Working with Windows 10 Preview, build 10041

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	TOP STORY Working with Windows 10 Preview, build 10041
	By Woody Leonhard After a nearly two-month hiatus, Microsoft has finally released a new Windows 10 Technical Preview build. You might run into a few hurdles when installing build 10041, but the changes and new features are worth the effort.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/working-with-windows-10-preview-build-10041 (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Hi, Woody,

Sorry to say 10041 doesn’t work for me. Internet connection problem after installing the upgrade. Network and Sharing Centre reports an internet connection, but browsers IE, Chrome and Firefox cannot find it. Apparently this is a known problem (also reported in 9926) but so far there is no solution. Windows Update doesn’t work either!
My original upgrade to 10041 was from Windows Update, but the ISO file is now available and I downloaded that to my Win 8.1 drive and used that to re-install 10041 on my Win 10 drive (I am dual-booting). It took so long that I stopped the installation and restored build 9926.
Then I burned the 10041 ISO to DVD, set it going and went to bed. This morning I woke to a welcome message and it took around another half-hour to finish the installation. Imagine my delight when I found that I was back to square one :rolleyes:. After over 50 years wrestling with computers I honestly didn’t expect anything else, but I now worry about the state of my Win 10 drive.
I have enjoyed working with Win 10, but in all my years being an early adopter of new operating systems I have never come across anything like this. Well done Microsoft – another first!

Woody, I didn’t run into a hurdle. I ran into a brick wall.

ACB (ex WOPR fan).

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FWIW, I clicked through to the Win 10 Preview site, for which I have registered, but not yet downloaded or tried to install an image. I immediately found a page which appears to offer the full Build 10041 ISO. I am downloading it as we speak. I recently attached a SATA connected external 3 TB drive to my Win 8.1 PC, and plan to learn how to use HPER-V to see is I can spin up virtual machines to test this safely (this is my primary consulting and high end simulation games machine, 32 GB RAM and a XEON processor), and some LINUX distros as well.

Here is the link that offers a Build 10041 ISO: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso-update-1503

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Great article Woody, and having gone through the update, yes, it did take a long time (I didn’t measure because I was busy doing other things) and Mail-Calendar-People was AWOL, but came back after going through the forum powershell commands.

I may have missed your comments on the Secure Boot “feature” for Win 10, but if I haven’t could you line it out for us. From what I can gather, if you purchase a PC with Win 10, you are stuck with Win 10, because the disks and BIOS will not allow another OS be installed, either dual, or only boot. And, if you get a Linux box, it may be locked down by the “secure boot” option as well, so that you can’t load Windows.

Ref: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/03/23/microsoft-may-lock-out-other-oses-with-windows-10/

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Very interesting article, Woody. Here are my 2 cents on Windows 10 TP.

First of all, (and as I posted in Win10 Feedback the other day) what I find really disappointing in this whole TP business is the apparent unwillingness of MS to fix basic problems and bugs, while instead apparently concentrating on new and unneeded “features”, such as the awful start menu, Cortana (who needs to talk to a pc!), Spartan (ok, develop a better IE, but not at the expense of a properly tested OS) and Hello, which, from what I gather, very few devices will have the hardware to support. The best example of this is the bug that forces the taskbar height or width (depending on orientation) back to the default size on every restart or sign-in. This has never been an issue in previous versions of Windows, so I conclude that its appearance now is relatively simple to fix, but it has been there ince the first TP build. So why not fix it?! Other examples might be the failure of the Bluetooth drivers to pair with anything(!), and the newly introduced bug in 10041 which forces the lock screen to appear even though all registry and group policy features have been configured to disable it.

Personally, I hate everything to do with the Universal apps. They seem to me inefficient and a classic victory for someone’s idea of “form” over function. Case in point: the new Settings app. In Win7 and previous, it was possible to configure the Start menu to display the Control Panel as a dropdown menu giving access with a scroll and a click to any of the applets. Now I hear that the intention is to port all these functions into the Settings app. So, now I have to launch this app (complete with wasteful flash screen), select from a list of 10 or so groups, then select from another menu to find the sub-function I want to change. Inefficient and wasteful! For me, the only way I will use Win10 when it is finally released is via a shell replacement program like Start8 (which I already use for Win 8.1) or Classic Shell – which has the benefit of being free!

One additional comment on the article. You suggest running the TP in a virtual machine under VMWare or VirtualBox. I am a great fan of VirtualBox, and have many machines defined for it. But its support for the TP is limited. As far as I know, the Guest Additions will not install properly, and, even if they do, the video drivers do not work yet. Finally, it appears fatal to try to install Vbox on a TP machine. I tried with an early build and my machine would not restart in any configuration and I had to completely re-install Wi10. I do not criticize VBox developers for this, let me hasten to add. Win 10 is a beta, not a full release, and they are not bound to support it yet. As for me, I run the TP on a dedicated laptop for testing only, and also virtually under VMWare.

Many years ago, Windows introduced “Bob”, a dumbed down desktop alternative presumably for thoroughly inexperienced computer users. It was hopeless. I consider Win 8, 8.1 and 10 as a further attempts to “Bob” down the Windows experience to the lowest common denominator.

Graham

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Can anyone tell me what is the size of this windows update from 9926 to 10041. ? is it 3 to 4 GB as has been the case with all upgrades. I await a reply from someone before I actually apply it on my dual boot PC.– Viraf P CHinoy

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Can anyone tell me what is the size of this windows update from 9926 to 10041. ? is it 3 to 4 GB as has been the case with all upgrades. I await a reply from someone before I actually apply it on my dual boot PC.– Viraf P CHinoy

From memory the 64-bit version is 3.5GB, the 32-bit is 2.5. It takes forever to install!

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I have not seen anything about WIN10’s desktop. Are they going to have a switchable desktop? I don’t want the look of the Surface or 8.1. I hate them. My primary computering is on desktop machines. My have to go down with the WIN7 ship. I also agree with IE. I quit using it after IE7.

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A few years ago I purchased a new laptop for my wife, with the understanding that Win 7 would be installed. We received a newer model and it came with Win8, and much the same as my kicking and screaming when I was dragged form WinXP to Win 7 I thought I would try it… I found that I could not initialize the system until I registered for a Microsoft account. Not likely…

I could not even get to the point where I could install Firefox or Thunderbird. Those two programs would be all that my wife would need to be happy, and the simple transfer of her contacts and emails would have made me happy. It was not to be. The system was blasted back to ‘as shipped’ and returned.

If Microsoft continues to move to the cloud and require accounts before you can even access the system, I guess I will continue to use Linux Mint for my everyday stuff and keep an isolated Win 7 box for my cad system.

I don’t even mind purchasing the OS, but I guess that we are heading towards the ‘androidization’ of desktop systems. I get enough crapware and bloatware on my phone… thanks Google. No wonder I want to jailbreak my phone.

I was happy when Microsoft just wanted my money to supply an operating system, not bloatware and ‘free storage’ I don’t need. The best way to protect our personal data is never to upload it to anything that we don’t have control over. My critical data is stored on removable hard drives… not that it is of financial use to anyone, I just don’t want to enter all those GB’s of files again… and I get enough targeted pushed ads as it is.

paul

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Amazing that Microsoft continues to build on top of the 25 YO Win NT code.

About time to code a new OS from the ground up and take advantage of modern technology, I say.

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Thanks for your superb article, Woody. I’d like to add my comments on Windows 10. I think Microsoft is psychic … that comment “Take a break and relax” during installation tells me they know and feel the user’s frustration, but that’s the least of my concerns. I got to Build 10041 eventually. I was really worried at the end when the screen had just one plain colour after a reboot … and I powered off forecefully after some 15 minutes. Restarted … same again. Restarted, and lo and behold Windows Build 10041 came up.

The simplest of things cause me concern. E.g. click on “Search the Web and Windows” (why on earth would I want to do that? I know positively if I want to search the web or the hard drive … or have I misunderstood the meaning of Search Windows?) … and I see “I’m afraid I’m not available to help in your region”. Believe me, the computer I first touched in 1970 (PDP-8/e) didn’t give me such a stupid response. I never asked for help!!! I enter “ReleaseNotes” (knowing it’s on the desktop). It doesn’t find it. Ok, click ‘Learn More’ => up comes a web page ‘Windows Phone 8 Getting Started’? Hey, this is an ASUS notebook, not a Windows Phone. Ok, I click on ‘Close’ => up comes ‘Bing Image of the day’. WTF! I never asked for this! Bottom line: people exist in the world that want a computer to do exactly what they command it to do, and I positively dislike any attempt for Microsoft to try and think for me. In fact I disliked every attempt to make Word or Excel think for me – I am perfectly capable of correcting my own mistakes, thank you, and don’t need automatic anything. (I’ll calm down now

Now this is probably a minor point, but the “NVIDIA driver update for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M” consistently fails with Error 0x80070103. I disabled downloading from sources other than Microsoft.

Now my major complaint. I happen to live in a country where the local language is not English. During the Windows installation, I specified ENGLISH as my system language. Henceforth, I want my PC to speak ENGLISH to me … and no other language. I reside in Germany – why should Windows care? I talk English. So … I click on ‘ReleaseNotes’ on the desktop. That’s English … good! A web page comes up “Vielen Dank, dass Sie die Technical Preview heruntergeladen haben.” Excuse me, sir … didn’t I specify English? How many people do you suppose in Germany don’t use German as their preferred language?

It’s an extremely simple concept to ask “what language do you want a computer to use” and stick to it. I click on the list of Apps: Alarms, Battery level, Contact Support, Documents, Erste Schritte (GERMAN!), Finanzen (GERMAN!), Gesundheit & Fitness (GERMAN!), Insider Hub, Kamera (GERMAN!), Kochen & Genuss (GERMAN!), Leseliste (GERMAN!), Maps, Microsoft Treasure Hunt, Musik (GERMAN!), Nachichten (GERMAN!), OneDrive, OneNote, Optional Features, Photos, Pictures, Reader, Rechner (GERMAN!), Reisen (GERMAN!), Samsung Printer Experience, Scanner, Settings, Skype, Sound Recorder, Spiele (GERMAN!), Sport, Store. This complete jumbled up mess of two languages must be clearded up. I’ve implored Microsoft to send their Windows 10 Development Team (at least virtually) into a country whose language is not English – they need to scratch their heads and wonder what does ‘Kochen & Genuss’ mean. Even better if the foreign language is Chinese or Japanese. This kind of language confusion is unacceptable for me (and, yes, I am fluent in German).

I thank you for be being permitted to post this feedback, and look forward to future articles on Windows 10.

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