Microsoft Good News/Bad News
Jan. 10th, 2026 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneWe'll start with the good news.
Microsoft may soon start allowing sysadmins to uninstall the CoPilot AI assistant from managed devices. Specifically, the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot systems. There are a couple of restrictions: "The new policy will apply to devices where the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are both installed, the Microsoft Copilot app was not installed by the user, and the Microsoft Copilot app was not launched in the last 28 days."
This is currently being released in the Dev and Preview builds in the Insider Channel.
FYI, and I was going to post about this but I'm still kinda wrecked over events in December and it didn't happen. MS renamed their Office 365 app to 365 Copilot as they integrated their Copilot system into it. This makes me really glad that I bought licenses for a slightly older version of the stand-alone version of Office and don't touch 365.
Now, they're specifically talking about sysadmins being able to remove these programs from managed devices. That means this is exclusively the realm of larger, usually corporate networks. However, there are so many clever boffin system administrators out there who look out for the little people that within a week or few that instructions will start spreading on how to uninstall them from any Windows 11 system, it'll just take a little time to write up and test. But it'll get out.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot-on-managed-devices/
https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/2219256/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot
On the bad news side, Windows Media Player. AKA WMP, is a decent product for ripping music CDs to formats including MP3. I've used it myself in the last year when my Apple USB DVD R/W went on walkabout, I was able to buy another at an estate sale last year. As most media players work, WMP would read the CD and supply the metadata for the album: album name, song titles, artwork.
Until last month.
Something changed, and it's unknown if MS will fix is. At this time, the only straightforward solution is to manually type all that info - readily available (usually) at Amazon, or rip it using another program which can provide the metadata (lots mentioned in the Slashdot article).
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/09/microsoft_windows_media_player_forgets/
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1742218/microsoft-windows-media-player-stops-serving-up-cd-album-info
Microsoft may soon start allowing sysadmins to uninstall the CoPilot AI assistant from managed devices. Specifically, the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot systems. There are a couple of restrictions: "The new policy will apply to devices where the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are both installed, the Microsoft Copilot app was not installed by the user, and the Microsoft Copilot app was not launched in the last 28 days."
This is currently being released in the Dev and Preview builds in the Insider Channel.
FYI, and I was going to post about this but I'm still kinda wrecked over events in December and it didn't happen. MS renamed their Office 365 app to 365 Copilot as they integrated their Copilot system into it. This makes me really glad that I bought licenses for a slightly older version of the stand-alone version of Office and don't touch 365.
Now, they're specifically talking about sysadmins being able to remove these programs from managed devices. That means this is exclusively the realm of larger, usually corporate networks. However, there are so many clever boffin system administrators out there who look out for the little people that within a week or few that instructions will start spreading on how to uninstall them from any Windows 11 system, it'll just take a little time to write up and test. But it'll get out.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot-on-managed-devices/
https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/2219256/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot
On the bad news side, Windows Media Player. AKA WMP, is a decent product for ripping music CDs to formats including MP3. I've used it myself in the last year when my Apple USB DVD R/W went on walkabout, I was able to buy another at an estate sale last year. As most media players work, WMP would read the CD and supply the metadata for the album: album name, song titles, artwork.
Until last month.
Something changed, and it's unknown if MS will fix is. At this time, the only straightforward solution is to manually type all that info - readily available (usually) at Amazon, or rip it using another program which can provide the metadata (lots mentioned in the Slashdot article).
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/09/microsoft_windows_media_player_forgets/
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1742218/microsoft-windows-media-player-stops-serving-up-cd-album-info
