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Microsoft is quietly adding a compatibility check to Windows Update so Windows 10 users can see — right in Settings > Windows Update — whether their machine meets the minimum requirements to upgrade to Windows 11, and the change has implications that go beyond a simple convenience notification. Background The system requirements for Windows 11 have been a recurring source of confusion since the OS was announced: TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and a tight list of supported CPU families created a large...

Bluetooth headphones that once paired flawlessly can suddenly refuse to connect, play no audio, drop in and out, or switch to a tinny mono voice channel on Windows 10 — this feature article explains why that happens, how to diagnose the problem step by step, and which fixes actually work for the most common and the most stubborn cases. Background / Overview Bluetooth is the short‑range wireless backbone for headphones, earbuds, speakers, keyboards and mice. On Windows machines the Bluetooth...

Microsoft has pushed a small maintenance flight to the Windows Insider Canary Channel today — Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1371 (KB5073097) — delivering a handful of targeted fixes for Start, File Explorer, input settings, and an elevated Windows Terminal hang, while calling out one cosmetic known issue with the desktop watermark. Background / Overview The Canary Channel is Microsoft’s fastest-moving Insider ring for platform-level experiments and early-stage changes that may never...

Microsoft’s January 13, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11 — KB5074109 — is rolling out to devices running Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2, delivering a mix of security fixes and quality improvements with an emphasis on battery and boot integrity, but also introducing changes that require immediate attention from IT teams and some end users. Background Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday cadence continues to blend security patches with targeted reliability fixes. The January 2026 cumulative...

This genius mod that makes volume control in Windows 11 so much better — a deep dive Windows 11 finally cleaned up a lot of UI cruft, but in the process Microsoft consolidated several tiny, incredibly frequent interactions (volume, media, battery, lock‑keys) into the Quick Settings panel. That’s tidy — until you need to lower the music during a meeting, mute one noisy app, or balance game audio without opening Settings. A small, community‑built mod fixes that exact friction: it surfaces...

Microsoft has quietly expanded the enterprise-focused Windows Backup for Organizations to include a first sign-in restore experience, giving IT teams a second opportunity to restore a user's Windows settings and Microsoft Store app list at the very first interactive sign-in — not only during OOBE but also after a missed restore opportunity — with early testing offered via a private preview for eligible organizations. Background / Overview Windows Backup for Organizations launched as a...

Microsoft pushed an emergency, out‑of‑band pair of updates on January 4, 2022 — KB5010196 for Windows Server 2019 (and related 2019 LTSC builds) and KB5010215 for Windows Server 2012 R2 — to repair a Remote Desktop/interactive logon regression that could leave servers unresponsive, present a black screen to RDP users, and cause slow sign‑in and overall performance degradation. These packages were published to the Microsoft Update Catalog and must be installed manually (they are not offered...

The Illinois attorney general has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to pause and scrutinize proposed Transmission Service Agreements (TSAs) between Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and multiple data center developers, arguing the contracts fail to insulate existing ratepayers from potentially massive transmission costs and reliability risks driven by rapidly expanding hyperscale data center demand. Background The filings at FERC challenge TSAs tied to large planned facilities in...

OpenAI’s early alliance with Microsoft to build what both parties called “cloud brains” was more than a press release—it foreshadowed a decade of tectonic shifts in how advanced AI is researched, trained, and commercialized in the cloud. The 2016 announcement named Microsoft Azure as OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and pointed to Azure’s newly released N‑Series GPU VMs as the backbone for large‑scale experiments; OpenAI explicitly promised to use “thousands to tens of thousands” of Azure...

SymphonyAI’s new suite of eight industrial AI applications for CPG and food & beverage manufacturers marks a decisive push to bring domain-specific, line-speed intelligence into the most demanding production environments, pairing the vendor’s IRIS Foundry and IRIS Forge tooling with a full Azure-native runtime and collaboration fabric to deliver real‑time optimization where it matters most. Background / Overview Food and beverage manufacturing is a unique industrial ecosystem: high-velocity...

West Midlands Police’s decision to advise banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from an Aston Villa match — a move that led to a national political backlash — has been revealed to rest in part on an erroneous intelligence item produced by Microsoft Copilot, a revelation that exposes how unverified generative‑AI outputs can migrate from private research into public policy with damaging consequences. Background On 6 November 2025, Aston Villa hosted Maccabi Tel Aviv in a Europa League fixture...

Microsoft has issued a preview (non‑security “C” release) cumulative update — KB5014668 — for Windows 11 (original release), a targeted package that patches a range of reliability and compatibility problems including a race condition that could block upgrades and a pair of game‑affecting bugs tied to audio and DirectX playback. Background What is a "C" preview update and why it matters Preview or “C” updates are optional, non‑security quality releases Microsoft issues in the third or fourth...

A stray Insider build and an accidental release of internal configuration files have pulled back the curtain on what looks like a deliberate push by Microsoft to productize a set of higher‑end Windows SKUs aimed at power users, workstations and advanced enterprise scenarios. The leak — discovered in Build 16212’s pkeyconfig strings and echoed by a separate internal slide — points to three new SKUs: Windows 10 Pro for Advanced PCs, Windows 10 Pro N for Advanced PCs, and an unexpected server...

Microsoft’s move to resell Box as a first‑class option on Azure — and to fold Box’s content platform into Azure’s machine learning and cognitive services — signals a pragmatic pivot in the enterprise cloud market: strategic partnerships between platform providers and independent content platforms are now a primary battleground for winning enterprise workloads and developer mindshare. Background Box and Microsoft announced an expanded partnership in mid‑2017 that formalized “Box on Azure” as...

FluentFlyout’s latest release finally brings native ARM64 support, meaning the polished flyouts that many Windows 11 users now rely on will run natively on Qualcomm Snapdragon X family devices and other ARM64 Windows PCs without emulation. Background FluentFlyout is an open-source utility that replaces and extends Windows 11’s built-in media and lock-key flyouts with a modern, highly customizable set of popups and a taskbar widget that feels native to Windows 11. The project is published on...

If you’re choosing a new Windows PC or deciding whether to spend extra for Windows 11 Pro, the practical answer is short: Windows 11 Home covers the needs of most individual users, while Windows 11 Pro is aimed at businesses, IT pros, and power users who need encryption, management, virtualization, or remote access. This article breaks down exactly what you gain by upgrading — and what you don’t — with a clear, actionable checklist to help decide whether the extra cost is worth it...

A new, community-built PowerShell project promises a blunt but effective way to strip much of Windows 11’s recently added AI surface — Copilot, Recall, AI features inside Paint and Notepad, plus a raft of Appx/MSIX packages — and the resulting debate is as much about system stewardship and update safety as it is about privacy and control. The repository, published under the GitHub handle zoicware and distributed with a GUI front-end and command-line options, automates registry tweaks, Appx...

The West Midlands Police decision to advise Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a Europa League fixture at Villa Park has landed as a defining embarrassment for modern policing: a public-safety judgement built on weak, poorly documented intelligence and then amplified by a demonstrable artificial‑intelligence error. The Home Secretary has told Parliament she no longer has confidence in Chief Constable Craig Guildford after an...

Mapping a network drive is one of those deceptively simple Windows tasks that keeps end users productive and systems administrators awake at night — done right it’s smooth and reliable, done wrong it’s a recurring help‑desk ticket that cost an hour of productivity and a box of coffee. Background A mapped network drive gives a Windows PC a persistent, drive‑letter shortcut (for example Z:) that points to a shared folder on another computer, server, or NAS on the network. The mapping makes a...

Microsoft has quietly drawn a line under one of the longest‑lived branches of Windows: the Vista‑derived codebase that powered Windows Server 2008 has reached the absolute end of vendor‑supplied security updates, with the final paid lifecycle option (Premium Assurance) closing on January 13, 2026. Background / Overview Windows Server 2008 — codenamed Longhorn Server and built on the Windows Vista kernel family — shipped to manufacturers in early 2008 and saw broad enterprise deployment...