Microsoft Support & Discussions

Turkey Day has come and gone, but there’s still something to celebrate. We’ve got some irresistible deals for you today in our 10 Days of 10 Cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10*. Halo: Spartan Assault and Halo: Spartan Strike are both available for 10 cents today through November 28! GAMES Halo: Spartan Assault (discount available through Saturday, November 28) The excitement of Halo combat comes to touch-based devices here for the very first time. Battle your way through 30 action-packed missions against the Covenant as you explore the origin of the Spartan Ops program and Halo 4’s Spartan Commander, Sarah Palmer. It’s time to join the assault, Spa…

Happy Thanksgiving! Celebrate today with some favorite Movies, Music, Apps and Games in our latest round of 10 cent deals in our 10 Days of 10 cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10*. MUSIC The Weeknd Trilogy Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, released three free mixtapes, aka albums, in 2011. Trilogy compiles them with remastered sound and adds three new songs. Buy the album for 10 cents today. Drake Nothing Was The Same Nothing Was The Same is Drake’s third album with steps in a new direction. Buy the album for 10 cents today. Jeff Buckley Grace This classic from 1994 is a mix of indie alternative songs from Jeff Buckley. Buy the album for…

The long weekend might give you a chance to spend time with family, watch football or dive into the shopping fray. We’ll help you find the best Black Friday deals and catch up on the past week’s most interesting happenings around Microsoft in this early edition of Weekend Reading. If you’re looking to make quick work of your holiday shopping, Microsoft has heaps of Black Friday deals: There are 1,000 movies, games and apps you can get on Windows 10 devices for just 10 cents each. Select Xbox One console bundles cost just $299. You can also nab a PC for less than $150 and score various great deals on the new Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL Windows 10 phones. And that’…

It’s Thanksgiving Eve and Day 6 of the 10 Days of 10 Cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10* is in full swing, every day so far we’ve featured a different selection of 10 cent deals. Today we’re starting with games because we have an amazing deal on Halo: Spartan Strike, now through November 28 you can buy the game for just 10 cents! We’re also offering more albums for 10 cents each and movies you can rent and download to your Windows 10 device to watch throughout your holiday travel. Here are today’s deals: GAMES Halo: Spartan Strike (discount available through Saturday, November 28) The gameplay is as epic as ever in this installment of the actio…

We’re halfway through our incredible 10 Days of 10 Cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10*, with the latest selection ready for day 5, below. Today is especially exciting because we have more albums on sale for just 10 cents! MUSIC Ellie Goulding Halcyon With her 2010 debut, Lights, and the expanded Bright Lights, British vocalist Ellie Goulding bridged the gap between the soulful adult contemporary beltings. On her sophomore effort, 2012’s Halcyon, Goulding moves in an even more arty, electronic direction. Buy Ellie Goulding’s album, Halcyon for 10 cents today. Jay Z Magna Carta Holy Grail Like few other album openers, “Holy Grail” encapsulate…

Fisherfolk at work on the island of Bohol in the Philippines. Over the last 50 years, Bohol has lost 90 percent of its fish. Spanning 97 miles, Danajon Bank in the Philippines is a rare marine life wonder. Just one of six double barrier reefs in the world, it is home to coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass biomes, tiger-tail seahorses and other natural wonders. But if you visited the reef in recent years, you would be struck by the absence of one vital creature – fish. One island, Bohol, has lost 90 percent of its fish. Overfishing, population growth and ineffective protection and management of coastal resources are all to blame. Danajon Bank is a story of so many mon…

Earlier today, we released our latest workforce demographic numbers on our Global Diversity & Inclusion website. I encourage anyone with an interest in diversity at Microsoft – as well as anyone interested in diversity within the tech industry as a whole – to visit this website and familiarize themselves with our latest information. As I look at our numbers, I see a story that to some degree is being repeated throughout the industry. While certain leading indicators are trending up and we are starting to see signs of progress, systemic challenges remain when it comes to increasing the presence of women and minorities at all levels of the workforce. The implications…

Today’s top 10 deals in our 10 Days of 10 Cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10* feature a movie that will make laugh, entire albums for just 10 cents, and classic games you’ll love to play! Don’t delay because these deals will only be available for a few more days. MOVIES Pitch Perfect 2 The Barden Bellas are back and the laughs keep coming in this follow-up to the 2012 smash hit about collegiate a capella singers. Follow Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and Beca (Anna Kendrick) as they prepare to graduate from Barden University. Also starring Brittany Snow, Adam DeVine and Katey Sagal. Rent Pitch Perfect 2 for 10 cents today. Ex Machina A remote retr…

Today marks Day 3 of 10 Days of 10 cent Deals in the Windows Store. If you’re just joining the fun, we’re offering more 1,000 pieces of content in the Windows Store for just 10 cents each on Windows 10*. Here are today’s top 10 deals. MOVIES Home Oh is a lovable misfit from a faraway planet and Tip is Oh’s new best friend on Earth. Getting Oh home is where the adventure for these two begins, and it’s the journey of a lifetime the whole way through. From the creators of How to Train Your Dragon and featuring the voices of Jim Parsons, Steve Martin, Rihanna, and Jennifer Lopez. Rent Home for 10 cents today. Spy Where Melissa McCarthy goes, huge laughs follo…

Get ready for Day 2 of 10 Days of 10 Cent Deals in the Windows Store on Windows 10! In case you missed the news from yesterday, we’re offering more than 1,000 pieces of content in the Windows Store for just 10 cents each over a period of 10 days*. There’s cool content like top movies and music, along with popular apps and games. Below are today’s top 10 deals of the day. MOVIES Mad Max Fury Road It’s a world without hope, without law, without mercy – but with enough action for three movies. Legendary Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is racing across the wasteland with elite Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), fleeing a Citadel overtaken by a tyrannical Immortan. …

Welcome back to another installment of Weekend Reading! We had a big week on several fronts, such as education, research and innovations for developers. Microsoft hosted a group of educators, students and industry leaders on Monday through the Education Underground Workshop, which highlighted the company’s commitment to make learning more engaging and accessible, while empowering every student on the planet to achieve more. The event at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus followed an earlier unveiling of a new “Minecraft” coding tutorial by Microsoft and Code.org. Microsoft also announced a new partnership with edX to create more courses for school leaders and prov…

It’s been an incredible year, with over 110 million devices already running Windows 10 and millions of people enjoying innovations like Cortana, Microsoft Edge, Xbox and more. With the recent availability of the November update, Windows 10 is better than ever – faster, more compatible, and with hundreds of new innovations. If you haven’t taken advantage of our free upgrade offer* to Windows 10, now is a great time! For the millions of fans who have upgraded to Windows 10, we’d like to celebrate with you – just in time for the long Thanksgiving week-end in the U.S. Starting today, we’re going to offer never-before-seen deals** on the Windows Store in Windows 10 devices.…

Today, HP Inc. announced one awesome piece of hardware: the HP Elite x2, an incredibly versatile tablet that offers the productivity of a full notebook and the convenience of a tablet. It’s perfectly designed for the mobile professional, and it’s also the first tablet to combine BIOS-level security with HP SureStart, manageability with HP Touchpoint Manager, and an optional Intel vPro processor. In short, the HP Elite x2 is a dazzling machine with top-shelf security and all the accoutrements that a modern business professional needs. The HP Elite x2 offers productivity of a full notebook and convenience of a tablet The tablet is a mere 8.1mm thin, weighing less th…

Today we delivered the latest free update to Minecraft: Pocket Edition and Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition beta. Starting today players in either of these versions can begin making wonderful creations with basic redstone components, explore new desert temples, collect six types of cute, fluffy rabbits, spruce up dwellings with five new door types, purchase the new Biome Settler character skins and more. Now you can use Redstone to upgrade your Minecraft worlds! Desert temples offer treasure hidden deep inside – if you can make it out alive! Today’s .13 update is sure to delight by delivering one of the most player-requested features for Windows 10 and Pocket Ed…

This post was authored by Jeffrey Snover, Microsoft Technical Fellow “There is an unlimited demand for computing.” That is what Buck Rodgers said in his great 1988 book The IBM Way. Buck connected the dots between computing and growing a business. While Buck had the right idea, the reality is that this gets held back by friction. In the past, friction took the form of cost – servers were expensive. But since then, servers have grown in capacity and shrunk in cost to the point where today they are downright cheap. Virtual servers are even cheaper and with cloud servers, you only pay when you use them. However, demand for computing is still being held back by fricti…

Back in October I shared that the Xbox Beta app on Windows 10 got an update bringing new ways for you to expand your social gaming network and share gaming content with your friends on Xbox Live. Today I’m excited to share that these updates are now available in the Xbox app on Windows 10! We’re upgrading your social experience in the Xbox app and unifying your Xbox Live and Facebook communities with the release of Facebook friend finder. Facebook friend finder will also be available starting today on Xbox.com, so web users on any platform and device can grow their Xbox Live network with Facebook friends. This feature joins the recently launched Game DVR voice reco…

Hi everyone, Today we are releasing Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 10586 to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. This build for mobile has a lots of good bug fixes and general improvements for you to check out. Overall this is a really great build, and we’re excited to get it out there for all of you to try. There is an important note for anyone who installed Build 10581 and then subsequently factory reset your phone, so please make sure to check out the known issues below. Here are some things we have fixed: We have fixed the issue that caused the Start experience to become corrupted (garbled) after upgrading and restoring a backup from a phone that had …

This post was authored by the Windows Server Security and Assurance Team Six months ago, in a previous blog post “Protecting your datacenter and cloud from emerging threats” we introduced our strategy and direction on how Microsoft can help customers protect their datacenter and private cloud from emerging threats. In this post, we’ll cover the great progress that was made since May 2015 in each of the areas we were focusing on and what offerings are already available for you to better secure your environment. Landscape shifts that affect the way we think about security Looking at the datacenter and cloud through security lenses, there are two major aspects th…

As we inch closer to the 15th BlueHat Security Conference, we are happy to announce the lineup of speakers and topics for this event. This year will continue with a solid speaker and topic selection that engage engineers, executives, and invited guests to discuss and tackle some of the hardest problems facing the industry today.

Today, I was able to join Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Washington, D.C., where he delivered a keynote that highlighted the need for a new approach to security. He shared how Microsoft uses its unique insight into the threat landscape to help better protect customers, and showcased how Microsoft technologies work in tandem with each other, and with solutions from the security ecosystem, to deliver a holistic, agile, security platform for today’s enterprise. New approach In our mobile-first, cloud-first world, employees work on corporate applications and access sensitive data from on-premises and cloud-based systems using every type of device from laptops to BYO de…

CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) has alerted the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) about the existence of a privacy-intrusive, hidden high-frequency audio cross-device tracking technology. According to an official complaint filed by the CDT, the privacy watchdog is tattling on advertisers like SilverPush, Drawbridge, and Flurry, online companies that deploy ads that squeal high-frequency sounds from the devices they're loaded on. The CDT says that these ultrasonic sounds scan the room for other devices like phones, tablets, TVs, computers, and wearables, effectively tying their presence to a browser cookie, an IP, and indirectly a user. Whenever the devic…

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing more on Windows Server 2016 and the key capabilities coming in the next wave of Microsoft datacenter solutions. In this installment we’ll be looking at Nano Server, the new headless deployment option for Windows Server. Nano Server offers a dramatically reduced footprint, resulting in lower servicing requirements and improved security. Along with Windows Server Containers, Nano Server is a key element of the modern application platform features coming in the next version of the operating system. Windows Server 2016 contains multiple features designed for application innovation, and specifically for modern or “born-in-the-cloud…

Getting rid of your Android smartphone or tablet, but want to make sure that all your data has been securely deleted. Here's how you go about the task. Backup all your data; because once it's gone, it's gone. There's no undo button you can press. Next, plug the charger into the device so it's getting power for the deletion process. This is important because the process can take hours. Go to Settings >> Security >> Encrypt phone (or Encrypt tablet) to begin the process on Android 4.4 or lower, or go Settings >> Security >> Screen lock to begin the process on Android 5.0 and higher (this is unnecessary on new devices running Android 6.0 Marshma…