Tag: windows 11

ShutUp10 is one of my favorite tweakers for Windows 10 and 11. The base version is free, it does not need to be installed, and it is super-easy to use but also comes with a good amount of tweaks to turn off features that you don’t need on Windows PCs.

The last version, released yesterday by O&O Software, adds some mighty options to the application’s already impressive arsenal. The new options deal largely with recent Windows changes, like AI in Notepad or File Explorer, denying apps access to generative AI, and taming annoyances, like Windows Search with Bing, Settings app account notifications, or Start menu recommendations.

Here is the full list:

• Disable Click to Do
• Disable the Settings agent
• Disable AI features in Notepad
• Disable AI actions in File Explorer
• Disable Find My Device
• Disable Microsoft account cloud content search (
• Disable work or school cloud content search
• Disable device search history
• Disable Start menu recommendations for tips, shortcuts and new apps
• Disable Start menu account notifications
• Disable Settings app account notifications
• Disable extension of Windows search with Bing
• Deny app access to generative AI
• Deny app access to generative AI
• Deny app access to presence sensing
• Deny app access to presence sensing
• Do not send device name in diagnostic data
• Windows Insider Program conflict detection: when the PC is enrolled in the Windows Insider Program, a notice explains that certain diagnostic-data settings prevent participation, and a dialog offers to disable those settings

Using the app is straightforward. Just download the latest version from the developer website and run it on a Windows machine. The app loads immediately and displays its tweaks in the interface. O&O Software uses colors to distinguish between tweaks that are enabled already and those that aren’t. Furthermore, you gain recommendations for each tweak which range from “yes” to “no”. However, no does not necessarily mean that a tweak is bad, but users should read the description to find out about potential issues that may be experienced after applying it.

“Yes”-Tweaks should be save to apply, but it is always a good idea to read the description to make sure. You can speed things up by selecting Actions to apply all “recommended tweaks”, “recommended and somewhat recommended” or “all tweaks”. I would not recommend doing so unless you are certain that the selection does not cause any issues. If you have the time, it may be better to go through the tweaks one-by-one just to make sure nothing unwanted comes out of it.

The app has a couple of other sections of interest. You can switch to other tabs, e.g. AI, to get a bit of extra control over certain features, or “Secure Boot” to check the status and whether the latest certificates are already used on the system.

The lackluster Windows Search has been a hot topic ever since its introduction. One of the main points of criticism is the inclusion of web-based search results, which Microsoft started to introduced with the release of Windows 8.1.

Today, Windows Search continues to return local and web-based search results. What makes matters worse, at least to some users, is the inclusion of advertisement.

Microsoft published a blog post on the official Windows Insider blog today promising to improve the Windows Search box in the near future.

Here is what Microsoft plans to change:

• Less visual clutter. Search will only display recent searches, not other content, such as “top apps”, image of the day, trending searches, or games for you.
• Clearer results. Search results will make it clearer where a result comes from.
• Removal of promotional content from web results.
• New control to turn off web and Microsoft Store suggestions in Search.
• Local results have priority when they are the stronger match.
• Better app search to handle typos, dropped and extra letters, and partial words better.
• Settings results are improving. More relevant settings should appear higher in the results.
• Finding local files is improving and support for two-character file searches.
• Improved search reliability.

The improvements are integrated in the latest Windows Insider builds of the experimental channel. Microsoft has yet to announce when the changes will land in stable builds of the operating system. One potential option is the coming feature update for Windows 11, which is expected in the coming months.

When things go wrong, Windows administrators have a few options at their disposal to fix problems. From built-in repair tools and restore options to backups and setting up the PC anew.

Nothing beats system backups in my opinion, but some problems can also be dealt with using built-in tools, such as the option to reset the PC.

Cloud rebuild is a new feature that Microsoft announced in the most recent test build of the Windows operating system this week. It can be run from the Windows Recovery Environment and will download everything it needs from the cloud. That is a big difference to the “Reset this PC” option, as it will also download drivers and such from the cloud.

However, it is not the only difference. Another main difference is that Cloud rebuild erases pretty much everything on the main drive. You can’t keep apps, settings or personal files, which makes this more of a last resort kind of option or something that you would run if you have proper backups of apps and files. The only data that is not touched is data on other drives or cloud-based files, which do get synced to the PC again after Windows 11 starts booting again to the desktop.

Windows 11 boots directly into the out-of-box experience. For unmanaged PCs, this means going through the whole setup process as if this were a new PC. The operation requires a working network connection to function at all.

This leaves one main use case: users who need to start anew who have few or none apps installed or personal files on the main drive. Experienced users may want to stick to USB images that may include customizations, including OOBE bypasses and such.

Imagine if a bad driver update or a bad update completely trashed your PC setup, but you could instantly roll the entire machine back to exactly how it was yesterday—local user files and all—in just a few minutes.

That scenario required use of third-party backup solutions until now. On June 23, 2026, Microsoft announced the general availability of its new, built-in Point-in-Time Restore feature for Windows 11 PCs (versions 24H2 and later).

According to the official release on the Microsoft Windows IT Pro Blog, this native recovery tool automatically captures full-system snapshots every 24 hours, giving Home, Pro, and Enterprise users a safety net to bypass hours of painful troubleshooting when something breaks the PC.

How Point-in-Time Restore works

Point-in-Time Restore acts as a comprehensive safety net for your operating system. Operating quietly in the background, the feature automatically captures full-system snapshots on a recurring schedule—defaulting to every 24 hours—and saves them directly to local storage.

Using it, you can roll back the PC to a previous state in minutes, according to Microsoft. That is excellent when a driver, Windows update or corrupted application affects the machine.

While it sounds similar to the classic “System Restore” tool windows users have known for decades, Microsoft built this version from scratch for modern PC management. The key upgrades include:

• Inclusion of User Files: Legacy System Restore intentionally ignored personal data. Point-in-Time Restore captures the exact state of your machine, including the Windows OS, system configurations, settings, installed applications, and your local user files.
• Smart Storage Management: To avoid eating up your hard drive, it integrates directly with Windows’ “reserved storage” (space set aside for updates). It enforces strict cleanup policies and caps its default disk footprint at just 2% of your drive.
• Native Integration: The interface is cleanly built into the modern Settings app (System > Recovery), making it accessible without digging into the legacy Control Panel.

Here is a table that Microsoft provided to compare it to System Restore:

	Point-in-time restore	System Restore
Restore points	Automatic, configurable cadence; user files are included in restore point	Event-triggered or manual only; user files are excluded from restore point
Reliability	Strict retention and cleanup policies	No retention limits
User experience	Integrated in system settings	Limited to control panel
Storage impact	Minimizes storage impact by integrating with reserved storage*	Higher impact to storage space
Management	Will support robust remote management capabilities	Limited remote management capabilities

Default Availability and Rules

The feature is turned on by default on unmanaged Windows 11 Home and Pro devices, provided that the primary drive partition is 200 GB or larger.

If disaster strikes and your PC won’t boot into the main desktop, the recovery process is designed to work securely inside the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).

The feature has its shortcomings though, especially when compared to third-party backup solutions. For one, restore points are kept for up to 72 hours only. That is a big problem in some cases, as issues may occur after the period. There is seemingly no option to store a restore point indefinitely, While Enterprise admins may change the retention period, 72 hours appears to be the longest.

Means: while Point-in-time restore is easier to use and in some cases better than System Restore, it won’t replace traditional backup options due to its 72 hour retention period.

There are not many good reasons for being first when it comes to installing new updates for the Windows operating system. In fact, being second has the potential of avoiding the usual assortment of bugs that happen to be confirmed regularly after releases.

Take the June 2026 security updates as an example. Microsoft confirmed a new bug just days after releasing the update. It affects Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems that use custom folder icons or localized folder names that are defined by desktop.ini.

First spotted by Deskmodder, the issue is described on a new support page on Microsoft’s website:

After installing a Windows security update released on or after June 9, 2026, you might notice one or both of the following behaviors for some folders:

A custom folder icon defined by desktop.ini no longer appears.

A localized folder display name defined by desktop.ini no longer appears, and the folder shows its original name instead.

This behavior might occur even when the user has not changed an application or folder configuration. ​​​​​​

Microsoft notes that this behavior is expected, as it introduced a security hardening change that affects desktop.ini.

This new behavior is expected. Starting with the Windows security updates released on June 9, 2026, a security hardening change is introduced to desktop.ini handling. When Windows cannot establish that the source of a desktop.ini file is trusted, Windows ignores that file and treats it as if it is not present. However, desktop.ini files from trusted sources continue to work normally.

Microsoft did not first mention this change in the release notes, but has since then added the information.

When is desktop.ini not trusted? When it is downloaded from the Internet and carries the Mark-of-the-Web, copied from “certain” remote locations, or when “files on network paths are not classified as intranet or trusted by zone policy”.

Microsoft has a few workarounds for affected users.

Option 1: Add the source to Trusted Sites (Recommended)

If the affected content is stored on a known internal or managed source, add that source to the Trusted Sites list. Once the source is treated as trusted, Windows processes desktop.ini from that source normally. This keeps the protection in place for other locations and is the lower-risk option.

Option 2: Use policy to restore previous behavior

Organizations that need broader compatibility can enable the policy Allow the use of remote paths in file shortcut icons.Enabling this policy restores the pre-June 2026 behavior for affected remote or untrusted scenarios.

IMPORTANT Using a broad opt-out reduces protection against malicious remote folder-customization content. If you use a workaround, Microsoft recommends trusting only controlled internal sources and keeping trust settings as narrow as possible. ​​​​​​​

Option 3: Check for and remove the Mark of the Web (MotW)

If the desktop.ini file has a Mark of the Web (MotW), Windows may treat it as coming from an untrusted source and block customization. Verify whether MotW is present and, if appropriate, remove it from the desktop.ini file. This can restore expected behavior, but should only be done for trusted content, as it removes the associated security protection.

To remove the MotW tag, open PowerShell and run one of the following commands:

For a single desktop.ini file:

Unblock-File “C:\Your\Folder\Path\desktop.ini”

For all desktop.ini files in a folder:

Get-ChildItem “C:\Your\Folder\Path” -Recurse -Filter desktop.ini -Force | Unblock-File

If you’ve noticed a mysterious new SecureBoot folder sitting in your C:/Windows directory following the May 2026 Patch Tuesday, you are not alone.

The folder, which has a subfolder named ExampleRolloutScripts that contains several PowerShell scripts, is a harmless administrative helper introduced in the latest security updates for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

According to official Microsoft guidance, these scripts are designed primarily for enterprise IT administrators to monitor the status of the upcoming UEFI CA 2023 Secure Boot certificate updates and to safely automate their deployment across Active Directory environments.

While essential for corporate networks preparing for this critical security transition, average users can safely ignore this tiny 450 KB folder for now.

The transition to the new UEFI CA 2023 Secure Boot certificates mark a critical security change for the Windows ecosystem. It is made necessary by the impending expiration of current certificates that were issued a long time ago.

Secure Boot acts as the fundamental gatekeeper against bootkits and rootkits by ensuring that only trusted, digitally signed firmware and operating system loaders can execute during startup.

Microsoft is employing a highly controlled, phased rollout strategy—which is exactly why administrative validation tools and scripts are currently being deployed.

Why Microsoft is rolling out the folder to anyone is anyone’s guess. It seems that the folder is pushed to all devices running Windows 11, even unmanaged Windows 11 Home systems.

It only took half a decade for Microsoft to remember how to build a functional user interface. On May 15, 2026, the tech giant took to the Windows Insider Blog to announce Preview Build 26300, a supposedly major update designed to give users “more flexibility” over their Taskbar and Start menu.

However, beneath the marketing spin, these groundbreaking additions—like the ability to finally shrink the taskbar, move it to the side or top of the screen, and independently toggle off intrusive file recommendations—are nothing more than basic features Microsoft stripped out of Windows years ago.

Rather than pushing the operating system forward, this long-overdue update rolling out to the Experimental channel feels less like innovation and more like a reluctant apology to power users who have been fighting a restrictive, dumbed-down user interface since 2021.

This is what build 26300 brings back from the dead

Let’s look exactly at what Preview Build 26300 actually brings to the table. The headline “feature” of this update is the reinstatement of taskbar mobility. After years of being glued to the bottom of the screen, users can once again click and drag the taskbar to the left, right, or top edges of their monitors—a decades-old Windows function that was axed during the initial jump to Windows 11.

Accompanying this is the return of taskbar resizing, allowing users to finally shrink the increasingly bloated bar to save precious vertical screen real estate, or expand it for better touch visibility.

Meanwhile, the Start menu receives what is arguably the most highly requested fix: a dedicated, single-click toggle to permanently disable the “Recommended” section. Instead of being forced to look at a useless blank void or unwanted cloud documents, users can now reclaim that entire bottom half of the menu for their own pinned applications.

Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface, championed these tweaks on X as a testament to the company “deeply listening to Insiders” and “empowering personalized workflows.”

Personalization and customization is in Windows' DNA. It always has been. Reading through your feedback and meeting with Windows Insiders over the past few months reminded us just how deeply people care about this. You wanted more control, more customization with taskbar and… https://t.co/YpexnoDyGD

— Pavan Davuluri (@pavandavuluri) May 16, 2026

But celebrating the restoration of basic functionality as a triumph of active listening is a massive stretch. While it is undoubtedly a relief to have these customization options back where they belong, packaging them as a bold new step forward highlights a recurring, frustrating cycle in Microsoft’s development ethos: breaking something that works perfectly fine, ignoring the immediate community outcry, and then expecting applause when they finally patch it back together five years later.