How urgent is the September 2026 Patch Tuesday?

Treat it as priority-high this week. The release fixed at least 974 vulnerabilities, 113 rated critical, and two of them – CVE-2026-81963 and CVE-2026-85880 – were already being actively exploited when the patch shipped. Internet-facing machines, domain controllers and DNS servers go first (CVE-2026-69730 is a DNS weakness touching Windows Server 2012 onward), everything else within days (KrebsOnSecurity, Sep 8, 2026).

Is the AMD GPU crash problem fixed yet?

No. The September 15 emergency update KB5129195 fixed audio problems, Remote Desktop Services failures and third-party integration breakage, but Windows Latest and PCWorld both confirm the AMD graphics crashes were not included in the fix. Update your AMD driver first, pause updates if crashes continue, and watch the Windows Release Health page for the known-issue entry to flip to resolved.

What does the Copilot Business billing change mean for my bills?

From November 2, 2026, new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses bought through CSP arrive with usage-based billing enabled by default and a preset $10 per user per month pay-as-you-go limit. You pay only for eligible usage such as Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs and GitHub Copilot Harness, and administrators can adjust the limit or use prepaid credits. Existing licenses are unaffected (Microsoft Partner Center, Sep 16, 2026).

Can I keep using Office 2021 after October 13, 2026?

Yes – the apps continue to run and open documents – but Office, Project and Visio LTSC 2021 stop receiving security updates on that date, so unpatched exposure grows the longer they stay in daily use. Microsoft recommends moving to Microsoft 365 suites (E3 for enterprises, Business Premium or Business Standard under 300 users), with Office LTSC 2024 as the on-premises fallback (Microsoft Partner Center, Sep 15, 2026).

Windows & Microsoft AI News: Patch & Copilot (Sep 17, 2026)