Microsoft Support & Discussions

Verizon has announced today that the Lumia 735 – the smartphone built for selfies and Skype – will be available online starting today and available in stores next month. The Lumia 735 will be available on Verizon Edge for $8 a month for 24 months; 0% APR (full retail price $192). For a limited time, if you bring your number over to Verizon, you’ll receive a $100 bill credit within 2-3 bill cycles for each new smartphone activated on Verizon Edge. The Lumia 735 comes also with wireless charging capability right out of the box and a variety of wireless charging back covers will also be available for purchase ($24.99) – in orange, green, white, red, and cyan. The Lumi…

Today, Toshiba announced a new lineup of PCs built for Windows 10 that feature a dedicated Cortana key, a range of high resolution displays and an enhanced audio experience. All of them are eligible for the free Windows 10 upgrade when it becomes available on July 29. A Refresh to Toshiba’s Satellite S Series of Performance Laptops Timed with the back-to-school season, this premium series features slim styling, an all-new sculpted aluminum design, includes two screen size options – 15.6 inch or 17.3-inch that can be configured with Full HD, HD+ (1600 x 900) or 4K Ultra HD with IPS technology – and comes configured with the latest high-performance processors and…

Intro by about.me is available to download for free from the Windows and Windows Phone Stores today. This app offers a modern, easy way to stay in touch with new contacts by sending your about.me page as a digital business card. With Intro by about.me, your about.me page becomes a digital business card you can send to an email address, phone number or another about.me page. You are always are in control of which personal details you share, you can share any combination of your page, phone number and email. You can also keep track of the people you’ve shared your card with and cards you’ve received, Intro by About.me is a simple, efficient, modern way to network. …

AT&T announced today that the Lumia 640 XL will be available in AT&T stores and online starting Friday, June 26th. The Lumia 640 XL will be available in matte black and matte white. Pricing starts at just $.99 with a two-year contract ($249.99 no-contract). You can also purchase the Lumia 640 XL for $0 down on an AT&T Next plan, paying $8.34 per month with 30 device payments on Next 24, $10.42 per month at 24 payments on Next 18, or $12.50 per month at 20 payments on Next 12. I had a chance to use a pre-production version of the Lumia 640 XL a few months ago and loved it. First off – it’s 5.7-inch ClearBlack IPS LCD HD display is quite nice. After livin…

This week has already been a great one for PC gamers. One of the highlights was the very first PC Gaming Show, in which the community was able to celebrate with some of the biggest names in PC gaming and see the innovations that lie ahead. As one of the sponsors of the event, Xbox was on hand to join in on the celebration and share more news about the future of PC gaming on Windows 10. Attending in support of the multiple Windows 10 developers at the PC Gaming Show, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer briefly took the stage for a chat with show moderator and pro-gaming all-star Sean “Day[9]” Plott. Plott got right into it, bluntly asking why Spencer was representing Xbox at …

Hi everyone, we have a new Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview build for Windows Insiders on the Fast ring today – Build 10136. There are a couple of things that you’ll need to pay close attention to in order to upgrade to this build. The first is that we are only offering it to phones that are running Windows Phone 8.1 and opted in to the Windows Insider Fast ring. What this means for you: If you are running the previous build offered to the Fast ring (10080) and you want to get this build you will need to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 via the Windows Phone Recovery Tool first. Once you’re up and running on Windows Phone 8.1, go to the Windows Insider app and select Ins…

At Microsoft, our vision for a powerful digital assistant means it is personalized and available to you everywhere, whether you’re on-the-go with the device you carry with you, in your office, where you need to be highly productive, or even in your home, where you relax, play, and are entertained. In a multi-device world this means allowing Cortana to move with you between your environments multiple times a day. We announced earlier that your Windows 10 experience includes Cortana.** To extend availability to a multitude of devices, we announced the Cortana app will be available soon for Android phones and iPhones, working as a companion to Cortana on your Windows 10 P…

In a press and analyst briefing a few months back, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put up a slide proclaiming “Microsoft ♥ Linux”. Wow! What a great slide and what a change for Microsoft! The trade press picked up on this slide in a major way, with a number of articles echoing this new approach to Linux and open source within Microsoft. And they’re right! But you may ask “Why is Microsoft working with Linux and open source?”, or “What’s Microsoft’s plan going forward?”, or “What does ‘Microsoft ♥ Linux’ mean for me as a customer?” At the core, “Microsoft ♥ Linux” is driven by what we’ve heard from you as customers. You run workloads on Windows. You run workl…

With the releases of Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, we made huge improvements across the board in software defined compute, storage, networking and more. We’re regularly hearing about your successes as well as your next round of feature requests J. In these discussions with you, we’ve also noticed the conversation has matured. While virtualization continues to be an important aspect of your infrastructure, I’m rarely asked about feature comparisons at the hypervisor layer anymore. That’s a 2005 conversation. The conversation has shifted from virtualization to cloud, specifically hybrid cloud. It’s in these conversation that we see first-hand that our Mic…

This is a post from Nir Ben Zvi, Principal PM Manager, Microsoft Cybersecurity has hit the mainstream. You would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know about a company that has been breached and dragged across the news. Security veterans might say that this is just the tip of the iceberg but you have to admit – it’s a very large tip. The actors and their motives have changed - A few years back, the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group published an internal position paper that predicted a shift in the security attack profile and sophistication of actors and called out the need to develop technologies and solutions to address Advanced Persistent Threats (AP…

This is a post from Siddhartha Roy, Group PM Manager, High Availability and Storage and Paul Luber, Group PM Manager, Storage and File Systems Storage is a foundational component of the datacenter fabric and is an intrinsic part of Microsoft’s software-defined datacenter solution. Our storage investments are centered on bringing value to customers in terms of increasing cloud scale, availability, performance, and reliability, while lowering acquisition and operational costs - with Windows Server, and now also with Microsoft Azure Stack. Storage Choice Customers can have more than one type of storage, based on their need. We have storage choices across the en…

Earlier today we announced the release of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2. We hope that in the coming weeks, you’ll take the time to try the preview and experience the new features first-hand. But to give you a snapshot of the technology innovation being delivered, we have compiled a favorites list. This list isn’t intended to be a full catalog of what’s coming. Our goal is to show off how new approaches to infrastructure are going to make a material difference in the way you approach IT challenges. Technology innovation fuels business innovation, and we’re excited to see the ways that our customers are going to use these new features to drive competitive value. S…

Guest post by: Jeffrey Snover, Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect Andrew Mason, Principal PM Manager Alan Back, Principal SWE Manager Today we announced new container technologies as well as Nano Server, a purpose-built operating system designed to run born-in-the-cloud applications and containers. As customers adopt modern applications and next-generation cloud technologies, they need an OS that delivers speed, agility and lower resource consumption. Nano Server is a deeply refactored version of Windows Server with a small footprint and remotely managed installation, optimized for the cloud and a DevOps workflow. It is designed for fewer patch and update…

UPDATE: If you would like to continue using the current Technical Preview of the next version of Windows Server released in October 2014, please visit the Microsoft Download Center and follow the download instructions. This solution will allow you to continue using the preview without interruption until the next preview is available in May. Thank you for your continued evaluation. ---- In October 2014, we released the first Technical Preview of the next version of Windows Server. To those of you who tried it out, thank you. If you are still using the preview released last October, you may have received notice this week that it will expire on April 15. If you wou…

Guest post by Dan Lovinger, Principal Software Engineer Hi everyone, I’m Dan Lovinger, a software and performance engineer on the Windows Server team. With the availability of the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS), we’re excited to now share an overview of storage-focused performance of a single rack CPS stamp, with real workloads, at real scale. The paper we’re releasing here covers the following three scenarios, scaled across a deployment of tenant virtual machines (VMs): Scenario 1. Boot storm: cold start of VMs. Scenario 2. VM microbenchmarks: synthetic storage loads that are generated within VMs. Scenario 3. VM database OLTP: simulated databas…

Although 75% of IT professionals are aware that support for Windows Server 2003 is ending July 14, 2015, there are still a lot of questions about just how urgent the need to move is. Deprioritizing migration is not uncommon when there are other technology projects that are perceived to more directly benefit business groups. However, although while perhaps not as glamorous as other projects, Windows Server 2003 migration can make a big impact on your business. There are two reasons you should prioritize Windows Server 2003 migration. The first is about the business opportunity you are not capitalizing on because you are running on decade-old technology. The innovation t…

Yes!!! At last we can talk about what we have been working on for close to 18 months - “San Diego” - that was the code name for what is now “Microsoft Cloud Platform System” (CPS), which was announced earlier today by Scott Guthrie. These 18 months have been a journey for all of us in the product group. It began, as all journeys should, as conversations with our customers. What followed has evolved how we think about and engineer our products. We were struck by the large number of customers who were failing to realize the benefits of the cloud. Running one of the largest public clouds, Microsoft Azure, we know what it takes to build and run a cloud, and we wanted to se…

In today’s Windows Experience blog, we communicated our intent to deliver regular improvements to Windows in order to address feedback quickly while continuing to bring you an enterprise-class platform. We also provided a heads up that the next update for Windows happens on August 12. On August 12, we will also release an update to Windows Server 2012 R2. In addition to regular security updates, this update will deliver bug fixes that will improve performance and reliability for your infrastructure. There are no changes to system APIs, your applications should “just work” without the need for re-certification or re-validation. Similar to Windows 8.1, we will ma…

In business for more than 40 years, Nottingham-based Paul Smith is a preeminent British designer. The company has 14 different collections—produced in England and Italy—under the global Paul Smith brand. In addition to 17 shops in England, Paul Smith retail stores are found in fashion capitals around the world. Paul Smith opens three new stores a year on average and the demand for IT services from the business is growing. “Our goal is to manage costs and improve service delivery, but we are challenged by an IT budget that doesn’t keep up with expectations from the business.” says Lee Bingham, Head of IT at Paul Smith. To address this challenge, six years ago Paul Smith…

Following our announcement from last week, we have now released the fix through Windows Update for the issue with Windows Server 2012 R2 Update communicating with WSUS 3.2 servers in certain non-default configurations. For servers that have already installed the update, Windows Update will re-offer the complete update, but it will only install the fix. Please read KB2959977 and the WSUS team blog for further details. As always, we’ve been listening to your feedback and want to ensure that you have a smooth deployment experience and continue to receive enterprise-grade protection. As a result, we have extended the timeframe for you to deploy the update. You now have un…

Following our announcement from last week, we’ve now released the media for Windows Server 2012 R2 Update on the Volume License Service Center (VLSC) today. Additionally, we wanted to create awareness of an issue with the Windows Server 2012 R2 Update VSLC/MSDN media that manifests under very specific configuration settings. Most of you should see no impact whatsoever. For the small number of who might encounter this issue, we have issued additional information and workaround guidance here. Continue reading...

Following our announcement from last week, we are happy to announce that Windows Server 2012 R2 Update is now generally available through Windows Update. The Windows Server 2012 R2 evaluation experience and has also been updated to the new OS image. The Volume Licensing Service Center will be updated on April 14, 2014 and the new image will be coming to Azure soon. We encourage you to apply this update to your Windows Server 2012 R2 systems as soon as possible. As a reminder, this becomes the new servicing baseline for Windows Server 2012 R2 systems, so next month's security updates (i.e. May "patch Tuesday") will be dependent on Windows Server 2012 R2 Update being ins…

Title: Windows Management Framework 5.0 Preview One goal of management is to simplify creating and operating computing environments. In Windows Server 2012 R2 we introduced two new standards-based technologies to achieve that: Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration and Certified for Windows Network Switches. Both of these generated a lot of excitement with our customers and partners. Today we are announcing the Preview of Windows Management Framework V5 which advances both of these areas and introduces Windows PowerShell OneGet to dramatically simplify finding and installing software on your machines. OneGet works with the community-based software repository c…

As we mentioned back in February, Microsoft has been working on an update to Windows Server 2012 R2 in conjunction with an update to Windows 8.1. Today we are providing Windows Server 2012 R2 Update to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and it will be generally available through Windows Update starting on April 8, 2014. We continue to focus on providing a world-class platform for IT Pros and developers around the globe. This includes an easy way to get up to date with the patches, bug-fixes, and improvements that we’ve been working on since we released Windows Server 2012 R2. To that end, we’re releasing this update which brings everything together for you in one easy-to…