In recent months, Microsoft has urged users to ignore certain error messages that weren’t what they seemed, most notably back in April with WinRE error code 0x80070643 as well as in July with Windows Firewall error messages in Event Viewer. It hasn’t even been that long, but we’re back with another call from Microsoft to ignore yet another error message, reports BleepingComputer. Specifically, Microsoft says users may be seeing incorrect CertificateServicesClient (CertEnroll) errors after intalling the optional July 2025 update or subsequent updates. The error message in question is shown as Error ID 57 in Event Viewer and the text reads: “The ‘Microsoft Pluton Cryptographic Provider’ provider was not loaded because initialization failed.” Microsoft provides a note in its Windows Release Health support document: “Following installation of the July 2025 Windows non-security preview update (KB5062660) and later updates including the August 2025 Windows security update, Event Viewer may display an error related to CertificateServicesClient (CertEnroll) which can be safely ignored. Please note that although this event is logged in Event Viewer every time the device is restarted, it does not reflect an issue with any active Windows component. This event is related to a feature that is currently under active development. There is no impact to Windows processes associated to this event and no action is required to prevent or resolve this error.” Error ID 57 is due to a bug and has no impact for end users, so you do not need to take any action and can safely ignore the message. Read...

Microsoft really, really, really wants you to start using Edge as your primary browser. The company has employed all kinds of tricks in the past to sway users, like forcing links to open in Edge, asking why you downloaded Chrome, and sneakily importing your Chrome data. As of this writing, the company isn’t yet out of ideas. In the latest version of Edge Canary—the most cutting-edge channel that’s updated daily with the newest developments—the browser now contains hints that point to a new internal feature that involves a “pin Edge when you close the browser” prompt, reports Windows Latest. To be fair, “pin Edge” prompts aren’t new. But the new feature flags in Edge Canary show that Microsoft might be trying a new tactic soon. Specifically, if you’re a heavy Chrome user, you might be shown a pop-up request to pin Edge to the Windows taskbar. If you aren’t, you may never see the pop-up. Going by two of the new feature flags, the new “pin Edge” prompt seems to be targeting users with “over 90 percent Chrome usage” and/or users who are designted as “Chrome engaged.” It’s hard to know what exactly those terms mean, but it likely means anyone who primarily uses Chrome more than any other web browser. Clearly, the aim is to bring Edge to the forefront for users who have forgotten or neglected the browser. It’s unclear when this feature will start rolling out, or if it will ever be rolled out. Since these are just feature flags for now, it could just be an internal company test. Microsoft’s ongoing strategy to aggressively market Edge has been criticized in the past and has even led to antitrust complaints. Read...

Earlier this week, Microsoft released the mandatory Windows 11 update KB5063878 for August, which included some improvements and new features like Quick Machine Recovery, which allows IT administrators to remotely troubleshoot and reboot faulty PCs. However, it appears that some users are already having trouble with the patch—even getting it to install in the first place. Various forum threads and Reddit posts contain reports of failed installations, which often occur with error codes 0x80240069, 0x80240031, or 0x800f0922. Microsoft is aware of the problem and has listed it as a known error in this support document, which states that users who get Windows updates via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) are particularly affected. WSUS is mainly used by companies, which is consistent with the reports from system admins who have commented on these difficulties. It also seems to make no difference whether it’s a newly installed Windows system or one that has already received several updates. This makes the search for a solution a little more difficult. What you can do if you’re affected Microsoft currently offers affected users the following temporary solution: perform a “Known Issue Rollback,” which allows you to undo a Windows update that’s causing problems. There’s also a temporary workaround for the problem that involves making changes to the Windows registry or running a PowerShell script, as detailed by Windows Latest. Afterwards, if you don’t want to wait for Microsoft to fix the issue and want to reinstall ASAP, you can try downloading the patch via Microsoft’s Update Catalog and installing it manually. Further reading: Microsoft says Windows 11 24H2 is the “most reliable” version of Windows ever Read...

What will the era of Agentic AI offer us ? Read...

Need another microSD card for your smartphone, tablet, dashcam, home security camera, or whatever else? The Samsung PRO Plus microSD is one of the best, most solid picks—and it’s a must-buy now that it’s on sale for its lowest price in almost two years. Get this microSD card for $35 (was $62) while this limited-time deal is still around! With 512GB of storage space, it’s large enough to hold all the photos, videos, or games you need. With read speeds of up to 180 MB/s and write speeds of up to 130 MB/s, it’s fast enough to record full 4K videos without any dropped frames and run games without any performance hits. It’s perfect for a phone, Nintendo Switch, or drone camera—and it comes with an SD adapter, expanding what you can use it with. This microSD card is made to survive all your adventures, making it just as suitable for a GoPro or any other action cam. The Samsung PRO Plus comes with protections against water, extreme temperatures, X-rays, magnets, drops, and even regular wear and tear. Snag one of these 512GB Samsung PRO Plus microSD cards for $35 before this deal expires! It’s the best price we’ve seen in a long time. If you need more or less space, note that the other capacities are also on sale: the 128GB model is $17 (was $22), the 256GB model is $25 (was $33), and the 1TB model is $90 (was $115). Get this 512GB Samsung PRO Plus microSD card for 44% offBuy now at Amazon Read...

I recently moved to a much more rural area, so getting Starlink set up was one of my top priorities. My area is an internet dead zone where you might get a bit of 4G on a nearby hill, but that’s about it. No cellular for phone calls, and the best I can hope from a landline connection is 3 Mbps. As a modern man with a modern family full of modern devices, I need fast internet—so I readied Starlink even before my kids’ beds. It worked pretty well, too. At first I heard a bunch of buzzing noises that I was not expecting, but that sort of coil whine is apparently pretty typical. A few minutes later, I was online! But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Having Starlink isn’t like having fiber internet, and I ran into several surprises along the way. Here are all the things I wish I’d known before getting Starlink at home. Starlink is better when it’s mounted As soon as I had Starlink working, I messaged my friends saying “Space internet installed!” with the following image: Jon Martindale / Foundry That’s right. The Starlink dish is propped up in the cardboard box it came in, sitting on some steps leading to a lawn that was never intended as its permanent home. It worked well enough for the first night—but that’s as long as I would ever want it to be there. Turns out, Starlink performs best when the dish is mounted in a location that’s free from obstructions and oriented in a way that maintains a connection with as many Starlink satellites as possible. The Starlink app makes the whole process pretty straightforward, with dynamically adjusting on-screen graphics that help you rotate the dish into its optimal facing. My ground-mounted performance was (obviously) bad, so taking the time to get it into a better position was worthwhile. But I’m no handyman. I can build a PC, sure, but hoofing up a ladder and drilling into red brick isn’t something I’m super comfortable doing—so I brought in a local professional TV antenna installer. Within a couple of hours, he had the dish mounted by my roof. Performance jumped from 50 Mbps to nearly 200 Mbps downstream. A huge improvement with better coverage, less chance of someone just wandering into my yard and stealing the dish, and no chance of my kids riding their bikes over the cable. That’s a win-win-win. …but Starlink can be ugly when mounted Personally, I think the Starlink dish looks pretty cool. Its a unique sight compared to all those rounded satellite dishes that you’ve likely seen in urban centers over the last several decades. It’s more modern. Jon Martindale / Foundry But the makeshift pipe-mount system I used? Eh, that leaves a lot to be desired. There are more attractive first-party mounts you can buy at additional cost, but a giant pipe on an unpainted brace is cheaper. Unfortunately, my wife is even less of a fan. It’s not like I’m going to be looking at it much up there. But if the exterior aesthetics of your home are important to you, it’s probably worth spending some more time (and money) than I did to get it mounted in a way that gets you great performance while looking good. Starlink’s upload speed is still lacking One aspect of fiber internet that’s easy to overlook is that it isn’t just blazingly fast for downloads—you can get upload speeds that are often as fast as your download speeds. That makes quick work when uploading work documents, personal photos, YouTube videos, and more. Jon Martindale / Foundry As I said at the start, though, Starlink isn’t fiber. I’m getting around 150 Mbps average download speeds with peaks up to 300 Mbps, but my upload speeds are decidedly slower. I’ve seen some people post screenshots of 50 Mbps uploads, but I’ve yet to see mine break 30 Mbps. More often than not, it’s closer to 15 Mbps. To be fair, 15 Mbps is plenty for sending photos over messaging apps and streaming my webcam during Discord D&D sessions, but it’s a lot more noticeable when I’m trying to send long videos to friends and family. And I don’t think I’d get far trying to livestream my gaming on Twitch at anything over 1080p with this kind of internet. Starlink’s router is underwhelming This might sound like a humblebrag, but the bundled Starlink Gen 3 router—a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router with a claimed coverage of just over 3,000 square feet—wasn’t enough for my new house. Truth is, my place is about half of that, yet I still had trouble getting signal everywhere due to walls, obstructions, and other sources of interference. Could I have place the Starlink router in a better spot for better coverage? Yeah, maybe. And there’s even a mesh system I could’ve employed if I was married to Starlink’s hardware. TP-Link But, fortunately, I have a much better TP-Link Archer GE800 Wi-Fi 7 router, so I didn’t need to bother. It’s complete overkill for a civilian gamer like myself, but it does offer fantastic coverage in my wonky-walled home, and I already know my way around it from the past year of faithful operation. (Lean more about why you should get your own router.) Props to Starlink for making the bridging process super simple, though. Just plug them in, switch the router to bypass mode in the app, a quick router reboot, and it was good to go in less than 10 minutes. There’s no planning for a global outage Two days after I got my Starlink dish mounted, my service went down. My wife had just left the house and closed the door the very second my PC connection dropped, so I thought it was her fault. Maybe she knocked the mount loose by slamming the door too hard? But as it turns out, it wasn’t anything so innocuous. In fact, the entire global Starlink network had gone down. Jon Martindale / Foundry I managed to text a few friends from my board game group to see if they could send me tips on how to get it working again. They sent me screengrabs from Reddit, Twitter, DownDetector. It confirmed that it wasn’t just my router or my dish. Indeed, all of Starlink was down. Apparently something like this has happened a few times before, but I also have friends who’ve had Starlink for years who claim there’s never been any outages as far as they know. So I’m not expecting this to happen again anytime soon, but tech is tech and it can fail. Even the magic of space internet can stop working from time to time. Your friends will judge you for Starlink Since November 2024, people around the world have been protesting against Elon Musk and those who support him. Many Tesla owners have added stickers to their vehicles, promising that their Teslas were bought before the CEO went crazy, all to fend off potential attacks. It hasn’t gotten that bad for Starlink, but I do have to put up with friends who ask if I couldn’t have found another way to get online. Indeed, if I could have, I would have! But while Amazon is working on Project Kuiper, its own low-Earth-orbit network of broadband satellites, that’s still years away from being fully operational and may take even longer to catch up to Starlink. Plus, as far as billionaire CEOs go, it’s more a lateral move than anything to go from Musk to Bezos. There are other providers with geostationary satellites that might have bandwidth, but the latency is poor. Eutelsat might be a legitimate option for me at some point, but not yet. Ultimately, the performance and viability of Starlink trumps my own misgivings about supporting a Musk-related company. Until that changes, I’ll have to swallow my pride and the condescension of a few friends. Starlink: Incredible tech, flawed execution There’s no denying it: Starlink feels like the kind of Jetsons-era future tech that has always captivated me. It just works, it’s nearly flawless, and it doesn’t have many real competitors. It’s really cool that I get super-fast, low-latency internet in a place that’s otherwise barely online. But I wish I’d paid more for a better-looking, less-obvious mounting system. I wish I’d had a better backup solution in place just in case it went down. I wish it wasn’t tied to one of the most odious CEOs in the world. For now, it’s the best solution available and a joy to use. It’s hard not to see how it could be even better, though. Read...

While microSD cards are super convenient for their tiny sizes, fast speeds, and respectable capacities, not all devices support them—and that sucks when you have extra microSD cards lying around. Wouldn’t it be great if you could pass them around between your phone, laptop, PC, tablet, cameras, and drones with ease? Well, you can! All you need is Anker’s 2-in-1 SD/microSD USB-C reader accessory that’s now on sale for just $9 (was $18). At this price, you might as well snag a handful for your various devices plus a backup or two! This delightful little accessory plugs into any USB-C slot and lets you read both SD and microSD cards, even at the same time if you wish. The compatibility list includes most SD and microSD generations, so you can rest assured that you’ll be able to read and write data to and from whatever cards you have on hand. Think of the possibilities! Running low on space with your phone’s external storage? Pop out the microSD card and transfer to your PC. Need to pull footage from your dashcam? Load the microSD data onto your laptop with this easy reader. Want to read CPAP data but your laptop doesn’t have an SD card slot? Here’s your answer. With how prevalent both SD and microSD cards are these days, you need at least one of these—and for just $9, it’s a no-brainer. Get this 2-in-1 SD/microSD USB-C reader for cheap while you can! This awesome 2-in-1 SD/microSD card reader is a steal for $9Buy now at Amazon Read...

Stripe said the information given by its support staff to some customers was `totally wrong.` Read...

Windows PCs are incredibly powerful and flexible, and that’s true even before you install any apps. As it turns out, Windows itself is chock-full of useful features that few people actually know about. If you’re a college student who wants to take your college laptop to the next level, here are several obscure Windows features that’ll help you whether you’re taking notes, researching projects, or otherwise. Related: The best laptops for college students Live captions Chris Hoffman / IDG Windows 11 has a feature called Live Captions that listens to audio and automatically generates readable captions on the fly. It works when you’re watching a video, but it also works with audio captured by your microphone. So, whether you’re sitting in class during a lecture or watching a recorded video, Live Captions can use speech-to-text technology to transcribe what you hear into readable text. To get started, just search for “live captions” in the Start menu and launch the Live Captions app. This app is available on all Windows 11 PCs and requires an internet connection to work. If you have a Copilot+ PC, the Live captions feature can actually work offline and also supports live translation between different languages. Clipboard history Joel Lee / IDG Whenever you copy and paste, you might think you’ve overwritten the previous thing you copied — but that’s not true. Windows 11’s Clipboard History feature keeps track of all the text and images you copy. Normally, when you paste, you just paste the last thing you copied. But you can choose from previously copied items by using the Windows key + V shortcut (rather than the usual Ctrl + V shortcut). You’ll be prompted to enable the Clipboard History feature if you haven’t already done so. Clipboard History even allows you to “pin” items so that they’re always available and conveniently accessible for easy pasting in the future. It’s one of the many useful productivity features on Windows. Handwriting to text input Ashkan Forouzani / Unsplash Some Windows laptops ship with support for capacitive pens. These pen-enabled PCs are a great choice for college students because they make it way easier to write handwritten notes, mathematical equations, diagrams, and more in excellent note-taking apps like OneNote. But with Windows 11, pen input works in any app thanks to handwriting recognition. You can write directly on any text field with your pen and Windows will instantly convert it to text. Dictation Chris Hoffman / IDG Windows 11 has built-in support for dictation, which means you can speak your thoughts aloud and they’ll be transcribed on the fly as text. In other words, you can type using your voice — just like on a phone. To open the Windows 11 dictation tool, use the Windows key + H shortcut. If you’re using a PC with a touch screen, you can also tap the microphone button on the touch keyboard to launch it. Related: I used Windows Dictation to write this article with my voice Web apps as desktop apps Joel Lee / IDG These days, many apps are actually just websites that run in the browser. Hate having to keep dozens of tabs open with all of the webpages and web apps you use? Well, there’s a better way. Windows 11 lets you turn webpages and web apps into Windows “apps” with their own taskbar icons and windows. They feel almost identical to usual desktop apps, and it’s a particularly convenient trick for single-page web apps you keep open 24/7 (e.g., Gmail, Spotify, Slack). To do this in Google Chrome, navigate to any website and click the three-dot menu > Save and Share > Install page as app. In Microsoft Edge, navigate to a website and click three-dot menu > Apps > Install this site as an app. (Mozilla Firefox doesn’t offer this feature.) Sticky notes Microsoft Microsoft OneNote is a great note-taking application, but it might be a little too complex for your needs. If all you want to do is jot down quick notes here and there, try the Sticky Notes app instead. Windows 11 has a built-in Sticky Notes app that you can launch by searching for “sticky notes” in the Start menu. This app can keep notes pinned to the desktop or kept in a simpler list format, and the notes can be synced between your PC and other devices. When syncing Sticky Notes with your phone, your notes are accessible via OneNote Mobile, Microsoft Launcher for Android, and Outlook for Windows. Emoji menu Chris Hoffman / IDG Windows has a convenient built-in quick insertion tool for emojis. To access it, you can use either the Windows key + Period or Windows key + Semicolon keyboard shortcuts. You can browse all the emojis included with Windows and insert them into any application or document. You can also start typing right after pressing the keyboard shortcut to search for a particular emoji. Text editing shortcuts 76 / Unsplash The Ctrl key provides so many essential keyboard shortcut tricks for editing text. My favorite part, though, is that it makes many keyboard actions apply to entire words instead of individual characters. Here’s what that means: Normally, when you press Backspace, you delete the a single character of text. But if you use the Ctrl + Backspace keyboard shortcut, you delete the entire previous word. This works with lots of shortcuts, including the Delete key. Another example is text selection. You can hold Shift and press the left or right arrows to select individual characters. But if you use the Ctrl + Shift + left or right arrow keyboard shortcut, you can select entire words at a time. And if you use Ctrl + Shift + Home or End, you can select entire lines of text with a single keystroke. Dynamic locking Joel Lee / IDG Whether you’re on a laptop or PC, you should be locking it whenever you aren’t using it, especially when you’re on campus. You’re probably already doing it with a keystroke (Windows key + L) or with a setting that automatically locks whenever your system goes to sleep. But there’s a better way in Windows 11: use the Dynamic Lock feature, which detects when your phone moves away from your computer and automatically locks when it does. You can set this up in Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options > Dynamic lock. Presence-based locking Ernest Ojeh / Unsplash Newer laptops with Presence Sensors don’t even need to involve your phone. They can detect when you move away from your computer, then automatically lock when you do — and they can automatically unlock when you sit back down. If you’ve set up Windows Hello with facial recognition, they can even sign you back in automatically. Further reading: The best webcams for Windows Hello Focus timers Joel Lee / IDG Have you heard of the Pomodoro technique? It’s a method that helps you stay focused and get more done in less time. The key is to work in half-hour bursts with short breaks in between — and most people use timers to know when to switch between work and breaks. Windows 11 has a built-in Pomodoro timer. You can access it by opening the Clock app in the Start menu, then activating its Focus sessions feature. You can configure your focus session, during which all notifications and app alerts will be stifled. You can also link your Spotify account so the right music plays while you’re focusing. Do Not Disturb mode Joel Lee / IDG Windows has a Do Not Disturb feature that quiets down noisy notifications while you’re trying to focus. While Do Not Disturb has long been a popular feature on smartphones, Windows PCs didn’t actually have this sort of thing for many years. To enable Do Not Disturb mode on Windows 11, press Windows key + N to open the Notification Center, then click the bell icon with Z’s at the top-right corner. On Windows 10, you’ll need to activate a setting called Focus Assist to temporarily disable notifications. Sync with your phone Microsoft Windows makes it easy to access or control your phone right from your PC, but the process is different depending on whether you have an iPhone or Android phone (and each one’s functionality is different). If you have an iPhone, install the iCloud for Windows app. After you set it up, you’ll be able to link iCloud Photos to the Photos app and browse from within Windows. You’ll also get to integrate with iCloud’s other features, including Drive, Passwords, Contacts, Calendar, and Bookmarks. If you have an Android phone, open the Phone Link app from the Start menu. After you set it up, you’ll be able to text from your PC, manage your phone’s notifications, browse photos in your camera roll, and even copy-paste photos to your PC. Screenshots and screen recording Chris Hoffman / IDG Modern Windows PCs have powerful built-in screenshot tools. On Windows 11, it’s called the Snipping Tool, which is as easy to launch as pressing the Windows key + Shift + S keyboard shortcut (or the Print Screen key if you have that on your keyboard). Once the Snipping Tool is opened, you’ll see an overlay bar at the top of your screen. Use it to select the type of screenshot you want: Rectangle, Window, Full screen, or Freeform. Then, click or drag to select what you want to capture and you’ll get a notification. (You can click the notification to edit the screenshot before saving it.) Related: How to take smarter screenshots in Windows 11 The Snipping Tool also includes the ability to record video of your screen. Switch to the video camera icon in the overlay bar at the top of the screen, then draw a rectangle over the area you want to capture. Past versions of files Chris Hoffman / IDG Windows offers multiple ways to retrieve an older version of a file. If the file is synced to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, you can locate it in File Explorer, right-click it, and select OneDrive > Version history. For files that are only stored on your PC and not synced to a cloud storage service, you can set up the File History feature to regularly back up selected files and folders to an external drive. Then, you can restore previous versions of the file from there. Lost laptop tracking Chris Hoffman / IDG If you’re at college and using a laptop, you should always have a contingency plan in case your laptop is lost or stolen. One option is to use the built-in laptop tracking feature of Windows, which also lets you lock your laptop remotely. It won’t be as useful as similar features available on smartphones because your laptop probably doesn’t have a cellular connection. The tracking requires your laptop to be connected to Wi-Fi, and your laptop can’t be in sleep mode. Even so, it’s still useful even if it isn’t perfect. If you lose your laptop on campus, it’ll probably stay connected to Wi-Fi and be traceable. But the key is making sure the feature is active before you lose your laptop. Turn it on now by going to Settings > Privacy & security > Find my device and activate the Find my device option. Then, use Microsoft’s account devices page to track down your laptop. Further reading: Laptop security guide for college students Advanced calculators Chris Hoffman / IDG The built-in Calculator app on Windows is more powerful than it looks. Open the app’s menu and you’ll find different calculator modes, including a scientific calculator, a graphing calculator, and tools for converting currencies and units of measurement. Quick video trimming Joel Lee / IDG Windows comes with Microsoft’s Clipchamp video editor, but there’s actually another useful video tool buried within the operating system. With this feature, you can quickly trim video files and clip sections to save as their own smaller video files. You can do this by right-clicking on a video file in File Explorer, then selecting Open with > Photos. When the Photos app opens up with the video loaded, click the blue Trim button on the toolbar and select the part of the video you want to save. Further reading: How to use the free Clipchamp video editor Quick photo editing Joel Lee / IDG You’d be surprised by how capable the built-in Photos app can be. It’s not just a photo viewer — it’s also a good photo editor when you’re in a pinch or just need some simple crops and edits. After opening an image in Photos, click the blue Edit button in the toolbar to access the image editing tools. You’ll see options for cropping the image, marking it up, adjusting lighting, applying filters, and even using AI effects to erase elements and remove the background. Laptop battery drain statistics Joel Lee / IDG Everyone always wants more laptop battery life. If you find your laptop dying much faster than you think it should, you’ll want to look into which apps are the biggest battery drains — and Windows keeps track of that for you, making it easy to investigate and troubleshoot. On Windows 11, head over to Settings > System > Power & battery. Then, scroll down and expand the Battery usage section to view battery usage by app. On Windows 10, go to Settings > System > Battery to find these same details. Once you know which apps are killing your battery life, you can make informed decisions on what to do. (Battery stress is one of the common mistakes killing your laptop’s lifespan.) Further reading: Is it bad to always leave your laptop plugged in? Read...

Cybercriminal groups ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider have escalated phishing attacks on Salesforce and major firms like Google, signalling possible collaboration. Read...