When I bought windows 10 it came with the Microsoft solitaire collection app included. After a week it disappeared while I was playing it. I checked all the help. Microsoft Solitaire Collection. Microsoft Solitaire Collection is the amazing evolution of this classic card game on Windows 8. ESRB: E, PEGI: 3.

• Microsoft Solitaire Collection Not Opening
• What Happened To Microsoft Games In Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, a solitaire game that requires you to watch 30-second-long full-screen video advertisements to keep playing. Ad-free solitaire costs $1.49 per month or $9.99 per year. That’s $20 per year if you want both ad-free solitaire and ad-free minesweeper. But there’s a better way.

Microsoft has jumped on board the “free-to-play” bandwagon, which means these games are no longer actually free but have become quite expensive. Microsoft is now making money by nickel-and-diming players with in-app purchases. That helps explain why Candy Crush Saga is automatically installed on new Windows 10 PCs, too.

Solitaire and Minesweeper Have Gone “Free-to-Play”

WIth Windows 8, Microsoft removed the old desktop Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts, and other games from Windows. No games were included with Windows 8, but you could download the Microsoft Solitaire collection and Microsoft Minesweeper from the Windows Store for free.

With Windows 10, Microsoft includes the Microsoft Solitaire Collection app out-of-the-box. But they’re not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. This Solitaire game will show you banner ads as well as full-screen video advertisements, making money for Microsoft.

Opting out of those ads requires a $1.50 per month or $10 per year fee, and that’s just for the “Microsoft Solitaire Collection Premium edition.” The Microsoft Minesweeper app, not installed by default but available in the Windows Store, also has its own entirely separate $1.50 per month or $10 per year fee to upgrade to the “Microsoft Minesweeper Premium edition.”

Aside from wasting your time and subjecting you to advertisements from playing a casual game that used to be free, this game ties together with the “advertising ID” used in Windows Store apps to track you across different apps you use, building a better ad profile and targeting ads to you while you play a once-free game.

RELATED:No, Windows 10 Won’t Require a Subscription: Here’s How Microsoft Plans on Making Money Instead

Really, this is just nickel-and-diming behavior from Microsoft. Windows 10 may be a “free upgrade” to most people at the moment, but it’s still a paid product. Windows 10 costs over $100 if you build your own PC, manufacturers have to pay MIcrosoft for Windows 10, and business organizations are on pricy volume-licensing contracts and don’t get a free Windows 10 upgrade. It’s just free for the users who wouldn’t normally bother paying for an upgrade license, anyway.

This is nothing new for Microsoft. Windows 10’s Weather app was packed with ads during the development process until user outcry led Microsoft to remove them. Windows 8’s included Weather, News, Sports, and various other apps also included ads.

How to Get Ad-Free Solitaire and Minesweeper Games

Rather than suddenly paying for an ad-free solitaire subscription, you can put that money to better use and play a free solitaire game instead.

It’s possible to get the old Windows desktop games from Windows 7 back, although Microsoft has made this a hassle. You can’t just drag-and-drop the old .exe files onto your new Windows 10 system because those games check to ensure they’re only running on Windows 7. You’ll need to either modify the .exe files to remove the Windows version check or download modified versions someone has already removed the check from. (No, just setting Solitaire.exe to run in Windows 7 compatibility mode won’t help. Microsoft really doesn’t want you using these old games.)

RELATED:What Happened to Solitaire and Minesweeper in Windows 8 and 10?

We previously offered instructions for modifying these games so they would run on Windows 8, and the same process should work on Windows 10. The WinAero blog also offers a link to a “Windows 7 games archive” file containing modified versions of these games, and they seemed to work for us.

Warning: Download archives like this one at your own risk. Watch out for the horrifically misleading ads from the MediaFire if you do this. They’ll try to trick you into downloading the obnoxious, probably malicious, software instead of the file you actually want to download. Don’t download any sort of “downloader” — just the “Windows-7-Games-For-Windows-8-8.1-32-and-64-bit.zip” file.

You could also skip the classic games and get another version of solitaire. The best alternative to Microsoft’s Solitaire game on Windows — and there are few, because no one has needed to bother coding up a replacement for Solitaire before — seems to be the open-source PySolFC. It’s unfortunately still hosted on the not-completely-trustworthy SourceForge hosting service, but it seemed to be free of additional offers and junk software when we downloaded it.

Play Solitaire in Your Browser

You could also just play browser-based solitaire games, too. We’ve put up completely free Solitaire and Minesweeper games on URLs that anybody can access in a desktop browser. And there are no ads.

If that isn’t good enough, just performing a web search for “Solitaire” will bring up a page with a variety of solitaire games you can play in any web browser. Sure, most of them will be ad-supported. But those will probably just be banner ads instead of full-screen video advertisements you have to sit through. Web-based Minesweeper games can be found in the same way. Don’t feel like searching? Here’s an ad-free web-based Minesweeper game.

In response to complaints, Microsoft noted that this is the same way the Microsoft Solitaire Collection app functioned on Windows 8. But Microsoft looks a bit petty in ripping out the old desktop games and replacing them with a new one that requires full-screen video ads or a paid subscription.

At the very least, these games could at least be part of a general subscription that offers additional benefits across Windows 10 instead of a per-app subscription. These are “Xbox”-branded games, after all — why not at least make them part of Xbox Live Gold? Microsoft could also just offer ad-free solitaire and minesweeper for a single purchase rather than a recurring monthly or yearly bill.

The classic desktop versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper are gone in Windows 8 and 10. Instead, you’ll find shiny new versions with advertisements, Xbox integration, and optional subscription fees. But you can still play Solitaire and Minesweeper without ads, and without paying a cent.

How to Launch Solitaire on Windows 10

Solitaire is installed by default on Windows 10. You can just open the Start menu and launch the “Microsoft Solitaire Collection” application to open it.

If the Microsoft Solitaire Collection isn’t installed—perhaps you’ve uninstalled it in the past—you can get it from the Windows Store.

How to Get Minesweeper on Windows 10

Microsoft Minesweeper isn’t installed by default on Windows 10, but it’s available for free. To install Minesweeper, launch the “Store” application and search for “Minesweeper”. Click the “Microsoft Minesweeper” tile and click “Install” to install it.

You can also click here to go straight to Microsoft Minesweeper on the Windows Store.

Once it’s installed, you can launch Microsoft Minesweeper from your Start menu.

On Windows 8, neither Solitaire nor Minesweeper are installed by default. You’ll need to open the Store and search for Solitaire and Minesweeper to install the Microsoft Solitaire Collection and Microsoft Minesweeper applications.

How Solitaire and Minesweeper Are Different on Windows 8 and 10

Whether you like the new games depends what you’re looking for. The good news is that they’re more shiny and polished than the old Solitaire and Minesweeper games.

The Microsoft Solitaire Collection includes quite a few different games—Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid, and TriPeaks. Klondike is the classic, default solitaire experience you’re probably familiar with from previous versions of Windows.

You can choose “solvable decks” of different difficulty levels—decks guaranteed to be solvable so you don’t get stuck and have to restart—or use a traditional, randomly shuffled deck.

Nov 9, 2017 - How to Find Your Computer Serial Number on Windows. This wikiHow teaches you how to find the serial number for your PC desktop or laptop. Feb 14, 2017 - Please use one the method bellow to retrieve the computer serial number: 1. Using the buid in 'wmic' command: 'wmic bios get serialnumber'. Open Command Prompt by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard and tapping the letter X. Then select Command Prompt (Admin). Type the command: WMIC BIOS GET SERIALNUMBER, then press enter. If your serial number is coded into your bios it will appear here on the screen. Dec 28, 2018 - On Windows 10 or 8, right-click the Start button and select “Command Prompt”. On Windows 7, press Windows + R, type “cmd” into the Run dialog, and then press Enter. You'll see the computer's serial number displayed beneath the text “SerialNumber”. Jan 28, 2015 - A computer serial number is a unique code assigned for identification of a single unit. It's often required to get the warranty service when you.

The Microsoft Solitaire Collection offers daily challenges you can compete in to earn badges. You’ll be given a specific game and deck and asked to perform a specific task. You’ll also find events, which are a series of challenges. You can choose different themes to customize your deck and gameplay area.

Balochi songs audio. In Microsoft Minesweeper, you can choose a traditional board of an easy, medium, expert, or custom size. This game also offers daily challenges made up of pre-made boards of various difficulties. Challenges may ask you to mark the location of 10 mines with flags, for example, or detonate a specific number of mines within a certain number of moves.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection Not Opening

Microsoft Minesweeper also has an “Adventure” mode where you try to reach the exit of a dungeon while avoiding traps and monsters and collecting gold. You have to find and avoid traps by using numbers on the floor. That part works just like traditional minesweeper.

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These games are integrated with MIcrosoft’s Xbox Live, so you’ll earn Xbox achievements by playing Solitiare and Minesweeper, too.

If you like the new Solitaire and Minesweeper games, check out Microsoft Mahjong. It’s a similar game, complete with daily challenges and a variety of puzzles and themes to choose from. Like Minesweeper, it’s available as a free download in the Windows Store.

RELATED:How to Disable All of Windows 10’s Built-in Advertising

For all the pretty features these games offer, they have built-in advertising and require separate yearly subscription fees to play without ads. Currently, the Microsoft Solitaire collection costs $15 per year, Microsoft Minesweeper costs $10 per year, and Microsoft Mahjong costs $10 per year. These are separate fees. So, to play all three games without ads, you’ll need to pay $35 per year.

Solitaire has actually gotten more expensive over time, too. When Windows 10 launched, Microsoft was only charging $10 per year for ad-free Solitaire.

Worst of all, we’ve seen 30-second video advertisements in these applications. That’s a deal-breaker for time-wasting games you may want to play in short bursts.

You don’t need to pay, however—if you don’t mind looking at the ads, you can play all you want for free by playing different versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper.

How to Play Solitaire and Minesweeper Without Ads

RELATED:You Don’t Have to Pay $20 a Year for Solitaire and Minesweeper on Windows 10

There are some great ad-free alternatives to Microsoft’s new Solitaire and Minesweeper games. You don’t have to pay anything extra or look ad ads if you just want the basics.

We’ve put up completely free Solitaire and Minesweeper games on URLs that anybody can access in a desktop browser. And there are no ads.

What Happened To Microsoft Games In Windows 10

Google now offers an ad-free solitaire game, too. Just search for “solitaire” on Google and you’ll see a Solitaire game you can play right on Google’s search results page.