Windows Essentials 2012: The Best Alternatives and Replacements

We're no longer offering the Windows Essentials 2012 suite for download, but if you already have it installed, it will continue to work as it does today. It reached end of support on January 10, 2017, and it isn't available in Windows 10.

Windows Essentials 2012

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Windows Essentials applications support installation on Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2.[6] Previous versions were also available on Windows XP and Windows Vista, and included Windows Live Messenger.[6]

Microsoft released a public beta for the next major update for Windows Live Essentials dubbed "Wave 4" on June 24, 2010.[12] The updated applications include Windows Live Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Mesh, and Messenger Companion. For Windows Live Mesh, the application has been rewritten to be based on the previous Live Mesh and will allow PC and Mac users to keep their documents, pictures and music in sync across multiple computers. It was also announced that Windows Live Toolbar will be discontinued and replaced by the Bing Bar.[13] In addition, the ribbon user interface was incorporated into Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and Writer. The Wave 4 beta has dropped support for Windows XP; Windows Vista or Windows 7 is required for its use.[12] The beta refresh of Windows Live Essentials 2011 was released on August 17, 2010. Microsoft released the final version of Windows Live Essentials 2011 on September 30, 2010. The applications were updated with a hotfix/QFE (except for Mesh and Family Safety) on December 1, 2010,[14] and that update became available through Windows Update from March 20, 2011.[15] On May 2, 2012, Microsoft announced the re-branding of Windows Live. Although all applications in Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite will continue to function on Windows Vista, 7, and 8, there will be no significant updates made to these applications in the future.[16] In June 2014, Microsoft announced that Windows Live Essentials 2011 would no longer be available for download on Windows Vista.

Microsoft released Windows Essentials 2012 on August 7, 2012, for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users.[17] Windows Essentials 2012 included SkyDrive for Windows (later renamed OneDrive), and dropped Windows Live Mesh, Messenger Companion and Bing Bar. Microsoft Family Safety is also installed for Windows 7 users only, as Windows 8 has built-in family safety functionalities.[16] Further, Windows Essentials 2012 also dropped the "Windows Live" branding from the installer itself, as well as from programs such as Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, which have been branded Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker respectively. These two programs have also received several updates and enhancements since their 2011 release, including video stabilization, waveform visualizations, new narration tracks, audio emphasizing, default save as H.264 format, and enhanced text effects for Movie Maker; as well as AutoCollage integration and addition of Vimeo as a publishing partner for Photo Gallery. No significant changes or re-branding were made in this release for other programs such as Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Writer.[18] It is still possible today to download the original pack for Windows Essentials 2012.[19] Such links are provided in the form of links to the Wayback Machine.

Some of the apps included in the package are unsupported on Windows 8.1 and 10 and are removed after an upgrade. The Facebook integration in Photo Gallery and Movie Maker broke due to Facebook API changes.[20] Microsoft turned off Windows Live Messenger's service and redirected users to Skype, another one of its messaging services; the installer has not been updated to reflect this change.[21][22] Windows Live Mail no longer works with Outlook.com using the proprietary DeltaSync protocol due to removal of support for the latter from Outlook.com,[23] but can be configured to use such accounts using either IMAP or POP3 protocols.[24] Windows Live Writer no longer works with Blogger due to Blogger's authentication API changes.[25] The suite had otherwise not received a major upgrade since 2012, and it had not received any updates through Windows Update since 2014, although Microsoft offered a downloadable buggy update in December 2015.[26] Microsoft announced that the suite would be officially retired on January 10, 2017, and would no longer be available for download, and that after the end of support date applications already installed would continue to work but with "an increased security risk associated with use of unsupported products past their end of support date."[6]

Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is a flexible, affordable, and easy-to-use server solution designed and priced for small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices. Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is an ideal first server that not only helps to reduce costs and increase productivity, but it also can be used as the primary server in a multi-server environment for small businesses.

Windows Server Essentials is an ideal first server for small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices. For organizations with up to 100 users and 200 devices, you can now use Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Windows Server Essentials Experience role installed. This topic addresses both scenarios.

You can use Server Manager to enable and configure the Windows Server Essentials Experience role in Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard or Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter by using the following procedure.

Pending moving them to a cloud-only setup, I have one customer still using Server 2012 Essentials (note: not R2) and their integration with 365 has broken. Yes, I know this was always slightly unsatisfactory, but cannot run grown-up AD sync s/w on this platform. Having removed the 365 integration and re-added it using the Dashboard, it will not accept any Global Admin credentials to re-setup the integration, saying that the userid or pw is incorrect (it isn't). Logs show an authentication issue but not clear exactly why and the message might be spurious (well it is, since user and pw are confirmed correct).Here's the relevant log entry:

Microsoft recently released Windows Essentials 2012 for Windows 7 and it includes support for Windows 8. The software suite has been renamed and some new features have been added to Movie Maker and Photo Gallery.

now that Microsoft has stopped allowing download of the Essential 2012 software can you tell me where I can get a copy of it so that I can get the Windows live photos gallery installed on my tablet that has windows 10?

The windows live essentials 2012 suite contained a package of applications that satisfied the need of every user of a computer. Microsoft developed the idea of integrating all the applications into one single roof under the name, Windows Live Essentials. The package mainly contained applications that satisfied the requirements or eased the process of a task, the user would use the computer for. Some of the note0worthy features of the suite were:

The windows live essentials have a list of nearly nine applications that help the users to make their life much easier with the help of your computer. The various specifications of the various applications are explained below

This application helps the user to make the computer a platform common to many members he knows very well. This application would enable the user to take control of the Windows Store purchases, websites that they visit and many such processes using this application. This feature of the windows live essentials is useful to the parents who have kids at home and as well they can keep an eye on what their children are doing on the computer when they are not around.

The drives application is like that of the driver software you find regularly, but the only difference is they are unique to outlook and windows live essentials users. These drives are so sophisticated that you can relieve memory form your systems provided you are connected to the internet.

There are many versions of the windows live essentials 2012 suite that is adaptable to all the versions of the Windows operating system. The various operating system requirement for windows live essentials 2012 are Windows XP, Windows Vista,7,8,8.1 and 10. (32 or 64 bit). The RAM and hard disk requirements are minimal as it contains only 134 MB only. This will help in making the windows live essentials software compatible with almost any type of upgrades for the existing users. For users who are trying to install windows live essentials 2012 software, just update the new operating system from Windows, they have got you covered!

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) in Windows Server 2012 allows organizations to share identity information with partners or cloud service providers. ADFS includes support for single-sign on, centralized federated identity management through the ADFS management console, support for Active Directory Rights Management and deployment control through Group Policy.

One of the biggest drawbacks of ADFS is that it can be quite difficult and time consuming to deploy, but for smaller businesses that would like to integrate Active Directory and Office365, Windows Server Essentials 2012 has a handy add-in that allows provisioning of Office365 users from the local server dashboard, to assign an Office365 license, and synchronize Windows passwords to the cloud.

Microsoft kept their promise and terminated support for Windows Essentials 2012 today. This is not a surprise because their plan to discontinue the popular desktop app suite was announced several months ago. Microsoft thinks the built-in apps in Windows are a good enough replacement. As of January 2017, the link to download the installer for Windows Essentials 2012 has been removed from its website although the setup file itself seems to be available still. If you have these apps installed, you shouldn't worry. Nothing will happen to your installed versions and you can continue using them. However, keep in mind that these applications won't be updated any more. 2ff7e9595c