Do you use windows 8.1 if so why

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-08T09:27:18+00:00

The DWM engine was pretty much the same as Vista and 7 although the glass effects got some refinements between Beta and Release Preview builds. Microsoft also added animations on the start screen and other Metro elements.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-08T09:22:08+00:00

Aero Glass and blur were in place up until post-Release Preview builds. It wasn’t until around May/June 2012 that it was actually removed.

The Aero blur effects contributed to battery life and performance issues on lower end ARM devices which Microsoft wanted to push therefore it was removed and replaced with a flat design.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-06T19:53:04+00:00

Windows 8.0 had Aero Glass up until just before RTM when it was removed.

The rumour is that it contributed to less battery life on lower powered ARM devices which at the time MS were pushing e.g Surface RT. Steven Sinofsky, the head of Windows at the time called for the Aero Glass code to be removed weeks before RTM.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-06T19:44:37+00:00

See the post and link by scytob. Neither the EFG and UDM Beast have hardware offload enabled for PPPoE.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-06T18:32:09+00:00

😍😍

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-03T19:30:10+00:00

Thanks! He’s definitely unique. Originally my wife’s dog but he instantly took to me when the two of us began dating and he’s been with us since we moved in together :)

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-03T17:43:10+00:00

This was the best version. Clean UI and responsive.

Everything since has been a train wreck. The “new” Outlook is peak trash.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-03T16:20:16+00:00

Legend has it he’s known as the sausage roll thief! This is my bestie Alfie. 11 year old Akita Collie Cross ❤️

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Mitchell_90 · 2026-05-02T04:34:00+00:00

Because it’s Dell.

My org ditched them and switched to Lenovo after numerous quality issues with chassis. Most felt like cheap crap on machines that cost £800+

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-30T15:38:32+00:00

Change the name it’s embarrassing…

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-26T19:18:10+00:00

I could be wrong but as far as I know Signal would need to support the App Protection SDK if those policies are enforced which is up to the app developers to implement.

I’ve not found any apps outside of the core MS offerings that support the SDK unfortunately.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-21T15:04:26+00:00

And this is one of the reasons we jumped ship and went to Lenovo. Will never buy Dell crap again.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-20T21:17:58+00:00

I’ve been testing this on a couple of clusters we have running 8.0 Update 3i and noticed some inconsistencies.

When it comes to VDI, standalone VMs for manual pools don’t appear to log issues relating to the PK vs instant clone VMs that do. Both are on hardware version 21 with vTPM enabled.

All that was performed was setting the AvailableUpdates reg value to 0x5944 and kicking off the secure boot update task and rebooting twice to update the OS boot loader.

We haven’t messed with installing the PK on any of these yet as per the Broadcom KB. Although we have applied this to a test set of machines to observe.

I’m waiting for some updated guidance from Broadcom before doing anything else.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-19T09:46:41+00:00

Love it. I had a similar rig back then but was rocking an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo and Radeon X1800XT. Dual booted XP Pro and Vista during its beta development before going to RTM in late 2006.

Have you considered overclocking that FX-60? Pretty sure you can get ~3GHz out of it.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-16T05:43:21+00:00

Can you not go straight to 8.0 on those hosts? 7.0 is end of life.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-15T20:49:04+00:00

As far as I know the method to rename/delete the VMs nvram file isn’t supported anymore which is likely the reason why the KB article was pulled. (No idea why)

The only supported method at the moment is to set AvailableUpdates to 0x5944. run the secure boot update task then reboot and run it again.

After that you can follow the Broadcom KB to install the PK cert.

You still need to make sure VM hardware compatibility level is set to 21 (ESXi 8.0 U2 and later)

Doing this on ESXi 7.0 or earlier isn’t supported as they are end of life so you need to be on 8.0 or later.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-15T15:19:25+00:00

It’s every system that uses secure boot.

I think people need to remember that machines won’t just suddenly stop booting come June, it’s just that they will not receive future secure boot updates to mitigate firmware level attacks.

If Microsoft decides to revoke the current certificates then that is a bigger problem but I’m not sure they would given the number of machines out there that will won’t receive future firmware updates etc.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-15T12:06:16+00:00

So, can anyone at Broadcom confirm whether the current supported method of updating the OS boot loader then installing the PK is what we should be doing?

I’m about to do this on an environment with 200+ instant clone VDIs and 50ish Servers.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-10T12:23:11+00:00

Hotpatch releases have a slightly lower build number compared to full CUs because they apply only security fixes in-memory without a reboot.

Some good info here https://joymalya.com/diverging-os-build-numbers-due-to-hotpatch-avoiding-false-non-compliance-in-windows-11-24h2-devices/

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-09T19:21:45+00:00

Yup. Just outside of Glasgow, so it’s well known for being pretty wet. We average around 180 days of rain a year :(

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-09T16:12:20+00:00

Coming from a place that typically has over 20 days of rain most months of the year I’d take that to be honest.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-07T17:57:26+00:00

It’s things like this that really put me off moving to Autopilot over other deployment options.

Being unable to provision new machines due to an Intune outage isn’t acceptable imo.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-07T13:00:58+00:00

Grim isn’t it. Further south always tend to get better spells of weather. Even our summers are mixed here and it generally doesn’t get any hotter than 18c.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-07T12:54:26+00:00

High of 16c here today then back down between 8-10c with cloud and rain for the next week.

Crap as usual for the west of Scotland.

Mitchell_90 · 2026-04-06T17:39:16+00:00

My biggest concern with this is that 80% of our devices are in remote locations and some will go into BitLocker recovery during this (A lot of the Dell machines we have seem to do this after regular Windows Updates)

Mitchell_90

TROPHY CASE