Get ready to say hello to new Windows and goodbye to an old friend
- Reference: 1694452514
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/09/11/get_ready_to_wave_hello/
- Source link:
Earlier this year, Microsoft [1]warned that its legacy inbox troubleshooters – such as the keyboard and speech troubleshooters – would be retired and, with the next release of Windows 11 soon to arrive, now is as good a time as any to hold hands, gather around the campfire and say goodbye.
While many readers will be pleased about the deprecation, malware authors will be sorry to see them go. A number of high-profile attacks, including the infamous [2]Follina exploit, made use of flaws in the service in order to execute malicious code. The announcement that Microsoft was killing off MSDT, therefore, made a lot of sense and wasn't hugely surprising.
Run and Get Help
Microsoft's plan is to redirect users attempting to run the legacy troubleshooters to its new Get Help platform. It's a noble effort, but will be somewhat hamstrung by the fact you'll need to be online – unless you are using the Network and Internet assistant, which appears to function when a device is not connected.
The company noted that half of the built-in troubleshooters have already been redirected, while the rest will be retired and removed with the next release of Windows.
[3]
This means that by next year, according to Microsoft's timeline, the redirections will be complete and all troubleshooters removed. Finally, in 2025, the MSDT platform itself will be stripped from Windows.
[4]Symantec: More malware operators moving in to exploit Follina
[5]Now Windows Follina zero-day exploited to infect PCs with Qbot
[6]Zero-day vuln in Microsoft Office: 'Follina' will work even when macros are disabled
[7]National Cybersecurity Awareness program 18 years on: Don't click that
[8]Organizations with special troubleshooting needs will be able to access the MSDT platform as a Windows Feature on Demand, but 2025 is the cut-off point. "This change," the company said generously, "will allow you to continue to use MSDT to run custom troubleshooting packages while transitioning to a new platform."
Users still clinging to older versions of Windows (from Windows 11 22H2 through to Windows 7 and earlier) won't be affected.
[9]
No flowers. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deprecation-of-microsoft-support-diagnostic-tool-msdt-and-msdt-troubleshooters-0c5ac9a2-1600-4539-b9d0-069e71f9040a
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/follina_microsoft_office_vulnerability/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZP@OBbGGH111dap-7RAmVQAAA8I&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/09/symantec-follina-microsoft/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/09/qbot-malware-microsoft-follina/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/follina_microsoft_office_vulnerability/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/03/cybersecurity_awareness_month/
[8] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/whats-new/deprecated-features-resources#microsoft-support-diagnostic-tool-resources
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZP@OBbGGH111dap-7RAmVQAAA8I&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: They work?
Quite. I don't think I've ever seen a single instance where they were of any use whatsoever - they always failed to properly diagnose or resolve the problem, and finished with some irrelevant suggestion. Good riddance!
I'll miss the dialog
that says
"windows has run into a problem it cant solve'
Re: I'll miss the dialog
"...by looking into a mirror."
Microsoft, help, hmmm...
...Reminds me of a story about a man flying a helicopter around Seattle.
I will admit that the Office troubleshooter was actually useful when I was using it back in 2015-16; It told me exactly what service packs and patches I was missing, and after installing those on my test system that was having the issue (issues connecting to the on-prem Exchange server) that magically fixed the problem.
Getting our in-house support team to realize this took MUCH longer.
Re: that magically fixed the problem.
The 'magically' part of it is the problem. MS should be educating us about what it has done to fix the problem in complete detail, as sometimes the only way to fix some problems is to run the tool.
Reminds me of a saying about teaching a man to fish. Now if MS taught the man how to fish instead of merely doing it for him then the phishers wouldn't be able to repurpose the tool for them to phish.
Surely if the tool did this in 'hand-holding' mode it would not be possible to repurpose it by the baddies, and would thus continue to be of use?
(I'm assuming the tools I've used to e.g., resolve print queue problems and msi installation issues fall into the deprecated category discussed).
I still cling to Windows 11 21H2
It is the only version offering nested-v for AMD and, at the same time, still has working shadowcopy for local drives. Since [1] May 2022 . By that time 22H2 was still insider. Luckily by a strange way someone at Microsoft noticed my complaining on heise.de and sent it into the right channels... So it may be fixed for 23H2, hopefully.
I am surprised the Linux community hasn't done their usual "Wouldn't have happened with Linux" yet. Such an easy target have shadowcopy/snapshots, avail since 2003, broken in current Windows 11.
Second best feature of Windows 11 after nested-v: Robocopy /iorate
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/935493/windows-11-all-22h2-builds-explorer-exe-previous-v?page=4
Re: I still cling to Windows 11 21H2
The linux community represented here never realized that NTFS had shadowcopy / snapshots in the first place. It's not a feature of NFS, so it's simply not on the radar of people whose knowledge of Windows is "what I read somewhere".
They work?
You know what would be really cool? If they ever actually solved a single actual problem that I've seen...