I have been following Raymond Chen’s blog, The Old New Thing, or several years and he recently posted about the process that Windows 95 used for installation. The installer was unusual since it booted into a limited MS-DOS environment, then a limited Windows 3.1 environment, and then finally into a Windows 95 environment. I had heard several reasons for this strange process for years, so it was nice to finally hear the reason from someone at Microsoft.

Windows Server 2025 was released to manufacturing on November 1, 2024, after being in public preview for most of the year. This is a major release, and there are many changes to the core features of Windows Server. This is also the first version of Windows Server to be available on the ARM architecture, which will allow for some interesting deployment options for the operating system. Windows Server 2025 is a LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) release and will be supported until October 10, 2034.

Microsoft announced last year that on July 29, 2024, the Xbox 360 Marketplace would be shut down for good. The Xbox 360 console would continue to operate normally, but the ability to purchase new games through the Xbox 360 Marketplace would be permanently removed (existing purchases would still work). It marks the end of an era for the Xbox 360, which was released in the fall of 2005, and was supported for almost 20 years. Microsoft supported the Xbox 360 for almost 8 years after the console was officially discontinued, which is impressive considering how the Xbox division has been doing in recent years. At the end of the day the Xbox 360 sold 84 million units worldwide, which is in the top 10, so not bad for a console. Despite the early hardware issues, it was a successful console with a great legacy.

I woke up on Friday July 19, 2024, and read that there was a massive IT outage in progress that was affecting airlines, financial institutions, and various other businesses worldwide. I was aware of CrowdStrike prior to this outage, and it was not surprising to me at all that something like this finally happened at this scale. While I have never been a customer of CrowdStrike, I have used products in the past that worked in a similar manner, and they always made me nervous how they deployed updates. These updates have the potential to cripple all workstations and servers in an organization with only one minor issue, and that is exactly what happened.

This article from Windows Central came up the other day and it sums up a lot of the current issues with the consumer side of Microsoft, not necessarily on the Azure or Office 365 sides. Obviously, short term gains are most publicly traded companies primary concern, but Microsoft is no longer playing the long game on its core products and services, and it is starting to erode trust in the company. Overall, a good read and worth the time to go through it.

Today is the last time that Microsoft will publish any updates for Windows 8.1. Today marks the end of extended support for Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.1 is now officially end of life. To say that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 were controversial is an understatement, but at the end of the day they were both solid improvements over Windows 7, despite the issues that they introduced.

I published my book, Practical Guide to PKI with Windows Server on September 22, 2021, and it has now been over a full year since I made it generally available for purchase. I wanted to reflect on what I have learned since releasing the book, what issues I have encountered, and what the next steps are.

Internet Explorer 11 has officially gone end of life and it had a good run despite the issues associated with it. The first version of Internet Explorer was released on August 16, 1995, and it had a 26+ year run as one of the most well-known Web Browsers in the world. Unfortunately, with the widespread adoption of modern Web Browsers, there was no longer a need for IE, and it is time to move on.