Catch up with the latest Microsoft news from this week in our latest episode of the Microsoft Weekly recap.
In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, Recall is making a comeback (somewhere in October), Windows 10’s Start menu is getting annoying ads, Windows Insiders have six new builds to test, gamers have a lot of news and upcoming releases, and something is happening with the legacy Control Panel. Of course, there is a lot more.
Table of contents:
Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft’s latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.
If you have a computer with one of AMD’s recent Ryzen processors, you will be pleased to learn that AMD and Microsoft are working on a new set of patches that should improve the performance of PCs powered by Ryzen 9000, 7000, and 5000 processors. AMD said the update is coming soon.
Things are not going very well for Windows users with dual-boot systems. A report emerged about the August 2024 Patch Tuesday update breaking PCs with Linux and Windows installed side-by-side. Shortly after that, Microsoft acknowledged the problem and promised to release a fix. Meanwhile, if you have a dual-boot system and the August 2024 Patch Tuesday update installation is pending, use a special registry tweak to kill the update before it takes down your Linux distro. If it is already down, check out this guide that will help you bring it back to life.
Finally, Microsoft published new docs about Regedit, Group Policy Editor, and other configuration tools. In those articles, users discovered what seemed like a hint about the upcoming deprecation of the legacy Control Panel. But if you feel like there is a need for a better way to access all the Windows settings, check out the Super God Mode script, which does exactly that.
Windows Insider Program
Microsoft has finally broken its radio silence about the controversial Recall feature. Now, the feature is coming to Windows insiders in October 2024. If you want to participate in the testing, go get yourself a Copilot+ PC since this type of Windows 11 machine is still the only one officially supported. Speaking of Copilot+ PCs, they may soon become more affordable as Qualcomm announced a new eight-core entry-level SKU.
Here is what Microsoft Released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:
With build 27686, which was released in the Canary Channel last week, things got a little confusing in the Insider program. Users noticed that Canary builds now have « Dev » as the Windows version, even though there is a separate channel with the same name. Microsoft clarified that that is not an indicator of your current channel. Instead, the inscription indicates that you use an in-development Windows build that is not tied to any specific Windows version.
What is also confusing is a not-so-new feature coming soon to Windows 10. Users noticed that the latest preview build has the so-called « Account Manager », which replaces traditional user-related buttons in the Start menu with a Microsoft 365 ad. For now, it is hidden and turned off, but considering the same feature is now in the stable version of Windows 11, it will probably make its way to Windows 10 soon.
What is not confusing is the new webcam settings in build 26120.1542. The latest Dev release finally allows video streaming to multiple apps at once. Also, you can toggle on a special basic camera mode that should make it easier to troubleshoot webcam issues.
This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.
Skype Insider has been updated to version 8.
