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Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.9202 for the standard Beta track and Build 28020.2731 for Beta (26H1), but the important change is not simply that two new previews are available. Both builds remove the legacy wmic.exe command-line utility, putting scripts, management agents, and deployment routines that still invoke WMIC on notice before the change reaches broader Windows releases. TheWinCentral correctly identified the two build numbers and their August 17...

Windows 11’s Get Started app is being expanded with app-install, website-pinning, and theme-personalization pages in Insider Experimental Build 26340.9212, Microsoft’s current preview for Windows 11 version 26H2. The change will matter less for experienced users who already know where Windows’ settings live than for the people Microsoft is trying to reach during setup and after a feature update: users who may otherwise never discover a feature, a Store app, or a way to tailor the desktop...

Microsoft has replaced the practical endpoint of Windows “phone activation” with a web-based Product Activation Portal, while keeping the familiar Installation ID-to-Confirmation ID workflow alive for offline systems. The change is spelled out in a Microsoft Support article published August 7, and it carries an instruction likely to surprise administrators working from older Windows activation dialogs: do not call the phone number shown by Windows. Instead, collect the Installation ID, use...

Microsoft’s refreshed Windows Recovery Environment guidance now places point-in-time restore alongside Startup Repair, Reset this PC, update removal and the familiar Command Prompt tools—but its own documentation leaves a consequential version-support question unresolved. The Support article, published August 3, says Windows RE applies to both Windows 10 and Windows 11 and presents the new rollback feature as an available recovery choice. Microsoft Learn’s administrator documentation...

Microsoft retired Deep Research in the consumer Copilot app on August 18, 2026, ending the feature’s ability to create new long-form, source-backed reports for ordinary Microsoft accounts. Its replacement, Researcher, is available to Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers and to properly licensed business and enterprise Copilot users — a change that turns an experience Microsoft had offered broadly into one attached to a $19.99-per-month or $199.99-per-year consumer plan in the United States...

Google has won a $10 million bankruptcy auction for a large archive of Spirit Airlines’ internal Microsoft 365 data, including roughly 100 million employee emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages. But the headline claim that Google “will get” the data is premature: as Axios reported from the bankruptcy filings, the sale still requires approval from a federal bankruptcy judge before the records can be transferred. The proposed purchase matters well beyond the collapse of one U.S...

Northern Arizona University has begun retiring Google Workspace accounts and is moving active student email and file storage to Microsoft 365, but the immediate consequence is more severe for former students and employees: their NAU Google accounts were closed on August 4, 2026, without a migration to Microsoft 365. The change ends the university’s long-standing lifetime-email arrangement for alumni and eliminates access to Gmail, Drive, and other data still tied to those accounts. NAU...

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.9202 adds a recovery-networking change that could remove a major failure point for Wi‑Fi-only business laptops: WinRE can now automatically reuse eligible Wi‑Fi profiles saved in the installed copy of Windows, including supported certificate-based networks. Microsoft announced the feature for Beta Channel testers on August 17; Neowin first highlighted its importance for administrators running cloud-assisted recovery workflows. The immediate payoff is...

Microsoft 365 administrators have four days, until August 22, 2026, to get any remaining legacy Microsoft Whiteboards out of Azure-backed storage. After Microsoft retires the migration tooling on that date, boards left behind cannot be moved; on September 5, Microsoft says they will be permanently deleted with no recovery path. The deadline comes from Microsoft 365 Message Center advisory MC1441775, published July 28, and was subsequently detailed by Neowin and Windows Central. The immediate...

Windows 11 Insider Experimental build 28120.2738 still carries a compatibility block that can prevent PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS from launching, but the important detail is that this is not a newly introduced PUBG failure in the August 17 flight. Microsoft had already listed the same issue in Experimental 26H1 build 28120.2630, released July 31, and has not supplied either a root cause or a resolution date. WindowsReport first highlighted the PUBG warning alongside the new build’s smaller set of...

South Korean high-bandwidth memory exports are increasingly landing in Malaysia, but the available trade data does not yet establish that Intel’s Project Pelican is the buyer or the packager. TechPowerUp, citing SemiAnalysis ChipBook figures and a social-media post by ChipsandWafers, reported that roughly $1.3 billion in HBM shipments now goes to Malaysia while Taiwan receives less than $3 billion, down from more than $5 billion several months earlier. The numbers are worth watching because...

HP’s 2026 OmniBook Ultra 14 earns the “sleek and sturdy” description in Can Buy or Not’s Intel-based review, but its real buying complication is hidden behind the shared product name: HP now sells materially different OmniBook Ultra 14 configurations with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 processors. For Windows buyers and IT teams, the chassis, OLED panel, Copilot+ branding, and haptic touchpad are only part of the decision. The processor choice changes graphics...

Windows 11’s much-publicized “free speed boost” for low-memory PCs is real, but the update identifier in the claim is already out of date. KB5101684 was an optional preview update released on July 28, 2026, not the current worldwide Windows 11 release; Microsoft shipped its August security update, KB5121003, on August 11. The practical performance and reliability fixes first listed under KB5101684 have since moved into the normal monthly servicing path for supported Windows 11 versions. GB...

KT, Nonghyup Agribusiness Group and Microsoft Korea have signed an agreement to extend an existing Azure migration into a retail AI program that could add personalized recommendations, automated customer support and data-driven marketing to Nonghyup’s agricultural e-commerce operations. The immediate practical takeaway for enterprise IT teams is more modest than the announcement’s agentic AI language suggests: the only completed production milestone disclosed so far is the July relaunch of...

Sainsbury’s has suspended Facewatch live facial-recognition alerts at its East Dulwich supermarket after a customer who had paid for his shopping was challenged and told to leave — an incident that exposes a problem larger than one employee’s alleged mistake. BBC News reported that Matt Arnold, a 46-year-old comedy promoter, was stopped at a self-service checkout on August 6 while buying supplies for an event at Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, despite having scanned the items and used his...

A Windows 365 Cloud PC can postpone a laptop refresh for the right employee, but it cannot replace endpoint planning outright. TechTarget’s assessment of cloud PCs versus traditional hardware refreshes gets the core division right: subscription desktops are strongest where a business needs to add, remove, or relocate users quickly, while locally managed PCs remain the better fit for users who need offline work, dedicated peripherals, or sustained workstation-class performance. The practical...

Microsoft has cancelled Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 490564, the planned Teams feature that would have let users bring interactive agents into meetings and one-to-one calls. The August 17, 2026 update removes a September 2026 general-availability target for commercial desktop tenants and says Microsoft will not continue the rollout, but it does not give customers, developers, or administrators a technical reason for the decision. The cancellation matters because the roadmap item described a...

Microsoft has put Roadmap ID 93269 back into an “In development” state for a February 2027 general-availability target in GCC, GCC High, and Department of Defense tenants, promising a tenant-wide eDiscovery Hold report in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. The report is meant to consolidate legal-hold information from eDiscovery cases, let authorized users sort and filter it, and export the aggregated data for further analysis. The practical value is straightforward: a legal...

Microsoft Purview is adding customer-managed key protection to eDiscovery direct exports, giving organizations that already operate Microsoft 365 Customer Key a way to place their own encryption keys around exported investigation packages. The Microsoft 365 roadmap entry, ID 557684, says general availability is planned for December 2026, with a preview listed for April 2026. There is an important timing wrinkle: Microsoft’s current Purview documentation already labels the capability...

Microsoft is planning to extend Customer Key protection to Microsoft Purview eDiscovery direct export packages, a change that matters most to government tenants handling litigation, investigations, and regulatory requests outside the Purview portal. Roadmap item 565373, updated August 17, lists general availability for GCC, GCC High, and DoD in January 2027. The practical change is narrow but meaningful: when an investigator exports search results directly from an eDiscovery case, the...