Featured content

Microsoft has shipped a pair of new Windows 11 Insider pre-release updates today — a Release Preview channel cumulative (KB5077241) that covers both 24H2 and 25H2 builds, and a Beta channel enablement package (KB5077223) for 25H2 — and the notes reveal a mix of small but practical polish, resiliency improvements, and one eyebrow‑raising consumer upsell baked into Settings. (blogs.windows.com) Background Microsoft manages its pre‑release cadence across several Insider channels: Dev for...

If you’ve ever shut down your PC and felt confident you were starting each day from a clean slate, that feeling can be misleading — Windows’ Fast Startup often keeps the operating system in a halfway state that looks like a shutdown but behaves a lot like hibernation, and for many users the trade-offs now outweigh the seconds it saves. Background Windows introduced Fast Startup (also called hybrid shutdown, hyberboot, or hiberboot) to tackle painfully long boot times on the mechanical-drive...

Microsoft's Defender platform has quietly gained a practical, high-impact capability that promises to shorten the gap between detection and effective response: a tenant-level Library Management experience for Live Response that lets security teams pre-stage, view, and manage investigation artifacts — scripts, signed utilities, and helper binaries — directly inside the Defender portal, with AI-assisted context from Security Copilot layered over those assets. Background Why Live Response...

Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6 lands as a practical, broadly available step-change: the Sonnet family now ships a beta 1,000,000‑token context window, improved instruction following, and measurable gains in long‑context reasoning and agentic planning — and it’s available to Free, Pro, and Enterprise users across Claude.ai, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, the Claude API and major cloud marketplaces starting February 17, 2026. Background / Overview Anthropic introduced the Sonnet lineage as the...

New Horizons’ decision to fold Microsoft Copilot training directly into its Microsoft Office curriculum marks a deliberate pivot from standalone AI workshops toward embedded, workflow-first learning — a move designed to turn corporate curiosity about generative AI into daily, measurable use inside the applications people already rely on. Background / Overview For years vendors and training providers have treated AI as a discrete topic: separate bootcamps, vendor workshops, or leadership...

AMD's latest Ryzen chipset driver refresh continues the quiet revolution at the foundation of modern Windows PCs: the July 2024 Ryzen Chipset Driver revision 6.07.22.037 extends official support to the new Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" family, adds a dedicated PMF driver for the Ryzen AI line, and introduces broader SoC interface support that — in practical terms — can make the NPU appear as a recognized device in Windows and enable visibility of AI hardware to the operating system and...

Microsoft’s February cumulative for Windows 11, published as KB5077181 (OS builds 26200.7840 and 26100.7840), has produced a patchwork of troubling field reports: failed installs with Windows Update/CBS error codes, DHCP network outages leaving systems “connected but no internet,” Bluetooth and audio regressions, and graphics/HDMI problems on systems with discrete GPUs. While Microsoft’s KB article for the release lists the package contents and notes that it is not currently aware of any...

Microsoft has started rolling out Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7859 (KB5077223) to the Beta Channel, delivering a small but focused set of reliability fixes and a single new account-related suggestion that will be gradually enabled for Insiders who opt in to receive the fastest preview updates. This flight is distributed as an enablement package on top of Windows 11, version 25H2 (Build 26200.x), and continues Microsoft’s pattern of using controlled feature rollouts to surface new...

AMD has quietly rolled out a new universal chipset package — revision 8.01.20.513 — that updates dozens of small but important platform drivers, adds explicit Windows 11 25H2 support for multiple components, and expands official compatibility for AMD’s growing lineup (including Ryzen AI 300 Series and Threadripper families). The package appeared on AMD’s official driver pages with a release date of February 16, 2026, and AMD’s published release notes enumerate per-driver version bumps, bug...

Windows 11 ships with more than a few convenience features — it also ships with built‑in telemetry, targeted recommendations, and advertising‑oriented behaviours that are enabled by default. Paul Thurrott’s “De‑Enshittify Windows 11” thesis is blunt: Microsoft’s defaults push users toward more data collection, and while the OS exposes some surface controls, you must dig deeply (or use a community tool) to reclaim meaningful privacy. This feature unpacks what’s actually happening, verifies...

New Horizons’ announcement that it will embed Microsoft Copilot training directly into its Microsoft Office course catalog marks a decisive shift in how commercial training providers are trying to close the gap between AI access and everyday workplace adoption. Announced on February 16, 2026, the update folds Copilot instruction into familiar Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams training so learners practice AI within the tools and workflows they already use—rather than treating...

Microsoft has added a long-awaited, practical capability to Microsoft Defender’s Live Response workflow: a centralized Library Management experience that lets security teams upload, manage, and pre-stage investigation artifacts—scripts, batch files, and utilities—directly inside the Defender portal, with built-in visibility and AI-assisted context to speed triage and reduce friction during live investigations. Background Security operations teams have used ad hoc collections of scripts...

Microsoft’s enterprise Copilot is no longer a lab experiment put on a lab VM: it is part of corporate productivity infrastructure, and organizations that roll it out at scale are already confronting messy, high‑stakes questions about what counts as electronically stored information (ESI), how to preserve and collect it, and who — inside or outside the company — will carry the legal and ethical burden if something goes wrong. ] Background Enterprise copilots — most visibly Microsoft 365...

Redmond Magazine’s walkthrough is a practical, no‑nonsense primer for administrators who want to manage Linux virtual machines the same way they manage Windows guests: by connecting with an RDP client rather than switching tools between SSH, VNC, or the hypervisor console. The article’s core recommendation—install and enable xrdp on an Ubuntu VM, open port 3389, and choose an Xorg session from the login screen—works as a quick on‑ramp to RDP access for many environments, but it leaves...

Mozilla’s support path for users running pre–Windows 10 desktops has reached a clear milestone: Firefox 115 ESR will be the last maintained Firefox build for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, and Mozilla’s support documentation now states that security updates for those legacy installations will stop at the end of February 2026 (Feb 28, 2026). For anyone still relying on a Windows 7/8/8.1 PC, this is a hard warning: after that date there will be no more security updates from Mozilla for...

Microsoft's engineering teams are quietly reshaping the Windows server and automation stack in 2026, directing focused investment into PowerShell, Windows OpenSSH, and Desired State Configuration (DSC) to prioritize security, reliability, and modern authentication—changes that matter to administrators, devops engineers, and power users who depend on secure remote access and predictable automation at scale. Background PowerShell, OpenSSH for Windows, and DSC are integral to how Windows...

Microsoft’s blunt reminder landed in February: the cryptographic certificates that underpin UEFI Secure Boot — the very mechanism that helps stop malware from running before Windows ever starts — are reaching the end of their designed lifetimes in mid‑2026, and the consequences for the many PCs still running Windows 10 are significant unless owners take action now. Microsoft says it is rolling out a “generational refresh” of those certificates (the replacements were created in 2023), but not...

Microsoft’s Copilot is now being folded directly into one of the Premier League’s most influential fan channels, with the tech giant and Sky Media launching a campaign that embeds the Premier League Companion into Gary Neville’s The Overlap network to bring near‑real‑time, data‑driven insight to pundits and viewers. Background What the Premier League Companion is — and where it came from The Premier League Companion is the fan‑facing expression of the Premier League’s 2025 technology tie‑up...

Microsoft has brought two new data halls into operation in the state of São Paulo as part of its multi‑year push to expand Azure and AI infrastructure in Brazil, a development that advances local cloud capacity while raising fresh questions about scale, sustainability, and policy incentives. Background Microsoft’s effort in Brazil is the most visible element of a broader commitment announced in September 2024: a R$14.7 billion (roughly US$2.7 billion) investment in cloud and artificial...

Microsoft’s blunt warning about expiring Secure Boot certificates has moved from obscure infrastructure maintenance into a practical security deadline: the original Microsoft Secure Boot certificates deployed in 2011 begin expiring in June 2026, and systems that don’t receive the replacement 2023 certificates will enter a progressively degraded security state where they can no longer accept new boot‑level protections or revocation updates. This affects a broad swath of devices—particularly...