Microsoft recently changed the release notes to clarify that two widget-related features are not available in KB5070311 and will arrive in later updates. Those include the following:

• [Widgets] You can choose a default dashboard in Widget Board settings. When live weather is showing, the Widget Board opens the first dashboard in your navigation bar instead of the most recently used one, making the experience consistent. To set your default dashboard, open the full-page Widgets Settings by selecting Settings in the navigation bar, then move your preferred dashboard to the top.
• [Widgets] Dashboard icons in the Widget navigation bar now show numbers that correspond to the number of alerts from that dashboard. Navigation bar badges clear automatically when you leave a dashboard, making it easy to track what’s new.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Microsoft has updated the changelog for KB5070311. In December, the company said that taskbar animations were no longer available (no explanation provided), and the ability to AI-categorized photos in the Microsoft Photos app using semantic search was removed as well (again, without explanations).

At the same time, Microsoft added a word about the Recommended section in File Explorer for your frequently used files and the AltGr layer for the Arabic 101 keyboard layout.

While it is nice to see proper communication from Microsoft, the company has recently been struggling with putting out consistent changelogs. Enthusiasts have been tracking all sorts of mistakes and mentions of non-existing features in Windows 11 preview builds and cumulative updates. Add to that the fact that not a single month goes by without a major Windows bug (some of which are quite hilarious) introduced by the latest Patch Tuesday updates, and you get quite a grim picture of the current state of Windows affairs.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 6:27 pm AEST (my time).

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Well, the reason is very simple, especially for people who work in corporate IT environments. The strategic decision behind not releasing updates on Monday is to give IT admins and workplaces some space to look into issues from the previous week (and perhaps even the weekend).

This made Tuesday the ideal candidate because it meant that when Microsoft rolled out Patch Tuesday updates at 10 am Pacific Time, IT admins would have the rest of the week to deploy them, monitor impact, and resolve any issues that may arise. Microsoft itself monitors bugs reported by customers, both enterprise and consumers, so that it can develop patches and release them out-of-band if necessary.

And since updates are released on a monthly basis, updates can be beefier and more significant, rather than requiring IT admins to always be on their toes to deploy tiny patches as soon as possible.

Although the trend of integrating AI into all systems possible is gaining speed recently, Microsoft has been using AI-assisted technologies for almost a decade to ensure that this Patch Tuesday update goes as smoothly as possible. Microsoft's Vice President, Product Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery, John Cable, noted in 2018 that:

We continuously collect update experience data and retrain our models to learn which devices will have a positive update experience, and where we may need to wait until we have higher confidence in a great experience. Our overall rollout objective is for a safe and reliable update, which means we only go as fast as is safe.

While this predictably in cadence down to the specific day and time gives IT admins and organizations in general more time to prepare for Windows updates, most of us here at Neowin know that this is not a perfect process. Despite Microsoft's planning, testing, telemetry, and feedback from customers, bugs still creep through. But perhaps that is expected when developing an operating system used by hundreds of millions of users.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 6:25 pm AEST (my time).

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Previously, KDE Plasma would incorrectly warn users about an empty waste toner box. This happened because the system was treating all printer components as standard consumables, like ink or toner, which start full and are replaced when empty.

A waste toner box, however, is a receptacle that starts empty and needs to be replaced when it gets full. The system saw a level of '0' and threw an error. Now, Plasma can properly distinguish between consumables and receptacles, and it will only notify you when your waste toner box is actually full.

The KDE team also brought KRunner settings and pin buttons to the right, just like in other Plasma widgets, and changed the default desktop switching and Present Windows shortcuts to use the Meta key.

When it comes to bug fixes to expect from 6.6, one patch addresses a "surprisingly common" issue where KWin could crash if you frantically wiggled the pointer to stop a monitor from going to sleep.

Other fixes include resolving a KWin crash that occurred when deleting a virtual desktop that still had windows on it and another that fixed a bug where tooltips from widget popups could get stuck on the panel.

Moving on to Plasma 6.7, there is now a dedicated UI for configuring shared printers on Windows networks. In addition to that, the Wi-Fi & Networking page in System Settings now uses clearer security labels, correctly showing WPA2 and WPA3 support.

Plasma 6.7 will also bring a fix for an issue that caused long boot menu entries to be cut off in the Breeze GRUB styling and another that broke KRunner’s Activities plugin from finding any activities.

Plasma 6.5.6, the sixth bugfix release for Plasma 6.5, is scheduled to drop on the 10th of March, and it will bring different fixes including a solution for a KWin crash that could sometimes happen after periods of idleness.

Another fix addresses a crash that happened when you disabled widgets in the System Tray and clicked the "OK" button instead of "Apply". Finally, Spectacle will once again remember the last location where you saved a screenshot.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 6:24 pm AEST (my time).

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Windows 11’s built‑in Sandbox feature has been hit by a widespread bug that makes it completely unusable for many users. Reports show the tool stalls at launch for nearly ten minutes before failing with error 0x800705b4, even after reinstalling the feature or running SFC/DISM scans. Multiple Windows 11 builds appear affected, and users across Microsoft Q&A, , and forums say they’ve been waiting weeks for an official fix.

On Windows 11, the Windows Sandbox features have been broken for some time. However, this issue is flying under the radar because Microsoft has yet to acknowledge it or provide answers to affected users.

If you are getting the 0x800705B4 error when launching Windows Sandbox (version 0.5.3), you're not alone. I can trace this problem back to December 2025, when the "CompactProducer" user on GitHub filed a bug report.

In the open bug report, the user noted that Sandbox will get stuck loading for several minutes, and the error code 0x800705B4 shows up with the "This operating system returned because the timeout period expired" message.

This bug was first stopped after installing the build 26200.7309 (preview), which was part of the December 2025 update. In the same thread, someone else confirmed that the bug was also found after installing build 26200.7462, which ended up being the final version of the December update. However, the same error can also be found after installing the January 2026 Security Update (build 26200.7623).

Although I wasn't available to replicate this issue on a device running build 26200.7623, I can confirm that this problem exists in the operating system, because I stumbled upon this bug in the latest preview of Windows 11 in the Dev Channel.

Rufus 4.12 Beta does not contain any new features, but there are several Windows-related and general enhancements. For example, the app is now better at detecting Dev Drives and understanding their layouts. It has also received improved ISO extraction error and conflicting process reporting, a fix for a security vulnerability in Fido script execution, fixes for errors when saving images to paths with spaces, and more.

Here is the full changelog:

• Filter out the new Bitdefender VHDs
• Filter disallowed characters in local account names
• Improve Microsoft Dev Drive detection (#2873, courtesy of @MartinKuschnik)
• Improve the pre-formatting partition cleanup code
• Improve error reporting on ISO extraction issues
• Improve detection of drives with long hardware IDs (typically SSDs) (#2894)
• Improve conflicting process reporting
• Improve support for Nutanix (#2884) and umbrelOS ISOs
• Fix a TOCTOU vulnerability in Fido script execution (CVE-2026-2398, reported by @independent-arg)
• Fix replacement vulnerabilities for diskcopy.dll and oscdimg.exe
• Fix FFU image creation being erroneously invocated, when trying to save an ISO image (#2889)
• Fix saving of ISO images to paths that contain spaces (#2829)
• Update UEFI:NTFS and UEFI DBXs to latest

You can download Rufus 4.12 from the official website or the app's GitHub repository. If you want to learn how to use Rufus to bypass Windows 11's hardware and software limitations, check out our guide here.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 4:46 am AEST (my time).

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Until now, Microsoft’s new calendar experience has been optional, but with the toggle removal, the new calendar is mandatory, reducing customer choice. The rollout is taking place worldwide and will affect standard commercial tenants, leaving no path to access the legacy calendar.

The benefit of using the legacy calendar was its speed and familiarity. Microsoft has built the new calendar to mirror the new Outlook for Windows which uses a WebView2 architecture to standardize the experience across the web and the app. Now the experience in Teams is standardized too. We have already had Christmas and New Year downtime from work, and now users will be slowed down again as they retrain their muscle memory as to where all the relocated buttons for scheduling, meeting notes, and view switching are.

Not only will employees need to familiarize themselves with the new layout, but it is also likely to obsolete a lot of documentation. Every how-to guide, training video, and onboarding PDF that includes snapshots of the old calendar will now need to be recreated to match the new experience. It is also likely going to drive up IT help desk tickets as users look for their familiar calendar.

One of the main drivers for this change from Microsoft is that the new calendar integrated Copilot and Microsoft Places. For businesses, these features come as paid add-ons so if you work somewhere that doesn’t have these add-ons purchased, you can expect more useless clutter.

Microsoft announced the removal of the toggle via Message ID MC1129730 in the Microsoft Admin Center.

Let us know in the comments if your toggle is gone.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 4:43 am AEST (my time).

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ReactOS is a rather interesting open-source project that is considered by many to be a direct and free drop-in replacement for Windows, especially if you don't want to be locked in to Microsoft's proprietary ecosystem. One of its goals is to allow customers to run Windows apps and drivers in an open-source environment (reminiscent of Windows XP) that they can trust, and it has made many advancements in this regard. It supports Microsoft's FAT file system, Registry caching, native .zip handling, and is even capable of running Microsoft's iconic Hover! in fullscreen. Now, the project is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

In a commemorative blog post, ReactOS' Core Developer Carl Bialorucki has shed some light on the history of the OS, noting that the first commit to its source tree was made 30 years ago this day.

Between 1996 and 2003, ReactOS was still finding its footing after the stalling of the FreeWin95 project, which aimed to implement a clone of Windows 95. ReactOS changed this direction a bit and set out to build a Windows NT-like kernel, after which drivers were written for it. Eric Kohl, the person who wrote the original storage driver stack for ReactOS had the following to say about the initiative's early days:

I think I found ReactOS while searching for example code for my contributions to the WINE project. I subscribed to the mailing list and followed the discussions for a few days. The developers were discussing the future of shell.exe, a little command line interpreter that could only change drives and directories and execute programs. A few days [later] I had started to convert the FreeDOS command.com into a Win32 console application, because I wanted to extend it to make it 4DOS compatible. 4DOS was a very powerful command line interpreter. On December 4th, 1998 I introduced myself and suggested to use my converted FreeDOS command.com as the future ReactOS cmd.exe. I had a little conversation with Jason Filby and Rex Joliff, the CVS repository maintainer. I sent my cmd.exe code to Rex and he applied it to the repository. After applying a few more cmd-related patches over the next weeks, Rex asked me whether I would like to have write-access to the repository. I accepted the offer.

 

[...] There was always an open and friendly atmosphere. It was and still is always nice to talk to other developers. No fights, no wars, like in some other projects.

ReactOS finally reached version 0.1.0 in February 2003 with a command line interface (CLI) that was bootable from a CD. You can see it in action below:

2003-2006 was a tricky period where there were advancements in development through a new desktop GUI and new drivers, but contributions had to be frozen after concerns grew about contributors using proprietary Windows code in ReactOS. This prompted a full audit of the existing code, as negligence could lead to a lawsuit from Microsoft.

Version 0.3.x was worked on between 2006-2016, which saw the introduction of networking support, a package manager, and the UniATA driver to support SATA storage devices and partitions greater than 8GB in size.

This brings us to ReactOS 0.4.x today which has support for kernel debugging using WinDbg when compiled with MSVC, a new graphical shell that is very similar in architecture to Windows Explorer, and more.

Despite being in development for 30 years at this point, interest in the project hasn't waned. In terms of what's next, Bialorucki has talked about several out of tree projects which may be integrated into ReactOS at some point. These include a new build environment for developers, new NTFS and ATA drivers, kernel and usermode address space layout randomization (ASLR), support for modern GPU drivers built on WDDM, and a lot more. If this piques your interest, you can financially contribute to ReactOS here or collaborate on GitHub here.

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Posted Friday 23 January 2026 at 5:47 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft is making it easier for developers to build Windows apps. The company has just announced the public preview of winapp CLI, an open-source command-line interface designed to streamline often complex parts of Windows app development.

"Windows development often involves managing multiple SDKs, creating and editing multiple manifests, generating certificates and navigating intricate packaging requirements," Metulev explained in the announcement. The goal? "Unify these tasks into a single CLI, letting you focus on building great apps rather than fighting with configuration."

At its core, winapp tackles setup headaches with a single command. If you’re a developer building Windows apps, running the winapp init command in your project root will bootstrap everything. The command downloads the Windows SDK and App SDK packages, generates projections (starting with C++/WinRT), creates manifests and assets, handles certificate generation, and sets up dependencies.

For team or multi-machine work, the winapp restore command recreates the exact environment from your config file. Microsoft is also including GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps tasks for enhancing CI/CD pipelines.

Microsoft is also adding support for package identity for debugging to the winapp CLI. This makes accessing modern Windows APIs (like Windows AI, security features, notifications, or shell integrations) much easier. Normally, you'd have to fully package and install your app just to test one feature. Now, a simple winapp create-debug-identity my-app.exe adds a temporary identity to your executable, allowing you to quickly test and debug.

The winapp CLI is still in the early stages of its lifecycle. Microsoft has made it available to the public primarily to gather early feedback, as the development is still underway. If you’re trying out the new CLI, don’t be surprised if you encounter a few issues here and there.

The Windows App Development CLI is available now in public preview. Visit Microsoft’s official GitHub repository for documentation, guides, and to report potential issues you encounter using the early version of winapp.

Read the full announcement on Windows Blog

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Posted Friday 23 January 2026 at 12:27 pm AEST (my time).

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Some of these features have already been announced and are confirmed to be coming soon, and others are yet to be announced and may be canceled at any time. Either way, we've tried to make this as all encompassing as possible, though there's likely even more features to come that we're yet to know about.

Microsoft is also expected to launch two new versions of Windows 11 this year, version 26H1, which will be available exclusively on new PCs with a Snapdragon X2 SoC this spring, and version 26H2, which is expected to come to everybody this fall.

Ask Copilot on the Taskbar

Windows 11 users are dealing with yet another update headache, and this time, Microsoft is openly telling people to uninstall the problematic patch. Update KB5074109 has triggered a wave of bug reports ranging from performance issues to broken features, and the company has now published guidance urging affected users to roll it back. It’s the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Windows updates causing more problems than they solve.

On January 13, 2026, Microsoft started the rollout of the 2026-01 Security Update (KB5074109) (26200.7623) for Windows 11 version 25H2 and 24H2, but shortly after, a number of reports from users started to emerge with different complaints.

For example, we've seen reports of apps not working correctly, resulting in error messages such as 0x803F8001. Also, a small number of users have reported random black screens after installing the update KB5074109 on devices featuring NVIDIA GPUs.

Now, if you use the legacy version of the Outlook app, Microsoft has acknowledged (via WindowsLatest) problems with accounts configured using the POP protocol and profiles with PST files, where users may experience "Outlook hangs and does not exit properly" issues. According to the notes, the problem may occur for any profile that has PSTs stored on .

Since the company still doesn't have a permanent fix and the workaround "may be complicated," it's recommending users to either use the web version of the service, relocate the PST files out of OneDrive, or uninstall the build 26200.7623 from the computer.

Also, recently, the company was forced to release an Out-of-band (OOB) update, KB5077744, for versions 25H2 and 24H2 to address sign-in failures during Remote Desktop connections. Furthermore, the software giant released an emergency update for version 23H2 (which is already out of support) to address a problem that prevented users from properly shutting down their devices.

In this how-to guide, I'll outline the easy steps to uninstall the latest update of Windows 11 to mitigate the current issues.

How to uninstall update KB5074109 from Windows 11

To uninstall the January 2026 Security Update from your computer, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Windows Update.
3. Click the "Pause for 1 week" button to prevent the system from reinstalling the update.

• Quick tip: You can also use these instructions to permanently disable Windows Update.

4. Click the Update history page on the right side.

On Windows 11, performing basic maintenance can help extend the lifespan of your computer. In this guide, I outline (several) practical ways to keep your device running reliably for years to come.

Computer hardware is no longer getting cheaper. System memory prices continue to increase with no sign of slowing, storage costs are climbing, and even entry-level computers now cost significantly more than they did just a few years ago. Replacing a perfectly usable device has become an expensive decision rather than a routine upgrade.

The good news is that Windows 11 includes tools that (when used correctly) can help you extend the usable life of your current system, and in this set of instructions, I'll show you close to a dozen ways to complete this task.

In this how-to guide, I'll dive into simple tips to help you keep your device for years to come.

Top 10 maintenance tips everyone should know on Windows 11

On Windows 11, you can take many steps to help extend your device's usable life, and here are 10 of them.

1. Software maintenance is a way to avoid costly upgrades

When memory and storage prices are high, inefficiencies become expensive. A bloated system consumes more memory, uses more storage space, and creates the illusion that hardware is failing when it is not.

Keeping the operating system clean and stable ensures you are using every gigabyte of memory and storage you already paid for.

Control apps at startup

To prevent specific apps from running at startup, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Apps.
3. Click the Startup page on the right side.

Developers have been comparing the strengths and weaknesses of Anthropic’s Claude Code, Anysphere’s Cursor, and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot for months now, looking for a winner. While no individual AI coding tool manages to be the best at every task that software developers do each day, Claude Code is increasingly coming out on top for its ease of use, both for developers and nontechnical users.

It seems like Microsoft agrees, as sources tell me the company is now encouraging thousands of its employees from some of its most prolific teams to pick up Claude Code and get coding, even if they’re not developers.

Microsoft first started adopting Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 model inside its developer division in June last year, before favoring it for paid users of GitHub Copilot several months later. Now, Microsoft is going a step beyond using Anthropic’s AI models and widely adopting Claude Code across its biggest engineering teams.

Microsoft’s CoreAI team, the new AI engineering group led by former Meta engineering chief Jay Parikh, has been testing Claude Code in recent months, and last week Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices division were being asked to install Claude Code. This division is responsible for Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Bing, Edge, Surface, and more.

Even employees without any coding experience are being encouraged to experiment with Claude Code, to allow designers and project managers to prototype ideas. Microsoft has also approved the use of Claude Code across all of its code and repositories for its Business and Industry Copilot teams.

Software engineers at Microsoft are now expected to use both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot and give feedback comparing the two, I’m told. Microsoft sells GitHub Copilot as its AI coding tool of choice to its customers, but if these broad internal pilot programs are successful, then it’s possible the company could even eventually sell Claude Code directly to its cloud customers.

Microsoft is now one of Anthropic’s top customers, according to a recent report from The Information. The software maker is also counting selling Anthropic AI models toward Azure sales quotas, which is unusual given Microsoft typically only offers its salespeople incentives for homegrown products or models from OpenAI.

Microsoft’s decision to adopt Claude Code more broadly among its engineering teams certainly looks like a vote of confidence in Anthropic’s AI tools over its own, especially as it’s encouraging nontechnical employees to try out coding. But the reality is that Microsoft’s developers are likely to use a mix of AI tools, and adopting Claude Code is another part of that tool set.

“Companies regularly test and trial competing products to gain a better understanding of the market landscape,” says Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s communications chief, in a statement to Notepad. “OpenAI continues to be our primary partner and model provider on frontier models, and we remain committed to our long-term partnership.”

While Microsoft remains committed to OpenAI, it is increasingly working with Anthropic to bring its models and tools to Microsoft’s own teams and the software it sells to customers. Microsoft and Anthropic signed a deal in November that allows Microsoft Foundry customers to get access to Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5. The deal also involves Anthropic committing to purchasing $30 billion of Azure compute capacity.

Microsoft has also started favoring Anthropic’s Claude models inside Microsoft 365 apps and Copilot recently, using them in specific apps or features where Anthropic’s models have proved more capable than OpenAI’s counterparts.

The big question here is, what does the increased use of Claude Code at Microsoft mean for its more than 100,000 code repositories? Microsoft told me last year that 91 percent of its engineering teams use GitHub Copilot and a variety of teams have been using the AI tool to speed up mundane tasks. Microsoft’s use of AI tools has been largely restricted to software engineers, but with Claude Code and Claude Cowork, Anthropic is increasingly focused on making coding and non-coding tasks more approachable, thanks to AI agent capabilities.

Microsoft is embracing the ease of use of Claude Code to allow more nontechnical employees to commit code using AI, and this broad pilot will certainly highlight the challenges and benefits of that shift. It also puts further pressure on junior developer roles, with fears in the industry that these roles are increasingly disappearing because of AI. Microsoft just took another big step toward a future where more autonomous AI agents are creating code, further wrestling control from its software engineers.

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Posted Friday 23 January 2026 at 4:17 am AEST (my time).

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For starters, the AI-powered Places experience is being made available to all users who have access to Teams and Outlook. This change makes Places available to the following licenses:

• Microsoft 365 E3
• Microsoft 365 E5
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Outlook 365 E1
• Outlook 365 E3
• Outlook 365 E5
• Exchange Online
• Additional Teams, Microsoft 365, and Office 365 licenses

This makes both Places Finder and Places Explorer available to more users. The former offers more information about meeting locations, such as images and floorplans. Meanwhile, Places Explorer builds upon this experience by showing map-based reservations, people, and spaces in each location. This license update will kick off on April 1, 2026.

Next, Microsoft is renaming the Teams Shared Devices license to the Teams Shared Space license, allowing IT admins to manage assets like bookable desks, Teams panel, and shared spaces. This gives them access to capabilities for space management, desk booking, space analytics, and integration with third-party APIs. This license will also be available from April 1, but IT admins will not be required to make any change for existing infrastructure, apart from assigning additional spaces.

Additionally, Teams town halls and webinars, which were previously available only for Teams Premium customers, are also being extended to Teams Enterprise customers as well. By default, Enterprise licenses will allow hosting town halls and webinars with up to 3,000 attendees, but organizations can purchase attendee packs that allow them to increase the limit to 100,000 attendees. You can find more details about these changes here.

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Posted Friday 23 January 2026 at 4:16 am AEST (my time).

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Windows Central has highlighted forum threads over on Reddit and Microsoft support forums where tons of users are unable to open certain apps like Notepad, Snipping Tool, Alienware Command Center, and Xbox Ally and ROG Ally Armoury Crate apps, among others.

Customers are being greeted with error code 0x803F8001, noting that the app is not available for their account and they should make sure that they are signed in. This leaves users unable to utilize their desired apps, which can have impacts on productivity too, considering that Notepad is also among the list of impacted apps.

On the Microsoft support thread, an independent advisor has indicated that this error code is typically thrown when the Microsoft Store cannot validate app licenses, sometimes due to a corrupted cache. While this would indicate that if you reset the store cache, or uninstall and reinstall the app, you should be able to get rid of the error, this is not the case in Windows Central's testing. For the media outlet, installing the latest Patch Tuesday update (KB5074109) fixed the issue, but this has not been confirmed to be a reliable fix either.

We have not been able to reproduce the bug on our side, so the exact impact and scope of the problem is unclear. It's also unknown if it was triggered due to a Windows update or a bug in Microsoft servers. Regardless, it's been reported that Microsoft is aware of the issue so we should expect a fix to land soon.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 6:09 pm AEST (my time).

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Bob Pony, a known enthusiast in the Windows community, prepared Windows 7 and Vista images that come with security patches all the way to January 2026. This month, Microsoft released the final security update for Windows Vista, which was still getting security updates via Premium Assurance, ending essentially a nearly 7000-day run. Now, all those updates are included in a single ISO that you can burn to a USB or DVD (if you like doing things the old-fashioned way).

The same thing is available for Windows 7, arguably one of the best modern Windows releases in the history of Microsoft:

Although these images include a lot of patches and security updates, it is still worth mentioning that running Windows 7 and Vista on your main machine is a bad idea. But if you want to experiment with stuff that predates Windows 8 or make a retro build, these upgraded images will certainly come in handy.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 1:01 pm AEST (my time).

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Apple is planning a big Siri overhaul that will transform the voice assistant into an AI chatbot built directly into its iPhone and Mac, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The update is reportedly coming later this year and will replace the existing Siri interface, allowing users to interact with the assistant by both typing and talking, similar to the chatbots available from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.

As noted by Bloomberg, this change is separate from the AI-powered personalization features coming to Siri in the next few months. Like that updated version of Siri, the chatbot will reportedly use a custom Google Gemini AI model as part of the multiyear partnership both companies announced earlier this year, though this version will have capabilities that “significantly surpass” its AI personalization features, Bloomberg reports.

Apple reportedly plans to reveal Siri’s AI update, codenamed Campos, during its Worldwide Developers Conference in June before launching it in September. It will be the “primary new addition” to iOS 27, iPadOS, and macOS 27, with other updates focused mostly on stability, writes Gurman.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 1:00 pm AEST (my time).

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[Account Settings]

We’re updating the design of dialogs in “Accounts > Other Users” based on the modern WinUI framework with support for dark mode:

Please note that the visibility of the above dialog option depends on whether a domain-joined work or school account is configured on the device.

[Click to Do]

• The Copilot prompt suggestions in Click to Do will now load instantly. This change is not yet rolling out to Windows Insiders in the EEA (European Economic Area) or China.

[Desktop Background]

• You can now set .webp images for your desktop background in Settings > Personalization > Desktop Background.

Here is what was fixed:

[Taskbar and System Tray]

• Fixed an issue in the latest builds where, when the taskbar was set to autohide, it might appear before interacting with the bottom of the screen, blocking the use of apps in that area.
• Fixed a recent issue that was causing the Start menu, notification center, and quick settings to not open on click sometimes, although using the keyboard shortcuts for each of these still worked.

[Start menu]

• Fixed a memory leak when opening the Start menu, which could lead to performance issues over time.
• Fixed an issue for Arabic and Hebrew users, where the Start menu was opening on the wrong side of the screen when the taskbar icons weren’t centered.
• Fixed an issue where if you opened a folder of pinned apps in the Start menu and tried to pan it with touch, it would dismiss the Start menu.

[Bluetooth]

• Fixed an issue causing Bluetooth device battery level to not show for some Insiders after the latest builds, even though the devices supported it.

[Xbox full-screen experience for PC]

• This build fixes some unexpected app and game behavior when using FSE. We’re continuing to validate scenarios and, as such, keeping the known issue active for now. Thank you, Insiders, who have been sharing feedback!

[Login and Lock Screens]

• Fixed an issue that could cause the password icon to appear blank on the login screen.

[Settings]

• Fixed an issue causing Settings to crash when interacting with audio devices in the last two builds.
• Fixed an issue where the keyboard character repeat delay in Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Keyboard was backwards from how it was set in the backend.

[Other]

• Fixed a few issues with clipped text in msinfo32 when using a high display scaling.
• Fixed an issue impacting some Insiders where clicking on .appinstaller files to install MSIX packages was unexpectedly failing with an invalid argument error.
• Fixed an underlying issue that was causing Notepad to not display an underscore in text with certain fonts when your display was set to 125%.
• Fixed an underlying issue that could cause explorer.exe to hang when first logging into your PC if certain apps were configured as startup apps. This could make the taskbar not appear.

And here are the known bugs:

[Xbox full-screen experience for PC]

• Some apps may behave unexpectedly when using FSE, particularly those that expect to be locked to a given size or launch additional windows.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• We’re investigating an issue where, for some Insiders, apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.

[Display & Graphics]

• [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an issue causing secondary monitors to not display correctly and show black screens after the latest updates for a small number of Insiders.

[Click to Do]

• We’re working on the fix for an issue where the Microsoft 365 Copilot prompt box on selected images does not function if the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is not running.

You can find the announcement post on the official Windows Blogs website.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 12:52 pm AEST (my time).

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Also, the app now has a new welcoming experience that teaches users about Notepad's latest features. You can bring it up any time by pressing the megaphone icon in the top-right corner of the toolbar. Finally, Microsoft improved text streaming when using AI to generate text. When you write, rewrite, or summarize text in Notepad with local or cloud-based AI, results appear much faster and without the need for you to wait for the complete response.

Moving to Paint, we have version 11.2512.191.0. The main change in the update is the new Coloring Book feature. This AI-powered feature can generate coloring book pages using text prompts. You can type what you want to generate, and Paint will then create a set of pages for you to choose. The selected variant can be added to your canvas, copied, or saved for later use.

Note that Coloring Book in Paint is only available on Copilot+ PCs. Additionally, like AI-based features in Notepad, using the Coloring Book feature requires signing in with a Microsoft Account.

Besides AI, Paint is getting a new fill tolerance slider that controls how precisely the Fill tool applies color. This lets you have clean fills or more creative results.

The new features for Notepad and Paint are now rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11. You can read more about the updates in a post on the official Windows Blogs website.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 12:49 pm AEST (my time).

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Over on its Windows Release Health dashboard, Microsoft has begun tracking a new bug that causes applications to become unresponsive or trigger "unexpected errors" when communicating with a cloud storage service like OneDrive to read or write files.

Microsoft has also highlighted an example about how this may impact Outlook where PST files are being saved on OneDrive. The email client will freeze or fail to reopen unless you manually terminate its process in Task Manager, or restart your PC. Similarly, you may also experience problems in seeing content in your sent emails folder and the inbox. Basically, any app which interacts with a cloud storage service, like OneDrive or Dropbox, for saving or opening files may be impacted.

The culprit behind this issue is once again the recent Patch Tuesday update. The bug impacts the following platforms:

• Client: Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 11, version 24H2; Windows 11, version 23H2; Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019
• Server: Windows Server 2025; Windows Server, version 23H2; Windows Server 2022; Windows Server 2019

Microsoft is in the process of developing a fix for the latest nuisance. However, if you're the IT admin of an enterprise and want an immediate mitigation, your should reach out to Microsoft Support for business directly. The company has not detailed a concrete timeline regarding the general availability of a fix for all customers yet, but we might be in for another out-of-band (OOB) update by the looks of it.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 5:06 am AEST (my time).

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Unfortunately for users, the Patch Tuesday update has some major issues, and as such, Microsoft was forced to release emergency OOB updates for them to patch those issues under KB5077744 and KB5077797.

However, the first Patch of 2026 on Windows 11 25H2, 24H2 (KB5074109) has continued to be notorious, as it has led to issues on classic Outlook too, which apparently made the app "completely unusable" for certain users. Microsoft initially did not release a workaround for the feature but has since updated its documentation.

While the unofficial workaround was to uninstall the Windows update leading to the issue, the company has now added some more details regarding the issue, including workarounds, after further investigation.

The company has explained in the updated support document: "After Windows updates on January 13, 2026 users with Outlook POP account profiles and profiles with PST files report that Outlook hangs and does not exit properly. This issue may occur for any Outlook profile that has PSTs stored on OneDrive. Symptoms reported include:

• Outlook hangs and shows “Not Responding”.
• Inability to reopen Outlook without ending its process in Task Manager or restarting the computer.
• Emails not appearing in the Sent Items folder despite being sent.
• Outlook redownloading emails."

While the tech giant has confirmed that it continues to investigate the problem, it has offered workarounds for admins and users alike who are affected by this issue. These include using the webmail, moving PSTs out of OneDrive, and last but not the least, uninstalling the KB5074109 Windows update. It says:

"Until a fix is available, please use webmail. The other workarounds may be complicated.

• Use webmail.
• Move PSTs out of OneDrive.
• Remove the Windows Update."

You can find the support article here on Microsoft's official website. Aside from these confirmed issues, users have also reported GPU-related bugs too.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 5:03 am AEST (my time).

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Windows 11 users are having a nightmarish start to their day. The error code 0x803f8001 is appearing for many trying to open apps on their PC. File system error (-2143322111) also appears on affected systems.

We've run into the issue when trying to open Armoury Crate, Notepad, and Snipping Tool. It seems like the issue affects a wider range of apps. I'll update this piece as more information becomes avaialble.

A post on a Microsoft forum by user "Kave" shared frustrations recently:

"Getting the error code 0x803f8001 for most my microsoft apps including my Notepad app which has important information and URLS i need for my job. This is getting pretty paralyzing. I can see other people saying they cannot open stuff like Alienware command center, Nitrosense, Snipping tool, etc with the same error code today."

According to Harold Milan, an Independent Advisor who replied to the post, that occur often occurs when the Microsoft Store cannot validate app licenses.

"In most cases, this is due to a corrupted Store cache, a temporary Microsoft account sync issue, or a Store registration glitch rather than actual data loss," said Milan.

Your Windows 11 desktop could soon change, though it won't look any different. The latest Windows Insider build adds support for setting .webp images as your desktop background.

Windows 11 Build 26220.7653 is available through the Beta Channel. It's a relatively minor build, so I'll take the chance to explain what WebP files are and why you may want to use them.

You've likely viewed a WebP file this week, or even today. The file format, which was developed by Google, has many advantages that make it a good choice for websites.

The WebP format supports both lossy and lossless image compression, giving people options to reduce file size while maintaining visual quality or preserve perfect image quality. WebP files also support transparency, which is important on the web.

You can even use a .webp file to replace a GIF, since the format supports animations.

Generally speaking, WebP files are smaller than PNGs or JPGs, which helps with website performance. The most popular web browsers all support WebP files, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

Of course, no file format is perfect — that's why there are so many of them. Some legacy pieces of software do not play nicely with WebP files.

In addition to support for these new games, Intel addressed a few headaches as well. One of the improvements is that owners of the Battlemage (B-Series) cards get fixes for a crash in the PRAGMATA SKETCHBOOK demo. Intel also fixed a bug where Arc Control (Intel’s settings app) was showing the wrong variable refresh rate (VRR) information. Finally, an intermittent crash issue has been addressed when users try to reset all their settings in Windows 10.

There are still several known issues in this update too, the most notable is that in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, there are still intermittent corruptions on water surfaces. Additionally, Intel warns that PugetBench for Davinci Resolve Studio may experience intermittent application crashes while running the benchmark. Intel recommends changing the timeout slider to 1500 seconds or higher as a workaround.

Since this driver is a Non-WHQL, it is essentially a beta release as it has not finished undergoing Microsoft’s full certification process yet. With that said, if you want the improved support for the two aforementioned games, installing it now shouldn’t cause too many issues. Intel’s release notes mention that the company is still working on issues with multi-GPU performance tuning and some display switching glitches when using wireless monitors. Intel also issues the following warning:

“WARNING: Installing this Intel generic graphics driver will overwrite your Computer Manufacturer (OEM) customized driver.”

The driver download is a hefty 1.2 GB and is available now on the Intel Download Center carrying the ID 785597 and Date 1/20/2026. If you aren’t going to be playing Arknights or Hytale, you may want to wait for the WHQL version for maximum stability.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 4:54 am AEST (my time).

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AMD has explained in a new blog post about its new "AI Bundle" option that, as the name suggests, bundles all of the available AI driver features under that option. AMD explains that it contains PyTorch, ComfyUI, Ollama, LM Studio, and Amuse. Thus users who do not require AI optimization on their Radeon systems can save huge disk space, up to 34 GB, by simply unticking that AI Bundle checkbox.

Aside from that, the new driver also brings support for the recently released Ryzen AI 400 series APUs, as well as game support for Starsand Island, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ - From the Ashes Edition.

The driver also fixes several bugs like visual corruption and other graphical glitches and more, including in games and other apps. The full changelog is given below:

• New Features
  • Optional install of AI Bundle
• New Product Support
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 475
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 470
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 465
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 7 450
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 7 445
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 5 435
  • AMD Ryzen™ AI 5 430
• New Game Support
  • Starsand Island
  • Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ - From the Ashes Edition
• Fixed Issues
  • Some shadows may not render correctly while playing Call of Duty®: Black Ops 7 on some AMD Graphics Products on Radeon™ RX 5000 series and Radeon™ RX 6000 series graphics products.
  • Texture corruption may be observed when playing Enshrouded while at the first “Elixir Well” location on Radeon™ RX 7000 series and Radeon™ RX 9000 series graphics products.
  • Application may fail to launch while playing Diablo 4 with usernames containing non-english characters on Radeon™ RX 7000 series and Radeon™ RX 9000 series graphics products.
  • Some lights may not render correctly while playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 during nighttime scenes on Radeon™ RX 7000 series and Radeon™ RX 9000 series graphics products.
  • Application crashes when using Unreal Engine 5.6 Editor with Lumen HWRT enabled on Radeon™ RX 5000, Radeon™ RX 6000, Radeon™ RX 7000 and Radeon™ RX 9000 series products.
  • Intermittent visual corruption may be observed while navigating Chromium and Electron apps on Radeon™ RX 5000 series and Radeon™ RX 6000 series graphics products.
  • Slow window resizing may be observed (related to vkAcquireNextImage extension) while developing games that use the Vulkan API on Radeon™ RX 7000 series and Radeon™ RX 9000 graphics products.
  • Player sprites may not render correctly while playing Cassette Beasts on Radeon™ RX 7000 series and Radeon™ RX 9000 series graphics products.
  • Artifact may appear when playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with TAA enabled on Radeon™ RX 5000 series and Radeon™ RX 6000 series graphics products. .

Finally, we have the issues that remain unresolved still:

• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while loading a saved game in Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing enabled. AMD is actively working on a resolution with the developer to be released as soon as possible.

• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Battlefield™ 6 on AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. AMD is actively working on a resolution with the developer to be released as soon as possible.
• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Roblox Player (Car Zone Racing & Drifting) when task switching between media on Radeon™ RX 7000 series products.
• Texture flickering or corruption may appear while playing Battlefield™ 6 with AMD Record and Stream on some AMD Graphics Products. .

You can download the new WHQL-certified Adrenalin 26.1.1 driver from AMD's driver page here on the company's official website.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 4:52 am AEST (my time).

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This decision came last week when Daniel Stenberg, lead dev and creator of the project, made a pull request on GitHub to remove all mention of the program from the documentation. He set the end of January 2026 as the final date. Here's what he said:

Up until the end of January 2026 there was a curl bug bounty. It is no more.

 

The curl project does not anymore offer any rewards for reported bugs or vulnerabilities. We also do not aid security researchers to get such rewards for curl problems from other sources either.

 

We have concluded the hard way that a bug bounty gives people too strong incentives to find and make up "problems" in bad faith that cause overload and abuse.

 

We still appreciate and value valid vulnerability reports.

Stenberg told etn.se that AI slop and bad reports have been increasing so much that the team had to "try to brake the flood in order not to drown". The developer already had a history of publicly complaining about what he calls "AI crap" flooding the bug bounty program on HackerOne.

The project's maintainers, who have to read these AI-generated reports, struggle to make sense of them since most are nonsensical. Many AI tools lack the necessary code context to produce sound reports, which ends up distracting developers from legitimate issues that actually need fixing.

Eventually, the cURL instituted a policy that any reporter who submitted "AI Slop" would be banned from the program. That did not stop the horde of low-quality submissions. By mid-2025, Stenberg began to consider shutting down the program entirely to remove the financial motivation for submitting garbage.

The cURL bug bounty program has been around since 2019 and was managed through HackerOne. During its operation, the program paid out over $100,000 for valid security vulnerability reports.

Obviously, cURL is not the only project drowning in this sludge of AI-generated bug reports. Other projects that are currently facing this issue include the Python Software Foundation, React, and Apache Airflow.

You can check out Stenberg's original PR here.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 4:51 am AEST (my time).

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