Those who sign up for the Windows Insider program know what to expect: you get first dibs on the platform's new and interesting features, and in return, you enlist in the volunteer ranks of Microsoft's bug reporting beta army.

However, few would anticipate the kind of bug found in the latest Preview Build 26200.5651 of the Windows 11 Beta and Dev channels .

It's not disruptive, it doesn't cause any frustrating software gremlins, and neither is it particularly annoying to deal with — but it does, inexplicably, drop an 18-year-old platform relic into the Windows experience, welcoming users to their desktops with the iconic, long-retired chimes of Windows Vista/7.

While this bug would typically be seen as nothing more than your average post-update blunder, given the timing, I'm convinced it has a lot more to do with Apple's recently announced operating system makeover for iOS 26 and macOS 26 than Microsoft is willing to admit.

One eagle-eyed (or eared) Windows Insider brought attention to the bug in a post to X on Friday, even tracking down its cause to the imageres.dll.mun resource file, where Windows 11's typical startup sounds had been overwritten.