Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17025 for PC

Earlier this week Microsoft released Build 17025 to the Fast Insiders,

What’s new in Build 17025

Revamped Ease of Access Settings: This build adds new Ease of Access settings to make your device easier to use and fit your needs. We also grouped related settings together which help you see, hear or interact with your computer to assist in discovering settings more quickly. Additionally, we heard your feedback and improved setting descriptions to help you more easily understand the available accessibility features. Go to the Ease of Access section in Settings to see what’s available to make your computer easier to use!

We have grouped related settings together which help you see, hear or interact with your computer to assist in discovering settings more quickly under Ease of Access.

Controlling your Startup tasks: Continuing our work from the previous flight, with today’s flight we’ve updated the Advanced options under Settings > Apps & Features so that UWP apps that are configured to run at startup will now have a new option to see all available tasks specified by the app developer and their status will now have a new option to see all available tasks specified by the app developer and their status.

We have updated the Advanced options under Settings > Apps & Features so that UWP apps that are configured to run at startup will now have a new option to see all available tasks specified by the app developer.

[ADDED 10/26] NOTE: The above screenshot is a sample app showing the functionality that app developers can take advantage of in their UWP apps. If you are unable to see this functionality for any of your apps shown under Settings > Apps & Features > Startup that’s because none of the apps on your PC under Startup currently have this functionality enabled.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • Continuing our effort towards Fluent Design, in this build you’ll notice that not only have we soften our light press effect based on your feedback, we’ve also enabled Reveal by default in CalendarView (seen, for example, in the Clock and Calendar flyout). UWP apps leveraging the Preview SDK for this build or higher will see this change automatically.
  • We fixed the issue where if you RDP into a PC running this build with certain GPU configurations, when you go to sign in to the PC locally it will appear stuck at a black screen with only the cursor available.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the touch feedback appearing visually corrupted in the last flight, with strange artifacts rather than the expected circle.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in UNC paths not being recognized when typed using the touch keyboard with the Japanese layout.
  • To improve the speed in getting you where you want to go, when typing with the Japanese IME into Internet Explorer’s address bar or search box, you will now see the search suggestions dropdown while composing the string, rather than having to wait until the candidate string is committed.
  • We fixed an issue where using an app in mini mode (for example Groove Music) would result in the taskbar appearing on top of a remote desktop session. We also fixed an issue where using Cortana to launch an app while playing a game fullscreen on another monitor could result in the taskbar drawing on top of the game.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to scroll to the very bottom of Start using touch when in tablet mode on small devices.
  • We fixed an issue where mouse input in Start might become offset.
  • We fixed an issue where clean installing Windows while not connected to the internet might result in default Start tiles showing download arrows indefinitely rather than the expected image.
  • We fixed an issue where right-clicking a folder already pinned to Start in File Explorer would still show the option “Pin to Start”.
  • We fixed an issue where attempting to log into Windows using a VM with Enhanced Session Mode might result in being prompted for your password twice.
  • We fixed an issue where toggling some DX9/DX10/DX11 games between windowed and fullscreen (for example using Alt + Tab) could result in the game window become black on certain PCs.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders with x86 PCs experiencing a blue screen with a HAL INITIALIZATION FAILED error when upgrading to the previous flight.
  • We fixed an issue where Insiders with restore points set might have experienced a volsnap.sys Green Screen error on boot.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Edge taking an unexpectedly long time to load the new page after clicking on certain links, appearing hung.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Edge being unexpectedly slow to respond when tabbing through controls with certain third party screen readers active.
  • We fixed an issue where settings under Windows Update’s Delivery Optimization page were unexpectedly disabled in the last flight.
  • We fixed an issue with the Courier New font where the numeral 2 was not displaying clearly on some display configurations.
  • Improved the Yu Gothic Bold font focusing on consistent baseline alignment and clarity of various Kana characters.

Known issues

  • If you are experiencing broken functionality in Mail, Cortana, Narrator or missing some features like Windows Media Player, please see this Feedback Hub post: https://aka.ms/Rsrjqn.
  • Using a swipe gesture with touch to dismiss notifications from the Action Center is currently not working. We’re investigating – for now you’ll need to use the clear all button, or use mouse/keyboard.
  • There’s a noticeable screen flicker when using hotkeys or the touchpad to switch between Virtual Desktops.
  • Invoking the Game bar with Win + G may cause the mouse cursor to become unresponsive while Game bar is up. Keyboard navigation still works and pressing Win + G again will close the Game bar, restoring the mouse cursor to the game.
  • Calendar toast dismiss and snooze icons may be missing from notifications in Action Center.

Source: Windows Blog

How to configure file associations for IT Pros?

Ran into this neat post on the MS Blogs by Ismaël Limbada:

After reading it, you will be able to configure file associations in Windows 10 and avoid this notification: An app default was reset.

All steps described in this blog post have been tested on following Windows 10 versions:

  • Windows 10 1709
  • Windows 10 1703
  • Windows 10 1607

Configuring file association prior Windows 10

There were different ways and guidance to set default program prior to Windows 10 (see Managing Default Applications).

Before Windows 10, an application could check default apps, ask for user consent and set default app programmatically using Windows API.

But some programs skip the user consent and set the app defaults into the registry. The main requirement for default file association is often forgotten: the end-user is in control.

Now in Windows 10 checks if registry file extension keys have not been modified to prevent file association hijacking.

File association changes in Windows 10

The way that default file associations work changed in Windows 10.

There is a new UI for the end-user. This new way puts the user in control with a new file association notification.

This notification will be displayed:

  • On the first launch of a file extension, if multiples programs are registered for handling that file extension.
  • Each time a new application registers a file extension, except if the Always use this app to open .xxx files is checked.

If an application used Windows API to set default apps, the user will receive the following notification:

For more information about these changes : https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/05/20/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-10122-for-pcs/

You will find some explanation on The Old New Thing blog: Why do my PDF file associations get reset every time I restart?

Windows 10: An app default was reset

But what happens if an application is not using Windows API and writes some stuff and hijacks user preferences?

Now,Windows 10 detects that the registry is corrupted and will reset the default program for this file extension. Additionally, the end-user will receive this notification: An App default was reset. These change is documented in KB4001770: Reset app default when a registry setting is deleted or corrupted and streamlined notification about the corruption.

In Windows 10, if you are using applications or scripts that tamper registry entries to configure default apps associations, you will get app reset notifications.

How to configure file association in Windows 10?

It’s possible for IT Pro to configure or force default association using supported methods.

The best way to do it is to set up a reference computer, install applications, configure default programs and use Dism to export/import the custom default app associations or use a group policy.

  1. Set up a reference computer
  2. Install applications
  3. Go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Default Programs and configure default apps associations. In Windows 10 1709, this control panel item is now in Settings app.

    Let’s try to configure Internet Explorer as the default browser

    Choose Internet Explorer

    Internet Explorer is now the default web browser

  4. Export/import the custom default app association with dism.exe
    Note that you need administrator rights to use dism.exe. And to export properly the associations use the same account used in step 3, otherwise you will get a malformed XML file.
  1. Dism.exe /online /export-defaultappassociations:C:\temp\CustomFileAssoc.xml

PS C:\Windows\system32> dism /online /export-defaultappassociations:”C:\Temp\IE-DefaultBrowser.xml”

  1. Open the xml file and check if everything looks good.

Usually at this step you will be tempted to delete other lines because you simply don’t care about them and get a file like this:

FTA-IE-Only.xml

VERY IMPORTANT: If you want to import your file with DISM.exe, DO NOT delete any file associations entries!
A missing entry will trigger the App default reset notification and you will get a notification storm at the first logon.

Refresh your XML on a regular basis

As some recommended applications can manage more extensions with each new Windows 10 version available, it’s a good practice to refresh your XML. For example, in Windows 10 1703, Microsoft Edge registers the epub extension. If you’re using an XML file from Windows 10 1607, epub is missing. As a result, you will get an app reset notification for epub.

Tips for building your XML file

  • Manually editing the file could result in a non-valid XML file. Ensure that your XML file is valid. Opening XML file in the old Internet Explorer is a good idea to check if the XML is valid. You can try XML Notepad to edit/validate XML files.
  • If you do not see your file extension in XML file, go back to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Default Programs and configure default apps associations, select file extension, click on Change Program and confirm the program in the dialog box. Then, export again you’re XML file.

Deploy your custom XML

Now it’s time to apply your XML file. You have two options:

  • Set up file association in your Windows 10 image. File associations will be configured for new users’ profiles. Existing profiles are untouched. Users can change file associations.
  • Configure a policy for your domain-joined computer: file association will be configured at each logon. User will be able to change file association, but at the next logon file association will be configured using XML file. This policy works only for domain-joined computer.

Configure the XML file for your Windows 10 reference image:

Dism.exe /online /import-defaultappassociations:c:\temp\CustomFileAssoc.xml

Your file will be copied in \Windows\System32 with the following name OEMDefaultAssociations.xml

Configure the XML file for your domain-joined computer

Configure the following policy Set a default associations configuration file located in Computer\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\File Explorer.

If this group policy is enabled and the client machine is domain-joined, the file will be processed, and default associations will be applied at logon time.

Note: this policy will not prevent user to change the file association. But at each logon the default association configured in XML file will be applied.

How to force only a set of file associations?

Some IT Pros want to force only some file associations and let users in control for others file associations. For example, they want to configure Internet Explorer as default for HTTP/HTTPS only for HR people.

So, they removed everything in the XML file except Internet Explorer entries. As previously seen, removing entries in XML file could result in app reset notifications.

But don’t panic, there is a solution to do it in your Windows 10 reference image.

You just need to have two XML files, one for configuring the defaults and another one to force file association.

The main XML, CustomDefaultAssoc.xml must contain all extensions. You need to import this file using:

Dism /online /import-defaultappassociations:C:\CustomDefaultAssoc.xml

The second XML, FTA-IE-Only.xml will contain only a set of file extensions. You need to use this XML file with the group policy Set a default associations configuration file.

At the first logon, Explorer.exe will apply both XML.

The end user will have this results without any app reset notifications:

  • PDF files associated with Microsoft Reader.
  • HTM/HTML files associated with Internet Explorer.

OEMDefaultAssociations.xml contains the following lines:

IEOnly.xml contains the following lines:

Why I’m getting an app reset notification?

Raymond Chen talked about this problem. If a program is trying to set some registry keys, Explorer will detect it and the file association will be reset.

Stop using script or other pre-Windows 10 ways for configuring file association.

You can check the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Core/AppDefaults event log for clues about file associations reset.

If you want to troubleshoot this, keep calm and run Procmon
?

You should be able to track which application is hijacking your file associations. Once you identified the bad application, the best way to solve this, is to use a more recent version, or contact your vendor.

Why I’m getting the User Choice notification even if I used an XML file?

You could get the following notification starting Windows 10 1703 when you choose an application as the default viewer instead using Microsoft Edge.

These notification windows are displayed only once if you’re clicking on OK. It’s because Microsoft Edge is detected as a new application.

If a new app is installed and is registered to an existing file extension or protocol you will get this notification.

If you want to get rid of these notifications, there is a group policy to hide these notifications:

Do not show the ‘new application installed’ notification

This policy removes the end-user notification for new application associations. These associations are based on file types (e.g. *.txt) or protocols (e.g. http:) If this group policy is enabled, no notifications will be shown

Group Policy Settings related to File Associations settings

You can find in the table below some group policies related to default file associations settings:

Policy Setting Name Policy Path
Do not reinitialize a pre-existing roamed user profile when it is loaded on a machine for the first time Windows Components\File Explorer
Turn off Internet File Association service System\Internet Communication Management\Internet Communication settings
Turn off access to the Store System\Internet Communication Management\Internet Communication settings
Do not show the ‘new application installed’ notification Windows Components\File Explorer
Set a default associations configuration file Windows Components\File Explorer

Bonus for Adobe Reader XI users

If you are still using Adobe Reader XI, you should get a new application to open PDF, as Adobe Reader XI is out of support.

With Adobe XI installer, you can get an app reset notification for PDF extensions and it will be reset to Microsoft Edge.

You should look at Adobe Reader documentation and launch the Adobe Reader 11 installation with the following command line:

AdbeRdr11010_en_US.exe /rs /sAll /msi EULA_ACCEPT=YES OWNERSHIP_STATE=0

With OWNERSHIP_STATE=0 Adobe Reader stops to change file association for PDF with an unsupported way.

Resources:

Source: TechNet

Upgraded to The Fall Creators Update & Missing Files on Demand?

It’s possible after upgrading to the 1709 build you can’t find the option to enable the Files on Demand option for OneDrive, this is caused by not having the latest & greatest version of the OneDrive client.

To get the option in your settings tab, you can wait for the update to be rolled out or manually install this one https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=851311 (version 17.3.7073)

Fall Creators Update, Windows 10 1709 Comming October 17th

For IT organizations, that means that Windows 10, version 1709 will be available on the 17th on all relevant distribution channels: the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC), Windows Update for Business, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and Visual Studio Subscriptions. The updated Windows ADK for Windows 10 will also be available by that date.

You might notice that there have been some packaging changes with volume licensing media and upgrade packages with Windows 10, version 1709. Now, instead of having separate media and packages for Windows 10 Pro (volume licensing version), Windows 10 Enterprise, and Windows 10 Education, all three will be bundled together.

For ISOs that you download from the VLSC or Visual Studio Subscriptions, you will still be able to search for the individual Windows editions. Just note that each of the editions (Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education) will point to the exact same ISO, so you only need to download the ISO once. Included in the ISO will be a single Windows image (WIM) file that contains all the volume licensing images.

Source: Technet

Edge Mobile Browser is comming to your Android & iOS device

Great news,

Microsoft has announced Edge to be on it’s way to your iOS and Android Mobile Devices,

A test version can be requested via the iOS testflight app on iOS,

Android users can sign up to be notified when a preview is available

Get your early access here: Sign up Link

 

Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android

One of the most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PCs is “we want our browser experience to move to our phones”. You spoke, we listened.

Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android shown on an iPhone and Android phone

Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android brings familiar features like your Favorites, Reading List, New Tab Page and Reading View across your PC and phone, so, no matter the device, your browsing goes with you. But what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, which enables you to immediately open the page you’re looking at right on your PC—or save it to work on later.

Continue on PC with Microsoft Edge, shown on an Android phone, iPhone and a Windows 10 laptop.

 

Beginning today, iOS users can test the preview app via Apple TestFlight, and Android users can sign up to be one of the first to test the preview app which will be available soon. Go here to sign up to test the Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android preview apps.

 

A few more details about the preview: Initially Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android will launch only in US-English, but we’ll ramp to other countries/languages as we expand the preview. And some features—like roaming passwords and support for iPads/Android tablets—aren’t available at preview launch but will come in the future.

Source: Windows Blog

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16299 for PC

Loads of new build have come out the last few weeks (16291, 16294, 16296 since last post), leading up to the Fall Creators update, mostly bug fixes are added, here’s what’s new in 16299, released yesterday:

Happy Upgrading!

 

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • We fixed an issue some Insiders were experiencing where after upgrading to recent flights their optical drive wouldn’t be listed under This PC.
  • We fixed an issue where Microsoft Edge might crash when scrolling embedded PDFs.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing 0x80070005 when trying to upgrade to the last few flights.
  • We fixed an issue where using the Automatic File Download notification to block an app from downloading files wasn’t working for UWP apps.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Windows Defender potentially downloading files selected to be online-only after using the file picker dialog and viewing their thumbnails.

 

Source: Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16288 for PC & Build 15250 for Mobileck

We’re back, holidays are over with a new release from Microsoft:

a quick & fast upgrade from the previous build, have fun discovering the new stuff!

Today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16288 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring only (not Skip Ahead). As we mentioned previously, we are now at the point of the development cycle for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update where our focus is now on stabilization for release to the world. This means that we are releasing new builds to Insiders more quickly and that these builds will include mostly bug fixes. You’ll notice that this build continues to include a bunch of good bug fixes Insiders will enjoy.

On Build 16288, you will notice that the watermark at the lower right-hand corner of the desktop has disappeared. You will also see that the OS now reports as “Version 1709” which is the official version number for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update release. However, this is NOT the final build as we’re not done yet. We’re just now beginning the phase of checking in final code to prepare for the final release. So we will have more builds to release to Windows Insiders between now and then. And the desktop watermark may re-appear in these builds.

We are also releasing Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build 15250 to Insiders in the Fast ring.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

Windows Shell Improvements

  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Facebook Messenger app failing to accept the enter key when sending messaging in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where the “New” text displayed under the names of newly installed apps in Start wouldn’t go away after launching the app.
  • We fixed an issue where using the letters in Start to jump to different locations in the alphabet wasn’t consistently working in the last few flights.
  • We fixed an issue where local app search in Cortana failed to return the expected app if the user profile directory contained non-ASCII characters.
  • We fixed an issue where pressing WIN + X would sometimes not show the accelerator key underlines.
  • We fixed an issue where when the People button was present in taskbar, and toast-only banners (for example from Outlook 2016) were sent, the Action Center badge counter would become inaccurate.
  • We fixed a bug from recent flights where upon unlock you’d be bombarded with any notifications that occurred while your PC was locked. If you’d like to review notifications received while your PC was locked, they can be found in the Action Center

Input Improvements

  • We fixed an issue where pressing delete when using the full touch keyboard layout in UWP apps would input a period rather than deleting a character.
  • We fixed an issue where the Pinyin IME’s emoji picker wouldn’t load in recent flights.
  • We fixed a tablet mode issue where launching the touch keyboard in UWP apps might sometimes take multiple taps on the edit field before the keyboard would come up.
  • We fixed an issue where when using the Chinese (Simplified) handwriting panel InputPersonalization.exe could get into a state where it would unexpectedly have a continually high CPU usage.
  • We fixed an issue with the handwriting panel where the “&123” and Emoji button didn’t work when the device was in portrait orientation.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to turn on the Japanese IME after the focus was moved from a UWP (like Sticky Notes) to another app and back.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in a stutter when selecting long strings in certain single line editable text boxes (for example when naming favorites in Microsoft Edge).
  • We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to type text via the touch keyboard into Internet Explorer when using the Japanese, Chinese, or Korean keyboards.
  • We fixed an issue where the Dayi and Array IMEs couldn’t input Chinese characters in certain apps in recent flights when using the touch keyboard.

Microsoft Edge Improvements

  • We fixed an issue where the tab preview for PDFs was just black with two white stripes.
  • We fixed an issue where the first time you used Ctrl + F in a tab the search box wouldn’t get focus. We also fixed an issue where after clicking the Find on Page text box you might not be able to type in the address bar.
  • We fixed an issue where sometimes the Hub would appear to open twice when you clicked the icon.
  • We fixed an issue where typing a web address into the address bar from the New Tab and Start Page and would sometimes clear the text and not result in any page navigation.
  • We fixed an issue where Ctrl + Click on a link in a PDF wouldn’t open the link in a new tab.
  • We fixed an issue where “Open with previous pages” wouldn’t recover tabs if the tabs had been dragged between frames prior to closing Microsoft Edge.
  • We fixed an issue which could result in uploads failing on some sites, such as Behance.net.
  • We fixed an issue where website tooltips could end up displaying behind the Microsoft Edge window after opening a link in new tab in the background.
  • We fixed an issue resulting copy/paste and the print dialog not working for those using the updated Youtube.com website design.
  • We’ve updated editable fields in PDFs to now have a subtle color to help indicate that they’re editable.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in PDFs potentially rendering blank after panning down a few pages and back up.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where Alt + D wouldn’t bring input focus to the address bar when certain keyboards were active.

Gaming

  • We fixed an issue resulting in Ghost Recon: Wildlands not starting in recent flights since the Easy anti-cheat component wouldn’t load.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Mod Organizer no longer load mods into Skyrim in recent flights.

Devices

  • We fixed the issue where USBhub.sys was causing spontaneous reboots due to bugchecks (GSOD).
  • We fixed an issue where your PC might not go to sleep automatically after remoting into it and signing out of the remote session.

Other fixes and improvements

  • We fixed an issue where Settings could crash if a Bluetooth device was turned off while the Bluetooth settings page was open.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights resulting in some Insiders experiencing an issue where Store apps would begin to fail to activate after being launched a few times.
  • We fixed an issue where if the lock screen slideshow was set to a OneDrive folder containing offline-only images, these pictures would all be downloaded to the PC while the PC was locked (going through each picture). These pictures will now be skipped.
  • If you’ve encountered an issue where Spotlight appears stuck on a particular image, we’ve added logic such that it should now reset after at most 7 days.

What’s new in Build 15250 for Mobile

Two factor Authentication: We are excited to announce that we’ve introduced a two factor authentication unlock mechanism for Windows 10 Mobile. With two factor unlock, an enterprise can enforce an additional security layer to their sensitive data via an MDM policy. Once two factor unlock is enabled, a phone user will have to enter a numeric pin followed by an enterprise-defined factor to unlock the phone. An example of an enterprise-defined factor is a companion device such as an NFC tag which can be used to unlock a phone using our Companion Device Framework sample app and documentation.

AppLocker Improvements: A number of customers have provided feedback on the warning prompts for apps that are blocked by enterprise policies. We’ve improved the UX and updated the MDM SyncML scripts associated with the policies. Application restrictions can be configured by either the ApplicationManagement CSP or AppLocker CSP.

ApplicationManagement/ApplicationRestrictions
ApplicationManagement/ApplicationRestrictions

AppLocker/ApplicationLaunchRestrictions 
AppLocker/ApplicationLaunchRestrictions 

VPN Improvements: In the modern corporate workplace, mobility is mainstream and secure access to corporate data via VPN has become the norm. We are bringing a range of improvements and features that enhance the reliability of VPN on Windows 10 Mobile. The key updates to our VPN capability are:

  • Lots of reliability improvements for VPN connectivity in Windows 10 Mobile.
  • IKEv2 Sleep and Power Enhancements.
    • VPN completes all pending actions before sleep and disconnects.
    • Automatic reconnection on resume.
  • Force tunneled improvements for UWP platform.
  • Proxy improvements for UWP VPN profile.
  • Enabling MMS usage when VPN is connected.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for Mobile

  • We fixed a regression that was introduced in build 15245 where the fingerprint reader on the HP Elite X3 did not turn on the screen. You needed to turn on the screen before you could use Windows Hello.
  • We fixed some issues where the Maps app navigation would start navigating a route and after performing a reroute, would present a list of possible routes instead of adjusting to the current route.
  • We also improved map-matching particularly for routes using ferries.
  • We fixed an issue where an app using the routing engine (e.g. Maps) would timeout on providing the route if suspended for more than 30 seconds.
  • We fixed an issue where tiles on the Start screen would occasionally be blank.
  • We fixed an issue where a VPN profile that was created via the VPN Management API would always be a dial-up profile.
  • We fixed an issue with the MDM policy used to control Build Flighting by Mobile Enterprise.
  • We fixed a couple of navigation issues when changing from highway to highway (occasionally, signposts were copied from the original highway to the destination highway) and highway to non-highway (erroneous instruction to “enter highway”).
  • We fixed a rare issue where the user’s call history was shown as corrupt after an upgrade.

Source: Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows Server Insider Preview Build 16267

Yes it’s here Server 2016 preview builds, get your systems up2speed with what’s coming now for Server side too! enjoy!

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are pleased to be releasing Windows Server Insider Preview Build 16267 to Windows Insiders. To obtain the build, registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. Matching symbols and the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) packages are available on the same page. When installed on a Windows 10 client, RSAT allows a user to remotely manage and administer Insider Preview builds of Windows Server via GUI tools. Valid on Windows 10 client builds greater than 16250.

For the best experience, the Windows Server team recommends a clean install.

If you have not yet registered as an Insider, register through the Windows Insiders for Business program or the Windows Insider program.

General Scenario Highlights

Developers and Containers:

  • New base container images (available on Windows Insider Docker Hub repo)
    • Optimized Nano Server base image (over 70% smaller)
      • The .NET team is providing a preview image based on Nano Server with .NET Core 2.0
      • The PowerShell team is providing a preview image based on PowerShell 6.0
    • Optimized Server Core base image (over 20% smaller)
  • Support for SMB volume mounting
  • Infrastructure for Orchestrators
    • Networking enhancements for ongoing Kubernetes work
    • Named pipe mapping support
  • Bug fixes, performance enhancements

Cloud Guest:

  • IIS
    • TLS info: administrators can make specific recommendations to default to HTTPS
  • Disaster Recovery
    • Storage Replica Test Failover
  • Guest + Host better together
    • vPMEM in Guest: Tenants can use and manage PMEM/SCM
    • Tenant-Aware VM Start Ordering: App Ready / OS Heartbeat for better load balancing
    • Guest RDMA
  • Improvement in time accuracy
  • Azure enlightened clusters – optimized to run on Azure IaaS

Cloud Host:

  • Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) host
    • Security
      • Shielded Linux VM
      • SDN: Encrypted virtual networks
      • Secure clusters
      • SMB 1 disabled by default
    • Resiliency and Availability
      • SDN: Reduced downtime for tenant connections through gateways
      • Spaces Direct: Scoped Spaces to mitigate impact of multi-node loss
      • Spaces Direct: Marginal drive handling for predictive detection of drive failures
    • Efficiency
      • Data Deduplication available for ReFS
      • New Data Deduplication DataPort API for optimized ingress/egress
      • Space efficiency with ReFS Compaction
      • Performant Spaces Direct Multi Resilient Volumes (MRV)
    • Hyper-converged Scale
      • Cluster Sets: Significantly increases hyper-converged SDDC cloud scale by grouping multiple clusters into a larger fabric
    • Hardware support
      • Support for Storage Class Memory (SCM) in Spaces Direct

What’s New in Build 16267 for Windows Server

There are no new features in build 16267

How to Download 

NOTE: If you signed up for Windows Insiders for Business using an AAD account, there is a temporary issue with access to the Windows Server Download page using AAD accounts. If you registered using an MSA account at the Windows Insider program, your MSA account may be used to access the page and to download builds until this is resolved.

The latest Windows Server build and matching symbols are available for download here.  Simply click on the desired file(s) and save locally. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via the Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, please visit http://aka.ms/containers/insiders.

The following keys are available for unlimited activations of Windows Server. These keys may be used throughout the pre-release cycle.

  • Windows Server Datacenter Core: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W
  • Windows Server Standard Core: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV

The RSAT version currently posted has not been updated, so if you already have it, you won’t need to download it again.

It’s all about your feedback! 

Use the Feedback Hub app to provide feedback on Windows Server builds. Feedback Hub comes pre-installed on Windows 10. Register a Windows 10 device with the Windows Insider or Windows Insider for Business programs. Open the Feedback Hub application. Choose the Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. Please indicate what edition and build number you are providing feedback on. The Feedback Hub app cannot scan a server for diagnostic information, however you may manually attach screenshots or other files to your feedback entry.

We encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts.

The expiration date for this server preview build is 12/4/2017.

Known issues 

  • Cluster Sets: A couple of key functionalities to enable end-to-end testing of Cluster Sets scenarios are not present in this build, so defer all evaluation of this scenario to a future build.
  • When a computer runs the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) from a local drive, the EFI system partition, which contains the WinPE image (boot.wim), does not have a drive letter assigned. This issue can adversely affect some automation.
  • Apps that call into the firewall, such apps that use networking, may become unresponsive until the user reboots because of an application hang end-task error (0xCFFFFFFF) in the Windows firewall API library (FirewallAPI.dll), which occurs when the library is blocked on an advanced local procedure call (ALPC) port while attempting to diagnose a connection failure and retrieve information.
  • A stop error may occur during volume repair in a cluster. The recommended workaround is to restart the computer. No corruption or data loss is expected.

Source: Windows Blog

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16237 for PC

Last week Microsoft released Build 16237 to the Fast Ring Insiders & announced another Bug Bash!

running smooth so far just a few performance issue with some game vendors in the store, guess they will be fixed soon. enjoy upgrading & get ready to bash some bugs starting July 14th!

Today we are excited to release Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16237 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring!

Upcoming Bug Bash

We’re really excited to do our 2nd (and final) Bug Bash for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update! The Bug Bash will start at 12am (Pacific Time) on Friday July 14th and will run a full week ending at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time) on Sunday July 23rd. As usual, we will be publishing new quests and will be doing some Mixer webcasts. So be sure to open Feedback Hub and complete as many quests as you can! More details to come early next week!

What’s New in Build 16237 For PC

Microsoft Edge Improvements:

Read aloud with word and line highlighting for all websites: With the read out loud feature for web, users will be able to read aloud any webpage with word and line highlighting.

PDF read aloud:  With the read out loud feature for PDF, users will be able to read aloud any PDF document with word and line highlighting.

Other improvements to address your feedback including:

  • If you click Share in Microsoft Edge, the Share UI will now match the Microsoft Edge theme if it is different from the rest of the system. Share UI will also now launch under the Share button, rather than in the center of Microsoft Edge.
  • When you add a favorite, you will get a delightful animation now that indicates where users can find their most important websites in the future.
  • We fixed an issue where copying double byte characters (for example Japanese or Chinese) out of Microsoft Edge and pasting into another app wouldn’t show the characters correctly in the second app.
  • We fixed a Microsoft Edge issue from the previous flight where opening links in a new tab might cause a new window to open with the link instead.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where the Print dialog in Microsoft Edge would show a blank preview page and lead to printing a blank page.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Microsoft Edge context menu not showing up on pen barrel button tap.
  • We fixed an issue when returning to Edge after a crash. Your tabs will be automatically restored for you.

Windows Shell Improvements:

No more logging out to fix blurry desktop apps: Hey, do you hate having to log out and back in to Windows to fix blurry desktop apps after docking, undocking, or remoting? We do too! In this flight, you only have to relaunch these apps in order to have them render crisply. If you have a high DPI display (a 4K display or other high dots-per-inch (DPI) display, such as Surface displays) and change the display scaling value in any way (this can happen when you dock/undock, remote from a device with a high DPI display, or otherwise change the display scaling setting) most desktop apps become blurry. This is due to 1) the apps don’t respond to a DPI change notification, because they haven’t been updated and 2) Windows keeps the display scaling/DPI data that it reports to apps constant until you log out and back in.

In this flight we’ve changed the way that Windows provides DPI-related information to these applications such that each time one of these applications starts, they’ll get updated data from Windows. This means that for these applications, you simply re-launch them in order for them to render correctly if they’re blurry. While this isn’t what we all want: having these applications render crisply all the time, we feel that it’s a lot less painful to relaunch apps instead of having to close out of all apps and going through a log-out/log-in cycles.

Some things to note: this won’t work for all desktop apps (and doesn’t apply to UWP apps). Also, this only helps apps that become blurry after a change to the display scale factor of the main/primary display. This change, unfortunately, doesn’t improve apps that are blurry on secondary displays when in “extend” display mode. Please give this change a try and let us know if you hit any bugs.

Notification and Action Center improvements:

• We’ve adjusted our notification buttons to now span across the bottom of the notification, rather than being right-justified.

  • We’ve adjusted our notification buttons to now span across the bottom of the notification, rather than being right-justified.
  • We just made it easier for you to take action on your notifications by auto-expanding the first notification in each notification group in the Action Center. Now you can quickly triage your emails, snooze your reminders, reply to your texts, etc. without the need to expand every single one of them.
  • In response to feedback about the X to “dismiss” notifications being confusing, we’ve adjusted it to now be an arrow to make it more clear that the notification is actually being pushed to the Action Center to be reviewed later.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where if you received 20 notifications from a specific app, then received more (without ever clearing them from the Action Center), ShellExperienceHost would start crashing repeatedly in the background.
  • We fixed a recent issue where tapping on the chevron of an expanded notification in the Action Center wouldn’t collapse the notification.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where opening the Action Center might not clear the badge on the Action Center icon, leading one to later believe there were new notifications when there weren’t any.
  • We fixed an issue where Notifications and Actions Settings might have unexpectedly had a number of unnamed apps listed at the top in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where Windows Defender notifications might include unparsed parameters (showing a % sign).

My People improvements:

  • Notification badges for people pinned to the taskbar will now be consistent with the color of your theme if you’ve opted into showing color in Start, Action Center, and other places on the system.
  • When you receive emoji from people pinned to the taskbar, we now refer to this as a “pop”. You’ll see this terminology reflected under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.

Input Improvements:

Emoji Panel turns it up a notch:

  • Type to search with the new Emoji Panel now supports emoji 5.0! We also added a bunch more keywords along the way.

Type to search with the new Emoji Panel now supports emoji 5.0! We also added a bunch more keywords along the way.

  • Have you ever wondered “What the heck is this emoji supposed to be”? Wonder no more! If you hover your mouse over any of the emoji in the Emoji Panel, you’ll now see a handy showing you the exact Unicode character name. Bonus: we’ve added tooltips to the categories so they’re no longer a mystery.
  • We fixed an issue for our dark theme lovers where the X to close out the Emoji Panel was black on black.

Improved touch keyboard experience:

  • We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard was passing the wrong window size information when shapewriting with the one-handed keyboard, leading to accuracy issues. Please try it again in today’s build and let us know if it seems improved.
  • As you type with the touch keyboard, you will now hear a sound with each key press – much as you did with the previous version of the keyboard before we introduced our new one.
  • We fixed some issues in learning your typing style, so you should find text predictions improved now the more you type and correct using the touch keyboard.
  • Since we now will relaunch the keyboard where you left it, we’ve decided to remove the left and right docked modes from the one-handed keyboard. As a refresher, if you want to move the keyboard, simply drag the candidate bar.
  • We improved the reliability of the Japanese one-handed 10-key Kana touch keyboard.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where the touch keyboard and handwriting panel would unexpectedly appear sometimes.
  • We fixed an issue where the text candidates would appear using unexpectedly small font.
  • We fixed an issue where only the one-handed keyboard was available on PCs with small screens.

Handwriting panel improvements:

  • We fixed an issue where if the text in the handwriting panel shifted while you were inking, it could result in an unintentional ink stroke across the panel.
  • We fixed an issue where a word might be inserted twice if you dismissed the panel by changing focus to somewhere else on the screen.

PC Gaming Improvements:

  • We have updated the Game Mode icon on the Game bar.

• We have updated the Game Mode icon on the Game bar.

Task Manager Improvements:

With Build 16226, we added GPU support to the Task Manager. We’ve made some improvements to the Performance tab, and in today’s build you’ll find:

  • GPU performance updates: We’ve made a few small changes in this build to the GPU performance tracker in Task Manager. We’ve updated the UI layout, and added more details like DirectX version and the physical location of your GPU. Only hardware GPUs show up in the list, and the software-only basic display adapter is hidden. More improvements coming soon!

We’ve made a few small changes in this build to the GPU performance tracker in Task Manager.

Hyper-V Improvements

You will see a new “virtual machine gallery” under quick create. There isn’t anything in the gallery yet and we’ll have more details on this in the future. In the meantime, choosing “Local installation source” will allow you to pick an image from your computer.

You will see a new “virtual machine gallery” under quick create. There isn’t anything in the gallery yet and we’ll have more details on this in the future.

If you’re wondering where the options for VM Name and networking went, they’re in the “More options” section which introduces another new feature in Hyper-V. Hyper-V on Windows 10 provides a default network so your virtual machines share networking with your computer using NAT.

If you’re wondering where the options for VM Name and networking went, they’re in the “More options” section which introduces another new feature in Hyper-V.

 Changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • We fixed an issue from the last flight where doing a PC reset via Settings > Update & security > Recovery and choosing “Remove everything” might put your device into a reboot loop. It is now safe to use this option again.
  • We fixed the issue causing some inbox apps to be displayed with a name that looked like “ms-resource:” and listed at the bottom of Start.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights resulting in the Photos, Groove Music, and certain other app’s live tiles not working.
  • We fixed a high hitting crash impacting Start and Cortana in recent flights.
  • We fixed a recent issue where you’d find two Connect apps in Start – one as expected, with a blue app icon, one unexpected with a light grey app icon and non-functional.
  • We’ve updated Start so that if you press and hold on an app in the all apps list, the context menu will now appear after a moment, rather than first having to lift your finger.
  • We’ve added a new option to Cortana to enable or disable showing your cloud content in the search results.
  • We fixed an issue where Cortana search might drop the first typed character if Microsoft Edge was the foreground app.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where Alt+<number> wasn’t working in Win32 apps to input special characters.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the up/down keys potentially hanging input when used after typing something into certain search boxes that offered dropdown suggestions.
  • We fixed an issue where the Network & Internet Status Settings page might say a network was public even though it had been set to be private using the Control Panel.
  • We fixed an issue where the “More”/“Less” text wasn’t localized in the custom color picker in Color Settings.
  • We fixed an issue where switching away and back to Windows Spotlight in Lock Screen Settings resulted in an infinite spinner in the preview image.
  • In order to fulfill our promise to always ship with quality, we have made the decision to disable Chinese (Simplified) dictation. It will be back once we have had some time to smooth out the experience. Voice input for English (United States) will still be available.
  • We fixed an issue from the last few flights where Task Manager was frequently hanging on launch for some Insiders.
  • We fixed an issue from the last flight resulting in Storage Spaces unexpectedly erroneously saying there was no disk space available.
  • For Insiders flighting using the Pro edition on a Surface Laptop, we’ve addressed a recent issue where Win32 apps (for example PowerShell and Command prompt) were blocked by Device Guard after upgrading.
  • We fixed an issue some people were experiencing resulting in content copied from Screen Sketch and pasted elsewhere appearing to be just a black box rather than the expected sketch.
  • We fixed the issue causing Xbox Live in-game experiences such as gamer profiles, achievement details, and other dialogs to fail to load.
  • We’ve updated the Win32 MessageBox to now be natively per-monitor DPI aware! That means it should no longer be blurry when used in mixed DPI environments, or when changing DPI. Curious to try it? One place in particular MessageBox is used is in Notepad, in the error dialog that pops up if you search for a word that’s not found in the text.

Known issues for PC

  • Thank you to everyone who tested and submitted feedback on the Cortana Vision features –including the Camera Roll Insights and Cortana Lasso – which we introduced in Build 16215. These features will no longer be available in Insider Preview builds going forward. The cross device Map Handoff feature has also been removed from Insider Preview builds. You will no longer see directions shared with your mobile device after searching for a location on your PC.
  • We’re continuing to investigate reports that the battery status on certain laptops isn’t updating while the device is unplugged. If you think you are seeing this, please send in feedback via Feedback Hub and use the capture feature when logging your feedback so we can get your logs.
  • Depending on the implementation of the 3rd party firewall product, it might result in Windows Defender Security Center showing an ‘Unexpected’ state. We’re investigating options for addressing this.  Until that time, if you are using a 3rd party firewall product, and see this state in Windows Defender Security Center, please reference the UI of your 3rd party provider to understand your protection status.
  • In Recovery Settings if you choose “Reset This PC” > “Keep My files” the operation will fail at 1% and will revert with no changes to the system. “Remove My files” option will work as expected.
  • Apps that call into the firewall, such as Microsoft Edge and other apps that use networking, may become unresponsive until you reboot.
  • Trying to use the dictation hotkey (WIN + H) in UWP apps won’t work – you’ll see the UI come up and immediately dismiss. If you’d still like to use dictation, the microphone in the touch keyboard will work. You can right-click the taskbar for an option to show the touch keyboard button if it’s not already visible.
  • We’re investigating your reports that the Copy Link option displayed in Microsoft Edge when you right-click a hyperlink isn’t working in recent builds.

Source: Windows Blogs

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16226 for PC

Microsoft has released another Insider Fast Ring Build, and it’s a massive on…

Make sure you plan the upgrade when you have some time this one takes a while… but again well worth the wait lot’s of new cool stuff to test & report on:

(heads up it you have .net 3.5 installed you might want to remove it before you try the upgrade)

 

What’s New in Build 16226 For PC

New features in Microsoft Edge

Giving you more control over closing tabs: Building on our work in Build 16199, we’ve updated Microsoft Edge to ensure the X in the tab band is always available to close a tab, even when a JavaScript (i.e. alert, prompt, etc.) dialog is showing within Microsoft Edge. Additionally, closing the Edge window always remains an available option. You can also access many browser capabilities (i.e. favorites bar, settings, etc.) while a dialog is showing.

Making it easier to move from another browser: Users can now migrate Cookies and Settings from Chrome to Microsoft Edge, which will make it easier for users to make the move to Microsoft Edge as their primary browser.

More EPUB improvements in Microsoft Edge

Copy and Ask Cortana: Now, when you select your text, you can Copy and Ask Cortana in addition to adding notes, highlighting and underlining. Cortana can help you do a little research while you’re reading an EPUB book!

Now, when you select your text, you can Copy and Ask Cortana in addition to adding notes, highlighting and underlining.

Ink Notes: Got ink? Add a note and write or draw on it with your pen.

Got ink? Add a note and write or draw on it with your pen.

To see your note, just hover over the note button—no need to open it.

To see your note, just hover over the note button—no need to open it.

Books roamed across devices: Your books from the Windows Store are available on your Windows 10 devices, and your reading progress, bookmarks, and notes are kept in sync.

Improved Favorites experience in Microsoft Edge:

New experience when saving new favorites: You can now view your favorites as a directory tree when you save new favorites, and collapse or expand folders from within the “Add to favorites” dialog. Just click the “Save in” folder list to get started!

You can now view your favorites as a directory tree when you save new favorites, and collapse or expand folders from within the “Add to favorites” dialog.


Edit URL for Favorites:
You can now edit the URL of any favorite in the Favorites menu or the Favorites Bar. You can use this to update the location of a site that has moved, or to create Bookmarklets in the favorites bar.

You can now edit the URL of any favorite in the Favorites menu or the Favorites Bar.

Favorite manageability for Enterprise: IT admins can now configure favorites via group policy and mobile device management, including the ability to define and lock pre-configured favorites in addition to the user’s favorites.

Emoji Updates

Emoji 5.0! We have added support for the latest Unicode updates – including new snacks, actions, dinosaurs, and even fantasy characters like genies, fairies and zombies!

They’re all accessible via both the touch keyboard and the Emoji Panel. Bonus: Along the way, we also updated our emoji pickers to now make it possible to access the profession emoji and gender diverse options for some of our people actions (for example, you can now select male or female face palm).

Finally, we’ve tweaked some of our original emoji designs based on your feedback and to improve consistency with how the emoji is displayed on other platforms (while maintaining our Windows style).

New emoji include:

New emoji included in this build!

Examples of updated emoji – before:

Examples of updated emoji – before.

And after:

Examples of updated emoji – after.

Search for emoji in Emoji Panel: We’ve updated the hardware keyboard’s new Emoji Panel to now provide a search feature! After opening the panel via the Win + period (.) or semicolon (;) hotkeys, keep typing! The words you type will be used to filter the emoji displayed. If you close the panel by clicking “x” button or pressing Esc, the words will remain. We’re still working on enriching our emoji keywords – have any suggestions? Log feedback! Note: The Emoji Panel is currently only available when the en-us keyboard is active.

Search for emoji in Emoji Panel.

Dark theme for Emoji Panel: Do you love dark theme? Because we do ????. If you have dark theme enabled (via Settings > Personalization > Colors), you’ll now see the Emoji Panel background display using dark colors instead of light.

OneDrive Files On-Demand

Last week, we released OneDrive Files On-Demand to Windows Insiders running Build 16215 and higher. This is essentially like OneDrive placeholders – but better. This was a highly requested feature from Insiders so be sure to check it out!

Additionally, we wanted to make sure that our customers are in control of all file downloads from the cloud. When they use OneDrive Files On-Demand (or another cloud provider), and an app (like a photo editor) tries to download files that the customer has stored only in the cloud, we’ll show a message displaying: what’s being downloaded, which app is requesting the download, and options to dismiss the message, cancel the download, or block the app from downloading. (We also added a way to unblock apps in Settings > Privacy > App-requested downloads, in case you change your mind.)

 App-requested downloads with OneDrive Files On-Demand.

Touch Keyboard Improvements

Shape writing for more languages: In addition to English, Shape writing is now available on the new touch keyboard for the following languages: Catalan (Catalan), Croatian (Croatia), Czech (Czech), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Netherlands), English (India), English (United States), English (United Kingdom), Finnish (Finland), French (Canada), French (France), French (Switzerland), German (Germany), Greek (Greece), Hebrew(Israel), Hungarian (Hungary), Indonesian (Indonesia), Italian (Italy), Norwegian, Persian (Iran), Polish (Poland), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian (Romania), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish (Sweden), Turkish (Turkey), Vietnamese (Vietnam).

If you speak any of these languages, please take a moment to try it out and log feedback. If you have anything you can specifically repro consistently, be sure to mention it in the problem report.

Note: For this and the below work to work, the language resources will need to be downloaded. If you upgrade with the language, it should happen naturally, but if you add the language after getting the build, you may need to go to Optional Features and manually download them. If language resources for that language have not been downloaded, then you will see the swipe pattern, but no text will be input into whatever field you’re typing in. In addition, you will not see any text predictions.

 Shape writing for more languages.

Text prediction for more languages: We also support text prediction upon your typing on the languages above and more! Please try out your mother tongue with our keyboard!

Touch keyboard for East Asian languages: Now the new touch keyboard supports some of East Asian languages such as Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean!

One-handed curve-flick touch keyboard for Japanese: We’re excited to announce that curve-flick input is coming to the PC! We’ve had this for a while on Windows 10 Mobile, and we know how much you like it, so with today’s build you’ll now be able to use it with the Japanese one-handed keyboard on PC too ^_^. For those who are unfamiliar with it, curve-flick input is an advanced method for quickly inputting Japanese Kana. If you’ve ever used flick input with your phone, please try it out today on your PC and share feedback! (and, if you’ve never tried it on your phone, share your feedback too! We love to hear your thoughts).

 One-handed curve-flick touch keyboard for Japanese.

Moving with ease: We’ve made some adjustments based on your feedback. First: you no longer need to hold the move icon to move the touch keyboard. We’ve removed that, and now you can just grab anywhere on the candidate pane that doesn’t have predictions, and place the keyboard where you want. Second: when using the one-handed keyboard, you’ll find that the left-most option is now “undocked”. If you use this option, then whenever you relaunch the touch keyboard it will appear back in the location it’d been in before being dismissed.

Shifting up a gear: We’ve heard your feedback, and we’re very excited to let you know that with this build of Windows, you can now use the shift key to cycle between capitalization states – just like on W10M!

Updated settings flyout: We’ve updated the design of our settings flyout so you can now easily access Language Settings, Keyboard Settings, or help if needed.

 We’ve updated the design of our settings flyout so you can now easily access Language Settings, Keyboard Settings, or help if needed.

Other UI and reliability improvements including:

  • We fixed an issue where the X to close would turn white on white if you hovered a mouse over it.
  • We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard would stop launching after you had used the Emoji Panel.
  • We’ve adjusted the emoji section so that it now scrolls horizontally.
  • We’ve added more padding to the emoji section when using the one-handed keyboard.
  • We’ve added a language key to the one-handed keyboard for easier language switching.
  • The emoji section will now stay open after you input an emoji, so you can enter all the emoji you want at once.
  • We’ve adjusted the size of our wide keyboard layout to be a bit bigger.

Refining handwriting and pen interactions in Windows 10

Handwriting panel improvements:

  • You can now erase words in the handwriting panel with the back of your pen.
  • We’ve updated the processed text in the handwriting panel to now be drawn using Segoe UI.
  • We fixed an issue where the font would sometimes be an unexpected size when selecting text and seeing it appear in the handwriting panel.
  • As a result of your feedback, we’ve updated the English mode button in the Chinese handwriting panel to now use “中“ and “英” as a label, instead of “全部”.

Pen scrolling now works in Win32 apps: Building on what we lit up with 16215, you can now use your pen to scroll in File Explorer and other win32 apps.

Windows Sonic spatial sound on PC

Windows Sonic, available in the Windows 10 Creators Update, is now even easier to enable with this update. Plug in a pair of headphones, right-click the sound icon in the notification area, and select Spatial sound to choose your preferred format. You can also configure your 5.1, 7.1, or Dolby Atmos for home theater from this menu if it’s your currently selected default endpoint. You can learn more about Windows Sonic here.

Gaming Improvements

New help options: We have added a new “Xbox Networking” section under Settings > Gaming. Here, we’ll help you attempt to identify and resolve issues preventing you from using voice chatting and playing multiplayer games with other Xbox Live users.

Xbox Networking settings page.

Track your GPU performance: For the Task Manager fans out there, we’re happy to share that we’ve heard your feedback and we’ve updated Task Manager to now include GPU info. Our engineering team used the feedback you gave us that is part of this Feedback Collection https://aka.ms/olx5pn to prioritize and to design the feature – thank you! The Performance tab shows GPU utilization information for each separate GPU component (such as 3D and Video encode/decode), as well as graphics memory usage stats. The Details tab shows you GPU utilization info for each process. Please note that this feature is still under construction and you will find issues and bugs, as always please send us feedback in Feedback Hub under Desktop Environment > Task manager.

Track your GPU performance in Task Manager.

[ADDED 6/22] Grouped processes in Task Manager: With Build 16215, we announced that Runtime Broker was going per app. Between this and some of the feedback for our apps, we’ve heard that you’d like to have all of each app’s processes grouped in a single collection for easy management. So we did just that! Check it out in Build 16226 by opening a bunch of Microsoft Edge tabs and windows, and let us know how it’s working for you! We’ve also added logic to show browser tab names where available, so you can easily know what you’re looking at.

Settings Improvements

Storage Sense update: Head to Settings > System > Storage > Storage Sense and you’ll find:

  • Delete your previous versions of Windows straight from Storage Sense: With all the work we’ve been doing to enhance Storage Sense features for freeing up space, we felt it just made sense to bring in windows.old clean up too.
  • A new look: Since we’ve added a few new features, we’ve tweaked the design a bit to make everything fit together a bit neater.

Storage Sense updates.

New Remote Desktop Settings Page: As part of our ongoing effort to converge Settings and Control Panel, you can now enable Remote Desktop and configure related settings from Settings > System > Remote Desktop!  We’ve improved this page from its counterpart in Control Panel to help you more easily establish a remote connection to your PC from a Remote Desktop client application. On the new Remote Desktop settings page, you can find associated settings like sleep (“Keep my PC awake for connections when it is plugged in”) and PC discoverability to help you know if your PC is remotely accessible. We also surface your PC name on this page, which you will need to connect from the RD client applications.

Improving your update experience: If an update has failed, when available, to help you better understand what went wrong we will now use a plain text string to describe the error that was encountered. This text, and the error code if visible, will now be selectable so you can easily copy and paste it elsewhere.

Shell Improvements

Reveal: The new Reveal Highlight  behavior is an interaction visualization that helps guide users. Reveal is now enabled by default on ListView and other XAML collection controls in experiences that target the Fall Creators Update.

The new Reveal Highlight behavior is an interaction visualization that helps guide users.

Note: This gif is from our UWP Style Guide, and showcases both the use of Acrylic material, and the use of Reveal. With this update, we are only enabling Reveal by default.

Updated File Explorer context menu: You can now Share a file in File Explorer via the right-click context menu! Right-click on a file in File Explorer or on the Desktop to bring up the context menu, then share away. NOTE: “Share with” in the context menu has been changed to “Give access to”.

Updated File Explorer context menu.

My People Improvements:

  • We’ve added text to the overflow area in the People flyout to make it more clear the people listed there are pinned.
  • We’ve updated the “Switch apps” button in the People flyout to now use the a hamburger icon, to make it more visually distinct from the back button.
  • If you right-click the taskbar, you’ll now find an option to easily turn on or off People.
  • We fixed an issue from the last flight where the People flyout would crash if you tapped “Find and pin contacts”.

Calculator cashes in with a Currency Converter feature

Since the launch of Windows 10, one of the top customer feedback requests we get is to include a Currency Converter function in Calculator.  Wait no longer!  As of desktop version 10.1706.1602.0 (included with the Fall Creators Update, available for update via store as we speak), you’ll find “Currency” as the top item under the “Converters” menu.  It does most everything you’d expect from a Currency Converter, all expressed within the fresh and shiny Fluent Design System we rolled out last month.  One aspect of the feature that we think is interesting is an offline mode…so if you’re roaming internationally and want to see how much that train ticket or souvenir is going to cost without rolling up extra data charges, we’ve got you covered.  As ever, we value and await your feedback on this new feature, so send us your thoughts via Feedback Hub or Store Review!

Currency Converter function in now available in Calculator.

Ease of Access Improvements:

Narrator gains auto-captioning: Narrator can now use artificial intelligence to generate descriptions for images that lack alternative text! The service also includes the ability to extract text from images using optical character recognition. Want to try it out? Turn on Narrator, set focus to the image below, then press Capslock + Shift + D to hear its description. You will need to be connected to the internet for it to work.

Meow.

Improved bitmap scaling for Magnifier: Text will now appear smoother when magnified using Magnifier. To enable or disable this, go to Settings > Ease of Access > Magnifier > “Enable bitmap smoothing”.

Improvements for IT Pros

Windows 10 and SMB1: As part of a multi-year security plan, we are removing the SMB1 networking protocol from Windows by default. This build has this change, however the change only affects clean installations of Windows, not upgrades. We are making this change to reduce the attack surface of the OS. Here are some more details to take note of:

  • All Home and Professional editions now have the SMB1 server component uninstalled by default. The SMB1 client remains installed. This means you can connect to devices from Windows 10 using SMB1, but nothing can connect to Windows 10 using SMB1. We still recommend you uninstall SMB1 if you are not using it. In a later feature update of Windows 10, we may uninstall SMB1 client if we detect that you are not using it.
  • All Enterprise and Education editions have SMB1 totally uninstalled by default.
  • The removal of SMB1 means the removal of the legacy Computer Browser service. The Computer Browser depends exclusively on SMB1 and cannot function without it.

For more information on why SMB1 is being removed, see: https://aka.ms/stopusingsmb1

For more information on software and devices that require SMB1, see https://aka.ms/stillneedssmb1

Hyper-V Improvements: Share your VMs with ease with the new VM Sharing feature! On today’s build you’ll find a new icon in Virtual Machine Connection that will compress your VM into a “.vmcz” file. Double click this file on your destination machine to start importing the VM – easy as that!

: Share your VMs with ease with the new VM Sharing feature!

 

Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements:

Enhanced learning for predictive input: The IME now understands when you use predictive candidates followed by backspaces, and will adjust the candidates accordingly so you don’t have to repeat candidate selection and backspace each time you frequently want to use only part of a particular predictive candidate.

The IME now understands when you use predictive candidates followed by backspaces.

English predictive candidates with spelling correction: With the Anniversary Update, we added a feature to show English words along with Japanese words in Japanese IME’s predictive candidates. We’ve been improving it over time, and with this release we’re now enable spelling corrections for English candidates as well, so that even if you make a typo we’ll still suggest the appropriate English words. For example “appointment” and “appointments” are shown if you type “apointmen”.

English predictive candidates with spelling correction.

Search from Japanese IME Candidate List: We added the ability to execute search from the predictive candidate window. Specifically, text candidates you’re are not familiar with can now be easily searched from the IME UI. To search for a definition, click on the search icon shown next to the candidate, or highlight the candidate and press the shortcut key (Ctrl + B). Search results will open in browser.

Search from Japanese IME Candidate List.

Also when the comment window is displayed during conversion, you can search about the word by clicking the candidate in the comment window.

[ADDED] Mixed Reality Improvements

  • The Mixed Reality software download issue has been fixed. The workaround that has been provided for the last flight can be removed. You could directly upgrade to Build 16226 and get the Mixed Reality software.
  • 360 Video issue with video quality has also been fixed.
  • New Teleportation Model also introduced in this flight, where we transitioned to a much easier teleportation and navigation model only using the left joystick.
  • Speech improvements where we have improved the speech interaction experience through out Mixed Reality platform.
  • Headset Reliability Improvement where we are going to continuously improve on this in future flights.
  • We also fixed issues when trying to get out of limited mode.
  • We fixed the issue where the Mixed Reality Portal does not shut down cleanly.
  • We fixed the issue where Cortana now opens up apps correctly within the Mixed Reality environment.
  • We fixed the issue where there is multiple gaze cursor in exclusive mode apps.
  • We also fixed the issue where the Boundary is set smaller than the actual.

More information for Mixed Reality developers can be found here.

Changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

  • If you were impacted by the issue causing your upgrade to get stuck or hung at around 33% trying to update to Build 16215, we fixed the issue and you should be able to upgrade to this build (Build 16226) without getting stuck at 33%.
  • We fixed the issue causing PCs to bugcheck (GSOD) with inaccessible boot device on install, and the Windows Update error 0x80070643 after rollback.
  • We fixed an issue preventing PDFs from opening in Microsoft Edge on some devices with enterprise configurations.
  • We fixed the issue causing some PDFs and sites to open in a cropped view (zoomed in) in Microsoft Edge, causing part of the content to be inaccessible to the user.
  • We fixed an issue from the previous flight where accented characters couldn’t be input properly into Win32 apps using the hardware keyboard.
  • We fixed a Hyper-V issue resulting in some Insiders not being able to connect to VMs in the last flight.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Start not working for a small percentage of Insiders on the last flight.
  • We’ve adjusted the application of Fluent Design in Start and Action Center to now be a touch more transparent and let more of the underlying color through. Along the way we also updated the Action Center to use the newer conscientious XAML scrollbar design.
  • We fixed an issue where notifications in the Action Center lost their outline if acrylic fell back to having no transparency, for example on battery saver. We also fixed an issue where the Action Center background might become 100% transparent.
  • We fixed an issue from the previous flight wherein you couldn’t expand notifications displayed in the Action Center.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some inbox apps unexpectedly appearing to be missing after upgrading to 16215 (although Store said they were installed).
  • Snipping tool is now natively per-monitor DPI aware! That means it should no longer be blurry when used in mixed DPI environments, or when changing DPI.
  • We’ve gone through all our image resource files and removed unneeded XMP metadata.
  • We fixed an issue where some of the older control panel dialogs were unexpectedly showing grey sections instead of white.
  • We fixed an issue from recent flights where selecting “Restart” in the power options list with a pending update had the same effect as “Restart and Update”.
  • When you right-click the network icon in the system tray, “Open Network and Sharing Center” will now open Network & Internet Settings.
  • We fixed an issue where the Start Fresh page was included in Microsoft Edge’s recovery store, leading to potentially multiple Start Fresh pages being visible in each window after Microsoft Edge was reopened.
  • We fixed an issue where the red heart emoji was displayed in superscript.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in ink lag and short ink strokes not being detected in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where there was an unexpected Microsoft Text Input Application visible in Start after using the touch keyboard.
  • We fixed an issue from the last flight where Chinese IMEs would hang when typing into Cortana. We also fixed an issue that generally could make the Chinese IMEs hang when typing on the last flight.
  • We fixed an issue for some input methods in the last flight resulting in certain apps crashing if you switched to that input method while the app had focus.
  • We fixed an issue where Cortana’s search box could end up in the wrong place if you set focus to it then brought up the Emoji Panel.
  • We’ve updated the casing of the Settings category “Update & security” to now be “Update & Security” based on your feedback. We also fixed an issue from the last flight where it might hang when you tried to open this category.
  • We fixed an issue where the OS Build Info link on Windows Update Settings didn’t do anything when clicked.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the top border of UWP apps sometimes being an unexpected color.
  • We fixed an issue from 16215 where our mini-surveys (we call SIUFs) weren’t popping after the computer had been locked and unlocked.
  • We fixed an issue from 16215 where any external monitor connected to a DisplayLink dock wasn’t working and you’d just see a static logon screen.
  • We fixed an issue from 16215 due to a driver issue where Wi-Fi wasn’t working on certain devices like the Surface Pro 1 and Surface Pro 2 and some USB devices.
  • We fixed an issue from 16215 where printing wasn’t working due to having multiple copies of each printer after upgrading.

Known issues for PC

  • If you have the .NET 3.5 Framework installed, updating to this build may fail and roll back to the previous build. As a workaround, uninstall .NET 3.5 before trying to update to this build and then reinstall .NET 3.5 after you update to this build. For more info, see this forum post.
  • Auto-complete in URL bar of Microsoft Edge may fail on some devices, searching for a partial string instead of the autocompleted text picture. This issue will be fixed in an upcoming flight.
  • Some UWP apps such as Twitter will crash on launch.
  • Word 2016 will crash if you try to ink on it.
  • You may notice some of your inbox apps are now displaying a name that looks like “ms-resource:” and are listed at the bottom of Start. We’re investigating. In the meantime, the app should still launch normally, it’s only the name resource that’s impacted.
  • We’re investigating your reports that the battery status on certain laptops isn’t updating while the device is unplugged.
  • ADDED: If you pinned any websites to your taskbar, those pinned websites won’t work. You will have to in-pin and re-pin your websites to the taskbar.
  • ADDED 6/22: If you have certain languages installed, ctfmon.exe will do into a crash loop and typing on the Start menu and UWP apps will become impossible. Currently, the list of impacted languages we’re aware of is: Kiswahili (Kenya), Basque (Spain), Armenian, Estonian, Romansh (Switzerland), Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Bulgarian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Irish, Latvian, Macedonian, Zulu South, Norwegian (Norsk), Hausa (Latin), Albanian, Afrikaans, Georgian, Uzbek (Latin), Slovenian, Bosnian (Latin), Konkani (India), Malay (Brunei), Xhosa (South Africa), Bangla (Bangladesh), Kinyarwanda (Rwanda), Australian English, Galician (Spain), Azerbaijani (Latin), Kazakh, and Lithuanian. The workaround is to uninstall the impacted language via Settings > Time & Language > Region & Language. From the list of languages, remove the ones from the list, if it’s the only one you have installed please install a language close to your language that’s not in the list.
  • ADDED 6/22: In some cases, Action Center appears completely transparent making it hard to see notifications.
  • ADDED 6/22: When attempting to install this build and you reboot to kick off the process, your machine may appear to complete a normal reboot but not begin the actual install of the build. Running the Windows Update troubleshooter via Settings > Update & security > Troubleshoot may alleviate this issue.

source: Windows Blogs