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Artificial intelligence is usually demonstrated by asking it to write an email, summarise a document or generate an image. Those uses are real enough, but they say very little about what AI can do in the hands of someone who already understands the problem in front of them.

We had a more practical example recently. Two Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosts failed to boot following a routine update cycle. One displayed a BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO stop error; both ultimately halted at Windows Boot Manager reporting 0xc0000225 – A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed. These were production systems, so reinstalling Windows was a last resort rather than a first move. Both were eventually recovered without a rebuild, and the update that appeared to have caused the problem turned out not to be the whole story.

Before You Copy Any of This

Windows servicing is stateful, and two machines showing the same stop code can have entirely different underlying faults. Nothing below should be treated as a set of commands to paste into a broken server.

Take a backup or confirm you have a working recovery route before touching a production system. In a virtual environment a checkpoint is a useful short-term safety net while troubleshooting, but a Hyper-V checkpoint is not a backup and should never be relied on as one. Most importantly, do not remove an update package because a package identity appears in an article — always identify what is actually present on your own system.

First, Establish What Windows Is Actually Doing

Error 0xc0000225 normally sends administrators straight towards the BCD, the EFI System Partition or missing boot files, and that would have been a reasonable first instinct. The more useful clue was that both servers had just been through an update cycle, which raised a different possibility: that Windows servicing had been interrupted part-way through committing an update during startup. Continue reading →

Britain’s cyber security authority has, for the first time, told the public to choose passkeys over passwords wherever they can. Here’s what that actually means for the businesses still running on “Summer2025!” and a sticky note.

At CYBERUK 2026 in Glasgow in April, the National Cyber Security Centre — the part of GCHQ that issues the UK’s official cyber guidance — formally recommended that passkeys should be the default way of logging in to online services where they are available. It’s a striking departure from decades of advice telling us to pick longer, stranger, more memorable strings of characters, and it followed a similar move by the UK government to roll passkeys out across GOV.UK services as an alternative to password-and-security-code sign-in, a change expected to save several million pounds a year. GOV.UK One Login began offering passkeys on 28 July 2026.

The NCSC still recommends a good password manager paired with two-step verification for the many services that have not yet added passkey support. But where the option exists, the message is clear: take it.

For small business owners, that translates into something simple: if your suppliers, banks and cloud platforms support passkeys — and many of the big ones now do — it is time to start switching over.

This week’s passkey checklist

If you read no further, do these five things:

1. Turn on passkeys for your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace admin accounts first, then your standard user accounts.
2. Make sure you have at least two independent ways of regaining access to each critical account — for example, a synced passkey plus a separate hardware security key or another registered passkey.
3. Set up a working fallback for every account — recovery codes where offered, a second registered passkey where appropriate, and make sure you understand the recovery options for the credential manager you use.
4. Review the registered passkeys and sign-in methods on your critical accounts and remove anything you don’t recognise.
5. Make sure your IT provider has documented the recovery process before someone loses a phone — not after.

Continue reading →

BERKELEY, CA — Before it became the backbone of modern internet infrastructure, before major institutions staked their data architectures on it, and before the elephant logo became a familiar sight in server rooms worldwide, PostgreSQL endured more than two decades of reinvention, academic intrigue, and near-extinction. Its story, stretching back to 1973, is less a corporate origin myth than a picaresque tale of a piece of software that simply would not stay buried.

Act I: INGRES and the Berkeley Crucible (1973–1985)

The story does not begin with PostgreSQL. It begins in an office at the University of California, Berkeley, where a young professor named Michael Stonebraker and his colleague Eugene Wong launched a project in 1973 called INGRES (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System). At the time, the relational model was barely three years old, a theoretical curiosity proposed by IBM researcher Edgar Codd. Stonebraker and Wong decided to build a working relational database from scratch.

For over a decade, INGRES grew into one of the most important database systems in the world, rivaling IBM’s own efforts. But by the mid-1980s, the focus of database research was shifting. Stonebraker and his team wanted to tackle new technical frontiers: extending database support beyond traditional business data to handle complex objects, geographical data, CAD/CAM systems, and documents. The relational model had been proven; now, it needed to evolve. Continue reading →

Updated: 18 August 2026 (before you get too excited, we have now confirmed this solution does NOT fix CCH).

A Microsoft .NET security update released on 11 August 2026 is causing printing failures in some Windows 11 and Windows Server business applications that use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the XPS printing system.

We have encountered the problem with Wolters Kluwer CCH, but the underlying issue is not specific to CCH. Reports from other organisations show the same problem affecting .NET Framework applications, Crystal Reports-based applications and other software that uses WPF font subsetting when printing. Microsoft is currently investigating the regression.

What Are the Symptoms?

Affected applications may suddenly stop printing after the August 2026 Windows/.NET updates have been installed.

An error may refer to a Windows font such as Calibri and report that the font:

does not conform to the expected file format specification

The fonts themselves are not necessarily corrupt. Testing has shown that Windows can still load and display them normally. The failure occurs specifically when WPF attempts to create a subset of the font for XPS or printing.

Fonts reported as affected include:

• Calibri
• Cambria
• Constantia
• Corbel

Other fonts, including Arial, Segoe UI and Times New Roman, have continued to work in testing. Some older third-party fonts may also be affected.

Which Windows Updates Are Involved?

The problem was introduced by the August 2026 .NET security updates. The exact KB number depends on the version of Windows. Continue reading →

Understanding Android Versions, Security Updates, and When to Upgrade
(Updated: August 15, 2026)

If you’re confused about which Android version your phone should be running, you’re not alone. Unlike Apple’s tightly controlled iPhone lineup, Android’s update system involves Google, your phone’s manufacturer, and sometimes your carrier — and it’s not always obvious whether your device is still secure or when you need to think about upgrading.

This guide explains how Android versioning works, what security patch levels mean, and how to know if your phone is still protected.

Android Versioning: Numbers, Not Years

Android keeps things simple with sequential numbering. Android 16 arrived in 2025, and the current release, Android 17, began its stable rollout on 16 June 2026, first to Pixel devices, with other eligible Android devices following through 2026. So if the year is 2026, the newest Android is 17.

But here’s the catch that Apple doesn’t have: the version number alone doesn’t tell you whether a device is current. Google releases Android, but your phone’s manufacturer — Google, Samsung, Motorola and so on — has to build, test and deliver the update for your specific model. A two-year-old Samsung and a two-year-old Motorola can be on completely different Android versions and both be perfectly healthy.

That’s why on Android you need to look at two numbers: the Android version, and — more importantly — the security patch level.

Major Upgrades vs Security Updates: What’s the Difference?

For most users, there are three types of updates to be aware of: Continue reading →

Understanding iOS Versions, Security Updates, and When to Upgrade.
(Updated: 15th August 2026)

If you’re confused about which iOS version your iPhone should be running, you’re not alone. Apple’s approach to software updates has become increasingly complex, and it’s not always obvious whether your device is still secure or when you need to think about upgrading.

This guide explains how Apple’s iOS versioning works, what security updates mean for your device, and how to know if your iPhone is still protected as we approach the next major software cycle.

The New Naming Convention: Why iOS Jumped to 26

If you were expecting iOS 19 after iOS 18, you might have been surprised when Apple released iOS 26 in September 2025. Apple changed their naming convention to align with the calendar year—so iOS 26 is for 2026, similar to how car manufacturers name their models. Continue reading →

Ask an AI assistant to write you a Python script and it will usually run first time. Ask the same tool for a PowerShell script that audits mailbox permissions or disables dormant user accounts, and the odds shift noticeably. The script will look right. The indentation will be immaculate, the comments helpful, the structure sensible. And somewhere in the middle there will be a command that has never existed, or a parameter that was quietly retired three years ago. For anyone keeping a small business network running, the gap between “looks right” and “is right” is worth understanding, because it changes how these tools should be used.

The failure that does not look like a failure

When an AI assistant gets Python wrong, you usually find out immediately: the script throws an error and stops. When it gets PowerShell wrong, the failure is often quieter. A misspelled cmdlet or an invented parameter fails loudly enough — PowerShell rejects both outright. The dangerous cases are the quiet ones. Under PowerShell’s default settings, a filter that refers to a property which does not exist will often match nothing at all rather than raise an error, so a script that should have found forty mailboxes reports a tidy run against none. A command whose behaviour differs between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7 can do exactly the wrong thing without complaint. And an -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue added to keep the output clean will suppress precisely the failure you needed to see.

Much of the best PowerShell was never published

Continue reading →

Microsoft is quietly beefing up storage for its Microsoft 365 Business tiers—Basic, Standard, and Premium. The primary mailbox limit is jumping from 50GB to a much healthier 100GB, giving teams plenty of extra room for heavy attachments, years of email history, and everyday clutter.

Keep in mind that this rollout is happening gradually between June and September 2026. Because the update is applied on a per-user basis rather than flipping a switch for the whole company, your team might notice the extra space at different times. Don’t panic if your quota looks different from your desk neighbour’s for a few weeks.

On the surface, this looks like a pure upgrade. Fewer “mailbox full” warnings and less time purging old threads. But there’s a catch Microsoft didn’t mention, and it specifically impacts anyone using the Classic Outlook desktop app.

The hidden 50GB ceiling in Classic Outlook

Even though your cloud mailbox just doubled in size, Classic Outlook relies on a local Offline Storage Table (OST) file to keep things synced and working offline. By default, that local OST file caps out at 50GB.

Once it hits that ceiling, things start to break down. Microsoft *does let you manually bump up that local limit via the registry, but they strongly advise against it because massive local files tank performance. When an OST file gets too bloated, you’ll usually see: Continue reading →

UK keyboard layout may behave like a US keyboard even when Windows settings appear correct

Summary: We recently encountered a Windows 11 PC that began behaving as though it had a US keyboard after a restart. The @ and quotation-mark keys were reversed, yet Windows showed English (United Kingdom) and only the United Kingdom keyboard layout was installed. Here is how to check and correct the problem.

What Are the Symptoms?

The most obvious sign is that the @ and quotation-mark characters appear in the wrong places.

On a standard UK keyboard:

• Shift + 2 should produce ".
• The key beside the Enter key should produce @.

When Windows uses a US keyboard layout, these two characters are effectively reversed.

This can be especially confusing because the letters and numbers continue to work normally. Users may initially assume that the keyboard itself is faulty.

Why Does This Matter to Businesses?

A keyboard-layout problem may sound like a minor inconvenience, but it can quickly interfere with normal work. Continue reading →

For years, Outlook users had a simple safety net against sending email to the wrong person. If a stale, mistyped or outdated address appeared in the suggestions under To, Cc or Bcc, many users could click the small “X” beside it and stop that suggestion appearing again. But following Microsoft’s 31 March 2026 retirement of “Contact Masking”, and recent changes to how Outlook generates recipient suggestions, that familiar control is no longer behaving consistently across Outlook clients. Microsoft says the AutoComplete list is not affected. Many users say the experience tells a different story.

Contact Masking was one of the features users experienced through that familiar “X”. It allowed a user to hide a specific suggested recipient, so that the address would no longer appear when they composed a new message. Microsoft says it had become a recurring source of customer confusion and support escalations, because contacts could be hidden for one user but remain visible to others, and the behaviour was inconsistent across Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 Search. In its retirement notice (MC1234566), Microsoft says no replacement is planned for Contact Masking, and that previously hidden contacts may now reappear in addressing fields.

On paper, that should not affect the separate AutoComplete list, the locally cached suggestions Outlook builds up from addresses you have sent to before. In its own retirement notice, Microsoft is at pains to say that the AutoComplete list for Outlook will not be impacted by this change, and that users can still remove entries from their autocomplete history. Microsoft’s published guidance on the AutoComplete list still tells users they can remove an individual entry by selecting the X beside a name, or by highlighting it and pressing Delete. In theory, the X for Contact Masking is gone, but the X for AutoComplete should remain. Continue reading →