Windows 11 Article Categories

Windows 11 introduces a brand new version of Microsoft Teams build for consumers.  This can be quite annoying if you are a business customer of Microsoft and use the commercial version of Microsoft Teams.  End users can end up with two versions of Teams which can be very confusing.  And good luck trying to explain what version of Teams they should be running since they are both called Microsoft Teams.  Great branding move right?

Some users have reported after installing Windows 11 on devices with touch screens the virtual keyboard icon is missing from the taskbar.  This can be very frustrating if you have a touch only tablet and you must plug in an external USB keyboard to be able to work.  Don't worry, the virtual keyboard functionality is still in Windows, it is just hiding by default upon a new install.  Follow these steps to enable the virtual keyboard icon on your taskbar. 

If you purchase a modern Windows 11 PC and really care about your game performance, you may notice the Virtual Based Security (VBS) feature in Windows 11 preventing you from reaching top performance with your hardware.  While this is a very important security feature of Windows that isolates critical components from others to prevent your machine from being compromised, if you device is dedicated to gaming and you want to squeeze every little bit of performance out of your hardware, it may be worth checking into if VBS is enabled on your hardware and testing performance with it disabled.

Microsoft really wants you to use a Microsoft Account as your login for Windows 11. In fact, they have hidden the ability to use a local account on most versions of Windows 11 even though it is still technically possible to do so.  While on the "How would you like to set up this device?" screen, you will notice that no matter where you click, you are forced to use a Microsoft Account.  That is where a special trick on this screen comes in handy that will allow you to create a local account with authentication into your Windows 11 PC.  Follow these steps if you prefer a local account over being forced to use a Microsoft Account. 

After installing Windows 11, or really any version of Windows, it has become common practice to head over to Windows Update to update and install any drivers for your device.  Over the years this has become a valuable technique to get your machine not only running, but with the latest version of drivers to make sure your device is operating at top performance.  But after installing Windows 11 on one of my laptops, I became very worried that the feature I have come to depend on was no longer present in Windows 11. After hitting Check for updates many times I was never presented with the option to install drivers for any of the devices that Windows 10 happily installed for me with this same technique.  After some digging around in the new Settings app, I discovered that Driver Updates are now separate and located within Advanced option of the Windows Update section.