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Microsoft has begun testing a feature in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26340.9233 that lets users control camera, microphone, and precise location access separately for each desktop application. Previously, these permissions were governed by a single device-wide toggle covering all desktop apps at once. The new controls are accessible via Settings > Privacy & security, with individual switches for each app.
A new guide from cua-sandbox shows developers how to boot a Windows virtual machine, install Minecraft Java Edition inside it, and control the game using an AI agent connected through the cua-driver MCP server. The setup works both on a local QEMU-based sandbox and on the Fleet cloud service, requiring version 0.3.3 or later of cua-sandbox.
A GitHub project called HelloAssembly, tied to Dave's Garage YouTube episodes, challenges developers to build the smallest possible uncompressed Windows executable that still runs a full message loop, a working title bar with minimize/maximize/close buttons, a system menu, and centered text. The repo hosts multiple competing versions—an optimized original, a shellcode-style variant, and one with a hand-written PE header—showing how far low-level tricks can shrink a working GUI app.
Microsoft has released PowerToys version 0.101.2362.0, introducing a new utility called Window Hopper that lets users cycle only through windows belonging to the currently active app using a configurable Alt+backtick shortcut. The update also brings a compact search-box mode for Command Palette, synced brightness controls across multiple displays via PowerDisplay, Windows-key activation for Shortcut Guide, a new DemoMirror feature for ZoomIt, and a ripple effect for Mouse Highlighter.
A developer released fDeploy, a self-hosted automation tool for deploying software to Windows servers running IIS. It ships in Community, Professional and Academic tiers, all offering unlimited projects, deployment targets and users, with licensing based on server instances rather than usage limits. Community is free for organizations under $1M/€900k in annual revenue, while larger companies pay for Professional under annual or perpetual licensing.
Microsoft released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, an event that drew crowds lining up for the software in a way never repeated for a Microsoft product. The operating system marked a major upgrade over Windows 3.x, introducing true multitasking instead of relying on applications to cooperatively share resources. It also better exploited faster processors, unlike Windows 3.1, which plateaued in performance around 100 MHz regardless of chip.
Lenovo confirmed that some Legion Go handhelds are going blank when installing BIOS version V42. The update wasn't pushed through Windows Update or Legion Space, and Lenovo has since removed it from its support site while it investigates.
Microsoft shipped Windows NT 4.0 to retail on August 24, 1996, bringing the Windows 95 graphical interface—including the Start Menu, Taskbar, and Explorer shell—to its business-focused NT platform for the first time. Previous NT versions had used the older Windows 3.x-style interface, so this release aligned the look and feel of Microsoft's consumer and workstation operating systems.
A Reddit user with an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 found that running the laptop in Asus' Eco mode, which disables the discrete GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU to save battery, caused Windows to eventually uninstall the Nvidia drivers entirely. Investigation of Windows logs revealed that pnpclean.dll, a routine that purges drivers for hardware absent past a timeout period, treated the disabled GPU as permanently disconnected after 15 days and wiped its drivers.
Microsoft has confirmed that the August 2026 .NET Framework cumulative update causes some WPF-based applications to throw a System.IO.FileFormatException when printing or exporting to PDF/XPS with fonts like Calibri. The bug affects current Windows 10 and 11 releases as well as Windows Server versions from 2012 through 2025, and Microsoft is still working on a permanent fix.
Microsoft has released a temporary fix for a bug introduced by its August 2026 Windows 11 updates (KB5121003 and later) that caused games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals to crash, freeze, or trigger system restarts. The company traced the problem to a driver file called inpoutx64.sys, commonly bundled with RGB lighting peripherals, which conflicts with recent changes made to the Windows kernel. Users can now manually disable this driver through the Windows Registry while Microsoft works on a permanent patch.
A developer released Thoreau BASIC, an interpreter compatible with GW-BASIC that can boot directly on bare-metal UEFI machines, with a Windows version also available. It supports classic BASIC constructs like DEF FN, GOSUB, error trapping, and graphics commands such as PSET, LINE, CIRCLE, and PAINT, working at native framebuffer resolution with 16-color EGA or 24-bit RGB.