Yep, PowerToys is back… well, the open-sourcey reboot is, anyway
Roundup Bored of Build? Suffering from cloud cramping? It wasn’t all Azure, Azure from Microsoft last week.
Microsoft followed up its File Explorer-tweaking update during Build – the one that broke Android integration in Your Phone – with an update to fix the latter in the form of Windows 10 preview build 18895.
While there is no mention of the small changes to File Explorer this time around, the usual range of issues remain present and correct, including that pesky anti-cheat software causing crashes in the OS. Some editions of the Fast Ring build for Windows 10 20H1 have also been held back this time around, including Windows 10 Professional x64 in ES-MX and Windows 10 Home x64 in CS-CZ.
The Windows Developer Team also joined the Build party with a fresh SDK to go with the Insider builds of Windows 10 currently tumbling from Redmond’s preview orifice.
The SDK, which is obviously preview code, is happiest running with Visual Studio 2017 or 2019. It will also only install on a Windows 10 Insider Preview build, but will work with previously released SDKs. Good news for the vanishingly small cadre of developers aiming to submit an app targeting build 1903 of Windows 10 to the Microsoft Store – you can continue to do so.
There was a further treat from Microsoft last week in the form of tools to pick through the output of the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) system.
The tentacles of ETW go deep into Windows, and generate data on events such as memory allocation, process create and exit and so on. It’s a handy resource for answering system-wide questions and, unlike basic text logging, produces structured event data for processing.
The Windows gang itself uses the data to check the performance of Microsoft’s legacy operating system and uses C# and. NET to perform automated analysis via a. NET API. The technology has now been parcelled up in a handy NuGet package allowing eager devs to analyse their own systems just like Microsoft does it.
