Windows 11 Digital

[Darth Gupta]

HoweverI have a question. I have at least 3 PCs in my house with the same Microsoft account on them. Presumably, all of them have digital license linked to this same Microsoft account. I wonder if there is a centralized place to check all my digital licensed connected to my Microsoft account?

As you have installed (and activated) Windows 10 on 3 PCs,Microsoft now holds in its activation database threedigital licenses for each of the computers by their hardware.Upon reinstalling Windows 10 on any of them, activation willbe immediate once Windows gets in touch with the Microsoft servers,no matter which account was used to login, Microsoft account orlocal account.

There is no connection between your Microsoft account and itsstored digital licenses, if none of these licenses was everinstalled on the current device.Go toaccount.microsoft.com/devicesto see a list of all the devices associated with your Microsoft account.

We recently tried out digitally signing our .NET binaries. We have a Windows Service which typically starts up within 10 seconds. However after we started digitally signing it, the time increased to around 20-30 seconds.

But the description of generatePublisherEvidence on MSDN points to the fact that this is not applicable for .NET 4. Still I tried out this setting and it did work. I double checked that my binaries do target .NET 4.

I was in a similar situation: An authenticode-signed application on a server without internetaccess had an unexplained significant startup delay. Setting the generatePublisherEvidence tofalse seemed to solve the issue, but I was unable to a definitive explanation of why this wasnecessary.

The generatePublisherEvidence element is definetely still relevant for .NET 4, even 4.7 which I was using!It is just no longer the case that without it the signature is always verified by the runtime as part ofthe assembly loading process, but the signature verification might still be triggered (unintentionally) at some point!

A digital signature would always be verified when an assembly was loaded, as part of theinitialization of the so-called evidence objects used by the Code Access Security (CAS) mechanism.The publisher evidence, which is the one created from the digital signature, was by defaultnot used in CAS, so most of the times this was just a waste of time. And asexplained here:

Authenticode verification adds to the startup time. Authenticode-signed assemblies have to be verified with the certification authority (CA). This verification can be time consuming, because it can require connecting to the network several times to download current certificate revocation lists. It also makes sure that there is a full chain of valid certificates on the path to a trusted root. This can translate to several seconds of delay while the assembly is being loaded.

Consider installing the CA certificate on the client computer, or avoid using Authenticode when it is possible. If you know that your application does not need the publisher evidence, you do not have to pay the cost of signature verification.

The initialization of evidence objects are now delayed until actually needed,to avoid the startup penalty this lead to in previous versions. This means digital signatures are no longeralways verified during assembly loading process. But it turns out there are cases where all evidence objects arebeing initialized, including the rarely used publisher evidence!

In my case I had an application which was using the Oracle.ManagedDataAccess library toquery a database on startup. This library relies on a specific configuration section("oracle.manageddataaccess.client") in the application configuration. For some reason I didnot include such a configuration in my app.config file (nor in my machine.config).

When asked for this configuration section, the System.Configuration assembly, responsiblefor accessing the configurations, will first look in the machine.config, and thenin the application config. When it does not find the requested section in either of theseit looks for user-specific configuration files, located in a subfolder path of %AppData%.The full path to these files includes the strong name of the assembly, so therefore thestrong name evidence must be created.

Since my application was digitally signed this included initializing the publisher evidence,which means verifying the signature, with CRL checks and all that comes with it.The publisher evidence is not actually used, only the strong name evidence is part of the path to theuser configuration files, so again this is just a waste of time.

Adding the "oracle.manageddataaccess.client" section to my app.config file avoided this, thecomplete set of evidence objects did not have to be initialized, and the digital signature wouldno longer verified. The startup delay was gone.

In general, setting the generatePublisherEvidence element to false makes sure the publisherevidence is not included whenever the framework decides that the evidence objects must be initialized!

This problem occurs because the application must download the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) for authentication. However, a lack of network connectivity causes the download to fail by timing out. For example, a firewall may potentially block the download. When Windows first starts, the network connection is not yet initialized.

The problem most likely is caused by OCSP and CRL checks being performed for the certificate used for signing. This can increase time significantly. Unfortunately we found no way to disable those checks (and anyway such disabling leads to potential security problems) so we simply don't sign the assemblies with Authenticode but simply strong-name them.

I'm running Windows 11x64 Pro (22H2) on a Surface Pro 8 i7 running at 3 GHz with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD. Unfortunately. Digital Photo Pro (4.17.10) takes 10-15 minutes to load, and even then goes "out to lunch" whenever I try to do anything with it. At first I thought that might be due to using OneDrive for many of my files, but when I changed the default to use a local drive the problem continues. Additionally, when I try to change the directories in the "Preferences General", I see only the directories in the OneDrive Desktop folder. I like DPP; I've used it since it first came out, but if it no longer works on Windows I may have to use something else. Anyone able to get this latest version to work?

Edited to add: If I revert to 4.12.20.3, it opens promptly, snappily. However, I can't edit directory paths under Preferences. I can't manually type a new path, can't paste the new path into the field, and the "Browse" button only brings up the "Desktop" folder in OneDrive. This last (showing only the "Desktop" folder) appears to be a Windows 11-related bug, as on another machine running Windows 10 Pro, I see the full directory tree. Still can't type into the fields though.

Version 4.17.10 of Digital Photo Professional 4 is compatible with Windows 11 and it should be able to access folders on the computer that haven't been protected or hidden. Since the computer is only showing the One Drive folders it may be good to check the security on the other folders on the computer. If you need assistance with checking that you will need to contact Microsoft.

There are a few things that can cause Digital Photo Professional to slow down. One is if it is accessing cloud or external drives. It takes longer for it to access those types of drives, so we recommend using folders that are on the computer itself. One other thing that can cause it to be slower is if there is a large number of photos in the folder. Typically it runs best when there are 100 or less photos in the folder you are currently viewing.

Digital Photo Professional 4 version 4.12.20.3 was released before Windows 11 came out, so that version might not work correctly on Windows 11. That is likely why that version is unable to use the Browse function.

Unfortunately, the default configuration on first install for DPP is to look in the user's Pictures library (C:\users\%USERNAME%\Pictures), which Microsoft urges people to set to back up to OneDrive. So you can't even start the app the first time without waiting a quarter hour or more if you're using OneDrive to back up your important files.

The issue with setting Preferences isn't a case of file permissions. DPP sees all my folders; I can choose any of them from the main Folders tab in the application. However, when I open the Preferences dialog under the Tools window in Windows 11 (or Windows 10) I cannot enter (by typing) a path to the Startup Folder. When I click on the Browse button to select a different folder it only shows one OneDrive folder, the Desktop folder. It doesn't allow me to select any of my other OneDrive folders, let alone local folders on the computer. Accessing the same OneDrive account on my Windows 10 machine, I have free run of ALL my OneDrive folders and ALL my local drives, whether fixed or removable. This happens on 4.17.10 on Windows 10, but not Windows 11. It's the Tools Preferences browse feature that is broken under Windows 11. If you allowed manual entry of the desired path this would be an annoying, but not critical, problem. But under neither Windows 10 nor Windows 11 can I type in a specified folder for t he startup folder. Similarly, I cannot specify, by typing, a Destination directory path for Temporary Files. In Windows 11 here too the Browse button only brings me to my OneDrive Desktop folder.

My download procedure, using Breeze Systems' Downloader Pro, is to create a new folder every 100 images, a habit I picked up back in my D60 days when Canon automatically created a new folder in camera every 100 images. As an aside, may I say that the recent (and now I hope abandoned) starting of new folders automatically either on a daily or monthly basis was a terrible idea. I note that at least my M50s and SX70 don't do this, but the M3, M5 and G9x do, and having to go in monthly to tweak the folder name is a real nuisance.

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