Imagine my surprise when I rebooted my old X380 ThinkPad this morning, only to have an Edge window open up on my desktop to proclaim “Your Windows 11 PC has been updated.” And indeed it went on to explain in a series of screens what new stuff I could find should I care to investigate further. I’d just applied the latest Quality Update, only to learn that this Beta 26220.7262 update gets interesting all on its own. You can see the first Edge page as the lead-in graphic above.

How Beta 26220.7262 Update Gets Interesting

In a series of 5 subsequent screens (with a Page Control to match), I saw the following

1. Your PC just got a new sense -- sight
   Try now button
2. Your voice is all you need
   Try now button
3. Stay connected right from the Start menu
   Add either Android or iPhone device from Start menu
4. Transform notes into polished ideas
   Try now button (Notepad gets structure)
5. Unleash your inner artist
   Try now button (Paint offers "creative control")
6. Discover 5 features ... get more from your device
   Discover Windows tips (sub-page with Try now)
   Customize your settings (sub-page with Try now)
   Pin sites to taskbar (sub-page with Try now)

This is all quite interesting, but a little bit disconcerting. The latter, mostly because I wasn’t expecting an unsolicited pop-up on my desktop. Makes me wonder if this is an emerging new kind of post-update behavior for Windows 11. If so — and I hope the team is reading my blog (though I’ll post to Feedback Hub as well) — this is the kind of thing I’d like a Settings option  for under the Windows Update –> Advanced Options hierarchy. Something like “Opt out of post-update notifications” would be nice. If I want to find this info, I already know where to look (that is, in KB5070303, in this case).

Sometimes, surprises in Windows-World aren’t benign. This one is mostly nugatory, if still unexpected. Gosh, you’d think they’d have mentioned that Windows will open an Edge window with update news in the Announcement as well — but they didn’t. Go figure!

I guess it’s inevitable. Upon reading about how Windows 11 25H2 finally extends notification area pop-ups to non-primary displays on multi-monitor rigs, I checked my own production PC. This is, of course, the Asrock B550-based Ryzen 7 5800X with its dual Dell 2717 UHD displays. And wouldn’t you know it? Works on the primary, but not the secondary. As I check the KB5065789 announcement, I learn why. Once again, gradual rollout strikes notification update, and my PC is NOT in the forefront. Sigh.

Explaining Gradual Rollout Strikes Notification Update

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you can see the text from the afore-linked announcement. It reads:

​​​​​​​[Notification Center] New! The Notification Center functionality is now available on secondary monitors. To open it, select the date and time in the system tray on the taskbar. With the August 2025 non-security update (KB5064081), you can also show a larger clock with seconds above the calendar.

What that doesn’t show, alas, is that this occurs under the “Gradual Rollout” heading in that announcement. In turn, that means this feature is trickling out to 25H2 PCs, not all of them at once. I’ll hook a second monitor up to one of my Copilot PCs and see if that machine gets the new functionality. Nope, doesn’t work when I used HDMI to connect up a second monitor to the Lenovo Copilot+ AIO9i model, either.

It Remains the Hardest Part: Waiting…

I’m just going to have to wait for MS to flip whatever switch it takes to get one  or more of my 8 or so 25H2 PCs to attain this capability. I’m no stranger to this position in the Windows-World feature sweepstakes — that is, on the outside, looking in. Sigh again.

I’m working with a Lenovo Copilot+ PC review unit these days: it’s a snazzy Yoga All-in-One AIO9i. It comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (8 cores: 4 each P-cores and E-cores/8 threads), integrated Intel Arc 140V GPU, 32 GB LPDDRx-8533, Hynix OEM PCIe x4 NVMe SSD, and more. It also has Windows 11 Pro for Workstations installed. I’m not sure what makes this PC so fast, but 25H2 enablement blazes on Lenovo AIO9i.

Details: 25H2 Enablement Blazes on Lenovo AIO9i

How fast? The whole process, after opting into the Release Preview channel on the Insider program, took under three minutes to complete. That means:

• Downloading the enablement package (under 30 seconds)
• Running the GUI-based portion of the update (under 30 seconds)
• Reboot and post-GUI update handling (under 40 seconds)
• Resume desktop through lock screen and login (under 10 seconds)

There are lots of reasons why this is so fast. For one. the enablement package itself is svelte (under 1MB in size). That’s because MS has already included most of the code in earlier updates, and the enablement package — as the name indicates — simply turns such stuff on. As Copilot puts it, earlier “monthly cumulative updates (LCUs) have quietly staged the new features in a dormant state.” It continues: “The enablement package simply flips the feature flags — no need to download or install new core components.”

Other contributing factors to speed:

• No drive revalidation, no app compatibility scans, no migration of user profiles
• As the preceding bulleted list observes, this process requires only one update to complete
• No rollback staging or recovery partition updates are included, to reduce disk I/O and system prep times

Indeed, inspection of $WinDrive (C:) shows no Windows.old partition, as one might usually find after a version uplift. Likewise, Disk Cleanup finds only 1.53 GB of files to clean up in the upgrade’s wake. That’s much less than the more typical 25-30GB on production Windows 11 systems here at Chez Tittel when transitioning from 23H2 to 24H2, for example.

Wow: Just Wow!

I’m not sure that Windows for Workstations made any difference here, either. Despite this version in place, it doesn’t use advanced features — e.g. ECC RAM and ReFS — that might speed things up. I think this is just one very lean, mean and fast enablement package. It’s worth enrolling a test PC in the Insider Program, Release Preview Channel just to check it out for yourself. Speedy!

I started seeing some news about this last Friday — most notably at Eleven Forum. The specific item was labeled “Get ready for Windows 11 25H2.” Shoot! I’ve been ready for months. What I needed to do was figure out how to get in on that act. Turns out it’s just an enablement package for Insiders in the Dev Channel. That’s how I got mine on Saturday, once I understood what was what. You can see, in fact, that Dev Channel gets 25H2 in the lead-in screencap.

After Dev Channel Gets 25H2, Then What?

Thanks to the afore-linked Eleven Forum post, I also learned that while I couldn’t see the enablement package in Update History directly, I could see it another way. By clicking through Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates, I saw “Feature Enablement for Dev Channel Preview Update (KB5054156)” as you, too, can see here (at bottom):

Given that it’s an enablement package, not a full-blown OS install it’s also speedy to download and run. The whole thing took less than three minutes on the brand-new dynabook X40M2 laptop I ran it on.

I expect this release to get banged on and patched for the next three-four months. That takes us to September or October, which is when it’s highly likely that 25H2 will make it into more widespread distribution — barring unforeseen hurdles or noxious gotchas.

But hey, this is Windows-World. While we THINK we know what may happen, anything and everything remains possible. Let’s just wait and see what unfolds next. In the meantime, I’ll be exploring the newest avatar for Windows 11 — 25H2, Build 26200.5670. Cheers!

This morning, I read a fascinating story from Mayank Parmar at WindowsLatest. It covers the one-year grant that MS plans to offer Windows 10 users to participate in the Extended Security Update (ESU) program at no charge. Given that around half of all Windows users still run version 10, that makes sense to me. But there’s a catch: apparently this offer extends to neither Enterprise nor Education versions of Windows 10. But first, that meant undoing Enterprise version WU defaults to figure this out. Let me explain…

Why Bother Undoing Enterprise Version WU Defaults?

I couldn’t opt into the “Get the latest updates…” option in WU unless and until I used gpedit.msc to explicitly disable a Group Policy setting. But I didn’t find it on my PC where MS Learn said it should reside, instead it was an additional level down, to wit:

Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Windows Update>Windows Update for Business

On Windows Home and Pro PCs (and probably Workstation as well) the hierarchy doesn’t automatically include WU for Business. On Education and Enterprise versions it does.

Long story short, I couldn’t see “Get ready for Windows 11…” or “Get the latest updates…” until I had explicitly disabled the policy named “Select the target Feature Update version.” As I think about it, that makes sense. MS is NOT giving ESU away to government, education and businesses; the grant only goes to SOHO and individual users. The others can — and many will — pay for their coverage plans. You don’t see the enroll info that Parmar shows in his story on my PC — and that’s because it’s running Enterprise.

And apparently, those running Enterprise and Education versions will not get the free ESU offer. I’m going to stand up a Pro version VM to double-check this, but I’m betting that’s right.

And boy howdy, isn’t that just the way things go in Windows-World. There’s always a wrinkle, and sometimes you have to dig and think, and think and dig to figure out how to understand and deal with things.