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Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27928 to the Canary Channel on August 20, 2025, and the flight is a concise but telling example of what the Canary track is for: low-latency platform experiments, targeted rollouts, and rapid iterations that can both surface neat usability gains and expose rough edges that still need fixing. This build doesn’t introduce headline features, but it tightens a number of behind‑the‑scenes issues, continues the migration of legacy Control Panel...

Microsoft has begun rolling out an update to the Copilot app on Windows that brings semantic file search to Copilot+ PCs and a redesigned Copilot homepage to Insiders, delivering tighter, AI-driven file discovery and faster access to recent apps, files, and guided help directly inside the Copilot experience. This staged release—delivered via the Microsoft Store to Windows Insiders—aims to make finding documents, images, and settings feel conversational while keeping the heavy lifting...

Microsoft’s August update cycle produced an unexpected and dangerous side effect: built‑in recovery tools stopped working on numerous Windows client releases, and Redmond pushed emergency, out‑of‑band (OOB) cumulative updates — KB5066189, KB5066188 and KB5066187 — on August 19, 2025 to restore Reset, cloud recovery and MDM remote‑wipe functionality. These fixes supersede the problematic August rollups and include servicing‑stack updates; Microsoft recommends installing the OOB packages if...

Microsoft’s Snipping Tool for Windows 11 is getting a practical — if incremental — upgrade: a new window mode for screen recording that lets you pick a single application window as the recording region instead of drawing a freeform rectangle around the desktop. The change is shipping to Windows Insiders in Canary and Dev channels as part of Snipping Tool version 11.2507.14.0 (rolled alongside Windows Insider Preview Build 27924), and it is designed to reduce post-capture cropping and...

Microsoft and SSD vendors have opened a coordinated investigation after multiple independent testers and users reported that the August Windows 11 cumulative update (KB5063878, OS Build 26100.4946) can, in rare but reproducible cases, cause some SSDs to stop responding or “vanish” during sustained, large write operations — sometimes leaving partitions corrupted or data inaccessible. eed KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946) as the regular August cumulative update for Windows 11 24H2. The update’s...

Hotpatch-ready fleets start with one infrastructure choice: enable Virtualization‑based Security (VBS) correctly and at scale — doing so is the single most important step to ensure your Windows devices are eligible for Microsoft’s hotpatch model and to materially reduce reboot-driven downtime for security updates. This article walks through the rationale, the exact prerequisites, the step‑by‑step configuration options for mass enablement (Intune, CSPs, Group Policy, registry), Arm64-specific...

Hotpatch readiness is no longer an optional optimization for modern Windows fleets — it’s a foundational capability for any organization that values continuous uptime, rapid security response, and simplified update logistics. Enabling Virtualization‑based Security (VBS) at scale is the single most important operational step to unlock hotpatch delivery across managed devices. The following feature unpacks the technical requirements, step‑by‑step rollout guidance, platform and licensing...

Hotpatching’s promise — apply security fixes without forcing reboots — hinges on one non‑negotiable platform capability: Virtualization‑Based Security (VBS). For organizations preparing fleets for hotpatch delivery, enabling VBS at scale is the single most important operational task, and it’s also the step that creates the most surprises if not planned carefully. This feature‑length guide explains what VBS requires, how to enable and validate it across thousands of endpoints, how VBS ties...

Microsoft pushed an emergency, out‑of‑band patch on August 19, 2025 to repair a serious regression introduced by its August Patch Tuesday rollups that could prevent Windows’ built‑in recovery flows — Reset this PC, the Fix problems using Windows Update cloud reimage, and certain RemoteWipe (RemoteWipe CSP) operations — from completing, and system administrators and home users should treat the matching fixes (KB5066189, KB5066188, KB5066187) as high‑priority for affected devices. Background...

Valve’s long-rumoured set-top box, codenamed Fremont, has reappeared in public testing data — this time in Geekbench — and the leaked entry paints a picture of a TV-focused SteamOS device in active development that, for now, was tested running Windows 11 Pro rather than a finished SteamOS image. Background Valve’s “Fremont” codename first surfaced in kernel commits and driver traces late in 2024, when references to HDMI CEC and an AMD-based development board hinted that Valve was working on...

The NFL’s long-running technology relationship with Microsoft has officially entered an AI-first phase: a multiyear extension announced in August upgrades the league’s Sideline Viewing System with Copilot-powered tools, expands Azure AI into scouting and operations, and promises richer fan-facing content and productivity gains across 32 clubs. Background The NFL and Microsoft have partnered for more than a decade, beginning with the introduction of Microsoft Surface tablets as the league’s...

Paul Thurrott is rethinking Thurrott.com from the ground up: a retooled Windows 11 Field Guide tied to Windows release cadence, a new travel-focused podcast, consolidated and free weekly newsletters, and a planned overhaul of the site’s membership and UI systems — changes that aim to simplify access, sharpen product strategy, and stabilize long‑running billing headaches while creating new ways to engage readers and monetize premium content. Background / Overview Paul Thurrott’s announcement...

Microsoft pushed emergency out‑of‑band updates on August 19, 2025, to repair a critical regression that prevented Windows’ built‑in reset and recovery tools from completing — a problem introduced by the August 12, 2025 Patch Tuesday security rollup that caused attempted “Reset this PC” and cloud recovery operations to start, reboot, and then immediately roll back without finishing. Background The August 2025 cumulative security updates were deployed through the regular monthly channel on...

The NFL and Microsoft announced a multiyear extension of their long-running technology partnership that formally moves the league into an AI-first operational phase — bringing Microsoft Copilot, Azure AI services, and an expanded Surface device rollout onto sidelines, into scouting workflows and into stadium operations. The public announcements frame this as an upgrade of existing sideline tooling: conversational Copilot assistants for coaches and booth analysts, Azure-powered real‑time...

Microsoft has moved a generative AI assistant from the sidebar into the spreadsheet grid itself: the new COPILOT function turns plain‑English prompts into live Excel formulas and structured outputs that behave like any other formula in your workbook. Background / Overview Excel’s power has always come from its ability to turn human intent into deterministic calculations, but that power has a steep learning curve. Nested functions, array behavior, and text parsing trip up even experienced...

The Git project has shipped version 2.51, a substantial maintenance-and-performance release that packs several storage-layer improvements aimed squarely at large repositories and monorepos, a new on-disk stash interchange format that finally makes stashes portable between machines, and foundational work that edges Git closer to the long-planned Git 3.0 changes (reftable, SHA‑256). For Windows developers and administrators, the release also includes fixes and defaults that reduce...

The NFL’s long-running technology relationship with Microsoft has entered an explicitly AI-first phase: a multiyear extension announced on August 20, 2025, brings Copilot-powered assistants to coaches’ Surface tablets, expands Azure cloud infrastructure inside stadiums, and folds generative AI into scouting and broadcast workflows—while the league publicly reins in any move toward autonomous play-calling. Background From Surface tablets to AI copilots The Microsoft–NFL partnership is not...

Microsoft has quietly issued a set of emergency, out‑of‑band patches to fix a serious regression introduced by the August 2025 security updates that broke Windows’ built‑in recovery tools — including the widely used Reset this PC workflow — and caused some upgrade attempts to fail with error 0x8007007F. These fix‑only updates (KB5066189, KB5066188, and KB5066187) are available now via Windows Update as optional downloads for affected Windows 11 and Windows 10 channels and are intended to be...

Enterprises across India are accelerating PC refresh cycles, driven by a near-term deadline and a new generation of machines built for on-device AI: demand for business laptops is surging as organizations prepare for the end of Windows 10 support on October 14, 2025 and push to acquire AI-ready notebooks that ship with integrated neural processors and other modern security features. Background India’s PC market has moved from slow recovery into a coordinated growth phase in 2025, but the...

Microsoft and SSD vendors have opened an investigation after multiple independent testers and users reported that the August 12, 2025 Windows 11 cumulative update (KB5063878, OS Build 26100.4946) can cause some NVMe and SATA drives to stop responding, vanish from the operating system, and — in a smaller number of cases — return with corrupted or inaccessible data following sustained, heavy write activity. Background / Overview Microsoft shipped KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946) on August 12...