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Windows 11 ships with a far stronger security baseline than its predecessors, but real-world attackers and configuration gaps still find workarounds—meaning Defender and Windows Security are necessary, not sufficient, for modern threat defense. Background Windows 11’s built-in protections—Microsoft Defender Antivirus, SmartScreen, Core Isolation (VBS), HVCI, Controlled Folder Access, BitLocker, and hardware requirements like TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot—raise the overall security floor for...

If your Windows 11 laptop runs hot, fans spin up frequently, or battery life feels worse than it should, the built‑in Windows Search Indexer — also known as searchindexer.exe or the Windows Search (WSearch) service — is one of the single background features that can meaningfully affect power draw; disabling or tuning it can reduce CPU and disk activity and extend run time when you’re away from a charger. (learn.microsoft.com, helpdeskgeek.com) Background / Overview Windows 11’s search...

OpenAI’s ChatGPT‑5 has arrived as a clear pivot from incremental “smarter chat” upgrades toward models built to reason—and the shift is already reshaping how Microsoft, developers, and everyday Windows users experience AI assistants on the desktop and in the cloud. Background: what landed and why it matters OpenAI unveiled GPT‑5 as a family of models—full, mini, and nano variants—designed to trade off latency, cost, and reasoning depth depending on the task. The company positions GPT‑5 as...

Microsoft has set a firm date to excise a long‑running compatibility relic: Windows PowerShell 2.0 will be removed from shipping Windows images beginning with Windows 11, version 24H2 (rollout starting August 2025) and will follow in Windows Server 2025 (September 2025) — a change already visible in Windows Insider builds and documented by Microsoft in a formal support bulletin (KB 5065506). Background PowerShell 2.0 first shipped in 2009 and for many years represented a quantum leap for...

Microsoft pushed a targeted re-release and mitigation for the August 2025 Windows 11 24H2 cumulative update (KB5063878) after enterprise customers reported widespread WSUS/SCCM delivery failures that surfaced as error code 0x80240069 — Microsoft acknowledged the problem and rolled a containment the weekend following the Patch Tuesday release while preparing a corrected servicing package. Background / Overview KB5063878 was published on August 12, 2025 as the monthly combined Servicing Stack...

Windows 11’s dark mode just got noticeably less embarrassing — Microsoft has started rolling dark themes into file-operation dialogs in recent preview builds, and that fix finally addresses one of the most frequently-complained-about “flashbang” moments users hit when copying, moving, or encountering file-access prompts. (blogs.windows.com, xda-developers.com) What happened (short version) Microsoft released Windows 11 build 26100.5061 (KB5064081) to the Release Preview channel on August...

Microsoft has quietly shipped matching Dev and Beta channel updates for Windows 11 this week — both delivered as cumulative update KB5064071 — bringing Dev builds to 26200.5751 (25H2 track) and Beta builds to 26120.5751 (24H2 track), along with focused refinements to Click to Do, File Explorer, Taskbar behavior and Snipping Tool recording. Background Microsoft’s Insider cadence has grown more complex as it prepares the Windows 11 25H2/24H2 servicing streams. Over the last year the company...

Microsoft’s staged rollout that lets Arm-based Windows 11 PCs download and run compatible games locally marks a decisive inflection point for the platform: it’s the first time Microsoft has tied visible storefront changes to deep platform work — a modernized x86→Arm translation layer, OS-level upscaling, and coordinated anti‑cheat vendor ports — to make local PC gaming on Snapdragon and other Arm silicon a practical, long‑term proposition for many users. t of Windows has traded raw x86...

Windows 11 hides a surprising amount of useful functionality behind simple toggles and keyboard combos — the kind of small discoveries that turn a pleasant OS into a genuinely efficient workspace. Background / Overview Windows 11’s design refresh brought a centered Taskbar, rounded corners, and tighter integration with Microsoft services, but it also layered in dozens of lesser-known settings that can boost productivity, privacy, and accessibility. Many of the most impactful options live in...

Microsoft’s announced retirement of Windows 10 and a single‑plaintiff lawsuit filed in California have ignited a debate that spans consumer rights, corporate lifecycle policy, and the broader environmental costs of forced hardware turnover. Microsoft has publicly set October 14, 2025 as the end of mainstream support for Windows 10. After that date, consumer editions (Windows 10 Home and Pro) will no longer receive routine feature updates, monthly quality fixes, or standard security patches...

When Microsoft set a firm October 14, 2025 end-of-support date for Windows 10, a predictable community response followed: local repair cafés across the UK have started planning special sessions to help residents keep working machines safe and useful without buying new hardware. In Huddersfield and nearby Slaithwaite, volunteers from the Huddersfield and Slawit Repair Cafés are exploring “Linux Repair Café” events that would help people migrate older, perfectly serviceable Windows machines to...

For the first time in years, there are convincing signs that Microsoft is finally taking the long-neglected promise of a true, system-wide dark mode for Windows 11 seriously — and the changes showing up in Insider preview builds point to incremental but meaningful progress in File Explorer and other shell surfaces that have remained stubbornly bright for nearly a decade. Background Windows gained a user-selectable dark theme in 2016, but its implementation has always been partial. Core shell...

Microsoft has opened a formal, externally supervised review into allegations that its Azure cloud was used to store and process vast quantities of intercepted Palestinian communications — a probe that elevates a months‑long ethics and policy crisis inside the company into an urgent legal, regulatory and reputational problem. Background and immediate news Microsoft confirmed it is launching a new, formal review after investigative reporting alleged that Israel’s intelligence apparatus stored...

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By 2025, artificial intelligence has moved from the edges of enterprise dreams into the center of the daily work routine, changing not just how tasks are completed but how organizations structure roles, measure value, and define productivity. Background / Overview AI’s penetration into the modern workplace has been both rapid and uneven. Large vendors have integrated generative models directly into productivity suites, companies in heavily regulated and data‑intensive sectors have piloted...

Lenovo’s decision to ship the Legion Go S with Valve’s SteamOS turns a capable but unfocused handheld into a genuinely competitive, purpose-built gaming device — and in practical terms, that change matters more than the hardware revisions themselves. The SteamOS model trims the Windows desktop layer, reduces background overhead, and channels more of the Legion Go S’s power toward actual gameplay. The result is a handheld that feels faster, phone-smooth in menus, and noticeably more efficient...

Google’s search ecosystem feels less like a quietly humming engine this month and more like a living, shifting organism: ranking volatility persists, product experiments are multiplying, and the balance between AI-driven answers and the traditional web referral economy is under renewed scrutiny. In mid‑August the storylines converged — Google shipped a user-facing “Preferred sources” control for Top Stories, publishers and analytics vendors offered mixed signals about AI Overviews’ impact on...

Chris Sutton's Premier League score-sheet went head-to-head with singer Tom Grennan this week, in a BBC Sport opening-weekend predictions feature that doubled as a promotional spotlight for Grennan's new album and a reminder of the emotional rollercoaster surrounding his beloved Coventry City. The exchange was short, sharp and characteristically British: a seasoned pundit mapping out expected results for the opening fixtures while a high-profile fan—fresh from a number-one album run and an...

OpenAI’s GPT‑5 arrived as a clear strategic push to make the next generation of large language models the default intelligence layer for consumer and enterprise apps — a unifying architecture that promises deeper reasoning, much larger context, and built‑in routing between fast and “thinking” modes, and which began rolling out across ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot on August 7, 2025. Background / Overview GPT‑5 is presented by OpenAI as a single, unified system that can automatically decide...

The Case for Personality‑Free AI A practical, ethical, and technical argument for keeping our assistants professional — and how to design AI that helps without pretending to be human By WindowsForum.com contributor — August 15, 2025 Summary: As AI moves from isolated tools into always‑on assistants and operating‑system level companions, companies are racing to make those agents feel “human.” That impulse brings short‑term engagement gains but long‑term costs: misplaced trust, privacy...