Your PC can finally get on Wi-Fi while it is busy repairing itself

Windows keeps a repair mode called the Recovery Environment tucked away for when the PC will not start properly, and these days some of those repairs need to download things from Microsoft. Networking has been the sticking point. On its own it could only get online over an Ethernet cable. On a laptop with no network socket you were asked to pick a Wi-Fi network from a stripped-back screen and type the password from memory, generally at the least convenient moment of your week.

That ends with the update landing on Tuesday 13 October. The Recovery Environment can now reuse Wi-Fi profiles already saved in Windows, and it is switched on by default. The code shipped first in September's optional preview, KB5124010, which took Windows 11 to builds 26100.9550, 26200.9550 and 26300.9550.

A few other things ride along in the same update. The Copilot key on newer keyboards can at last be remapped to Right Ctrl or to the Context Menu key, under Settings, then Bluetooth and devices, then Keyboard. Accessibility picks up an option to open apps maximized, in Visual effects. File Explorer previews PDFs properly and remembers which parts of Home you had collapsed. Emoji 17.0 turns up too, for whatever that is worth.

One date goes with it. For Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro, Tuesday's patch is the last security update those machines will ever receive, so moving to 25H2 is this week's job rather than next month's. If the upgrade stalls or the update button sits there doing nothing, that is the sort of thing Tendvane's Windows Update repair wizard was written for.