She is at it again. Look out for 14942

[Tim Locke]

Another subtle hint. See her latest tweet. I have just tried and have not got it yet.

 

[Trouble]

Man......
https://twitter.com/donasarkar/status/784420044721774593
Subtle to the point of being completely obscure.

Not getting it here either 11:05 A.M. local time.
I wouldn't expect it until sometime after noon.

Nothing in the Feedback Hub either.

 

[Tim Locke]

1303 EDT here it comes.

 

[Trouble]

Nope...... nada.
Just checked 12:25 P.M. here in Chicagoland.
I'll check when I get back later. I'm sure it'll show up at some point.

 

[Tim Locke]

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14942 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 14942
Hide app list on Start: We are releasing a new feature that enables you to collapse the app list in the Start menu. This has been a top feedback request from Windows Insiders. You can try it out by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning on “Hide app list in Start menu”.



image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/hide-app-list.png

Photos app update: With the latest Photos app update on your PC, the Photos app on your PC is now more beautiful and easier to navigate!



image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/photos-app-update.png

• Photos now has a horizontal navigation bar that makes it easier to view memories by Albums and Folders.
• Let your photo collection shine! We’ve got a new, light viewing mode for your pics. You can always go back to the dark theme in settings.
• When viewing photos in full screen, we’ve added new animations in and out of the Collection view, making it easier to keep track of where you are browsing.
• See individual photos more quickly with your mouse—and now we support full screen.

Plus, the Photos app is now available on your Xbox One! Show off a slideshow of all your OneDrive photos in your living room. Simply make sure you are signed in with your Microsoft account to see all your OneDrive photos on the big screen.

Refining your precision touchpad experience: Based on the feedback we have received, we have made some adjustments to our gesture and click detection on precision touchpads. This includes enhancing detection and disambiguation of left and right clicks, making two finger taps and clicks a bit easier, reducing false positives in our two-finger tap detection and improving our pinch to zoom detection. We have also made algorithm changes in an effort to reduce inadvertent zooming when panning. If you have a precision touchpad on your device, please take the opportunity try out with this build and let us know how it feels with these changes.

Improving the PC upgrade experience: Starting with build 14926, we announced that if you uninstall one of the preinstalled apps on Windows, that state will now be preserved after upgrade. With today’s build, we’re happy to let you know that we’ve taken that work a step further: after upgrading from 14942, if an IT-Pro has de-provisioned an app from your OS image (and you haven’t reinstalled it yourself), that provisioning status will now be preserved after upgrade, and the app will not reinstall. We appreciate everyone who shared feedback with us about this – if you have any other feedback about your upgrade experience, please don’t hesitate to log it – we’re listening!

New Windows Update icon: We have introduced a new Windows Update icon to match the rest of the new iconography in Windows 10. After installing this build, you will see the new icon when Windows Update notifications appear and via Action Center. You can also manage notifications from Windows Update via Settings > System > Notifications.



image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/new_WindowsUpdate_icon_black.png

Service hosts are split into separate processes on PCs with 3.5 GB+ of RAM: If your PC has 3.5+ GB of memory, you may notice an increased number of processes in Task Manager. While this change may look concerning at first glance, many will be excited to find out the motivation behind this change. As the number of preinstalled services grew, they began to get grouped into processes known as service hosts (svchost.exe’s) with Windows 2000. Note that the recommended RAM for PC’s for this release was 256 MB, while the minimum RAM was 64MB. Because of the dramatic increase in available memory over the years, the memory-saving advantage of service hosts has diminished. Accordingly, ungrouping services on memory-rich (3.5+ GB of RAM) PCs running Windows now offers us the opportunity to do the following:

1. Increase reliability: When one service in a service host fails, all services in the service host fail. In other words, the service host process is terminated resulting in termination of all running services within that process. Individual service failure actions are then run. As you may have noticed in Task Manager before, service hosts can contain a lot of services:
   image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/services_1.png
   
   
   
2. Increase transparency: Task Manager will now give you a better view into what is going on behind the scenes. You can now see how much CPU, Memory, Disk & Network individual services are consuming.
   image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/services_2.png
   
   
   
   
   To see the name of the service, click on the left-most arrow such that the Display name drops down. Alternatively, right-click on the header and select ‘Command Line’ to add the Command Line column. Service names will be listed in the format ‘svchost.exe -k <svchost name> -s <service name>.’
3. Reduce servicing costs: Following reports of instability, service engineers, IT admins, and Microsoft engineers can rapidly pinpoint issues to the exact service and fix it.
4. Increase security: Process isolation and individual permission sets for services will increase security.

Note that critical system services (services whose recovery require system restarts), as well as a couple of select service hosts, will remain grouped.

Expanding the Active Hours default range: We’ve heard the feedback that you like the control Active Hours provides over when your PC restarts for updates, however feel that that the default 12 hour range on PC is too limited. We want to accommodate various enterprise environments and schedules including those where employees have double shifts, so starting with Build 14942, we’ve changed this range for PCs on Pro, Enterprise, or Education editions to 18 hours. This means Insiders using these editions can now set active hours up to 18 hours from the selected start time (same as Mobile). We’ve added text to the active hours dialog so users always know what the default range is when choosing their times. We’ve also added the ability for the default range to be configured via new group and MDM policies (configurable up to 18 hours). New text will be displayed on the active hours dialog to indicate when the default range is configured via the policy. PCs using Home edition will continue to have a default range of 12 hours.



image: https://winblogs.azureedge.net/win/2016/10/active-hours-change.png

Form field navigation in Narrator: We are excited to announce that this build introduces form field navigation to Narrator.

In Scan Mode, you can now use the following commands to jump to form fields:

• F and Shift + F: Jump to next/previous form field
• C and Shift + C: Jump to next/previous combo box
• E and Shift + E: Jump to next/previous edit box
• X and Shift + X: Jump to next/previous check box
• R and Shift + R: Jump to next/previous radio button
• B and Shift + B: Jump to next/previous button

Basically, the letter moves forward and Shift + letter moves in reverse.

Form Fields have been added to Narrator’s Search and Select feature which is available at any time by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Search and Select allows you to list items such as buttons, links, headings and other elements available in an app, webpage or document.

A new view is now available for form fields. The active view can be changed by pressing Caps Lock and using the up and down arrows to navigate the list of views on the keyboard, or single finger up/down flicks with touch.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

• We’ve updated Narrator’s reading order for Windows 10 apps which display an app bar on the bottom of the app, for example OneDrive, so now the contents of the page will be read before the contents of the app bar.
• We fixed an issue where running sfc /scannow in an elevated command prompt would fail at 20% with the error “could not perform the requested operation.”
• We fixed an issue resulting in certain areas of Windows 10 app notifications not doing anything when clicked, rather than opening the corresponding app.
• We fixed an issue resulting in Personalization > Background Settings page crashing or showing a blank context menu when right clicking one of the recent images .
• Fixed an issue resulting in Windows Defender’s Antimalware Service Executable sometimes using an unexpectedly large amount of CPU.
• We fixed an issue resulting in the Devices and Printers page in Control Panel loading slowly for users with certain audio devices.
• We fixed an issue resulting in a small set of users seeing the NTFS partition of their external hard drive incorrectly showing up as RAW format.
• Going forward from Build 14942, custom printer names will be preserved across upgrades. We’ve also addressed an issue where the printer queue name wasn’t preserved across upgrade for some printers.
• Improved framerates when Game Bar is enabled for full screen games.

Known issues for PC

• Insiders doing web development may find themselves their local intranet server unreachable, as service host separation will leave the IIS World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3Svc) unable to start successfully. To fix this issue:

1. Run the following from an admin cmd line (or edit the registry accordingly):
   1. REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
   2. REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WAS /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
2. Reboot the system, so that the W3Svc and WAS services share a service host process.

Read more at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsex...eview-build-14942-for-pc/#to8fM2uxQXtoJZm6.99

 

[Trouble]

Hide app list on Start:

I don't believe it..... that barely rises to the level of cute.
Somebody actually asked for that in the feedback hub??
Enough people for them to actually do it?

Call me old fashion but.....
Give me an update / upgrade, that doesn't break shit.
How about me not having to reset my damn screen resolution.
How about me not having to remind the weather app where the hell I live.

I like a new feature or function as much as the next guy but honestly...... do I really need to hide apps in my start menu??
IF they want to screw around with the start menu, how about they make it so I can customize it with my own program folders and put shit where I want it.

IF I want a screwed up start menu I'd download one of the myriad third party overlays and be done with it.

IDK.... I guess at "soon to be" 67..... it takes a little more "WOW factor" to get a WOW out of me.

I guess.... a lot like my political options for president this year..... it doesn't completely suck!

 

[Tim Locke]

I agree... maybe after the big MS W10 meeting on Oct 26th we'll start to get something useful.

 

[davehc]

I am not , at the moment, indulging(lol) in the insider releases, but would just like to comment:
I have just finished reading posts on a couple of other reliable forums. Both have posts warning that this latest installation is full of problems. One has gone to the extent of warning members to by pass it. - just passing this on for info.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Yep...and quite a few are experiencing BSOD's with it.

 

[Bif]

And by the time it reaches the masses it's no better...my head shaking continues, when will the lunacy end?
What are they trying to accomplish? what is MS's objectives?

 

[Trouble]

What are they trying to accomplish? what is MS's objectives?

That would be the 64 thousand dollar question or adjusted for inflation perhaps the 64 million dollar question.
With a lot of software moving towards subscription licensing as a new model for sales, I can only guess what Microsoft sees as a future avenue for the OS.
Perhaps we'll be renting it.

On the surface it seems quite simple.... a single OS that will run my phone, tablet and computer (desktop and laptop), with the emphasis on Cloud First, Mobile First, Windows as a "service".
Not exactly clear as to what that last bit actually means.

What might be just below the surface is practically anyone's guess, but.....
Just in case the conspiracy theorists might be right, I think I might sharpen my somewhat meager Linux skills.
Sort of like a prepper, awaiting the Zombie Apocalypse
What?? Me worry??

 

[Gideon]

I am not , at the moment, indulging(lol) in the insider releases, but would just like to comment:
I have just finished reading posts on a couple of other reliable forums. Both have posts warning that this latest installation is full of problems. One has gone to the extent of warning members to by pass it. - just passing this on for info.

If you are referring to 14942 I would have to disagree. !4936 had many problems. Yes I am back 14393 had to bright of a screen for me and the fonts are better in 14942 and so far everything works.

 

[davehc]

The thread is about 14942!
As I said, I am not currently using the insider previews, just passing along some info to avoid the forum being flooded with BSOD problems. For the time being, the anniversary release is fine for me.

 

[bassfisher6522]

I'm trying it out on this old Sony Vaio laptop that doesn't support windows 10 at all....go figure. As I'm typing this...the laptop is doing it's thing as if a clean install has been done. Will report back with the nitty gritty....if hurricane Matthew doesn't get me first.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Well...there's the water mark in the right hand corner....damn I hate that.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Oh crap...it's only build 14931.1000

I'm on the slow ring.....

 

[Gideon]

I don't believe it..... that barely rises to the level of cute.
Somebody actually asked for that in the feedback hub??
Enough people for them to actually do it?

Call me old fashion but.....
Give me an update / upgrade, that doesn't break shit.
How about me not having to reset my damn screen resolution.
How about me not having to remind the weather app where the hell I live.

I like a new feature or function as much as the next guy but honestly...... do I really need to hide apps in my start menu??
IF they want to screw around with the start menu, how about they make it so I can customize it with my own program folders and put shit where I want it.

IF I want a screwed up start menu I'd download one of the myriad third party overlays and be done with it.

IDK.... I guess at "soon to be" 67..... it takes a little more "WOW factor" to get a WOW out of me.

I guess.... a lot like my political options for president this year..... it doesn't completely suck!

OK youngster, I have had zero problems with this build. None with 14931 I had plenty. I did have a problem trying to upgrade from 14931 to 14942 . It failed every time. I had to re image 14936 and it updated without issue.