Microsoft's October 10 Updates Might Cause Windows Devices Boot Failure

Microsoft Support has stated that it is well aware about the October 10th Security updates Issue. Security update was done as 2017's monthly security updates for Windows 10 version1703 (KB4041676) and version 1607 (KB4041691), and Windows Server 2016 (KB4041691) for WSUS/SCCM managed devices.

On the very afternoon of 10th October Windows released Cumulative Security Updatess. and has asked it's customers to update the Cumulative Updates. 

Mitigation Plans and Reported issues can be found on the notice released by Microsoft in the link below:

Link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4049094/windows-devices-may-fail-to-boot-after-installing-october-10-version-o

Related Articles:

• PLURALSIGHT: FREE UNLIMITED COURSES FOR SIX MONTHS
• How to Hide/Exclude Certain Files from Sidebar in Visual Studio Code?
• Windows 10 : How to Disable Login Screen Background Image
• MICROSOFT AND OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES

How to Hide/Exclude Certain Files from Sidebar in Visual Studio Code?

Currently I'm learning Angular2 and building a test project using Visual Studio Code.  VSCode is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

So what happens while working on Angular2 Project is that we write TypeScript codes. The tsc: typescript compiler generates respective JavaScript Code for our typescript codes. For this single process there are 3 files created which are listed below:

For a typescript file: event-details.component.ts, typescript compiler creates event-details.component.js.map and event-details.component.js. This is two additional files for a single components. Imagine an application with 20 components and 10 services, your side bar will be full of files. Because of similar names you cannot locate your required files easily. 

So in Visual Studio Code, here is how you Hide/Exclude certain files from your sidebar:

1. Goto File
2. Click Preferences
3. Click Settings
   You will see the user Settings and Workspace Settings in your Visual Studio Code Text Editor.
4. In your text editor add following code:
   "files.exclude": { "**/**.js.**" : true, "**/**.js": true, "**/**-lock.**": true } 

Above code listed every file with extension .js , js.** (example: *.js.map), *-lock.*(example:config-lock.json) will be hidden from sidepanel.

This small tips will help us refine our sidepanel and also vase much time in finding the right file we want

Related Article: 

1. Why Visual Studio Code?
2. Microsoft and Open Source Technologies
3. How to run any chrome app as Desktop App in Windows10

 Free. Open source. Runs everywhere.

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (such as C++, C#, Python, PHP) and runtime. Visual Studio Code is one of the greatest committed open source project on Github by Microsoft. 

Owner: Microsoft

Github: vscode

Why Visual Studio Code?

VS CODE provides development environment for most of the programming languages which follow Open Specification (technical standard) known as Common Language Insfastructure(CLI) 

VSCode is lightweight. Comparing it with the Visual Studio it has many pros which promises developers to dive into it.

Visual Studio	2015(V14.0)	CODE
Software Size	1.9GB	54MB

Visual studio Code consists of three components:

1. Side Panel
   Here we can see the tree structure of your project. We see a search icon where we can perform advance search in files as well as folders. Visual Studio has integrated Git where we see the change in file immediately. We can perform every git operation that can be done from other git application. We can browse extensions and download from side panel too.
2. Text Editor
   This is where you do all the coding stuffs. The color customization and Theme Selection from VSCode is pretty straight forward. You can split the screen and see multiple text editors.
3. Terminal
   Here we build and run the project. Once we run the program from terminal it fetches and downloads all the necessary referenced library online while building the project.

You can perform all other activities that you do from Visual Studio 2013, 15, 17 and other IDEs.

This can be a major alternative of Visual Studio IDEs where you need to buy the licence key and also need ore space and memory to execute it. VS CODE mimics the Command Line Interface implementation of developing and deploying a project. So this could be a good tool for software development.  

Because it's free   . Free as in you can view and customize the source code. Do you believe that Microsoft launched a software for free? Means it's worth it.

I use visual studio code for web app development in ASP.NET MVC Framework, Angular2. 

Explore more about Visual Studio Code.

Related Articles:

1. Why Visual Studio Code?
2. Microsoft and Open Source Technologies
3. How to run any chrome app as Desktop App in Windows10

Windows 10 : How to Disable Login Screen Background Image

Windows 10 included Hero wallpaper that comes as a default wallpaper in final build of Windows 10. It also popped in the same image for the login background.

It might have pleased a few people but most of the people out there don’t seem to have liked it.

DISABLING THE LOGIN SCREEN BACKGROUND IMAGE IN WINDOWS 10

• Go to Start > type regedit
• On the folder tree (left side of regedit window), open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows > System
• By clicking System, you can see (Default) file on the right pane of the window.
• Right-click on the empty area > New > DWORD (32 bit) Value
• Name the file DisableLogonBackgroundImage (Remember: Name the file exactly mentioned here)
• Double-click the file:
  • To remove the Windows Hero background, set the Value data to 1.
  • To restore the Windows Hero background, set the Value data to 0.

This method sets the accent color to the background image in login screen. In the internet, you may find 3rd party software that commits to set user defined image but after the KB3081424 Windows Update, it seems to cause screen flickering issue between Lock Screen and Login Screen.

MICROSOFT AND OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES

Have you ever thought Microsoft a company who sells it's products like Windows OS, Visual Studio, Azure and all much more in hundreds and thousands of dollars would produce something for free? At Microsoft as a matter of fact even the Sticky Note is not free.😝

I never imagined Microsoft would launch a product and not license it as their Proprietary Asset. Neither I had never imagined it would invest its time and money on Free and Open Source Technologies. But it surprised the whole world in last few years. If you have observed the milestone of Microsoft, you would be surprised as I'm these days. Not only Microsoft was interested on Open Source Technologies in past couple of years but also it Launched a handful of Tools and made them Open Source.

Sounds like I'm exaggerating, but below are some of the Tools and technologies launched by Microsoft as Open Source. This will also leave you with a question mark "why is such a huge company  so much interested on FOSS and what would be the future surprises for Open Source Enthusiasts and the Microsoft Lovers.

.NET Core

Microsoft released .NET Core as an open source product on November 12, 2014. This was a huge day for .NET migrating from its Proprietary circle to the open source. The runtime as well as the framework libraries were also made open source together with .NET Core.

.NET Core is a modular development stack that is the foundation of all future .NET platforms. It’s already used by ASP.NET 5 and .NET Native.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. It includes support for debugging, embedded Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring. It is also customizable, so users can change the editor's theme, keyboard shortcuts, and preferences.

Microsoft released Visual Studio Code on November 18, 2015. And to highlight some of the surprising facts, Recently Microsoft is the one with Highest Commit on GitHub. This fact will be surprising to the Open Source Lovers and also to the Microsoft developer community

PowerShell

PowerShell(including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core) is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework.

18 August, 2016 Microsoft announced some of the components of PowerShell as Open Source.

Black Duck Integration with Visual Studio

Black Duck are popular for development of automated open-source code management tools. It's on the news that Microsoft is integrating Black Duck's Hub program with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (TS), formerly Visual Studio Online, and Team Foundation Server (TFS).

I Just highlighted some of the Open Source Tools that was developed by Microsoft. With these findings that I worked on I'm interested in the milestones of Microsoft. I want to explore what is it going to release next in near future. Also how will it contribute to the Open Source Community and at the same time handle its Proprietary product and huge customer base. So I think I should also write some more blogs on each of these open source tools and all curiosities I have. Being an Open Source Enthusiast, it would be awesome to compare and contrast the features available in these tools. Also I can get an idea on the motive behind Microsoft's investment to the Open Source Tools. 

Stay Tuned for some more blogs.

Related Article: 

1. Why Visual Studio Code?
2. How to hide/exclude certain files from sidebar in visual studio code

Reference : 

1) blogs.msdn.microsoft.com
2) Visual Studio Code
3) PowerShell