virtual secure mode

Microsoft’s January update headache widened again this month: a restart-on-shutdown regression that began with the January 13, 2026 cumulative updates and was initially tied to System Guard Secure Launch on Windows 11 has now been confirmed to affect some Windows 10 systems with Virtual Secure...

Microsoft’s shutdown bug — the one that turns “Shut down” into an unintended all‑nighter — has widened its footprint: what began as a Windows 11 23H2 problem tied to System Guard Secure Launch now affects a subset of Windows 10 deployments as well. Administrators and power users discovered that...

Microsoft’s January security rollup introduced a startling regression: machines that should have powered off instead sprang back to life, and the problem has proven both widespread and stubborn — now confirmed to affect not only Windows 11 but certain Windows 10 configurations as well...

Microsoft’s vendor acknowledgment that the January security roll-up is causing some Windows 10 PCs to restart instead of shutting down marks a rare and uncomfortable convergence: an end‑of‑life OS still receiving paid security updates, and a modern, low‑level security feature colliding with...

Microsoft has confirmed that its January 13, 2026 security rollup for Windows — published as KB5073455 for Windows 11 version 23H2 — introduced a configuration-dependent regression that can leave some systems unable to shut down or enter hibernation. Affected machines with System Guard Secure...

Microsoft’s own release notes now show the shutdown-and-hibernate regression that began with January’s Patch Tuesday is not fully fixed: while Microsoft’s mid‑January out‑of‑band (OOB) update addressed many machines, a residual population of PCs — specifically those with System Guard Secure...

Windows 11 users and administrators woke up in mid‑January to a puzzling and disruptive problem: after applying Microsoft’s January cumulative update some PCs refused to power off cleanly. Instead of shutting down or reliably entering hibernation, affected systems often restarted or remained...

Microsoft has confirmed that a January security update triggered a configuration‑dependent shutdown and hibernation regression on Windows devices, and — while an out‑of‑band (OOB) patch fixed many cases — machines with System Guard Secure Launch that also have Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) enabled...

Microsoft’s January update mess has proven more stubborn than first advertised: the shutdown and hibernation regression that surfaced after the January 13, 2026 cumulative updates is still troubling a subset of Windows installations, and Microsoft’s own release notes now acknowledge the problem...

Microsoft’s shutdown bug is no longer a narrow oddity hiding in enterprise telemetry — it’s a demonstrable, multi‑stage reliability failure that touched a surprising range of Windows configurations and forced emergency patches, workarounds, and hard operational choices for IT teams and power...

Microsoft’s latest admission that the January hibernation fix still isn’t universal turns what began as a narrow, configuration‑dependent regression into a broader reliability headache for enterprises and device makers alike. On January 30 Microsoft updated its Release Health dashboard to...

Microsoft has confirmed that the shutdown-and-hibernation regression triggered by January’s Patch Tuesday affects a broader set of enterprise-grade configurations than originally disclosed: an out-of-band fix addressed many Secure Launch cases, but systems using Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) remain...

Microsoft's January update cycle has left a stubborn aftertaste for administrators and security‑minded users: even after an out‑of‑band (OOB) fix, machines running Windows 11 with System Guard Secure Launch — and, in some cases, Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) enabled — can still fail to honor...

Microsoft has published an advisory describing CVE-2025-48813, a Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) spoofing vulnerability that arises when a VSM key is accepted past its expiration date—allowing an authorized local attacker to spoof identities or services inside the VSM isolation boundary. The issue is...

In this video I spent some time with David Hepkin, a member of the Windows engineering team working on Hyper-V, to get a better understanding of the Windows 10 Virtual Secure Mode. I've had the good fortune of learning a lot about Isolated User Mode with several folks in the kernel team. In this...