Windows 11 version 23H2 started rolling out last October, but many users of Microsoft's flagship operating system opted out of an upgrade, thanks to a handy "optional" toggle. News outlets have latched onto a freshly published (February 20) Windows 11 "Release Health" notice—the official Microsoft dashboard alert states that Windows 11 2023 Update: "is now entering a new rollout phase." Fastidious users will not be happy to discover that "eligible Windows 11 devices" are now subject to an automatic bump up to version 23H2. Very passive-aggressive tactics have been utilized in the past—Microsoft is seemingly eager to get it audience upgraded onto its latest and greatest feature-rich experience.

According to NeoWin, an official announcement from last week alerted users to an "impending end of optional preview updates on Windows 11 22H2." Yesterday's "23H2" dashboard confessional provided a little bit more context—unsurprisingly involving artificial intelligence: "This automatic update targets Windows 11 devices that have reached or are approaching end of servicing, and it follows the machine learning-based (ML) training we have utilized so far. We will continue to train our intelligent ML model to safely roll out this new Windows version in phases to deliver a smooth update experience."

Microsoft on Tuesday began rolling out Windows 11 23H2, the year's major update to its PC operating system. This release sees a major integration of AI into several features across the OS. To begin with, Microsoft Copilot, which made its debut with 365 and Office, is getting integrated with Windows. Powered by Bing Chat, Copilot is a GPT-based chatbot that not just gathers information from web-search, but can also be made to do a variety of OS level functions. For example, you can ask it to pair a Bluetooth device, or find something on your machine, find stuff within the files of your machine. The WIN+C key now brings up Copilot. Next up, Microsoft Paint gets its biggest feature update, with the generative AI-based Paint Cocreator feature. Not only will Paint assist your brush-strokes, in getting the shapes and contents right, but much like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, Paint now has a prompt-based image generation feature. For now, Paint Cocreator is being released as a preview feature.

Microsoft Clipchamp, the video editor included with Windows, now has a set of generative AI enhancements of its own, with tools such as Auto Compose, which assists in building a movie with scenes, getting the sequence of clips and transitions right, getting the effects and filters right; and audio features such as narration and background score. Clipchamp also has integration with social platforms including Tik Tok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Snipping Tool, the screengrab application of Windows, now gets a couple of AI enhancements too, such as scanning an image to extract and redact information. Photos gets AI-accelerated image recognition and categorization. Much like Google Photos, you can look for a picture by describing what you're looking for. As with each such annual major release, Microsoft will be releasing 23H2 in a phased manner through Windows Update, but if you're impatient and want to immediately update, or perform a clean installation, visit the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 11 23H2 (Installation Assistant, Media Creator, ISOs)

Microsoft put up the latest Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 on Windows Update (retail channel). Referenced in KB5030310, this update to Windows 11 has been found to break the usability of the AMD Software application, or the main control panel utility of AMD Software Adrenalin drivers. The latest Windows 11 cumulative update preview causes AMD Software to reset custom user settings upon each system reboot (hard reboot, which reloads drivers and starts a new user session, not fast startup). The bug does not, however, affect the core display driver functionality. It's more likely that this issue will be addressed by an AMD Software update, than having to wait for the next Windows 11 Patch Tuesday.

The Windows Update Restored project was launched not along ago—this community led initiative aims to fill a gap, once occupied by official Microsoft support. The team wants to "restore the legacy Windows Update websites, (allowing) older operating systems (Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP) to obtain updates like they used to." Volunteers have so far made the service available to users actively running Windows 95, 98 (& SE), and NT 4.0. Their system is currently limited to a clone of the Windows Update v3.1 website (of 1997 vintage). They hope to get Update v4 (2001) and Update v5 (2004) running in the future. It is stressed to visitors of the page that their project is not affiliated at all with Microsoft, and users are at risk of exposure to security exploits—given the outdated nature of older variants of Windows OS and the recreated update sources.

The Windows Update Restored mission statement reads: "Ever since 2011 when Microsoft pulled the plug on nearly all the Windows Update websites, the Windows Update feature for older Windows operating systems was no longer functional. The only way to install updates after that point was through external third-party installers which didn't cover all the updates that the operating system would fully support. So, with this project, we can now update operating systems as old as Windows 95 all the way through Windows XP RTM like we used to back in the day. The Windows Update Website provides users with security updates, optional updates, driver updates, and other types of software for the operating system. This project only restores the Windows Update website, not the Automatic Updates feature. To find out more about the Windows Update Website and what it does, follow this link."

Microsoft today unleashed a slew of updates for its March Patch Tuesday to address around 80 security vulnerabilities in the wild. To begin, Windows 10 patches KB5023696 and KB5023697 address system and security issues in Windows 10 versions 22H2, 21H2, 21H1, 1809, and 1607 as well as Windows Server 2016. These are being deployed as non-optional updates and will be automatically installed via Windows Update (unless you run a modified or locked down install). Windows 10 1507 also received a small patch, KB5023713, which similarly addresses security fixes as well as hyperlinks in Excel.

Microsoft today also releases fixes for two critical zero-day vulnerabilities that were being actively exploited as far back as April of 2022. The two exploited vulnerabilities are CVE-2023-23397 and CVE-2023-24880. CVE-2023-23397 is an elevated privilege attack that allows crafting special emails that can force a target's device to connect to remote URLs and transmit the Windows account's Net-NTLMv2 hash. CVE-2023-24880 is a Windows SmartScreen vulnerability that can be exploited to create executables which bypass the Windows Mark of the Web security warning.

Today, the Windows 11 2022 Update rolls out in 190+ countries. The last few years have brought enduring changes in the ways we live, work and learn, with the PC playing a more critical role in our daily lives. Online options that didn't previously exist for meetings, appointments, everyday tasks and access to entertainment emerged out of necessity, but remain due to convenience and efficiency. We formed new habits; and they stuck. The PC has fundamentally connected us in more emotional ways than ever before.

The rapid move to more flexible work and life also dramatically increased security threats for individuals and businesses, with 921 password attacks every second. With last year's launch of Windows 11 we gave the PC a modern refresh, making it faster and easier for you to accomplish the tasks you have relied on your PCs for most. We added foundational security built into Windows at home and at work to help keep you safe and with Windows 365, we took Windows to the cloud, empowering organizations to stream the full Windows experience on any device. More people are using Windows and spending more time on their PCs. In fact, Windows 11 is the most used and most loved version of Windows ever.

Intel Graphics over the weekend released the Arc Graphics Drivers version 30.0.101.3268 beta. These drivers add performance optimization for Saints Row and Madden NFL 23, but that's hardly the defining feature. In our testing, the drivers were found to to be night-and-day compared to the previous version, in terms of overall system stability. The release comes hot on the heels of a report that Intel fixed as many as 43 bugs just by watching a product review video by Gamers Nexus.

Among the fixed issues are lower-than-expected performance with Marvel's Spider Man (Remastered) in DirectX 12 mode; an application crash with SoTR in DirectX 12 mode with ray traced shadow quality set to "high," a texture-corruption issue with Battlefield 2042 in DirectX 12 mode; artifacts and object loading failures seen in Halo Infinite, an application crash with Horizon Zero Dawn, and the nasty bug where Windows Update attempts to replace the installed driver, causing severe stability issues. As many as 17 bugs related to Arc Control and 11 bugs related to Arc Control Performance Tuning, have been fixed, as listed below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc 30.0.101.3268 beta

Microsoft and AMD on Thursday released software updates that fix the two performance issues affecting AMD Ryzen processors with Windows 11. The two issues were abnormally high L3 cache latency, and a broken "Preferred Cores" system. The companies had assessed that the issues impact performance of Ryzen processors on Windows 11 by as much as 15%.

The two issues are fixed in separate methods. The L3 cache latency bug is improved through a Windows Update patch, which has been released now as an Update Preview (an Update Preview is not a "beta," but a software update released ahead of its designated "patch Tuesday"). The Update Preview is chronicled under KB5006746, and Windows 11 systems updated with this, get their OS build version set as "build 22000.282." The next update restores the Preferred Cores mechanism that leverages UEFI-CPPC2. This update comes in the form of an AMD Chipset Software update. You'll need to download and install both of the following:

DOWNLOAD: Windows 11 October 21, 2021 Update Preview KB5006746 | AMD Chipset Driver Software 3.10.08.506

Apparently, AMD processors officially compatible with Windows 11, exhibit a three-times increase in L3 cache latency with the new operating system. The new operating system is also found to break the "preferred cores" system on AMD processors (UEFI CPPC2), in which the two "best" CPU cores, which can sustain the highest boost frequencies, are highlighted to the operating system, so most of the light-threaded traffic could be sent to them.

AMD and Microsoft jointly made this discovery, and listed out potential impact on application performance. The increased L3 cache latency affects performance of applications sensitive to memory performance. They also warn of a 10-15% loss in gaming performance. On the other hand, a dysfunctional "preferred cores" system would mean reduced performance in light-threaded tasks as the OS is unaware which are the processor's two best cores. Thankfully, both issues can be fixed via software updates, and AMD is working with Microsoft to push fixes for both issues through Windows Update, in an update rollout scheduled within October 2021.

Microsoft formally released the new Windows 11 operating system. If you meet its rather steep system requirements, you can just wait for it to appear as an option in Windows Update, as Windows 10 users are eligible for a free upgrade. But if you're like us, and impatient to try new things out (when stable), then there are a couple of ways you can get Windows 11 right now. The first (and safest) way to upgrade is to use the Windows 11 Installation Assistant. This app runs from within your Windows 10 environment, downloads the operating system, tailors it to your machine for the upgrade (with essential device drivers already in place for things like network interfaces and graphics); and upgrades Windows 10 for you.

The next option is the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. You're probably familiar with this one. It's a Windows application that lets you download Windows 11 to create a bootable USB flash drive installation media, or even put out an ISO file that you can burn DVDs or other removable media with. The third option is the bare Windows 11 RTM (release to market) ISO file. The latter two options are recommended if you want to do a clean-slate installation for your machine. Creating ISO files would be particularly applicable to those installing Windows 11 on virtual machines, where the VM software can use the ISO file to emulate an installation media.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 11 Installation Assistant | Windows 11 Media Creation Tool | Windows 11 ISO Files

Microsoft released a fairly detailed run-down of the under-the-hood changes it made to Windows 11 over its predecessor. The operating system is optimized for a zero-trust work environment. This explains making a hardware TPM 2.0 device a minimum system requirement. The company may even penalize PCs running unsupported hardware with no access to security updates. The company also described fine-grained application performance prioritization, which automatically prevents "trivial" apps from taking up too many system resources.

Apps running in the foreground also automatically get a higher app priority. This is particularly useful when your CPU is bogged down with a heavy workload, and you're trying to open a new app. The OS automatically rations resources to ensure the app you just launched is prioritized, making the experience snappy. This technology carries forward even to the Edge web-browser, where the tab that's active has more priority, and tabs that haven't been accessed in a while are put to "sleep" (i.e. their memory is completely paged, and they're given least system resources). Microsoft calls this "Sleeping Tabs." Microsoft claims that the feature can reduce memory savings by around 30%, which could be handy for your foreground tasks. With the feature enabled, the OS (or Edge) handle prioritization automatically.

With pre-release builds of Microsoft's upcoming operating system, Windows 11, doing rounds, the PC enthusiast community has developed various workarounds to the system requirement of a hardware trusted-platform module 2.0 (TPM 2.0) for the operating system. Microsoft itself also suggested that those on older machines (without TPMs), who cannot upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, have the option of performing a clean-installation of the new operating system using its ISO installer disk image.

These machines, however, will be treated as "unsupported," will not have access to Windows Update, and may potentially be barred from receiving important security updates. Microsoft recommends, however, that those who don't meet the system requirements of Windows 11 remain on Windows 10. The company plans to maintain support for Windows 10 up to October 14, 2025, which means four more years of security updates for the older operating system. The choice, hence, would be between upgrading hardware to meet Windows 11 requirements, or to remain on Windows 10 until Q4-2025.

Windows 11 Home setup will require you to have a Microsoft account and a working Internet connection handy. "Windows 11 Home edition requires internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account to complete device setup on first use," lists Microsoft as part of the operating system's requirements. In addition, all editions of Windows 11 will require Internet connection to receive updates, and a Microsoft Account for some tasks. "For all Windows 11 editions, internet access is required to perform updates and to download and take advantage of some features. A Microsoft account is required for some features," it adds. The requirement for Internet makes sense as Microsoft will be using Windows Update as the main medium of distributing Windows 11. It will be offered as a free upgrade for existing Windows 10 users.

Microsoft's future update to Windows 10 will add a GPU-aware selector that allows both the OS and the user to adaptively select the best GPU for each usage scenario. The preview release of Windows 10 build 20190 features this in two ways. First is an OS-level layer that automagically selects the best GPU for the task at hand between installed options (let's assume, an Intel iGPU and your discrete GPU). For web browsing or productivity it's expected the OS will switch to the less power-hungry option, whilst for gaming and its all-cylinders philosophy, it would launch the discrete option.

However, if you're not much into ceding that kind of control to the OS itself, you can override which specific GPU is activated for a specific application. This change is made via the Settings panel with a drop down menu in Graphics Settings. This feature should be a particular boon for laptops that don't feature a power-saving technology that enables this kind of behavior, but there are some other usages for power users that might come in handy with this OS-level integration.

We are transitioning and converting our current ring model, based on the frequency of builds, to a new channel model that pivots on the quality of builds and better supports parallel coding efforts. In addition to this change, Insiders will also find similar offering names and expectations across Windows and Office programs and soon Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Teams. Our goal is to not only make it clearer for existing Insiders to choose the experience that's right for them, but also for new Insiders to pick the right channel as they join. The Insider community is very important to us all and we're working to align how all our Insider programs work better together across Microsoft.

Microsoft released the first preview of its overhauled chromium-based edge browser back in January, but users had to navigate to Microsoft's site to install the browser. The new browser will now automatically roll out to versions of Windows 10 from version 1803 onwards, this will mean up to a billion installs of the updated browser. The New Edge browser when installed via windows update completely replaces the previous Edge browser whereas the website install coexists with the existing Edge browser.

Microsoft began rolling out the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (version 2004) to the public. You can have Windows Update check for updates, and offer to upgrade Windows whenever it's available; or head over to the Microsoft website in the link below, and get the Windows Update Assistant and upgrade now. Windows 10 May 2020 Update introduces improved Network Connections, particularly with Bluetooth; the new DirectX 12 Ultimate API that enables richer gaming experiences, the Windows Hello. Hitting the Windows key + . (period key) invokes the new emoji menu that includes Kaomojis. Improvements have also been made to Edge, Cortana, and Windows Accessibility.DOWNLOAD: Windows 10 May 2020 Update (Update Assistant)

The "Game Mode" toggle Microsoft introduced with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709), is designed to improve gaming performance by prioritizing system resources for the game at the expensive of background processes, and preventing Windows Update from performing any automatic tasks (such as GPU driver updates, which would most certainly ruin your game). With "Call of Duty Warzone," however, this toggle appears to be having the opposite effect.

The Game Mode toggle reportedly causes Warzone to stutter, and sometimes even freeze. Apparently Windows 10 doesn't recognize it as a game. The issue affects users of both AMD and NVIDIA graphics hardware. It has so far been reproduced on the likes of the GTX 1080 Ti, GTX 980, RX 5700 XT, RX 570, RX 480, and R9 290. For now there's no workaround other than to simply disable Game Mode in Windows Settings. Find it in the "Gaming" section.

Microsoft could release the next major update to Windows 10, aka 2004, in May as the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (build 19041.173). Codenamed "Manganese," Windows 10 2004 has been released to Windows Insiders (slow ring), who can now either update their current installations or get ISO files for the new operating system. For the rest of us, Microsoft could release the software some time in May. Windows 10 2004 introduces a "restore this PC from the cloud" option, refined Windows Update management system; a more functional Task Manager that can show GPU temperatures; improvements to Cortana, Windows Search, and Network management.

Microsoft yesterday announced that they would be freezing any release for optional Windows 10 updates whilst the world still reels from the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision by the company comes after they decided to keep delivering security updates for the Fall Creator's update (version 1709 of the OS).

Both these decisions by Microsoft stem from the company trying to reduce the impact of Windows 10 updates on businesses - reducing update requirements to security updates means there is fewer chances of an optional update shipping that could negatively impact productivity - of which very little bit is required right now for some businesses to even keep afloat. When the crisis has passed, all updates will be resumed.

Microsoft started deploying microcode updates to some of Intel's older Core, Pentium, and Celeron processor generations through Windows Update. The latest Cumulative Update packages chronicled under "KB4497165" apply to machines running Intel's 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors, and low-power Pentium and Celeron chips based on "Apollo Lake," "Gemini Lake," "Valley View," and "Cherry View" microarchitectures.

The microcode update provides firmware-level hardening against four major variants of the MDS class of security vulnerabilities, namely CVE-2019-11091 (MDS Uncacheable Memory), CVE-2018-12126 (Microarchitectural Store Buffer Data Sampling), CVE-2018-12127 (Microarchitectural Load Port Data Sampling), and CVE-2018-12130 (Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling).

Microsoft earlier today released to market its latest version of Windows 10, the May 2019 Update (version 1903). There was quite some talk about Microsoft tweaking the kernel to improve CPU performance. Other gamer-relevant changes include updates to WDDM (display driver model), and an updated DirectX 12, which now supports variable-rate shading. A similar technology is available on Vulkan, and has already been implemented in games such as "Wolfenstein: The New Colossus." With much talk about the latest Windows being better for games than the previous Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update (1809), we decided to take it for a spin.

After backing-up our 1809 installation onto a disk image, we updated to 1903 using Windows Update, with the same driver- and game versions as our recently-updated setup (details here). We then put the machine through our entire selection of 21 games, and two high-end graphics cards, the AMD Radeon VII and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. We used driver versions 19.5.1 for AMD, and 430.64 for NVIDIA, both of which support Windows 1903. Our tests span 1920x1080 (Full HD), 2560x1440 (1440p), and 3840x2160 pixels (4K) resolutions. We present our data as percentage gain/loss over Windows 1809, with three data-points per game, each representing the three resolutions in the order "Full HD", "1440p", and "4K". The first graph below covers the RTX 2080 Ti, and the second one Radeon VII.

Intel released CPU microcode updates to address four new security vulnerabilities disclosed by the company on May 14, 2019. These microcode updates can be encapsulated as motherboard UEFI firmware updates, and for some processors even distributed through Windows Update. In its Microcode Revision Guidance document put out on Tuesday, Intel revealed that all Core and Xeon processors going as far as the 2nd generation Core "Sandy Bridge" architecture are eligible for microcode updates.

2nd generation Core is roughly the time when motherboard vendors were forced to adopt UEFI (unrelated to these vulnerabilities). A number of low-power microarchitectures, such as "Gemini Lake," "Cherry View," "Apollo Lake," and "Amber Lake," which are basically all low-power processors released after 2012-13, also receive these updates. Until you wait for your motherboard vendor or PC/notebook OEM to pass on these microcode updates, Intel advises you to disable HyperThreading if your processor is older than 8th gen "Coffee Lake," and seek out the latest software updates.Additional slides follow.

One of the big no-nos for some users looking to upgrade do Windows 10 was the fact that Microsoft enforced constant, 6-month update cycles independent of whether users wanted them or not. This move was done to streamline the update process and keep all users at parity when it comes to important security and feature updates that Microsoft considered relevant. However, it seems Microsoft is now abandoning this practice, which means that users that like to know exactly what is being changed in their systems - and at a time of their convenience - now have one less reason to not upgrade.

Not only will Windows no longer push updates inadvertently, now home users will also have the ability to not only pause updates, but also remove them. There's a caveat, though - you won't be able to postpone feature updates forever. As it stands, Microsoft has an 18 month "end of life" period for major Windows 10 versions, which means that after your 18 months of postponing updates are up (and all of the kinks have been ironed out), you PC will still update to the latest version. There are some other details, which I will transcribe from the Microsoft blog post for your perusal.

Let's give credit where it is due- Microsoft was quick in admitting that their Windows 10 update (KB4482887) from March 1 had a detrimental effect on performance, especially as it related to specific gaming scenarios. Under a week later, we now have a public fix available as well. The latest update from today, March 12, is version KB4489899 (OS Build 17763.379) and claims to address "an issue that may degrade graphics and mouse performance with desktop gaming when playing certain games, such as Destiny 2, after installing KB4482887", among other things.

Other listed improvements and fixes include improved HoloLens tracking and device calibration, solving a bug that caused some users to get "Error 1309" when dealing with some .MSI and/or .MSP files, and a host of general security updates to various Microsoft software solutions. There remain some issues with this update, however, which are listed in the source page linked below. The update should be available for download and install automatically via Windows Update, as of the time of this post.