Windows 11 Latest Tech Preview

**Tony** · 22-03-2015, 11:54 AM

OK, Build 10041 is installed and this post is from chrome under Win10.

It was all fairly painless and, I think a little faster. My initial impression is that it is all a bit snappier. The double avatar on the logon screen has disappeared, but so has my logon picture - I just see the generic silhouette. It still shows the picture on the start menu and in my account details - just not at logon.

The other thing I have noticed is that the new install no longer takes over the multi-boot menu. At the first boot it showed the Win 8/10 style menu. When I chose Win7 it did not reboot before going to Win7. When I changed the default OS to Win 7 and rebooted, it showed me the old style boot menu, with Win7 as the default, although it had put Win10 first in the list.

I am beginning to really hate the bland white minimalist window design, and the thin almost invisible back and forward arrows and the design of the various icons. They look like a work-in-progress - let's hope that is what they are.

**jcr1** · 23-03-2015, 07:42 AM

I installed it, about a month ago, as a virtual machine on my Proxmox server.
I haven't really played around with it that much; it is different, as far as I can tell, in some superficial aspects.
But I haven't had any trouble with the networking at all - mind you I use Remote Desktop to connect, from my win7 machine or Surface tablet (whether that makes a difference and being on a Linux server, or not, I don't know).
The other thing, that surprised me, was the sound works. Whereas it didn't when I tried a similar exercise with win8 (as a vm).
It must be able to use the sound on the host machines! That's good, as generally it's explained that there's all sorts of hoops to jump through, getting sound with desktop type vm's on a Proxmox server.

None of this probably is all that relevant to the thrust of this thread, but I felt it would be good to share

**paulw** · 23-03-2015, 11:26 AM

Just installed this latest update on my work Laptop in a second partition. Took nearly 3 hours to update . When it finally finished the wifi is OK but the Ethernet port has gone AWOL and crashes when I try to access it's properties. Guess I'll have to wait for a driver update..

**paulw** · 23-03-2015, 03:37 PM

Fixed the LAN port by deleting it and rebooting. It came back fine.. Now I get a Windows Defender Popup when the PC starts saying to check that my ESET viri checker is working and I notice that a program called DU Meter no longer works.. working. At least I now see one picture at login rather than two..

**Tony** · 23-03-2015, 03:45 PM

Originally Posted by paulw

At least I now see one picture at login rather than two..

Are you actually seeing a picture? I'm just getting the (single) default silhouette.

**paulw** · 24-03-2015, 07:40 AM

Originally Posted by Tony

Are you actually seeing a picture? I'm just getting the (single) default silhouette.

That's what i was meaning. Still looks like I can't drag from the start menu to the desktop or from the task bar to the desktop..

**dugimodo** · 24-03-2015, 12:21 PM

It hasn't shown up on the list for me yet, but I haven't set it for early updates (whatever that option is called I forget). I see however the end date for the preview is supposed to be in about 3 weeks so unless that changes I'm not sure it's worth worrying too much about updates now. I've been using it on my secondary machine for quite a while now and after some initial hiccups with the display driver it's been pretty painless and uneventful.

I have got an issue that I believe is to do with how storage spaces and WD green drives interact. I set up a 4 drive storage space using parity to give the same kind of redundancy as RAID 5 (I believe it's functionally equivalent but works a little differently). It is incredibly slow to write to but I read this is an issue with this particular type of storage space. It's not that much of an issue for me except when copying large amounts of data onto the drive. In daily usage you don't really notice.

What happens though is any time I access the storage space either directly or through a program there are large pauses where nothing happens before it bursts into life. I suspect the WD green drives might be going to sleep but it's much more noticeable in a storage space than on a single drive so I think there's more going on than just waking up a drive, maybe it has to wake up all 4 and verify everything is ok or something.

In any case if you want to play with storage spaces I recommend avoiding green drives and using either the mirrored array or the unprotected one as they don't appear to have the same write speed issue. Also they kind of hide this feature away, it's there in windows 8 too but you won't see it unless you go searching. It's like software RAID designed to be easier to set up and manage for home users and I kinda like it but probably won't persist with using it.

**Tony** · 24-03-2015, 01:00 PM

It sounds like you are on the "slow" ring. You can change it by going to start/settings/backup and recovery/advanced options. But also see one of my earlier posts about problems with getting the update and Wainuitech's solution - which worked for me.

As far as the storage spaces issue is concerned it is worth repeating that this is a technical preview, so those sorts of issues shouldn't surprise you. The thing to do is to fire up the Feedback app and see if it has happened to anyone else and either "me too" it, or post new feedback of your own.

**dugimodo** · 24-03-2015, 03:21 PM

Yeah I should do that, but I suspect it's just storage spaces and not windows 10 and probably acts the same under windows 8

**Tony** · 31-03-2015, 03:36 PM

Just installed the new build - 10049, and in fact this post is being done via the project Spartan browser. The in-place upgrade went OK this time, but it took a very long time. The system seemed to go to sleep at the end of it and wouldn't wake up. I had to press the reset button before it would come back to life.

This build seems less snappy than the previous one - but this is after 30 minutes of use. It took over the multi-boot menu again, but EasyBCD under Win7 fixed that up.

Apparently there is not much else new to see, apart from some bug fixes. Also "If you have Virtual Machines hosted on your PC running Windows 10, you will want to move to the Slow ring and wait for the next build as this build breaks the ability to run VMs". That could impact some people here I think.