So a new day, and another release of Windows 10 Insider preview, with lots of changes to the operating system including improvements to Edge.     When I started my Surface Pro 4 this morning I was greeted with the usual 'your computer was updated...'. After logging in I noticed issues straight away in my web browser of choice (Firefox), it was having problems scrolling (scroll bar down action didn't work 9 times out of 10). I tried Edge, same issue so not my browser, Next I tried to play back video, it didn't work and sent the audio into a meltdown, it crashed and started 'audio diagnostics'.     After checking the event log I saw several errors with Spectrum.exe crashing over and over. Anyhow, I tweeted it and got replies immediately and was advised to check the release notes, so here they are.   My issue is the first in the list. After applying this workaround all is ok again.   Now I will point out that most of us Insiders don't read the release notes, why ? because we are used to our computers getting updated every other week and in general, it's a painless process moving from one build to the next, but in this case i found the issues were enough to send a tweet or two.   Known issues for PC After updating to this build, nonstop exceptions in the Spectrum.exe service may occur causing PCs to lose audio, disk I/O usage to become very high, and apps like Microsoft Edge to become unresponsive when doing certain actions. As a workaround to get out of this state, you can delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Spectrum\PersistedSpatialAnchors and reboot. For more details, see this forum post. We are investigating certain situations in which PCs might bugcheck (GSOD) during the installation of new builds (15002+) causing the PC to rollback to the previous build. When clicking on certain elements in desktop (Win32) games, the game minimizes and cannot be restored. Desktop shortcuts containing the “%” character (usually URI shortcuts with escaped characters) will result in a cyclical explorer.exe crash. To resolve this, use Task Manager to open PowerShell, and edit the shortcut to not include a % in the path. When projecting to a secondary monitor, if you set the connection to “Extended”, Explorer.exe may start crashing in a loop. If this happens, turn off your PC, disconnect the secondary monitor, then restart your PC. Windows Insiders will unexpected see a “Holographic” entry on the main page of Settings. Brightness changes made via Settings > System > Display will unexpectedly revert after closing the Settings app. For now, please use either Action Center, power flyout or brightness keys to change the brightness. The list of apps in the Surface Dial “Add an app” page via Settings > Devices > Wheel may unexpectedly be empty. If that happens, tap the “Browse for an app” button at the bottom of the screen to pick the desired app instead. Taskbar preview icons are unexpectedly small on high-DPI devices. Quicken will fail to run with an error stating .NET 4.6.1 is not installed. For Insiders familiar with Registry Editor, there is an optional workaround. Take ownership of the following registry keys and edit the “version” value to be 4.6.XXXXX instead of 4.7.XXXXX: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Client
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full Note: Please take caution when editing the registry. Changing the wrong value can have unexpected and undesirable results. Using CTRL + C to copy in Command Prompt won’t work. Some websites in Microsoft Edge may unexpectedly show “We can’t reach this page”. If you encounter this, please try accessing the site from an InPrivate tab. Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid won’t work. For now, please right-click on the desired app in order to pin it. Miracast sessions will fail to connect. On certain hardware types (e.g.: Acer Aspire), the Netflix app crashes when starting a movie. 3rd party UWP apps would crash on devices if the DPI settings on the machine are >=150% (Generally people do this on high resolution devices – Surface book etc.). If you upgrade from Windows 8.1 directly to Build 15002, all your store apps are lost during upgrade process but you can go and re-download all the lost apps from the Store. When using Microsoft Edge with Narrator, you may hear “no item in view” or silence while tabbing or using other navigation commands. You can use Alt + Tab when this happens to move focus away from and back to the Edge browser. Narrator will then read as expected. Saying “Hey Cortana, play <item> on <AppName>” doesn’t work immediately after installing the app. Wait 5 minutes for indexing to begin and try again. ADDED 1/10: Under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update you might see the text “Some Settings are managed by your organization” even though your PC isn’t being managed by an organization. This is a bug caused by an updated flight configuration setting for Insider Preview builds and does not mean your PC is being managed by anyone. ADDED 1/13: If you’re experiencing an issue getting stuck at 0% downloading this build – check out this forum post. ADDED 1/13: During the installation of this build, Insiders may experience a storport.sys bugcheck (GSOD) causing them to rollback to the previous build. There is currently no workaround. ADDED 1/13: If you’re experiencing an issue where your PC gets to 99% and appears stuck – sit tight and don’t do anything (such as rebooting). There is a bug causing the installation to take an abnormal amount of time. ADDED 1/13: On some PCs, audio stops working sporadically with ‘device in use’ error”. We are investigating. Restarting the audio service may fix things for a bit.

Today Microsoft is releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. This is a BIG update so please take time to look through all of the new changes we detail below. What’s new in Build 15002 Microsoft Edge UpdatesThe Microsoft Edge Team has lots of new features to share, focused on making it easier than ever to keep track of your tabs and pick up where you left off, as well as a few other surprises!   Tab preview bar: It’s easy to lose track of what’s in your tabs, especially when you have many tabs from the same site, with similar titles and icons. Tab preview bar allows you to easily glance at a visual preview of every tab you have open without leaving your page. You can scroll through the list with touch, mouse wheel, or a touchpad. Just click the chevron icon next to your tabs to get started. Give it a try and let us know what you think!     Set these tabs aside: We often hear that it’s a headache to keep all your tabs organized, and to pick up where you left off. Sometimes you just need to set everything aside and start from a clean slate. We’ve added two new buttons next to your tabs in Microsoft Edge to help you quickly manage all your tabs without losing your flow.     Jump List for Microsoft Edge: You can now launch a new window or new InPrivate window for Microsoft Edge straight from its Taskbar icon. Simply right-click or swipe up on the Microsoft Edge icon in the Taskbar, and pick the task you want!     Component UI: This release introduces a new UWP architecture for Microsoft Edge’s multi-process model, including a new visual tree and new input model. These changes will help improve stability and input responsiveness and make the browser UI more resilient to slow or hung web page content. Be on the lookout for any issues with tab launches and activation or input (including keyboard, mouse, or touch) and share feedback in the Feedback Hub if you have problems!   Flash Click-to-Run: Microsoft Edge will now block untrusted Flash content by default until the user explicitly chooses to play it. This means better security, stability, and performance for you, while preserving the option to run Flash when you choose. You can learn more about this change on the Microsoft Edge Dev Blog: Extending User Control of Adobe Flash with Click-to-Run. We will be evolving this experience in upcoming flights to make the option to run Flash content more contextually obvious.     Web Payments: Microsoft Edge now has preview support for the new Payment Request API, which allows sites to make checkout easier using the payment and shipping preferences stored in your Microsoft Wallet. This is currently in a preview state for developers and will not process payment information until a future flight. You can learn more about Payment Request on the Microsoft Edge Dev Blog.     For a complete list of all the changes in Microsoft Edge, visit the Microsoft Edge changelog. Start and Shell ImprovementsTile Folders in Start: As part of our ongoing effort to converge experiences across devices, and to address your feedback, we’re excited to let you know that with today’s build you will now be able to group your Start tiles into folders. Tile folders are a way for you to organize and personal your tiles in Start, and we’re happy to now bring this to Windows 10 PCs. To get started, drag and drop a tile on top of another tile in Start to create a folder. Updated Windows Share experience: We have redesigned the Windows sharing experience to be more app-focused and integrated with where you are sharing from. The new Windows Share experience will pop-up the new share flyout within the app you are sharing from and give you a list of applications you can share to. This list changes based on your usage.   more info > https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/01/09/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15002-pc/#2ZBmbrCu5V4r3LCk.97

Microsoft has had an amazing year, pushing out several builds of Windows 10 and Windows 10 Insider Previews and many other software releases such as Windows Server 2016, Configuration Manager Current Branch (and Technical Preview releases) and SQL Server 2016. All those achievements are amazing in their own right.   However to the mainstream user, the Windows brand itself, embodies what Microsoft is to that user, as it's the operating system they use day in, day out.   In a recent video interview with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, they interviewed the Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft (Chris Capossela) about the year that just went by, and Paul posed this question (edited for clarity/brevity)   When you look back at last year, and maybe from a 'more of a negative standpoint' if you will, I mean are there other regrets or things you might have done differently (I don't mean you personally)...       to which Chris replied (edited for clarity)   And the last one for me, purely from a marketing or branding perspective, is what Paul alluded to, which essentially was for me the uh you know the oh, getting too aggressive in pushing out of the Windows 10 free upgrade, uh and uh you know we know we want people to be running Windows 10 and from a security perspective etc, uh but finding that right balance where you are not stepping over the line of being too aggressive, uh is something we tried and for a lot of the year I think we got it right, but there was one particular moment in particular where you know the red [x] in the dialogue box which typically means, you know, cancel, uh, didn't mean cancel....     and within a couple of hours, of that hitting the world we, you know with the listening systems we have we knew, uh that we had gone too far.     so there you have it, Microsoft admitted that the cancel button on the GWX dialogue went too far, and hopefully we won't see any more of that in 2017, it's good to see that a company this big and powerful, has a conscience   You can review the video mentioned above here.

It smells like snow up in Redmond-town and you know what that means? A big ole pile o’ features to keep us company during SNOWpocalyse! Microsoft this week, released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. What’s new in Build 14986Making Cortana awesomer: Turn off your computer, change volume with voice commands: Being able to control your computer with just your voice is one of the top requests we get with Cortana, so we’re excited to say that we’ve added several new features to Cortana that let you do just that. Now you can shut down your PC just by asking Cortana. You can also restart, lock, or put the system to sleep, and raise and lower your system volume with just your voice. Give it a try and let us know what you think! Cortana loves music: You can now use Cortana to control music playback on more of your favorite music apps (EN-US only). Starting with this build, we’ve enabled natural language compatibility for iHeartRadio and TuneIn Radio. This will work on both, above the lock screen (PC is locked) as well as below! You can try queries like… Play <Artist/Track/Title/Genre> on <AppName>
Play Drake on iHeartRadio
Play Christmas music on iHeartRadio
Play NPR Hourly News on TuneIn
Play jazz music on TuneIn Play <Frequency/Call Letters> on <AppName>
Play 90.3 on iHeartRadio
Play KUOW on TuneIn   While you are listening to music in one of these apps, you can also use your voice to control playback and volume. With radio stations, we often want to know what that catchy tune is that has played a million times, so we added support for “What’s Playing”. Try saying “Hey Cortana, What song is Playing?” and it will work for all apps playing music. As a bonus, we made Cortana smarter by remembering the last played music app so you don’t have to say “on Groove” over and over. All you need to do is say your desired app one time, something like “Play jazz music on iHeartRadio”; then the next time, just say “Play rock music” and it will play on iHeartRadio. Please look for the Quest and give us feedback!  

At the Ignite conference in Atlanta Microsot launched the newest release of their server operating system – Windows Server 2016, here's the announcement below:-   Now that we’re ready to share it with the world, I want to take a moment to thank our customers who helped shape this exciting release. Windows Server 2016 is jam-packed with innovation and customer response has been overwhelming, with more than half a million devices running our final Technical Preview which we released five months ago. These customers range from large global enterprises to private cloud hosters to organizations of every size from every corner of the globe.   Customer feedback is an important driver of the features we build into our products. Customers tell us they face massive change as they evolve processes and applications to deliver faster and more powerful business solutions, while at the same time having to operate existing workloads more securely and efficiently. IT and developers need to work together to innovate, using cloud computing and a variety of new technologies, while managing the transition of critical applications from one world to the next. IT needs to make strategic investment decisions, betting on vendors and solutions that can support them in a hybrid cloud world.   This customer feedback inspired the design of Windows Server 2016. We call it the “cloud-ready OS” because it meets customers where they are today, and it introduces technology to ease the transition to cloud. It is a great server OS to run traditional applications and datacenter infrastructure, and at the same time it delivers an unprecedented amount of innovation to help customers transition workloads to a more secure, efficient and agile cloud model. It is a great place to land all your workloads, providing the flexibility to run them on-premises or in the cloud. Windows Server 2016 delivers powerful innovation across three areas: Advanced Multi-layer Security: Nearly every morning when I read the news, I see a new headline about a security breach. Attacks have become more sophisticated, so organizations must respond with a more sophisticated environment that presents new layers of defense at every level of potential compromise. As the operating system that runs mission-critical applications and databases, Windows Server can play a strategic role in an organization’s security arsenal. Windows Server 2016 gives IT the power to help prevent attacks and detect suspicious activity with new features to control privileged access, protect virtual machines and harden the platform against emerging threats. Learn more about the new security features. Software-defined Datacenter: Many people don’t realize that our Azure public cloud is actually one of my Windows Server customers. This means they use Windows Server and Hyper-V at a massive scale to deliver some of the most efficient datacenters in the world. Not every organization needs this type of scale, but every organization can definitely benefit from the new models of cloud efficiency. We worked hard to build that into this release so every customer can benefit. As a result, Windows Server 2016 delivers a more flexible and cost-efficient operating system for any datacenter, using software-defined compute, storage and network features inspired by Azure. Learn more about the new software-defined datacenter features. Cloud-ready Application Platform: Applications are at the heart of every organization and its ability to serve customers and compete effectively for their loyalty. As the digital transformation accelerates in every organization, nearly every application needs to transition or transform. Windows Server 2016 delivers new ways to deploy and run both existing and cloud-native applications – whether on-premises or in Microsoft Azure – using new capabilities such as Windows Server Containers and the lightweight Nano Server deployment option. And to make life easier for developers, today we announced with Docker a new agreement that will make the Commercially Supported Docker Engine (CS Docker Engine) available to Windows Server 2016 customers at no additional cost. Learn more about the new application platform features. As you can see, I am very excited about the release of Windows Server 2016. It is an important piece of the Microsoft hybrid cloud platform. And of course you will also want to check out today’s launch of System Center 2016, which includes enhancements to help deploy and manage the new features in Windows Server 2016. Availability Windows Server 2016 is available for evaluation beginning today and will be on the October price list. Volume licensing customers will be able to download fully licensed software at General Availability in mid-October. Get started today: Download Windows Server 2016 trial. Get demos and documentation on the new Windows Server 2016 site. Save the date for our webcast on Oct 13th as I join Jeffrey Snover and Jeff Woolsey to walk through the new features, demos and early adopter stories. Free e-book about Windows Server 2016 You can download a free e-book explaining all the new features of Windows Server 2016 from here.