September 22, 2026—KB5124006 (OS Build 28000.3086) Preview

• [Taskbar]

  • This update gives you more ways to customize the taskbar to match how you work and make better use of screen space.

    • New! You can now choose whether the taskbar appears at the bottom, top, left, or right side of your screen. In these other positions, tooltips, flyouts, and animations will still come from the taskbar, and most customization settings, such as never combining taskbar icons, will work with all locations. Search box and smaller taskbar are currently supported only for top and bottom positions. To change the position of the taskbar, go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors > Taskbar position.

    • New! A smaller taskbar option is now available to help maximize screen space on smaller devices. This experience reduces the size of taskbar icons and the taskbar height while maintaining access to key features such as Start, Search, and the system tray. To change your taskbar size, go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors > Taskbar size. When set to Small, both the icons and the taskbar height become smaller.

    • New! The Taskbar behaviors section of the Taskbar settings page is now expanded by default for improved discoverability.

  • This update improves the reliability of loading the system tray area of the taskbar for non-touch PCs.

• [Start menu]

  • This update makes the Start menu more personal with several customizations.

    • New! You can choose between a small or large Start menu, in addition to "Automatic (default)" that's available today. To customize this, go to Settings > Personalize > Start > Start menu size.

    • New! The "Recommended" section is renamed "Recent" in the Start menu and Settings page (Settings > Personalize > Start).

    • New! You can now hide your name and profile picture in Start by going to Settings > Personalize > Start > Hide your name and profile picture on Start.

    • New! The Start menu settings page is now redesigned with section-level toggles to independently show or hide Pinned, Recommended, and All.

• [Windows Search]

  • This update includes improvements that make Windows Search more dependable, easier to scan, and clearer before you click.

    • New! Search home has been simplified to reduce visual clutter and make it easier to get back to recent searches quickly.

    • New! Search does a better job showing where a result comes from, app, setting, file, web result, or Store suggestion, so it's easier to tell what you're looking at and where you will go before you click.

    • New! A new setting in Settings > Privacy & Security > Search lets you choose whether web and Microsoft Store suggestions appear alongside local results.

    • New! Windows now automatically indexes your most used folders to make those files appear in subsequent search results. You can control the setting at Settings > Privacy & Security > Search > Automatically find additional relevant locations.

• [File Explorer]

  • New! Launching File Explorer Home is now faster and more responsive.

  • New! The Recommended section on Home now supports touch scrolling, making it easier to browse files in the carousel.

• [General design] New! This update introduces updated progress indicators across Windows, providing a more consistent and modern experience during startup, sign-in, restart, shutdown, and update installation.

• [Windows Share] New! This update adds the ability for users signed in with a work or school account to discover and install relevant apps directly from the share window. To manage this experience, go to Settings > System > Share and select Show suggested apps in share surfaces.

• [Administrator Protection] New! Administrator protection aims to protect free floating admin rights for administrators. It enables users to perform administrative tasks using just-in-time privileges. Administrator protection is not classified as a formal security boundary; it hardens the security against elevation-of-privilege attacks with the introduction of profile separation. This feature is turned off by default and can be enabled using OMA-URI in Microsoft Intune or through Group Policy. This feature was previously disclosed in October 2025 KB5067036 and is now beginning to roll out.

• [Multiple desktops] Switching between virtual desktops is now smoother and more responsive.

• [Display and Graphics]

  • This update improves the reliability of navigating to and interacting with Settings > System > Display.

  • This update improves the persistence of previous brightness settings once the energy saver turns off.

• [Task Manager] This update improves the reliability of displaying app history information in Task Manager.

• [Windows Setup]

  • This update streamlines the experience for selecting a secondary keyboard during Windows setup, making it easier to skip when it isn't needed.

  • This update improves the Get Started app with new App install, Site pinning, and Theme pages to help you personalize your device and discover new features.

• [Windows Update] This update improves restart behavior so PCs that were manually put to sleep return to sleep after completing an update, even when automatic sleep is set to Never.

• [App Updates] This update adds support for participating apps to coordinate their updates with Windows Update. Supported apps can benefit from improved scheduling and a more streamlined update experience. For more information, see Windows Update Orchestration Platform (UOP).

• [Microsoft Store] New! This update provides support for in-app purchases in packaged WinUI 3 apps that require elevation, helping developers offer purchases through Microsoft's integrated commerce platform.

• [Windows Autopilot device preparation] New! Device association for Windows Autopilot device preparation is now generally available. This feature helps organizations identify trusted devices before enrollment, enabling device-targeted policies, automatic corporate device enrollment, and additional setup customization during the out-of-box experience (OOBE). To learn more, see Windows Autopilot device preparation.

• [Microsoft Execution Containers] New! This update introduces Process Isolation for Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), a fast, lightweight boundary for responsive workloads such as coding agents and model-generated code. It uses Windows operating-system containment capabilities to restrict access to resources such as files, networking, the user interface, and other operating-system capabilities according to policy.

• [Agentic processes] New! This update introduces preview platform support for tagging agentic processes. Authorized components can assign an opaque agent identifier to a process token. Windows protects the marking and automatically passes it to child processes. When an agentic process authenticates through Web Account Manager (WAM), WAM includes the agent identifier from the process token in the authentication request. As a preview capability, the identifier format may change in future releases.

• [Cryptography] New! Post-Quantum Cryptography algorithm ML-KEM can now be used as a standalone algorithm for TLS key exchange, in addition to hybrid groups added previously.

• [Network]

  • This update improves resiliency and recovery from potential VPN process-related background issues that can cause processes to stop responding.

  • This update improves the output of the netsh wlan show wlanreport command for Japanese users.

• [Input]

  • This update improves the reliability of typing with the Japanese IME by reducing potential hangs.

  • This update improves the persistence of voice typing settings for automatic punctuation and launcher.

• [Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC)]

  • Starting in September 2026, Windows 11, version 26H1 will no longer include the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility. WMIC is already removed by default in new installations of Windows 11, version 26H1, and will no longer be available as a Feature on Demand (FoD). This change affects only the WMIC utility; Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) remains supported. Learn more: Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) removal from Windows.

• [Secure Trust (Known issue)] Fixed This update fixes an issue that could cause domain-joined devices to lose their secure trust relationship with an Active Directory domain. As a result, users might have been unable to sign in with valid domain credentials and could have received a message indicating that the trust relationship between the device and the domain had failed. This issue affected devices configured to use Machine Identity Isolation in unsupported environments.

• [Accessibility and Localization] This update improves the accessibility and user experience of the Intelligent Carveout interface and provides improved translations for users across supported languages and regions.

• [File History (known issue)] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where File History might fail to back up or restore files to an external drive or network location. Affected devices might incorrectly display a "Reconnect your drive" message even when a compatible backup drive is connected and working properly.

• [Time and Date] This update enables permanent Daylight Savings Time (DST) support for British Columbia and Alberta starting in November 2026.

This release updates the following AI components to version 1.2607.840.0: Image Search, Content Extraction, Semantic Analysis, and Settings Model.

To learn more, see Release information for AI components.

Includes KB5124005 (Build 28000.3081), which improves the reliability of the Windows update installation process. To learn more about SSUs, see Simplifying on-premises deployment of servicing stack updates.

Symptoms

After installing the September 2026 non-security preview update KB5124010, or later updates, non-admin users might be unable to establish Remote Desktop connections to remote devices that have Administrator protection enabled. Attempts to connect might fail with error 0xC000000D and display the message, “The token that was passed to the function is invalid.” This issue primarily affects enterprise-managed remote devices used as Remote Desktop hosts with Administrator protection enabled, regardless of how the feature was enabled.

Note: If your organization uses Windows security baselines, published through the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit, Administrator protection is enabled by default in Windows 11, version 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 security baselines, unless your organization has configured the policy differently.

Resolution

IT administrators can mitigate this issue on devices affected by the Remote Desktop connection failure by using their existing policy management method to temporarily turn off Administrator protection. Reset the User Account Control Type Of Admin Approval Mode policy in Microsoft Intune or Group Policy. For more information, see Administrator protection on Windows 11.

Next steps: Microsoft is working to address this issue in a future Windows update and will provide more information when it is available.

Symptoms:

After installing the August 2026 Windows non-security preview update KB5120996 and subsequent updates, some devices might experience desktop loading issues. This issue has been primarily observed on Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) hosts using FSLogix. This issue appears to occur more frequently with some existing user profiles.

Affected users might see a black screen after sign-in, with the desktop session failing to load automatically. In some cases, users might be unable to access their desktop until the desktop session is started manually. Application event logs might also show Windows Explorer crashes.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in Windows updates released on and after October 13, 2026 such as KB5127646. We recommend you install the latest Windows update for your device as it contains important improvements and issue resolutions, including this one.

Symptoms

After installing the September 8, 2026, Windows security update, some USB Audio Class 1.0 devices might fail to start or produce audio. Affected devices might experience one or more of the following symptoms:

• The device displays an error in Device Manager: "This device cannot start (Code 10)."
• No audio output.
• Volume controls are unresponsive or remain at zero.
• Sound settings are unresponsive or unavailable.

This issue is limited to USB Audio Class 1.0 devices.

Resolution

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will update this documentation when more information is available.