Microsoft surprised everyone today by releasing not just one, but two Windows 10 Insider Preview builds today. Along with the first Redstone 5 build, those on the Fast ring for the current development branch for build 17101. Along with a bunch of new features, there are obviously plenty of fixes, improvements, and known issues.
Here"s what got fixed and improved:
We fixed an issue from the last flight were some PCs failed to resume from hibernate (requiring a hard reboot to recover).
We fixed an issue resulting in 3 and 4 finger gestures on the touchpad being unresponsive in the last two flights.
We fixed an issue after upgrading to the last flight where Start didn’t work for Insiders who’d had HomeGroup added as a folder to appear on Start.
We’ve updated the touch keyboard so that if you try to shapewrite in an unsupported text field or when the typing resources aren’t installed, you won’t see the shapewriting trail as you swipe your finger over the keys.
We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard showed an English layout with no IME on/off key when an East Asian keyboard is the only input method on your system.
We fixed an issue where if you install a font product from the Microsoft Store, then later install a new build (feature update), the Store package will remain installed, but the fonts within the package are not installed. Until this is fixed, the temporary workaround is to uninstall the product from the Apps page in Settings, then re-acquire the product from the Store.
We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard might stop invoking automatically after locking the PC and then unlocking the PC by using the touch keyboard to enter your PIN or password.
We fixed an issue where the Japanese IME sometimes wouldn’t turn on correctly.
We fixed an issue where the floating dictation UI could be unexpectedly tiny.
We fixed an issue that could result in the mouse cursor suddenly jump to screen corner while mouse was moving in a List Control.
We fixed an issue that could result in tabs hanging and not loading content recently in Microsoft Edge after using the browser for a few days with an adblocker enabled.
We fixed an issue resulting in newly installed Microsoft Edge extensions not appearing in the Extensions pane in the last two flights.
We fixed an issue in Microsoft Edge where favicons in light theme were unexpectedly getting black backgrounds.
We fixed an issue that could result in UWP apps sometimes launching as small white rectangular boxes.
We fixed an issue resulting in certain fingerprint readers not working in recent flights.
We fixed an issue where Windows Hello failed to work on Surface Laptops with the last build.
We fixed an issue that could result in the labels for files on the desktop overlapping their icons.
We’re updating the “Advanced graphics settings” link on the Display Settings page to now just say “Graphics Settings”.
When your volume is muted, the volume icons in the Sound Settings page will also now appear muted.
If you click the Reset button on the App volume and device preferences page, it will now also reset any app specific volumes you’ve set back to default (100%).
We fixed an issue resulting in app updates failing in the Microsoft Store with error 0x80070057 in recent builds.
We fixed an issue resulting in app updates failing in the Microsoft Store with error 0x803FB005 in recent builds.
We fixed an issue where bringing up Game bar using the Xbox button on an Xbox One controller didn’t work in some games.
We fixed an issue where in the text box for the Mixer stream title using non-character keys (e.g. Tab, Delete, Backspace, etc.) might cause the game to hang for a fewseconds.
We fixed an issue where keyboard and mouse input might not work correctly in the Game bar when playing a first person game (e.g. Minecraft).
We fixed an issue where in some games—such as Destiny 2 and Fortnite—mouse and keyboard input would still go to the game while Game bar was open.
We fixed an issue during first shutdown/boot, or reboot, where for some users the device goes into a boot loop and the OS never loads.
Here are the known issues:
- We have observed seeing longer-than-normal delays during install at the 88% mark. Some delays are as long as 90 minutes before moving forward. Please be patient as the install will complete successfully.
- Plugging in an external optical drive (DVD) will cause an Explorer.exe crash.
- Settings will crash if you open the Themes Settings page.
- Buttons on Game bar are not centered correctly.
- Selecting a notification after taking a screenshot or game clip opens the Xbox app’s home screen instead of opening the screenshot or game clip.
It"s interesting to see that there are so few known issues, as this is the least that there have been for some time. Microsoft is expected to be finalizing Redstone 4 next month, before releasing it to the general public in April, so it would seem that it"s not putting the finishing touches on it.
But still, there"s a lot that we don"t know about Redstone 4. Microsoft still hasn"t officially announced what the update will be called, although one Quest did refer to it as the Spring Creators Update. The version number in the OS still hasn"t even been updated from 1709; we"re expecting it to end up being 1803, named after the March 2018 timeframe.
If you"re on the Fast ring, you can get today"s build by heading over to Settings -> Update & security -> Windows Update -> Check for updates. If not, go to the Windows Insider Program tab and click Get started.