KB5094978

Microsoft has released cumulative update KB5094978 (Build 28020.2236) for Windows 11, version 26H1 for insiders on the Beta channel.

• Extension of update pauses. The Windows Update section now allows you to extend update pauses as many times as you need.
• Administrator protection. Following the resumption of the Administrator protection feature rollout, which is enabled by IT administrators, the ability to enable Administrator protection has now also been added in Settings under Privacy & security > Windows Security > Account protection, by toggling the switch to On. A reboot will be required to complete the process.

Known issues:

• Audio issue. Fixed a bug that caused sound to stop working for some insiders after the latest flights.
• Settings issue. Fixed a bug that affected the reliability of the Settings > Apps > Installed apps section after the latest flights.
• Overall reliability and freezes. If you experienced freezes in the previous flight when interacting with search, Notepad, or in some other scenarios, this problem should now be resolved.

Install via Windows Update. Go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates. A computer restart is required to complete the installation.

Features and capabilities included in these builds may never be released in the final version – Microsoft is testing different concepts and collecting feedback. Features may change, be removed, or replaced and may not ship beyond the Windows Insider program. Some of them may appear in future Windows releases when they are fully ready.

Some features that are under active development and are being previewed by Microsoft to insiders may not be fully localized. Localization will be completed as features are finalized. If you notice localization issues in your language, please report them through the Feedback Hub app.

How the new features work:

Extension of update pauses (English): The system utilizes the Windows Update API (WU API) to programmatically manipulate deferred installation timers. The "Settings" user interface now ignores the hard limit on the number of consecutive extensions, writing a new flag to the registry branch HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings, which allows the WU client to recalculate the pause deadline without frontend validation of the attempt counter.

Administrator protection (English): The feature is based on the "Just-In-Time" (JIT) security model and privilege isolation. Upon toggling the switch in "Settings," the Local Security Authority (LSA) service activates a hidden token filtering marker, forcing the kernel to create two separate access tokens for the administrator account: an unprivileged one (for standard work) and a privileged one (with NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM rights), requested solely via an explicit UAC dialog on a hardware-isolated desktop. Reboot is required to reinitialize the session structure and refresh the access control list in the Security Account Manager (SAM).

Known issues (Audio) (English): A bug was fixed in the audio device stack component (AudioEng.dll). The issue involved incorrect release of the audio driver's Interrupt Service Routine object on the HD Audio bus upon exiting Modern Standby, leading to a race condition in the WASAPI thread scheduler and locking of the playback endpoint.

Known issues (Settings) (English): A defect was resolved in the WMI provider for the root\cimv2\mdm namespace that affected the generation of the Win32_InstalledPrograms list. An error in the AppX manifest parsing method resulted in an E_INVALIDARG exception during XAML UI rendering, causing the "Installed apps" page to crash when attempting to refresh the background icon tile.

Overall reliability and freezes (English): A root cause crash was resolved in the Composable Shell (CShell) infrastructure that caused a deadlock when calling ISearchQueryHelper handlers from the UI thread. The problem was tied to incorrect reference counting of a COM object inside SearchHost.exe, blocking the window message processing loop and creating a complete GUI freeze effect when typing in "Notepad" or the search field.

The last 10 Windows updates: