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The City of Burlington’s public website went dark after officials blamed a Microsoft cloud-system problem, a local outage that dovetailed with a broader Azure disruption which, according to operator telemetry and industry reconstructions, traced back to an Azure Front Door configuration change that produced DNS and routing anomalies across the global edge fabric. Background / Overview In late October, Microsoft reported an incident in its global edge and application delivery fabric, Azure...

Microsoft’s cloud fabric tripped in plain sight on October 29 when an inadvertent configuration change inside Azure Front Door (AFD) produced DNS, TLS and routing anomalies that cascaded into an eight‑plus‑hour disruption across Microsoft 365, the Azure Portal, gaming services and thousands of customer‑facing endpoints — a global outage that forced an emergency rollback, targeted failovers, and a preliminary post‑incident review from Microsoft. Background Azure Front Door is not a...

If your PC is running Windows 10 but fails Microsoft’s compatibility checks for Windows 11, there are multiple, legitimate upgrade routes — and a well‑known set of community workarounds — that can get you to Windows 11 without buying new hardware. Microsoft’s official guidance is clear: move to a supported PC when possible. But for many enthusiasts and budget‑conscious users, the practical reality is more nuanced. This feature explains the official upgrade paths, the most used unsupported‑PC...

Microsoft’s optional October preview for Windows 11, KB5067036, introduced a surprising and persistent regression: closing Task Manager with the window “X” can leave the underlying taskmgr.exe process running, and repeating the open→close cycle spawns additional background Task Manager instances that quietly consume RAM and occasional CPU until explicitly terminated. Background / Overview Microsoft released KB5067036 (OS builds 26200.7019 and 26100.7019) as an optional, non‑security preview...

Microsoft’s move to bring the handheld “full screen experience” from its Xbox-focused handhelds to regular Windows 11 PCs marks a practical — and overdue — pivot: a console-style, controller-first shell that trims background work, redirects system resources to games, and stitches tighter Copilot and Bluetooth audio features into the gaming loop. Background / Overview Microsoft first introduced the controller‑first, full screen experience (commonly called FSE) as the default home shell on the...

Microsoft and Meta have quietly moved a long‑teased idea — using a mass‑market VR headset as a full Windows workstation — from preview into a broadly available productivity tool, letting Quest 3 and Quest 3S owners beam a full Windows 11 desktop (local or cloud) into a private, spatial workspace with multiple floating monitors. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Link is the software bridge that streams a rendered Windows 11 desktop from a local PC or a cloud endpoint (Windows...

Microsoft is quietly decluttering one of the most complained‑about corners of the Windows 11 experience: update names. What used to be a tangle of long, technical titles — stuffed with version numbers, architecture tags and date prefixes — will now show up in Settings with a streamlined, predictable format focused on the update type, the KB (Knowledge Base) identifier and, where relevant, a single build or component version token. Background Windows Update has long been indispensable for...

Microsoft has pushed a matched preview update to the Dev and Beta Channels today — Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7051 (KB5067115) — bringing an opt‑in Ask Copilot taskbar experience, an expanded handheld Full Screen Experience (FSE) for the Xbox PC app, and a narrow, time‑limited opportunity for Dev Channel Insiders to move to Beta while the two streams are matched. Background / Overview Microsoft continues to evolve the Insider release model around a shared‑servicing approach...

Design patent litigation in United States federal courts has surged over the past 18 months, driven by a mix of doctrinal change at the Federal Circuit, aggressive enforcement strategies aimed at online marketplaces, and renewed appetite from brand owners to police the ornamental appearance of mass‑market products. Background / Overview Design patents protect the ornamental design of an article of manufacture — its shape, pattern, or surface ornamentation — not the way the thing works...

Microsoft’s latest Insider cumulative — shipped as KB5067115 and tied to Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7051 — brings a significant shift in how people will discover and interact with their PC: an opt‑in Ask Copilot entry in the taskbar that fuses classic Windows Search with Copilot’s conversational, multimodal AI features, plus companion updates for handheld gaming (a Full Screen Experience) and a preview of shared audio for compatible Copilot+ hardware. This release is an...

Microsoft’s optional October preview for Windows 11 (KB5067036) appears to have introduced a puzzling regression: clicking the Task Manager window’s close button (the “X”) can leave the process running and — worse — spawn a new taskmgr.exe instance each time you reopen it, producing multiple live Task Manager processes that quietly consume RAM and occasionally CPU until you kill them manually. Background Microsoft published the October 28, 2025, optional preview cumulative update identified...

Anthropic’s Claude has moved into the place every analyst, accountant, and data wrangler lives most of their working day: Microsoft Excel — and the implications for financial modeling, auditability, and competitive dynamics with Microsoft’s own Copilot are substantial and immediate. Background Anthropic announced an expansion of its Claude for Financial Services initiative on October 27, 2025, unveiling Claude for Excel as a beta research preview that places Claude in a sidebar inside...

Microsoft quietly repaired the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool (MCT) on October 28, resolving a regression that had left many Windows 10 users unable to create Windows 11 installation media — and the refreshed utility now appears to deliver images aligned with the October 2025 cumulative (the 25H2 26200.6899 family), albeit with a few important caveats for IT pros and power users. Background / Overview In late September 2025 Microsoft shipped an updated Media Creation Tool (MCT) binary tied...

Microsoft has started testing a built‑time Shared Audio feature in Windows 11 that can stream the same audio feed to two Bluetooth LE audio devices simultaneously — headphones, earbuds, speakers, or hearing aids — and the capability is now visible to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta channels as a preview toggle in Quick Settings. Background Bluetooth audio on PCs has been stuck on a two‑profile compromise for decades: high‑quality stereo playback via A2DP or low‑quality mono with...

Microsoft’s latest Insider preview for Windows 11 — KB5067115, which upgrades the 25H2 enablement branch to Build 26220.7051 — widens the Full Screen Experience (FSE) footprint beyond ASUS’ ROG Xbox Ally family and now surfaces in MSI Claw models, while also bringing Ask Copilot integration into the taskbar and a handful of other handheld‑focused improvements. Background / Overview The Full Screen Experience (FSE) is Microsoft’s console‑style, controller‑first shell layered on Windows 11 and...

Windows 11 ships with sensible defaults, but a handful of targeted tweaks—covering storage, startup and background apps, visual effects, and power settings—can deliver immediate, measurable improvements in responsiveness without buying new hardware. Background / Overview Windows 11 was designed for a wide range of PCs, from high-end desktops to budget laptops, so Microsoft sets defaults that favor reliability and broad compatibility rather than peak responsiveness. That means many day‑to‑day...

Microsoft has issued a matched preview package to both the Dev and Beta channels — delivered as Windows 11 Insider Preview Quality Update KB5067115 — and with it comes a small set of visible features (a taskbar “Ask Copilot” experience, a console‑style full‑screen Xbox experience on handheld PCs, Bluetooth LE shared audio testing, and additional Prism emulator improvements for Windows on Arm) plus a structural change: the Beta channel is being offered the same 25H2‑based update as Dev as a...

Microsoft’s latest optional preview for Windows 11 appears to have introduced a baffling regression: the Task Manager’s close button can fail to terminate the app, leaving behind one or more live taskmgr.exe processes that accumulate each time you open and close the utility. The bug was tied to the October 28, 2025 preview update KB5067036 (OS builds 26200.7019 and 26100.7019) and has been reproduced by independent outlets and community testers, producing measurable memory and occasional CPU...

Microsoft’s latest Insider release for Windows 11 brings a meaningful upgrade to Arm-based PCs: Prism, the operating system’s x86/x64 emulation layer, now advertises and emulates a broader set of 64-bit x86 CPU features by default for x64 applications, reducing hard compatibility blockers and letting many previously blocked desktop apps run where they would not before. Background Microsoft introduced Prism as a replacement for the older emulation stacks on Windows on Arm, with the explicit...

Microsoft has begun rolling out a preview of the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) to MSI’s Claw family as part of a Windows 11 Insider Preview build, extending the console‑style, gamepad‑first navigation layer beyond the ROG Xbox Ally devices and into a broader set of Windows handhelds. The update places a new “home app” model at the center of handheld usage, lets devices boot directly into a full‑screen launcher, and trims background activity to free memory and battery for games. It is...