update management

Microsoft’s leadership has finally acknowledged what large swaths of the Windows community have been saying for months: Windows 11’s day-to-day reliability has drifted below acceptable levels, and the company is redirecting engineering priorities to fix the problems that matter most to real...

Microsoft’s public-facing concession — that Windows 11 faces a “trust problem” and that the company will prioritize reliability and user confidence through 2026 — has jolted an already uneasy Windows ecosystem and forced a rare moment of corporate accountability from Redmond. WebProNews reported...

Microsoft's pledge to “swarm” Windows 11 engineers onto core issues marks a rare admission: the OS's reputation for reliability and performance has eroded enough that leadership is reallocating resources to repair fundamentals rather than ship new features. The company says 2026 will be the year...

Microsoft’s recent flurry of announcements and product moves—spanning sensorized meeting-room displays, stronger protections for “data in use,” a commercial tie-up to bring Box storage tighter into Azure, and a problematic Windows 11 cumulative update that disrupted Azure Virtual Desktop...

Disabling Windows updates is a straightforward way to regain control over when your PC downloads patches and restarts, but it’s a choice that carries immediate convenience and long-term risk in equal measure; this feature story explains every practical method, the technical trade-offs, and a...

Microsoft’s post‑end‑of‑life handling for Windows 10 has taken an unexpected and troubling turn: users who are not enrolled in the Consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program are reporting that the familiar “Pause updates for 7 days” control in Settings is greyed out and replaced by an...

Microsoft has quietly shifted from a slow, optional rollout to an assertive distribution posture for the Windows 11 2025 feature update — Windows 11, version 25H2 — making the release available to all eligible PCs through Windows Update while simultaneously moving to protect consumer systems...

Microsoft pushed an out‑of‑band hotpatch on November 20, 2025 to stop a nagging reinstall loop that caused the November hotpatch KB5068966 to be repeatedly downloaded and reinstalled on some Windows 11 version 25H2 devices — a fix that restored sane update behavior but left hard lessons about...

Microsoft has published a targeted preparation update that organizations must install to ensure Windows 10 devices enrolled in the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program continue to receive security rollups and that ESU licensing is recognized correctly across managed environments. Background...

Microsoft has shifted the Microsoft Store's app‑update control from a permanent on/off toggle to a pause‑only model: turning "Update apps automatically" off now opens a dialog asking you to pause updates for a fixed period of 1–5 weeks rather than disabling automatic updates forever. This change...

A compact, enthusiast-focused utility that began life as a blunt instrument to bypass Microsoft’s Windows 11 installer checks has just gained a strikingly practical — and potentially controversial — new capability: an integrated Windows Update control suite that claims to pause or disable...

Flyoobe’s new 1.25 release bolts Windows 11 25H2 readiness to a deeper set of debloat tools and — most controversially — ships a built-in “Windows Update Tamer” that promises far more aggressive update controls than Windows exposes by default, including a claimed ability to pause updates for...

If you’re staring at a Windows 10 machine that’s nearing the end of support — or you simply tried Windows 11 and didn’t like it — switching to a free, user-friendly Linux distribution like Linux Mint is a practical alternative that can revive older hardware, protect your privacy, and get you...

Missing or silent Outlook alerts can quietly undermine schedules, cause missed meetings, and fracture workflows — and fixing them is often a matter of methodically checking a handful of settings rather than reinstalling your life. This guide walks through every practical step to restore Outlook...

Microsoft’s October deadline for Windows 10 support has arrived like a ringing bell for an industry that—by several measures—wasn’t ready: large numbers of consumer and corporate endpoints still run Windows 10, many organisations face compatibility and budget constraints, and the safety net...

Microsoft has quietly moved another piece of hybrid management from "manual chore" to "policy-driven automation" with the public preview of Auto Agent Upgrade for Azure Arc–enabled servers — a feature that will automatically keep the Azure Connected Machine agent current across on‑premises...

Last month’s Windows 11 patch KB5063878 triggered a flurry of alarm among power users and IT pros after a narrow set of SSDs began disappearing under heavy write conditions — a regression serious enough that some users experienced irrecoverable data loss. This feature walks through a practical...

Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” arrives as a careful, pragmatic point release that sharpens the desktop experience, brings native fingerprint enrollment to the mainstream Mint workflow, and extends hardware support via Ubuntu’s HWE stack—without forcing users into a disruptive upgrade path. Background...

Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” lands as a conservative, practical refresh: the same familiar desktop experience with a newer kernel and hardware enablement, a modest Cinnamon update that nudges Wayland forward, and a handful of user-facing polish including native fingerprint setup and improved update...

Azure Arc gives Hyper‑V administrators a new, cloud‑centric management plane that complements — not replaces — established tools like System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), Windows Admin Center (WAC), Hyper‑V Manager and PowerShell, and this guide walks through practical onboarding...