Windows Tips

Xbox's disc-to-digital feature is now being tested across the Xbox Insider program, and the interesting part isn't simply that a physical game can unlock digital access.

Microsoft has fixed the Windows 11 KB5124008 bug that broke Plan9 host-folder sharing for some Linux virtual machines, including environments used by Claude Cowork and the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Microsoft announced Project Zenith this week, a preconfigured Windows 11 setup built for developers who want to run 30B+ parameter AI models locally, according to Microsoft's announcement. Microsoft Project Zenith Windows 11 targets developers trying to cut recurring cloud-token bills, not casual users hoping for a free feature drop.

Microsoft has confirmed that its September 8, 2026 security update can knock out USB audio on some Windows 11 PCs, cutting off sound from speakers, headsets, and microphones that connect over USB. If you're trying to find a Windows 11 update broke USB audio workaround, the scope here is narrower than "audio is broken" across the board, and the only reported workaround that may help is limited to one of two failure patterns showing up in reports.

Outlook throwing "Your message can't be displayed right now" sends most people straight to a search bar looking for a one-click fix. There isn't one published yet. The Microsoft material reviewed for this guide does not document a fix for this exact wording. What follows is a troubleshooting heuristic for narrowing down whether the problem is a local app glitch, a single damaged message, an account-level issue, or something happening on Microsoft's end. It's not a Microsoft-confirmed diagnostic...

A writer at Eurogamer traded in a PS2 and more than 100 games the day after a single session with Halo 3 at a colleague's apartment. Not gradually. Overnight. That is what a system-seller looks like: not a game that rewards console ownership, but one that creates it from nothing.

A console with a game disc inserted should, by most players' intuitions, be able to run that game. During Sunday night's Xbox outage, that assumption failed. The Xbox outage blocked disc games alongside digital titles for roughly 15 to 16 hours, not because the discs were unreadable, but because a backend licensing service that Xbox depends on stopped working.

This guide walks through how to update GPU drivers in Windows 11: when to let Windows Update handle it, when to install a manufacturer's package instead, and when Device Manager is actually the right tool for the job rather than the default one.

Can MS Paint run Doom? Yes, technically, though the honest answer takes some unpacking. Doom is fully playable inside Microsoft Paint right now, complete with sound, music, and a frame rate that hits 35 fps at the game's native resolution (The Verge, today). The project is called DoomPaint, built by Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure's CTO and a Technical Fellow (Windows Central, today). It loads the genuine shareware DOOM1.WAD file and sustains Doom's classic 35 tics-per-second cadence at...

Microsoft is moving Teams and Copilot web traffic to new addresses this month, and organizations with locked-down firewalls could lose legitimate access if network teams don't update their allowlists first, Computerworld reported on September 11.

Microsoft marked Windows 365's five year anniversary two weeks ago with a disclosure that tens of thousands of organizations worldwide now run Cloud PCs in some form, according to Microsoft's anniversary post. The company paired that figure with a batch of Windows 365 new features that push the platform well past its original 2021 pitch of "Windows from any device," adding options for part-time workers, shared kiosks, contingency access, developers, and now autonomous AI agents. Customer...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for September 2026 shipped fixes for 973 vulnerabilities, including 113 rated Critical, making it the largest Patch Tuesday on record, according to Automox. Cisco Talos counts the same 973 CVEs and 113 Critical bugs. Rapid7 puts Microsoft's own tally slightly higher, at 974, and counted 999 vulnerabilities total once it added 25 non-Microsoft CVEs reviewed in the same release. None of the three publications explain the small gap between their counts.

Microsoft has until October 31, 2026, to explain why it waited until December 22, 2025, to disclose a June 2013 internal presentation now central to the Microsoft ValueLicensing antitrust lawsuit. The document, titled "Second-Hand Software" and referred to in a new UK Competition Appeal Tribunal consent order as a "Known Adverse Document," sat undisclosed for roughly four years after ValueLicensing first filed suit in April 2021, according to The Register.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Microsoft announced its new Xbox disc-to-digital program on August 26, with testing opening to Xbox Insiders on August 31. The feature lets owners of "most" Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs unlock a digital copy of a game simply by inserting the disc and launching it.

Windows 10 reached its end-of-support date on October 14, 2025, when Microsoft stopped shipping free security and feature updates for the OS (HotHardware reported, last year). Microsoft also offers Extended Security Updates in specific licensing and cloud scenarios, including Volume Licensing plans, Windows 365 Cloud PCs, and Azure Virtual Desktop machines (Microsoft Learn), but that's separate from the free upgrade path this guide covers. If you'd rather upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11...

Microsoft will begin switching on Memory Integrity, along with Virtualization-based Security where it isn't already running, on eligible Windows 11 machines through next month's Patch Tuesday update. That's according to Peter Waxman, a group program manager at Microsoft, whose comments on the rollout were reported by The Verge yesterday, with the October timing confirmed by OC3D yesterday.

Microsoft has spelled out a Windows platform framework that lets apps request an age signal tied to a user's Microsoft Account, and it's calling that framework the Windows Age API. Microsoft says age verification is available in Microsoft Storefronts in Singapore, Brazil, and Australia; in Australia, the announced requirement specifically extends to Microsoft Store and Xbox storefronts (Microsoft Source LATAM, this week). Whether Xbox purchases in Singapore and Brazil see the same check isn't...

Sony packs most of the useful controls for its headphones and earbuds into a phone app, and if you've ever wanted to flip noise-canceling modes or tweak EQ from a laptop instead, there hasn't been an official way to do it. A trio of open-source projects, including one called Sony Device Center, now claim to bring that control to Windows. The Sony Device Center Windows app is the newest and most talked-about of the three, but "claim" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Nothing reviewed for...

If you searched for "Microsoft Teams unable to make or receive calls," the real picture is narrower than that phrase suggests. BleepingComputer reported two separate problems on Sept. 4, not one sweeping outage: some Windows users couldn't get the Teams desktop client to open, and separately, some Mac users were blocked from joining calls and meetings.

Microsoft's Microsoft 365 Copilot app now goes by a different name: Microsoft Copilot. That's not just cosmetic. As part of the same round of Microsoft 365 Copilot app updates, Microsoft is merging existing Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot installations into one client on Windows and Mac devices.

Xbox's disc-to-digital program is no longer just a leaked roadmap item. Microsoft officially announced the feature on August 26, and Xbox Insiders began testing it on August 31.

Ask "what is Microsoft Copilot" and you'll still get several different correct answers, because Microsoft uses the Copilot name across a unified chat app, AI features inside Word and Excel, a class of Windows PCs, work-account licenses, and tools for building custom agents.

Windows 11 offers several built-in ways to capture a screen, and each one saves the result somewhere different. Pick the wrong shortcut, and you can end up with an image stuck on the clipboard with no file to show for it, or a PNG saved somewhere you weren't expecting.

Microsoft confirmed yesterday that Activision is taking over Halo, with the Call of Duty publisher developing the next flagship game in the franchise through a team built specifically for that job. Halo Studios, the current caretaker of the series, isn't building that next game and instead shifts into a support role for existing titles. The confirmation came from an internal memo by Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty, shared by The Verge.

Xbox confirmed today that Activision is taking over development of the next flagship Halo game, handing the project to a newly formed team inside the Call of Duty publisher. The announcement arrived alongside 268 additional job cuts across Halo Studios and other Xbox teams, detailed in an internal memo from chief content officer Matt Booty titled "Continuing Our Reset" (Game Informer, today; The Verge, today).

Bluetooth speaker problems rarely have one cause. Microsoft's own support documentation splits them into distinct categories: pairing failures, connection failures, and audio-output failures, each requiring a different fix (Microsoft Support, 3 months ago; Microsoft Support, 3 months ago). Treat all three as the same problem and you'll end up applying the wrong fix for hours.

Windows 11 tucks a small bell icon next to the clock to flag unread alerts, and the Windows 11 taskbar notification icon settings that control it live in one spot: Settings > System > Notifications. This guide covers how to add or remove the notification bell icon on the taskbar in Windows 11 using that toggle, what to try if the checkbox goes missing or does nothing, and how to tell a hidden bell apart from a Notification Center that's actually broken.

If the dedicated Copilot key on your laptop keeps opening an AI assistant you never asked for, here's how to remap the Copilot key in Windows 11 so it does something useful instead. Use Windows Settings if you want the key to open Search or a specific app from its built-in list. Use PowerToys Keyboard Manager if you want the key to fire a keyboard shortcut or open whatever's pinned to your taskbar. Turning the key into a standalone Ctrl is also possible through PowerToys, though it behaves...

Vivaldi shipped a fifth minor update for Desktop 8.2 on September 18, 2026, just one day after minor update 4 landed.

Microsoft released the Windows 11 KB5124010 update on September 22 as an optional non-security preview for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

Microsoft released Visual Studio Code 1.139.0 to the Stable channel on September 23, 2026, replacing the sparse Insiders page that had appeared earlier in the month.

An ASUS laptop running slow on Windows 11 rarely comes down to one mystery cause. It's usually a process using too much CPU, memory pressure, low storage space, an older hard drive, heat buildup, or a power setting working against you. Sometimes more than one problem is involved.

Game Pass subscribers who rely heavily on cloud streaming have a change to plan around starting in November: unlimited Xbox Cloud Gaming is going away.

In December 2017, Microsoft and Qualcomm pitched a new category of Windows Always Connected PCs that would behave more like smartphones: instant wake, long battery life, and cellular connectivity without hunting for a hotspot.

"Excel multiple values in one cell" can mean two completely different things.

Every time a Surface Dial clicks under a fingertip or a Surface Slim Pen 2 pulses after a completed gesture, three things happen in sequence: something detects the input, software decides how to respond, and a small motor produces the sensation felt. That pipeline sits at the center of Microsoft Surface touch interface design, and Microsoft has now documented, at least partially, how it works at the operating system level.

Is Microsoft 365 down right now? Mostly recovered, not fully closed. As of Wednesday morning, Microsoft's own telemetry shows service availability holding stable above 99%, though the company has kept the incident open while it finishes remediation work (NHSmail Support, today).

Microsoft formally introduced Project Zenith today, building on the developer-optimized Windows 11 experience it previewed at Build 2026. Zenith is a preconfigured "ready-to-code" setup that ships with coding tools and developer-tuned settings built in. It launches first on AMD's Ryzen AI Halo platform, and AMD showed the first Project Zenith device, a mini PC, on stage at IFA earlier today.

Starting in October 2026, Windows 11 quality updates will begin automatically enabling Memory Integrity, a kernel-level security feature, on eligible PCs where it isn't already active.