firmware

Microsoft’s handheld push has taken a new turn: the Xbox-style, full‑screen “Xbox Mode” that will ship as the default experience on the ROG Xbox Ally family is already appearing on other Windows 11 handhelds — in community builds and hacks — ahead of the Ally’s retail launch, forcing a rapid...

The community has already started peeling back the seams of the ROG Xbox Ally’s new “Xbox Mode,” and hobbyist modders have managed to run the console-style, full‑screen Xbox experience on a range of other Windows handhelds — a development that short-circuits manufacturer timelines, accelerates...

UEFI Secure Boot on Arm64 is usable today but fragmented: the essential pieces exist, many mainstream distributions already support it, and a growing set of EDK II UEFI firmware ports make an x86‑like Secure Boot experience possible — yet the practical reality for users and enterprises remains...

Windows engineers quietly keep a short, secretive compatibility table inside the Bluetooth stack to fix one particularly stubborn relic: the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 — a 2006-era device that shipped its Bluetooth name using the wrong character encoding and forced Windows...

Microsoft has confirmed that the original Secure Boot certificates shipped with most Windows PCs are nearing the end of their life, and the transition to new certificates is already underway — a quietly consequential change that affects Windows servicing, OEM firmware, Linux compatibility, and...

When a Windows 11 upgrade refuses to finish, the experience is equal parts opaque and infuriating: cryptic error codes, a rollback that restores your old desktop, and little explanation of what went wrong or how to fix it. These four troubleshooting “secrets” — polished through hundreds of...

Microsoft’s Secure Boot update FAQ makes clear that a coordinated, multi-step transition is now live: Windows will roll new 2023 signing certificates into UEFI variables and update the Windows boot manager to preserve Secure Boot protection ahead of the 2011 CA expirations, but the rollout...

Microsoft pushed Windows 10 cumulative update KB5065429 to 22H2 machines this week, a mandatory security rollup that arrives as the platform approaches its October 14, 2025 end‑of‑support deadline — and it’s tightly linked to Microsoft’s consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) enrollment path...

Microsoft's Settings app is quietly turning into a one-stop hub for RGB: the long-rumored Lighting/Dynamic Lighting controls have appeared in Insider builds, and Microsoft is positioning Windows 11 to manage RGB lighting across compatible keyboards, mice, chassis and other peripherals without...

Microsoft has made Windows 11’s annual refresh—version 25H2—available as official ISO media to Windows Insiders in the Release Preview channel, completing the packaging that IT teams, OEMs and advanced users need for clean installs and image-based testing even as the bulk rollout continues to be...

ASUS’ quietly posted promo that details the Xbox Ally family’s so‑called “Zero Gravity” cooling system has pulled back the curtain on one of the most consequential engineering problems for modern handheld gaming PCs: how to keep a dense, hot APU comfortable and quiet in every orientation while...

Windows 11’s crash screen may look familiar, but the reasons behind the crash and the route to recovery are rarely simple — this feature walks through practical, verified BSOD (and the newer black crash‑screen) troubleshooting, consolidates the basic steps Guiding Tech outlines, and layers in...

Microsoft’s choice to omit the x86 HLT (halt) instruction from Windows 95’s shipped idle path was not a bug or oversight — it was a deliberate, conservative engineering decision taken to avoid a catastrophic failure mode that, in lab and field tests, could leave some laptops effectively bricked...

Phison’s latest public testing and community forensics have reframed the mid‑August Windows 11 SSD scare: what began as frantic reports that the Windows 11 August cumulative updates (commonly tracked as KB5063878 and the related KB5062660) were “bricking” NVMe drives now appears to be a...

A small Taiwanese PC‑building community may have just pulled a loose thread that explains a wave of terrifying reports about Windows 11 “bricking” SSDs: the drives that failed in public tests were running pre‑release, engineering firmware — not the production firmware shipped to regular...

A set of high-severity flaws in ABB’s ASPECT, NEXUS, and MATRIX building-management products has forced an urgent wave of patching and network lockdowns across industrial and commercial facilities worldwide, with at least three tracked CVEs that let remote attackers bypass authentication, crash...

Windows 95 engineers walked away from a simple CPU instruction — the x86 HLT (halt) — not because the idea was exotic or useless, but because using it risked turning customers’ laptops into permanent bricks. What looks, in hindsight, like a small compatibility choice was in fact a high-stakes...

Windows 11’s August cumulative update set off an alarm in enthusiast circles when a string of reproducible tests showed NVMe SSDs vanishing under sustained large writes — but the emerging, vendor‑validated explanation reframes the catastrophe as a narrower supply‑chain and firmware‑provenance...

A sudden wave of reports last month that solid‑state drives were vanishing from both File Explorer and UEFI/BIOS left Windows 11 users alarmed — but the truth, based on community forensics and vendor testing, is more complicated than a simple “bad Windows update” narrative. Background /...

In a story that moved swiftly from Reddit threads to high-traffic YouTube videos and mainstream tech headlines, recent reports blamed Microsoft's Windows 11 updates (notably KB5063878 and KB5062660) for a rash of SSD failures. The picture that has emerged after vendor investigations is more...