worked this time. Some really weird stuff.

It installed on the other two PCs without any drama, one DIY and one Dell Optiplex.

How the hell do non techy people handle this mess? I get it that running Windows updates on heavily modded systems comes with some risks and increases the chances of things going sideways, but I've heard so many horror stories involving Windows updates on vanilla systems just in the last year. This is ridiculous. I guess 30% of the code being AI slop, spat out by halucinating LLMs, will do this to the quality of the system software.

So no more Windows updates for me. I'm going back to my old strategy: new custom ISO once a year, clean install on each PC and no updates for a year other than Defender definitions.
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Windows has been a headache as of late. I am sticking to 23H2 till further notice for me to change. Would rather have a system working and not have to worry about everything else.
 
Yes, it sucks. I miss the old days. There were ups and downs in the past too, for sure... but nothing of the magnitude of the shitshow we're going through right now.

Oh, and NVIDIA drivers too... complete trash, I'm still on 6 months old drivers because there was a steady stream of badly broken drivers as of late.

This isn't gonna end up well. Either the AI bubble bursts and takes the economy down for many years, or the world is gonna continue degrading into chaos and tech driven dystopia like we've seen in video games for decades.

Someone said to me once: "we're not building a Star Trek future, we're building a Cyberpunk 2077 future".
 
Necrosaro said:
Windows has been a headache as of late. I am sticking to 23H2 till further notice for me to change. Would rather have a system working and not have to worry about everything else.
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Once installed and set up, it seems OK. My 25H2 build worked for a month without any major issues, until I started messing with the updates. Though yeah, it takes way too much time and effort to whip it into shape.
 
As i do not use ltsc 2021 online the last non esu updates are stable enough for my needs. Maybe an updated captured image every year or 2, wait and see how things go.
 
16309 said:
As i do not use ltsc 2021 online the last non esu updates are stable enough for my needs. Maybe an updated captured image every year or 2, wait and see how things go.
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Probably a wise decision. I'm gonna stay on my current build too for as long as I can this time. Only Defender updates applied manually with WAUManager. I used to do one image per year, but this time I'm gonna wait longer and see how things go. The last two builds burnt me out.

MS is going to add some kind of "Xbox Mode" to Windows 11 in the coming months. Probably another useless and intrusive piece of trash that will need to be ripped out. Then there is the inane and reckless AI push. Gotta see where all that goes before wasting time on another Windows build or... something else.
 
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