Microsoft releases Windows 10 build 20231 to the Dev channel

[Karlston]

Microsoft releases Windows 10 build 20231 to the Dev channel

 

It's Wednesday, and right on schedule, there's a new Windows 10 Insider Preview available. This one is build 20231, and there's nothing wild about it. As usual, it comes from the rs_prerelease branch, meaning that it's not tied to any particular feature update. The Dev channel is in a perpetual state of vNext.

 

One thing that's new is that Microsoft is adding yet another page to the Windows 10 OOBE to help customize your experience. It's going to ask you how you plan to use your PC, such as for gaming, creativity, and so on.

Improving relevancy of initial device setup

Based on feedback, we’re exploring adding a page to Windows setup (OOBE) to help better understand how you plan to use your device and aid in customizing your device given your intended usage.

 

This is the initial wave of work for this feature, and Insiders may notice different options presented in OOBE depending on what they select, however at this time Insiders will not notice any other configuration differences after exiting OOBE. We look forward to sharing future improvements in this space.

 

This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel. NOTE: You will see this feature if you choose to reset your PC and when you do a clean install of Windows. You can find the ISO for Build 20231 here on our download page later today.

Better Management Options for App Default File Associations

Enterprise customers can now modify file associations on a per-user or per-device basis. This change will apply to existing users as well as users with new deployments. This means that IT admins can set which apps will automatically open various file types or links. For example, this makes it easy to set Microsoft Edge as your organization’s default browser, or always open PDFs in your organization’s preferred app. Leveraging this group policy for the default browser and common file types means that your organization’s end users will not have to decide on these defaults themselves.

 

Deployment/Testing Steps:

1. Generate Default Application Associations XML file by following this page.
2. Manually modify the XML by adding 2 new properties:
3. Add Version=”1″ to the DefaultAssociations tag.
4. Add Suggested=”True” to any Association tag.
5. Enable the group policy to set the default file associations by following this doc.
6. Reboot or log in as the user.

Please note: If your device does not have this feature enabled, the policy will fall back to the default logic and will not respect the “Version” and “Suggested” fields of the policy.

 

This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

As usual, you can grab today's build via Windows Update. If you're not on the Fast ring yet, you can enroll through the Windows Insider Program tab in Settings.

 

 

Microsoft releases Windows 10 build 20231 to the Dev channel

 

[Karlston]

Here's what's fixed, improved, and still broken in Windows 10 build 20231

As happens almost every Wednesday, Microsoft has released its weekly build of Windows 10 to Insiders enrolled in the Dev channel, formerly known as the Fast ring. This week's build is 20231, and as far as new features go, there are some improvements to the OOBE and default file associations in enterprise environments.

 

Of course, in addition to those additions, there are some smaller changes and improvements in this release, as well as some bug fixes and some known issues you'll want to be aware of before getting the update. Starting with the new improvements this week, Microsoft is highlighting the Meet Now integration that was spotted a while back, and a couple more additions:

• Meet Now in the Windows 10 Taskbar is now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.
• We’re starting to roll out a change to enable displaying graphics card information listed under Settings > System > About, and some Insiders may see this on their PCs.
• Our change to enable moving the text cursor via gestures on the touch keyboard is now rolling out to all Insiders in the Dev Channel.

As for fixes, there's a decent list this week:

• We fixed the vEthernet adapter disconnecting inside of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Please see this GitHub thread for full details.
• We fixed an issue that could result in your ALT + Tab order changing unexpectedly and leading you to switch to the wrong window.
• We fixed an issue that could result in Action Center and notification buttons not being visible after switching between High Contrast Black and High Contrast White.
• We fixed an issue where the “Show audio alerts visually” option under Settings > Ease of Access> Audio wasn’t functioning for incoming notifications.
• We fixed an issue where if the PC was locked using with Narrator running, dismissing the lock screen wouldn’t announce the signed in username on the login screen.
• We fixed an issue when using Narrator and logging in with Windows Hello, Narrator wouldn’t announce the error message if your face wasn’t recognized.
• We fixed an issue resulting in audio and microphone glitches over Bluetooth for certain devices. As a reminder, when encountering issues in this space, please take a moment to capture a repro trace, as it helps the teams investigate. More details about capturing traces available .
• We fixed an issue impacting Task View reliability.
• We fixed an issue resulting in the Windows Hello setup camera preview in OOBE displaying in the wrong position if you rotated your device into portrait mode during setup.
• We fixed an issue resulting in Settings hanging on launch for some Insiders.
• We fixed an issue resulting in systemsettingsbroker.exe crashing for some Insiders.
• We fixed an issue where the HideRecentJumplists MDM Policy wasn’t taking effect.
• We fixed an issue that could result in duplicate cloud provider entries appearing in the File Explorer navigation pane.
• We fixed an issue resulting in PDF previews no longer displaying in File Explorer.
• We fixed an issue resulting in the touch keyboard unexpectedly dismissing after setting focus to the search box in File Explorer.
• We fixed an issue where when typing with the Chinese Pinyin IME, if your text included an apostrophe, then after finalizing your composition by pressing Shift the result would display a garbled character.

And it wouldn't be an Insider build without some known issues, so here's what you need to look out for before making the jump:

• If you were one of the Insiders repeatedly entering a temp profile with the previous flight, please refer to the following forum post to get your profile back into a good state. If you were not impacted, this issue will not impact you in today’s flight.
• We’re looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
• We’re working on a fix to enable live preview for pinned site tabs.
• We’re working on enabling the new taskbar experience for existing pinned sites. In the meantime, you can unpin the site from the taskbar, remove it from the edge://apps page, and then re-pin the site.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue where some Office applications crashing or missing after updating to a new build.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue causing some devices experiencing a KMODE_EXCEPTION bugcheck when using certain virtualization technologies.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue where after taking this build some users receive a Compatibility Assistant notification that “Microsoft Office is no longer available”. Despite the notification, Office should still be there and working fine.
• We are working on a fix for an issue where selecting an IME candidate or hardware keyboard text prediction candidate may insert the candidate adjacent to the one selected.
• We’re investigating an issue reported by some Insiders wherein the taskbar is obscuring the Power button in the Start menu. If this is happening on your PC, you may need to use the Windows key plus X menu to shutdown for the time being.

As always, it's worth keeping in mind that Windows 10 builds aren't tied to a specific public version of Windows 10, so any changes being made now aren't guaranteed to be in the next feature update, or even the one after that. In fact, the next Windows 10 feature update, version 20H2, is pretty much finalized, so all the new features are already known about. You can read our overview of that update here.

 

 

Here's what's fixed, improved, and still broken in Windows 10 build 20231

 

[Karlston]

Microsoft releases ISO images for Windows 10 build 20231

 

If you've been looking to do a clean installation of the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview builds, you're in luck. Microsoft today released new ISO images for build 20231, a build that's hot off of the compiler. The last time that the company released fresh new images was in August, when it released build 20201 along with 20H2 images.

 

Obviously, there are no new 20H2 images for the Beta channel. The whole nature of 20H2 is that it's nothing more than an enablement package that lights up some features and bumps up the build number by one. If you're on the latest version of Windows 10 version 2004, you've already got 20H2 under the hood; the features just haven't been lit up yet. You can actually light some of them up yourself. The point is that new ISOs aren't necessary for 20H2.

 

But the rs_prerelease branch keeps chugging along. The Dev channel isn't tied to any specific feature release like the Beta or Release Preview channels. Because of this, the build number keeps going up, and it keeps getting full builds rather than enablement packages and cumulative updates.

 

If you want to download the new ISOs, you can find them here. Other things released today are build 20231 of Windows Server, the Windows on ARM VHDX, SDK, ADK, and WDK.

 

 

Microsoft releases ISO images for Windows 10 build 20231