How To Check What Version of Windows You Have

Posted on by Adam Fowler

What Version Of Windows Do I Have?

Check with one easy command!

  1. Right click ‘Start’ and choose ‘Run’
  2. Type ‘winver’ and press ‘OK’
  3. A window will show up showing the main version of Windows you are on (such as Windows 10), followed by the version and build details.

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

The menu that pops up in Windows 11 after right clicking the Start button (Blue 4 boxes)

The ‘winver’ command goes all the way back to even before the Windows for Workgroups 3.11 days, and was a GUI version of the ‘ver’ command.

As you can see above, the version (2004), OS build (19041.572), and edition (Pro) are all listed.

How To Update Microsoft Edge

Posted on by Adam Fowler

How To Check For Updates on Microsoft Edge

  1. Click the Ellipsis (…) in the top right corner
  2. Under ‘Help and Feedback’ click ‘About Microsoft Edge’
  3. The page that shows up will tell you if you’re on the latest version, or give you an update link to click on.

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7

Microsoft Edge (Chromium version) should just update by itself. If there’s an update ready to go, you may see an arrow over the top right hand corner ellipsis, which just means you need to restart the browser when you want the update to apply.

New versions (known as builds) are released frequently – on a 6 week cycle for features, and security updates as required.

If you’re still on the old Microsoft Edge (known as Microsoft Edge Legacy), then check Windows Update as this will automatically upgrade you to the new Edge.

Bing Daily Wallpaper On Your PC

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Microsoft Bing’s Free Daily Wallpaper on your PC

Bing releases a daily wallpaper that can automatically be shown on your PC. The images they use are impressive shots of nature, and it’s actually quite nice to see a new daily photo. You can download this for free directly from Microsoft at the link below.

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper

The Bing Wallpaper app from Microsoft is a quick install that sits in your taskbar. On a daily basis, it will download and update your desktop wallpaper with a new nature photo.

By right-clicking on the ‘b’ in your taskbar for Bing Wallpaper, there’s a few options:

First you’ll see a description of the image and photographer. If you don’t like today’s wallpaper, you can go back through previous days to one you prefer. The enable daily refresh is on by default, but if there’s a photo you like and don’t want it to change, you can just turn that off.

It’s an easy and free way of keeping your desktop fresh, and a chance to see some awesome photography!

How To Launch Command Prompt As Admin

Posted on by Adam Fowler

How To Launch Command Prompt As Admin

(also known as Elevated Command Prompt)

  1. Click “Start”
  2. Type ‘cmd’ and Command Prompt will appear as the first option
  3. Right click ‘Command Prompt’ and choose ‘Run as Administrator’
  4. Click ‘Yes’ to the prompt ‘Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device’ (If asked, enter an administrator username and password). Click ‘Yes’
  5. Command Prompt will load under the Administrator context, and you will be able to see the word ‘Administrator’ in the top left of the window.

Applies To: Windows 10

Administrator: Command Prompt

It might seem frustrating to try and run a command in Command Prompt to be told that you need to run it as administrator, and then go through more clicks to open it again in an elevated fashion – but it’s designed this way for security reasons.

It’s tied to Microsoft’s User Account Control (UAC) behavior which drastically reduces the attack surface your computer has – a program can’t perform many functions that change things about your system without permission granted through a pop-up window.

There are ways to turn off UAC, but doing so puts your computer at a much greater risk of being compromised; so please take the slight annoyance of a few extra prompts to keep your computer safe and healthy.

Microsoft Lists Date/Time Settings Incorrect

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Microsoft Lists is available for a lot of people already, and should be globally available by the end of October 2020. Users can start using it as soon as it’s released for your tenant, which is great; but you might get caught out by the same date and time regional problem I did.

Creating a List is easy (right now I have the option available in Teams, but the app in Office 365 hasn’t turned up yet), and there’s many use cases for wanting a date or time field.

However, the suggestion on what day it is was wrong:

Today is actually Wednesday, October 14th 2020. It’s being caused because the timezone is wrong for the list. How do we fix that?

A Microsoft List can be created two ways – in the single user context, or in a Microsoft 365 Group context. If you’re doing in in Teams then the later only applies. Individually, it’s saved in the same area as your OneDrive for Business (which is backeneded by SharePoint), but for a Group it’s saved straight into the Site for the Group.

Lists in OneDrive for Business

For the individual point of view, there’s already a Microsoft Answer on how to fix this – change your Time Zone and Region Locale. The link for this is indivualised for your tenant and account, but you can access it by:

  • Browse to office.com and sign in
  • Click the OneDrive app from the left hand menu
  • Click the cog in the top right corner and choose ‘OneDrive Settings’
  • Click ‘More Settings’ in the left hand list
  • Under ‘Region and Language’ choose ‘Regional Settings’
  • Choose the correct Time Zone and Locale for your account

Changing this for all users is a bit more of a problem. There’s a PowerShell script here to update all existing ones, and new users there appears to be no way to do it based on this outstanding UserVoice – if you find anything different, please share and I’ll update this post.

Lists in SharePoint Online

A Microsoft List tied to a Microsoft 365 Group will read the Time Zone and Region settings from the Group’s site, which is accessed a bit differently:

  1. Browse to office.com and sign in
  2. If you have the Lists app in the left hand menu, choose that and skip to step 5
  3. If there is no Lists app, click the SharePoint app from the left hand menu
  4. Choose the Microsoft 365 Group that contains the Microsoft List (if you’re unsure, you can try finding the List in Teams, clicking the elipsis and choosing ‘Open in SharePoint’.
  5. Click the cog in the top right corner and choose ‘Site Contents’ then choose ‘Site Settings’
  6. Click ‘Regional Settings’ under ‘Site Administration’
  7. Choose the correct Time Zone and Locale for your Group and press ‘OK’ in the bottom right corner.

This works for a single site, but what about a company wide default?

In the SharePoint admin center, under Settings then Site creation, you can set the default time zone for new sites. This won’t help any existing Microsoft 365 Group already created (as a site is created at the time the group gets created), but will help with future sites.

If you want to update existing sites in PowerShell, you’ll need to start with this command:

Set-SPoSitesRegionalSettings -Url site.url.goes.here -TimeZoneID 19

That will change just the specified site.

The list of TimeZoneIDs is available from Microsoft here and there’s also a Gallery Script called Update the time zones in all sites in SharePoint Online which you could use to update all sites if you can’t work out how to do it.

A lot of details there just to change the date detection in Lists, but hopefully this gives you enough information to understand the scenarios and how to resolve them.