Microsoft is throwing everything at Windows 11's spiraling quality crisis. Sources tell The Verge the company's redirecting engineers in an urgent process called "swarming" to fix performance and reliability issues that have pushed the operating system to breaking point. After months of buggy updates, intrusive ads, and AI features nobody asked for, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri admitted the feedback is crystal clear: "We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people."
Microsoft just admitted what Windows 11 users have been screaming for months: the operating system is broken, and the company knows it. In a rare acknowledgment of systemic problems, Windows and devices president Pavan Davuluri told The Verge that engineers are now "swarming" to fix core reliability issues that have eroded user trust over the past year.
The situation hit a breaking point in January when Microsoft's first Windows 11 update of 2026 turned into a disaster. Shutdown failures forced an unusual emergency out-of-band patch, followed by a second emergency fix days later for OneDrive and Dropbox crashes. Then came confirmation that business PCs were failing to boot entirely after the January update left machines in an "improper state" from December's botched rollout, according to Microsoft's own advisory.
It's the culmination of a brutal 12 months. Microsoft spent months fixing Remote Desktop disconnection issues, shipped an update that wiped out Copilot, released patches that , and created a . The company even broke its own dark mode improvements with a in File Explorer.
