7 ms·
Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste
- htrp 17d ago> "The paste operation might fail silently," according to Microsoft. > Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2024 are affected. Microsoft said: "Although users try to paste content, the source remains selected and the destination is unmodified. When this issue occurs, users receive no indication of the failure, such as a beep or error message." How many people wrote lgtm on the security patch?
- cube00 17d agoSimilar behaviour here: > Related tools, including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), RDS Licensing Diagnoser, and File Explorer might also become unresponsive," Microsoft admitted. > "Additionally, the Windows Update page might stop responding and continuously display a loading indicator." This culture of trying to avoid showing the user an error message has to stop.
- sdcfgy 17d agoI’ve got that problem. I think I’m just going to roll that machine back and turn updates off now. It’s too risky.
- kmeisthax 17d agoI remember the time when spurious copy-paste failures meant something shit the bed so badly in the Win32 subsystem you needed to reboot. Never did figure out why that would happen but it kinda stopped around the Windows 8 era...
- xvxvx 17d agoAside from the audio issue, it feels like the remote access and pasting issues should have been discovered in QA. This constant slide in quality over the past few years has me looking to Linux as an option.
- baal80spam 17d ago> in QA No such thing in Microsoft AD 2026
- ainar-g 17d ago> This constant slide in quality over the past few years has me looking to Linux as an option. Just out of curiosity, what's holding you back? I'm not trying to evangelize or something, it's more of a personal collection of reasons various people have provided that I have.
- xvxvx 17d agoI’m lazy and don’t want to spend the rest of the year trying to get Linux running on my Alienware desktop. I think most of the software I use is available on Linux, I just need to find the time to get started.
- pbhjpbhj 16d agoInstalling Pop_OS! or Ubuntu takes about an hour to 90 minutes (including setting up eg Steam, your preffered browser, etc). You'll want to run it as a live USB for a bit first to make sure there's driver support. IME much faster to install and update than MS Windows. If the hardware you buy doesn't support Linux use then it can be a crap shoot (down to luck). Why people blame their Linux distro for that I don't really understand.
- DANmode 16d agoFair enough, Dell can be pretty spotty when it comes to Linux support.
- kenhwang 17d agoFor me, it's gaming, drivers, and still too much Windows-only software. Wine/Proton has gotten really good, but still requires tinkering, and still sometimes has really bad performance. WiFi/BT drivers continue to be really terrible, there's connectivity but speed and reliability sometimes aren't there. Peripherals and motherboard chipset functionality still mostly won't work. Desktop environments are still clunky and rough around the edges. Maybe I don't get along with KDE/Gnome and just need to shop around for another DE.
- yukIttEft 17d agoThere is not a single component in Windows that is not riddled with bugs, its infuriating. I wonder what exactly the "quality czar" is doing, maybe he needs a good PIP? https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/02/05/satya-nadella-decides-microsoft-needs-a-quality-czar/5186380 https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/02/05/satya-nadell...
- markus_zhang 17d agoThe culture of QA sailed off like 10-15 years ago I think.
- tylerchilds 17d agoTy here from Sillyz.Computer pointing out once again, software authorship is and has always been political and not technical. AI inverted power structures to favor action over bureaucracy and software development is historically the definition of bureaucratic— dating back to IBM backing the Holocaust. The entire thing is just men LARPing as executives behind closed doors and kids vibing futures is forcing them to keep up while the mask of “the responsible computer adult” continues slipping.
- taviso 17d agoA recent update broke the file history service for me, which I only discovered when I went to restore a previous version of a file. If you use it too, you should probably check it's actually working.
- kasabali 17d agojoke's on you, it has never worked for me.
- layer8 17d agoIt has always worked for me when I needed it.
- jocoda 16d agoWhen it works it's amazing. Files are saved as is with date time stamp appended, so all do is to undo that. Great if you trashed something a while back and always quicker than getting it back via github. Haven't found anything using a similar approach - just copy the change to the mirror. if the file is moved, just make a copy of the changed file, if it is deleted, who cares, just ignore from then on. simple. Everyone else is being way too clever, compression and exact deltas history, etc One recent issue required cloning the user account to get file history working. Just would not work with that account while any new account worked fine. Current status is broken - the last two security updates report file history as broken. Git hub handles code ok, but for all the other stuff on windows file history was the way to go. Now cumbersome incremental backups.
- PowerElectronix 17d agoSounds like Microsoft, yes.
- everyone 17d agoMS is forcing everyone to vibe code right? Like they utterly fucked Minecraft with many baffling bugs fairly recently afaik.
- tencentshill 17d agoThey must have forgotten to prompt "bug-free and make no mistakes". It happens to the best of us.
- al_borland 17d agoAlso, “maintain all existing functionality.” I tried using the AI recommendations in the security scanning tool being used where I work. If I were to accept some of the recommended fixes, it would simply delete all the content in the file. The actual fix required was a simple tweak on one line, but the AI wanted to take the nuclear approach.
- bakugo 17d agoI keep hearing about how software development is a solved problem in the age of AI... and then reality hits, like we see here.
- Sharlin 17d agoWe just need QA agents to check the work of the coding agents (yeah, I’m sure that’s already a thing and people are saying this in all seriousness).
- sdcfgy 17d agoSenior staff at my company have been saying that already. They don’t care if it works just if they can say they have it and get rid of the QA people.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- post_break 17d agoThere's a massive RDP bug in the new update that is breaking stuff with no fix right now. Congrats Microsoft on the help desk ticket generation. (KB5124008)
- albert_e 17d agoThanks for the headsup. it seems they claim to have fixed it : > September 14, 2026—KB5129195 (OS Builds 26200.9457 and 26100.9457) Out-of-band > [Remote Desktop Services (known issue)] Fixed: This update addresses an issue affecting Remote Desktop Services (RDS) after installing the September 2026 Windows security update (KB5122880). In affected environments, RDS might become unstable, causing RDP connection and sign-in failures or servers to become unresponsive during Remote Desktop configuration. Related tools, including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), RDS Licensing Diagnoser, File Explorer, and the Windows Update page, might also stop responding.
- moepstar 16d agoFWIW, neither the KIR nor the OOB patch did fix the black screen problem for us on Citrix.. waiting for another round of updates... yay.
- dgarciaf18 17d agoDo they even have automated testing? This should have been detected not only in one layer of the release process, but in serveral ones.
- throwaway85825 17d agoNot anymore. The test lab and testers got laid off. Now they test in production on end users.
- bunderbunder 17d agoSo there’s an argument to be made that when the same person designs, implements and tests the change, any purported defense in depth is largely illusory. Once upon a time I disagreed with this argument, insofar as I believed it wasn’t necessarily true as long as you had good peer review every step of the way. But the shift to AI coding has made good peer review a heck of a lot harder to pull off.
- nicbou 17d agoIt can create tests to make sure that things keep working.
- bunderbunder 16d agoFor 100% of the root cause analyses for critical production defects that I’ve done over the past 18 months or so, a key finding was that AI-generated tests asserted that the defective behavior was correct.
- _s_a_m_ 17d agoVibe coding?
- throwaway85825 17d agoWill the last competent employee being laid off please turn out the light.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- mococa 17d agoLet's pour more AI
- fithisux 17d agoAfter the last update many things suddenly feel very sluggish like searching an app and starting it.
- karp773 17d agoMy favorite one was a few years ago when MS rolled out a Visual Studio with the login window broken. Literally, it was impossible to log in. I still cannot believe a company like Microsoft can fall so low.
- srmatto 17d agoI grew up with DOS, Win 95, 98, 2000, XP and so on. I have to ask when was Microsoft above breaking things? In my mind they always had a reputation as being pretty shoddy. As soon as MacOS (OS X) was a viable alternative I gleefully switched and never looked back. I still keep a Windows machine around for gaming but I don't use it for anything more than that. All my serious work happens inside of MacOS.
- worik 17d agoI switched to Linux in 1993. Never looked back
- wolfi1 17d agoah, those were the days, when compiling the kernel took about 12 hours, or the switch from COFF to elf - fun times indeed
- torben-friis 17d agoI just started using windows after being on macOS since Vista. I planned to go full Linux for a gaming pc, but there are still some kinks, so dual booting it is. The shocking negative was the amount of ads and tracking I had to get rid of, like chinese budget phone tier of crap. Once you get rid of that though, the experience is halfway decent. But there are absolute head scratchers for 2026: some dialogs literally blurry because they haven't adapted them to my 4k display, apps adding itself to self start at boot left and right, and so on. The most laughable event happened after I installed windows home when my license was for windows profesional. The official way to solve this was... to turn down wifi and write a hardcoded switch-to-professional key as a fake activation. That was the most amateur workaround I've seen in decades.
- jakzurr 17d agoI really wanted to spend more time reading the comments, but I've sworn off doom-scrolling.
- pmontra 17d agoWhen they tell you that Linux has issues with suspend, reply that Windows has issues with paste /s
- krater23 17d agoI see no difference anymore. I used Windows because it worked and didn't break obvious things. Thats gone. I switched to Linux because the user experience is now better. Never expected that this switch happens because Windows gets worse...hoped everytime Linux gets better.
- ahartmetz 17d agoNah Linux is clearly getting better, but perhaps Windows is getting worse faster than Linux is getting better. Easier to destroy than to create and all that.
- krater23 17d agoWindows users, welcome to the world of Linux! Now you don't need to have to install Linux to experience the Linux way of working.
- charlieyu1 17d agoso just a regular day for Microsoft
- sdcfgy 17d agoWell that explains why excel was completely and utterly borked cutting and pasting then. What an absolute fucking shit show.
- tombert 17d agoEvery time I see one of these articles I will, very briefly, get optimistic that people will move to an operating system that isn't terrible, and then realize that most people will literally just forget about the bullshit they put up with Windows. I don't know what kind of reality distortion field Microsoft generates, but for reasons that are still unclear to me, people will literally simply forget every single awful thing Windows does. People will (correctly) call out the jankiness of desktop Linux, but tacitly imply that Windows doesn't have jankiness. They will forget all the times that Windows Update bricked their computer, or all the time that their "repair" tools were literally just no-ops, or their copy-paste feature not working, or Microsoft literally breaking fucking Notepad, or the "System Restore" tool not actually restoring anything. Desktop Linux certainly has its issues, I'm not so deluded as to say that it's perfect, but I really feel like its bullshit-level is lower. Oh, and since it supports filesystems that didn't coexist with dinosaurs, the snapshotting actually works. Instead, I'll be stuck playing tech support for Microsoft's shitty products for my parents until the heat death of the universe.
- layer8 17d agoDon’t project your parents on every Windows user. :)
- tombert 17d agoI'm not. It seems to be something that affects nearly every person who uses Windows by choice. It's actually kind of a testament to Microsoft's marketing that they can continue to release terrible, broken products and people still keep purchasing them.
- carlosjobim 16d agoThe alternative to Windows for the majority of people is MacOS. Throw out or sell your old PC and get a Mac, they can be had for cheap in great condition second hand. Or an iPad with a keyboard, which is best for the elderly or other people who need to just pay bills, read news, and write e-mails. Another reason that users put up with Windows is simply because that's what the computers at their job have. The employer has decided on Windows, and when the Windows/Office users get back home from work they don't even touch a computer.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- sitzkrieg 17d agoitem no. 17531 why i will be using windows 10 LTSC to the grave. zero issues
- Stevenrojas888 17d ago[flagged]
- hn_submit 17d agoLinux is rising from the ground up. Many users are fed up with Redmond's nefarious schemes to pump up their share price like using its user base as A.I. guinea pigs. Amazingly it's U.S. users who are taking the lead in installing Linux Mint and other Linux distros. I assume it's because there are few consumer privacy and protection laws and tech companies can abuse their users as they see fit. Many have had enough and are jumping ship towards Linux.
- cromka 17d agoI'm surprised recent MS Office isn't fully supported under Wine yet, given the advantages that LLMs give in reverse engineering stuff. EDIT: Well, should have searched first before posting: https://itsfoss.com/news/bottles-microsoft-365-early-look/ https://itsfoss.com/news/bottles-microsoft-365-early-look/
- Krssst 17d agoI generally assume Wine cannot use LLMs considering developers that have been in contact with Windows code cannot contribute and LLMs almost certainly were. Edit: for reference: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Developer-FAQ https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Developer-FAQ No such reference to LLMs possibly being trained on Windows code however. Well maybe AI companies were careful to remove problematic data from the training set.
- EMIRELADERO 17d agoThat would be a stupid application of the rule, it would mean no developer could use an LLM for anything that already has a proprietary alternative with heavily documented internals or leaked source code.
- Krssst 16d agoNot so sure, if the LLM has been overfitted and can just throw back something equivalent to the original code, then it's no different from a human having seen the code and writing something similar afterwards. On another hand, I'd be curious about Microsoft's reaction if somebody let an agent write a "perfect" Windows emulator/compatibility layer eating away at Windows's market share (assuming that's possible; since it does not exist it's probably not currently). Would not do much for kernel anti-cheats but would help for productivity software. Microsoft could either choose to say this is not a white box implementation and take down the project but it would hurt anything LLM-related since all LLM-based projects could be targeted, or let it live and eat away at Windows (I suspect they'd choose the latter because it's the shiny new thing and would probably not hurt Windows that much).
- shevy-java 17d agoThe time has come for Microsoft to support LibreOffice. The people have enough of Microsoft's shenanigans.
- yoyohello13 17d agoMicrosoft has constantly been bragging about AI writing all their code. And they push out more bugs than features these days.
- bunderbunder 17d agoI don’t know if that’s strictly true. But one thing I’ve seen since AI coding has taken over is that the additional features that do get built are all the lower-value ideas that would previously been left on the cutting room floor. I’m not convinced that’s a positive. Users don’t necessarily even perceive those lower-value changes as features, so much as unnecessary bloat.
- wannabe44 17d agoThe friction between coming up with an Idea and implementing it is a feature in most corporates. Otherwise managers will be too focused on creating shiny slides and marketing nonsense - which is happening with AI.
- bunderbunder 16d agoAlso just a lot of overemgineering. The last project I kicked off, I straight up told my manager that in the pre-Claude days I’d have pushed back pretty hard on automating this particular task. And even with AI I’m still pretty sure that building and maintaining the automation ended up being more expensive than just continuing to do this particular task by hand. The real business value is one more thing to list as an accomplishment at performance review time, and nothing more.
- nairboon 16d agoThat's why I had to enable the "pause updates for four weeks" setting on Windows. Otherwise every second update would break something somewhere and disrupt workflows regularly. With the one-month update delay you'd get the updates that fixed the previous update.
- tacomagick 16d agoI was on 24H2 and recently went to 25H2 for app compat reasons. I havent even been updating my Nvidia drivers for months, stuck in the 5xx releases because whenever I update to the latest studio drivers which are supposed to be stable, the computer fails to wake up from sleep and hibernation.
- hulitu 16d agoWhy such a verbose title ? "Microsoft patches Windows and Excel" would have been enough.
- jan_m_savage 16d agoIs it because they're using LLMs? LOL. This is just the beginning.
- RichardBirch 16d agoAnother minor bug with this release - explorer doesn't launch on Citrix platforms, or those with FSLogix (a Microsoft product) installed. Good job Microsoft.
- sota_pop 16d agoFor me, it was about the time of the early announcements for the TPM2.0 reqs for windows 11 that I started to seriously consider alternatives (though I consciously accepted many pain points even then). The initial debacle that was the Recall recall and announcing the level of AI stuffing of win 11 that made me actively try out Linux mint (which has been quite nice and smooth). LLMs help to diagnose and fix items if you aren’t familiar with Linux. You no longer have to scour message boards for up-front answers (only use them as a “confirmation backstop”). For work I now use macOS which feels like a toy but is ok overall (probably still some personal habit-based things). If it weren’t for the fact I still develop plugins for a single, very specific windows-only app in my spare time, I would completely ditch windows, with contempt. Outside of Windows I am continually stubbing my toe on every single use of every single MSFT product with which I interact; primarily outlook, teams, and some azure stuff. Their products feel highly “feature optimized” with absolutely zero (perhaps negative) cross-feature cohesion. e.g. it’s as if the various outlook panes and the boxes of content were designed so modularly and independently that they don’t re-size or scale themselves cooperatively. I perpetually experience stark jamais vu using their products, i.e. I am forced to use them every day and each time feels as unfamiliar, clunky, and unintuitive as the first time I ever touched them.
- ezoe 16d agoWhen does the people learn enough is enough and ditch Windows?
- z_rho_one 16d agoWindows 11 has been broken since launch. If you have more than 20 files of mixed types (especially media files) in a folder, the new file explorer takes 10 seconds to load the folder. In Windows 10, the same operation took less than a second. Windows 11 is so comically slow that I sometimes feel the warm nostalgia of using the Intel Pentium desktop shared by the entire family when I was a kid -- click, wait 3 seconds, click, wait 3 seconds, click...