- A bug in recent updates for Windows 11 and 10 accidentally deleted Copilot
- Microsoft has swiftly fixed this and reinstated the Copilot app
- The company will doubtless be looking to forget this odd episode in the AI assistant’s history just as swiftly
Microsoft has rushed out a patch to put Copilot back into Windows 11 (and Windows 10), after the latest round of updates for its operating systems deleted the app for the AI assistant (for some users, anyway).
In what’s one of the more head-scratching bugs we’ve seen from Microsoft in the recent past – and it has some competition there, make no mistake – the key introduction for Windows 11 as far as AI is concerned was accidentally removed from some PCs.
Windows Latest noticed the fix has now landed, and observed that Microsoft updated its support documents for affected versions of Windows, which are Windows 11 24H2 and 23H2, and also Windows 10.
Microsoft tells us: “This issue has been fixed, and the affected devices are being returned to their original state.”
So, if the Copilot app has gone missing from your desktop, it will soon be returned to its rightful place, although it may take a little time for the cure to be pushed to all affected systems.
As Microsoft also notes, if you can’t wait, you can manually reinstall the Copilot application yourself. You’ll find it in the Microsoft Store (and once it’s installed again, you can also manually pin it back on the taskbar).
Analysis: A predictably swift response to a bewildering bug
Windows Latest also observed that Microsoft kept this one rather under the radar, keeping its known issue updates (including the resolution) just to the respective support documents for Windows versions, rather than flagging this in the overarching Windows health dashboard.
That’s not surprising, though, and indeed the speedy fix is no surprise either. Let’s face it, this was a red-alert-level of embarrassment here – Microsoft is pushing hard to drive Copilot adoption, so ditching the AI app mistakenly from some Windows 11 devices was rather shooting itself in the foot, to say the least.
Clearly enough, it wasn’t a difficult fix, and at any rate, as Microsoft has pointed out, it wasn’t difficult to rectify the problem yourself simply by reinstalling the Copilot app manually.
As a final thought, here’s an interesting question to ponder: how many of the affected PCs that had Copilot removed even noticed the AI assistant was missing? If you never summon the Copilot app, you might not have even noticed the icon going missing from the taskbar. I’m betting a fair few people will have fallen into that category…
That said, it should be noted that as far as I’m aware, only a relatively small set of Windows 11 (and 10) users were hit by the vanishing Copilot bug in the first place, so the overall impact was likely to be limited, anyway. As mentioned, this is more of a PR embarrassment for Microsoft than anything else, but it’s certainly a weird error to have occurred.
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