The real reason your Windows 11 taskbar couldn’t move for 5 years

pcworld.com Sep 18, 2026

The real reason your Windows 11 taskbar couldn’t move for 5 years

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Sep 18, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

Microsoft reintroduced the ability to move the Windows 11 taskbar and resize the Start menu after five years of omission. The features were removed when Windows 11 launched because the new OS did not inherit much of the legacy Win32 code that handled taskbar positioning, forcing engineers to rebuild the component from scratch and prioritize functionality. Tali Roth, then head of Windows core user experience, explained that supporting a movable taskbar required extensive reflow work for every embedded app, a complexity the team deemed unnecessary given low demand. Feedback from a minority prompted Insider tests, leading to the restored functionality. Similar redesign challenges affected the Start menu, which shifted from a React‑based prototype to WinUI to meet significant performance expectations.

💡 Why It Matters

· Restoring these controls demonstrates Microsoft’s willingness to adapt the desktop experience to power‑user demands, marking a pivot away from its earlier mobile‑first minimalism.

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Having issues with Microsoft Copilot? Here’s what’s going on

Microsoft confirmed on September 17, 2026 that its Copilot AI assistant suffered a service degradation, causing users to receive error messages such as “I’m sorry, I’m having trouble responding to requests right now.” The issue stemmed from problems with a specific API endpoint, prompting the company to launch an investigation and post updates on its status page. By 5:21 PM ET the same day, Microsoft announced that Copilot had returned to full operational readiness. The outage affected anyone relying on Copilot for tasks across Windows, Office and other integrated platforms, temporarily halting the assistant’s ability to generate responses. The incident underscores the dependency of many productivity workflows on the AI service.

💡 A brief Copilot outage reveals how tightly modern work processes now hinge on a single AI service, exposing vulnerability when that service falters.

windowslatest.com · Sep 17

Microsoft turned Windows 11’s lock screen into MSN hell, now it’s undoing…

Microsoft has quietly altered Windows 11’s lock screen, making Weather the sole default widget and removing other MSN‑powered cards such as Sports, Money, and Daily Discovery. The change, documented in the August 27 preview update and rolled out in the September 8 Patch Tuesday release, follows user complaints about clutter. Users can still add or remove widgets via Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, or disable widgets entirely. The update reflects Microsoft’s effort to streamline the lock screen after earlier issues with Remote Desktop and audio bugs.

💡 By trimming the lock screen to a single, useful widget, Microsoft reduces distraction and improves focus for daily use. This shift signals a broader move toward a cleaner, more user‑controlled interface.

windowscentral.com · Sep 17

Web apps are freezing in Microsoft Edge, and the fix is a…

The article intended to report that web applications are experiencing freezing issues in Microsoft Edge and that the recommended remediation steps are cumbersome. However, the provided content consists solely of a biographical profile of Sean Endicott, a Windows Central news writer, detailing his professional background, areas of coverage, and extracurricular achievements. No information about the Edge freezing problem, its scope, technical cause, or the specific fix is included in the text.

💡 Without substantive details on the Edge issue, readers cannot assess the impact on their browsing experience or evaluate the proposed solution.

techcommunity.microsoft.com · Sep 17

Microsoft Discovery lowers barriers to chip design

Microsoft Discovery, the company’s new AI‑driven chip‑design platform, enabled a former aerospace engineer to take a RISC‑V core and a small AI accelerator from specification through logical C, high‑level synthesis, RTL and finally physical layout using the open‑source OpenROAD flow and SKY130 process node. The author documented the end‑to‑end workflow on GitHub and demonstrated the tool’s ability to lower the expertise barrier for non‑silicon specialists. The project, presented at DAC 2026, also showcased how AI assistance can streamline both design and optimization stages, allowing participants to focus on architecture rather than low‑level implementation details. Microsoft Discovery thus provides a guided, open‑source path for learning and prototyping chips without requiring access to advanced foundry resources.

💡 By democratizing the chip‑design workflow, Microsoft Discovery turns a traditionally niche skill into a teachable, reproducible process, accelerating talent development and fostering open‑hardware innovation.

ign.com · Sep 17

Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2026 — Everything Announced

Microsoft’s Xbox broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show 2026 unveiled a slate of new titles and updates. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 received a campaign trailer featuring Mads Mikkelsen. Sega’s Crazy Taxi World Tour, ArtPlay’s Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement, and Atlus’ Persona 4 Revival were showcased with fresh trailers. Hideo Kojima announced two upcoming Xbox games—OD – KNOCK and Physint—revealing Bill Skarsgård as the lead in the latter. No release dates were set.

💡 The partnership between Kojima Productions and Microsoft signals a strategic push into exclusive, high‑profile titles for Xbox, potentially reshaping the console’s competitive edge in the next generation.

windowslatest.com · Sep 17

Microsoft confirms it accidentally broke copy and paste in Excel with a…

Microsoft released KB5002914, a security update for Excel, on September 8 that inadvertently disabled copy‑and‑paste across all supported versions, including 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2024. The bug causes silent paste failures, leaving source cells selected while destinations remain unchanged, and has been reported by users on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft acknowledged the issue, confirmed it is investigating, and advised against uninstalling the update due to critical security patches. No workaround is currently available.

💡 The glitch hampers daily productivity for millions of Excel users, exposing a rare but critical flaw in a widely relied‑upon office tool. It underscores the delicate balance between rapid security deployment and software stability.