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Federal investigators in a fraud probe in Guam obtained full access to BitLocker‑encrypted laptops by compelling Microsoft to hand over the accounts’ BitLocker recovery keys — a development that crystallizes the trade‑offs between cloud convenience and real‑world data privacy. Background / Overview The episode emerged from United States v. Tenorio, a Pandemic Unemployment Assistance fraud investigation in Guam in which agents seized three laptops believed to contain evidence. When forensic...

Microsoft pushed an emergency, out‑of‑band Windows 11 update on January 24, 2026 to fix a serious compatibility regression that could cause Microsoft Outlook and other applications to hang or crash when opening or saving files stored inside cloud‑synced folders such as OneDrive — a problem that first surfaced after the January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday rollup and quickly escalated into a widespread productivity risk for some consumers and enterprise users. Background The January 2026 Patch...

Microsoft pushed another out‑of‑band Windows 11 patch on January 24, 2026 — KB5078127 — to blunt a series of regressions that began with the January 13 cumulative (KB5074109), but the situation remains messy: the emergency fix restores many cloud‑file and Outlook Classic behaviors for most users while a subset of machines still face uninstall failures, boot problems, and lingering edge‑case breakage that require manual recovery or enterprise mitigations. Background / Overview Microsoft’s...

Microsoft pushed an unexpected emergency fix this month after January’s Patch Tuesday updates left a significant portion of Windows 11 users unable to reliably open, save or sync files stored in cloud‑backed folders — most visibly rendering classic Outlook profiles that keep PSTs inside OneDrive effectively unusable until the problem was patched. Background The disruption began with the regular January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative updates (cataloged under KB5074109 for several Windows...

Microsoft's January security rollup for Windows 11 has once again rattled the update ecosystem: after a series of rollback updates and emergency fixes, a subset of users who installed KB5074109 report an even darker outcome than the earlier shutdown and sleep bugs — some PCs now fail to boot entirely with the stop code UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. The problem appears confined to physical machines running Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2, and while Microsoft says it has received only a "limited...

Microsoft has begun rolling out a focused but powerful enhancement to Dynamics 365 Contact Center: administrators can now customize consults and transfers so that the set of queues and customer service representatives available during a consult or transfer is dynamically controlled by FetchXML queries configured in the Copilot Service admin center. The change — announced in Microsoft’s Message Center and scheduled for general availability on January 26, 2026 — formalizes administrator...

Across boardrooms and IT departments the debate has shifted from “if” to “how fast”: organisations are rapidly adopting AI to squeeze efficiency from existing work, but the bigger — and riskier — prize is what comes after optimisation. Simon Brown, EY’s Global Learning & Development Leader, argues that real transformation follows a three‑loop journey — Optimisation, Innovation, and Reinvention — and that most companies are still stuck in the first loop. The practical consequence for IT...

The era when search engines merely influenced shopping is giving way to one where AI agents can complete purchases on a shopper’s behalf — and recent moves by JD Sports, Google, Shopify, Microsoft and others make that shift unavoidably practical rather than hypothetical. JD’s decision to let U.S. customers search for and buy products directly through AI platforms, combined with Google and Shopify’s launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), crystallises what many retailers have...

Microsoft pushed a string of Windows updates over the weekend that try to clean up several regressions introduced by the January Patch Tuesday rollouts — and at the same time have started a phased, OS-driven refresh of Windows' Secure Boot certificates that will touch millions of devices ahead of a looming mid‑2026 expiry window. The net result is a mixed bag: a targeted out‑of‑band (OOB) fix for applications that stopped responding with cloud‑backed files, an automated delivery of new Key...

Microsoft has acknowledged a set of serious regressions after the Windows 11 January 2026 cumulative update (KB5074109), including a small but alarming set of machines that fail to boot with a Black Screen of Death showing the Stop Code UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. In response, Microsoft issued an out‑of‑band emergency update (KB5078127) on January 24, 2026 to roll back and repair some of the most disruptive failures introduced by the January release—most notably classic Outlook (Win32) hangs...

Microsoft’s Copilot has moved from optional experiment to a pervasive part of the Windows 11 experience, and in 2026 the ways to hide, block, or remove it have shifted again. If you want Copilot out of your taskbar, keyboard shortcuts, apps, or even off your device entirely, this guide collects the latest, tested methods — from the quick Settings toggle to enterprise-grade AppLocker rules — explains what each approach actually does, and warns where Microsoft’s evolving rollout can make...

Microsoft has opened an investigation after a subset of Windows 11 devices running the 25H2 servicing branch failed to boot following the January cumulative update, producing an early-stop error of UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME that in many cases left systems unusable until the offending update was removed via the Windows Recovery Environment. Background / Overview The January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday rollup for Windows 11 included a combined Servicing Stack Update (SSU) and Latest Cumulative Update...

Windows 11 is technically stronger than many critics admit: faster in everyday tasks, more secure in default configuration, and the beneficiary of years of engineering work. Yet the conversation on forums, social feeds, and comment threads has shifted from performance to trust — not because the kernel is faulty, but because a string of opaque decisions, surprising defaults, and update regressions has left many users feeling that Windows now happens to them rather than for them. Background: a...

Microsoft’s emergency out‑of‑band update KB5078127 is a targeted, cumulative patch for Windows 11 that consolidates the mid‑January fixes and corrects a high‑impact file I/O regression that left Outlook and other apps hanging when they tried to open or save files in cloud‑synced folders such as OneDrive and Dropbox. Released as a follow‑up to the January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday rollup and the first wave of OOB patches on January 17, KB5078127 was issued to restore stability quickly and reduce...

Microsoft moved quickly to contain a trio of disruptive regressions introduced by the Windows 11 January 2026 Patch Tuesday wave, shipping targeted out‑of‑band (OOB) updates that restored Remote Desktop sign‑in flows and fixed a configuration‑dependent shutdown/hibernate bug — while a separate Outlook Classic (POP/PST) problem remains under investigation and, for some users, still unusable. Background / Overview Microsoft’s normal Patch Tuesday cadence delivered the January 2026 cumulative...

Microsoft has issued a second emergency, out‑of‑band cumulative update for Windows 11 — KB5078127 — to stop a fresh wave of Outlook crashes and cloud‑file I/O failures that began after the January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday rollup, a sequence of fixes that highlights both rapid remediation and recurring instability in Microsoft’s update pipeline. Background / Overview In mid‑January 2026 Microsoft shipped its regular Patch Tuesday security rollup, which for several Windows 11 servicing branches...

Microsoft’s decision to stop routine security updates for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 forced a hard choice for millions of PC users: upgrade to Windows 11, buy limited Extended Security Updates, move to another OS, or accept growing risk — and a third option has emerged as a practical stopgap: third‑party micropatching from vendors such as 0patch, which promises targeted, in‑memory “micropatches” for high‑risk vulnerabilities on unsupported Windows 10 systems. Background / Overview...

Microsoft has pushed an emergency follow-up to its January 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes after a wave of users reported Outlook crashes and other app instability when working with cloud‑synced files; the company’s out‑of‑band updates issued on January 24 (notably KB5078127 and companion packages for other servicing branches) are intended to restore Outlook stability, fix file I/O regressions with OneDrive and other cloud providers, and bundle earlier emergency fixes into a single cumulative...

Microsoft has begun shipping an ARM-native Xbox App for Windows 11, meaning Game Pass subscribers can now discover, download, and in many cases run games locally on ARM-based Windows laptops, tablets and handhelds — not just stream them — as Microsoft says more than 85% of the Game Pass catalog is currently compatible on ARM devices. Background Windows on ARM has been a long-running engineering and market experiment: ARM-powered Windows devices promised dramatically better battery life and...

Windows 10 users chasing faster downloads—whether for Windows Update, large game files, GitHub releases, or tunnelling traffic through proxies—now have more practical options than ever, but the fastest route isn’t always the simplest: you need to understand Windows’ Delivery Optimization, leverage modern package tooling, choose the right network tools (or proxies), and treat privacy and telemetry as part of the performance equation. Background Windows networking and update subsystems evolved...