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A few weeks ago, users discovered that Microsoft is working on a native resolution upscaler for Windows 11. Although you can already turn on its bits and pieces in the recent Windows 11 preview builds, the official announcement is nowhere to be found. Now, it appears that Microsoft plans to showcase Windows 11's native upscaler next month at the GDC conference in San Francisco.

Keeping your battery constantly at 100% can reduce its lifespan, but many Windows 11 laptops lets you limit the maximum battery charge to 80%.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Mean Girls' tops the chart, followed by 'The Beekeeper'. ‘'The Zone of Interest' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Although Windows 11 is now approaching its third birthday, hardware requirements remain unchanged. You still need an 8th Gen Intel or 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen processor (or newer) with a few extras to run the operating system in officially supported mode. That requirement is quite easy to bypass, which helped users with old hardware run Windows 11 relatively fine. However, with Windows 11 version 24H2, things are changing.

Those who regularly follow Neowin or Windows news, in general, are likely aware of the requirements like MSA (Microsoft Account) or an internet connection when setting up a new Windows 11 PC (via the Out of Box Experience or OOBE). However, not everyone may be well versed about these and sometimes it can also be high-profile figures in the tech space itself.
 
Twitter (now X) owner Elon Musk apparently bought a new laptop and was surprised, in a bad way, to find that they could not install Windows 11 on their new PC without an MSA. Needless to say, they did not appear too thrilled about it.

Microsoft is ready to release another drop of features for Windows 11 users. The so-called "Moment 5" is almost ready for its prime time, so let's take a look at what is coming soon to customers with computers powered by Windows 11.

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In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at updates for Windows Update that should force the operating system to restart less frequently, more information about recent CPU-related issues in Windows 11, plenty of browser and other app updates, new Windows 11 preview builds, gaming news, and more.

Nvidia has pushed a new GPU driver for those still using old graphics cards based on the Kepler architecture. In addition, there is a new release for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users who do not want to upgrade even though the operating system trio no longer receives security updates from Microsoft and other developers.

Windows 11 may soon no longer require a reboot when installing security updates every month.

Tips and tricks for making Microsoft leave you alone while you use your PC.

I've written before about my nostalgia for the Windows XP- or Windows 7-era "clean install," when you could substantially improve any given pre-made PC merely by taking an official direct-from-Microsoft Windows install disk and blowing away the factory install, ridding yourself of 60-day antivirus trials, WildTangent games, outdated drivers, and whatever other software your PC maker threw on it to help subsidize its cost.

While advancements in technology like Microsoft DirectStorage are helping to significantly reduce I/O-based load times in games, long shader compilation times are something games continue to struggle with. There are ways to reduce this like shader pre-compilation or shader caching in GPUs but in worst-case scenarios, like in the case of The Callisto Protocol, shader compilation and shader loading can lead to a stuttery mess.

Owners of PCs with Nvidia GPUs have had to access a number of apps to get the info they need. Today, the company announced it is merging most of the features in three of those apps into one, and its named, appropriately enough, as simply the "Nvidia app."

Copilot for Windows could see a wave of new capabilities thanks to Power Automate Desktop and an update.

You can finally highlight and split your WhatsApp messages into things like shopping lists and step-by-step instructions.

Four new text formatting options have been added to WhatsApp to help users communicate more effectively. Available starting today, WhatsApp users can now use bulleted and numbered lists, block quotes, and inline code to highlight and organize their messages, making it easier to break down large sections of text into something easier to read.

A message on the Windows Health Dashboard website has confirmed that Microsoft is now beginning to roll out Windows 11 version 23H2 to devices with 21H2 and 22H2.
 
Microsoft says it will automatically update such PCs gradually as they have reached the end of servicing - in the case of Windows 11 21H2 - or are soon going to reach the end of servicing, like in the case of Windows 11 22H2, that reaches the end of servicing in October later this year.

At the time of writing, at least dozens but most likely hundreds of pirate sites are effectively down due to a domain issue at a single registrar. The problem seems to be isolated to sites using .TV domains registered at Sarek Oy in Finland, a registrar well known for its pirate-friendly policies. As things stand, hundreds of domains are completely devoid of DNS, resulting in one of the biggest mass blackouts in recent history.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft officially acknowledged Windows 11 version 24H2 as this year's big feature update for its operating system coming in the second half of the current year. "24H2" is a technical moniker, and Microsoft will most likely use a different name for marketing purposes. It seems that now we know what that name will be.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released cumulative updates for all supported Windows versions. Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2 got KB5034765 with security fixes and other quality-of-life improvements. However, for some users, KB5034765 introduced nothing but problems, particularly with the taskbar.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Iron Claw' tops the chart, followed by 'The Beekeeper'. ‘'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

In this issue of Microsoft Weekly, we look at new changes in Windows 11 processor requirements, new builds for each Windows Insider Channel, Patch Tuesday updates, Xbox updates, and app updates. There were a lot of updates.

Windows users with Intel processors and graphics cards inside their computers can update to the latest non-WHQL driver under version 31.0.101.5330. It adds support and optimizations for Nightingale and Pacific Drive, plus some notable performance improvements for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Fortnite, and Remnant 2.

Microsoft released a major Insider build earlier this week on the Dev and Canary channels. The new build, 26052, introduced several features like "Sudo for Windows," an improved Registry editor, among other things.
 
It also is the first Windows 11 version 24H2 build, and interestingly, it looks like Microsoft is making a fairly major change in terms of CPU instruction set architecture (ISA) support on next-gen Windows 11. The company is seemingly looking to make the SSE4's "POPCNT" instruction a mandatory requirement for running Windows 11. When a user tried to boot into Windows 11 24H2 on a system powered by such a chip, the machine failed to boot up.

Microsoft created the PowerToys project in the late nineties to give Windows users more advanced features unavailable out of the box. Eventually, Microsoft integrated those old-school options into the operating system (changing the screen resolution was once considered an advanced utility). The modern PowerToys app serves the same purpose, and we are finally seeing Microsoft turning parts of PowerToys into native Windows 11 features.

The redesigned context menus are a controversial part of Windows 11. Although they look nice and provide convenience by moving common file actions closer to the cursor, some people dislike the extra complexity of the "Show more options" button and slower performance. Other people find it confusing that the cut, copy, rename, share, and delete buttons are unlabeled. Windows 11 build 26058, which was recently released for public testing, aims to fix that confusion.

If you are unhappy with how much time Windows Update takes to install the latest update, do not bother cleaning the registry (even though there are now Microsoft-made apps for that) or doing other questionable stuff Windows gurus across the Internet often suggest. Especially if you have an older computer without much horsepower.