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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Temporarily Suspends Availability of Windows 10 Builds 106

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-it-for-now dept.
Mark Wilson writes: If you haven't already downloaded Windows 10 build 10162 or 10166, you're now too late. Microsoft has suspended the availability of these two builds — previously available on the Slow and Fast rings respectively — in the run up to the big launch day in a couple of weeks' time. As we edge closer and closer to the RTM build of Windows 10, Microsoft is now asking Windows Insiders to stick with the build they currently have installed for the time being. Anyone who hasn't upgraded to these latest preview builds is out of luck. As well as disabling upgrading through Windows Update, Microsoft is also suspending ISOs and activation.
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Microsoft Temporarily Suspends Availability of Windows 10 Builds More

Microsoft Temporarily Suspends Availability of Windows 10 Builds

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  • Dammit (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 )

    I botched up my disk drive's EFI partition while trying to install Windows 10. By the time I resolve all my problems, I may not be able to activate the damn install!

    • Re:Dammit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Monday July 13, 2015 @05:49PM (#50102573)

      I botched up my disk drive's EFI partition while trying to install Windows 10. By the time I resolve all my problems, I may not be able to activate the damn install!

      Fortunately you weren't trying out a beta on your production machine, so the two weeks without Win10 won't matter, right?

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 )

        More like messing around with a personal machine I didn't want to lose the customizations or data from the past month. More flying by my ass than I would have liked in hindsight; less flying by my ass than the worst possible case I could have exposed myself to.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mlts ( 1038732 )

          I think everyone reading this is has been in that boat sometime or another. The only thing that might have helped was to run a wbadmin backup of your personal machine (at least the hard drive with the Windows partition) so you can boot OS media and reload the entire drive fairly quickly if you encounter any bumps.

          • Re:Dammit (Score:4, Interesting)

            by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Monday July 13, 2015 @08:29PM (#50103655) Journal

            I think everyone reading this is has been in that boat sometime or another.

            Nah, in my case, it was my own damn fault. I should have been more familiar with EFI/UEFI issues before starting. I've been a long time linuxer, so I was counting on my outdated MBR/dualbooting and ntfsclone dumps to get me through. The first snag was that Windows 10 would not install on my secondary drive for some reason, because it already had an EFI partition, which somehow made it unsuitable for booting. (I know this may sound incorrect to some; I'm just relating my first hand experience.) It was the relative sluggishness of the Windows install menu that made me accidentally delete a partition important to my OS drive and then hilarity ensued...

            wbadmin backup? You're talking 8.1, right? Nope, windows 7 here at home. Yeah, I've been able to mount all my intact partitions, so I haven't lost data, but I'm working on repairing EFI partitions and restoring the relevant hidden system drive dump to the correct partition. Actually, I was doing the book learning I should have done before attempting anything, and then Microsoft now "mentions" they're shutting down the preview activations.

            Well, I've mentioned elsewhere that I was able to get my 10162 build installed & activated today (different machine), so one day soon I'll be back to square one.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Wolfrider ( 856 )

              > I should have been more familiar with EFI/UEFI issues before starting. I've been a long time linuxer, so I was counting on my outdated MBR/dualbooting and ntfsclone dumps to get me through.

              --Could you please recommend a good link/resource to learn more about EFI/UEFI? TIA...

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            FYI, Build 162 and Build 166, War Thunder sound works fine again.
            Before those builds, if you launched War Thunder from an admin Powershell, the sound would work too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rioki ( 1328185 )

          Install 10074... It's sufficiently stable and will weather you over the two weeks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dissy ( 172727 )

        Fortunately you weren't trying out a beta on your production machine, so the two weeks without Win10 won't matter, right?

        If course it matters, it's a beta! Duh.

        That's two weeks of lost beta testing and compatibility verification with your companies software and existing infrastructure. That's potentially another two week delay in being able to successfully deploy it.

        It may not matter much or a lot, but it certainly does matter.

        In my case it only slightly matters, but I only have 45 days remaining of my free license for the new version of our ERP client I'm testing for compatibility.
        Now I admit I already ran into a couple sh

    • Activation isn't important at this stage. The RTM version will be out long before the Activation protection kicks in.

      • If you want any copy of any Windows OS to work beyond 30 days, it has to be "activated" by Microsoft's licensing servers. I have no idea if my preview build has/had a 30 day clock; it may have had a 0 day clock. Was it a big deal? No, but given the fuzziness of the "free" Windows 10 license with a VALID Windows OS install, I wanted to preserve the freebie Windows 10 license that would be mine by installing the Insider preview.

        • Activation can be delayed on Windows at least twice. It's kind of hidden but is supported. Lets you have sort of a trial period.

          Open a root prompt (cmd, powershell, whatever).
          slmgr[.vbs] /rearm
          Reboot (shutdown /r /t 0 if you want to use the command line for that too).

          The slmgr (Software Licensing Manager) script, and its rearm flag, is documented here: https://technet.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]

  • Wonder what MS might be adding for the RTM build.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Monday July 13, 2015 @05:48PM (#50102559)

    In the past, there were last minute "gotchas" which MS tossed in right before a build went RTM. In the antediluvian past, it was removing direct MS-DOS access in Windows ME, with XP, it was the Secure Audio Path (which was a DRM stack which required all audio drivers to be signed, in order to prevent programs like TuneBite from existing.)

    I wonder what is going to be tossed in at the last minute. Hopefully nothing too headache-forming.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Any other examples from 15 years ago?

      When I was 10, I was rude to my parents. I wonder if I'll call my Dad a bastard tomorrow?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )
      So, their strategy is to NOT test the last-minute fixes?!? What could possibly go wrong?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If you fire all of your QA, you don't plan to test anyway. So, what's the difference?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mlts ( 1038732 )

        I hope this is the case, and I'm proven brain-dead wrong. MS hasn't really pulled any real "fast ones" recently. W10 looks like it will be the next Windows 7 or XP.

        As for OS releases, MS's real interesting OS release will be Server 2016. I'm guessing MS is going to wait and see what bugs pop up with W10, get them fixed before WS2016 goes out the door (which is a wise move.)

        WS2016 is (for me that is) the one to watch, especially the added virtualization and container capabilities. I wonder how many place

        • I've been using the tech preview and its a shit pile, it would be amazing if Microsoft managed to turn that garbage barge around in a few weeks time.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            This just in: Well known Linux zealot and anti-Microsoft troll previews Windows 10, calls it shit. News at 11.

            • Re: Wonder what MS might be adding for the RTM bui (Score:5, Informative)

              by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Monday July 13, 2015 @10:38PM (#50104307)

              It really is in a lot of ways.

              1. They still have two separate control panels: The windows vista era one, and the one that uses that butt-ugly 'modern UI' that looks and works like something thrown together on linux 15 years ago, complete with badly rendered fonts. They didn't even try to consolidate them either. Fucking idiotic.

              2. The new scheme follows office2013/16's 'all white' mantra, making it hard on the eyes. Like windows vista and up, this is not easily editable. Window metrics are fixed and unchangeable without hacks, like win 8.1.

              3. The start menu is usable again, but still isn't as flexible as previous ones. Startisback++ exists and works fine, but still.

              4. They totally hosed ddraw fullscreen support which breaks a lot of backward compatibility. There's no reason for this either. Hacks that existed for win 8.1 no longer work (disabledwm.exe).

              5. More pointless 'metro' apps that also look like shitty linux X11 from 15 years ago. What's worse is that some of these have replaced traditional windows utilities like calculator.

              These are the issues I've noticed. This list is not meant to be all encompassing.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

                One major issue which for me means I'll be disabling Windows Update when they EOL 7: NO MEDIA CENTER IN 10.

                Fuck that. I'm sticking with 7.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                2. The new scheme follows office2013/16's 'all white' mantra, making it hard on the eyes. Like windows vista and up, this is not easily editable. Window metrics are fixed and unchangeable without hacks, like win 8.1.

                Incorrect. The colour scheme is very easy to edit, just right click on the desktop and select "personalize..." from the menu. Like Windows 8.1, it has a feature where the colour scheme will track the colour scheme of the desktop wallpaper, or you can edit it manually.

                Window metrics scale with DPI and accessibility settings, or as you say you can do some trivial registry edits.

                4. They totally hosed ddraw fullscreen support which breaks a lot of backward compatibility. There's no reason for this either.

                The reason is for high DPI support. If the app doesn't scale it's going to be unusable on a 4k monitor. Sadly, sometimes you have to

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by epyT-R ( 613989 )

                  Selecting from a few predefined themes and colors is hardly flexible compared to past editions of windows. I shouldn't have to edit the registry to get rid of all that white space (and color) either. Those themes also don't affect the majority of the window, which stays white. The metrics are also not editable in the GUI either, and the defaults are terrible. Sure, the 'high contrast' themes are there, but they don't resolve the metrics issue, are much more limited in what can be colored, and all of this re

              • 1. They still have two separate control panels: The windows vista era one, and the one that uses that butt-ugly 'modern UI' that looks and works like something thrown together on linux 15 years ago, complete with badly rendered fonts. They didn't even try to consolidate them either. Fucking idiotic.

                Wait, what? I though they consolidated them late last year already.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Jheaden ( 169061 )

                  I'd call it more a case of "work in progress". They both still exist, but more and more settings are moving into the new "modern UI" settings.

                  No way they'll have this completely transitioned by RTM (not even sure if they are planning to transition everything)

        • SSH too will be SWEET and a must have too in any enterprise environment with security needs. To have powershell, remote desktop, and perhaps even AD SMB communication encrypted will prevent devices any hacker can plug into an electrical socket and 0wn the network or put in ransom where at the AD schema level.

          Server 2012 is a hefty upgrade too with schema deletion restoration, WinRM, compression of AD/SMB traffic for slow WAn links, Powershell Desired state configuration templates SSD tier to raids for cachi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

      is that what stopped my Sonicstage (which worked flawlessly on Windows 2000) from properly detecting my NetMD on xp?

  • Reading Is FUNdamental... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The summary is quite wrong.

    Microsoft is asking people to receive the next update via the same channel that they'll eventually use (in a few weeks) to push the operating system to retail users. They didn't say that there would not be more builds (in fact, they explicitly said that there would be). The whole point is to test out the new distribution channel.

    • Then why cease validating build 10162? Immediately shutdown downloading the test ISOs, and warn that they'll stop validating any "old" windows 10 releases in three days.

  • Downloading 10162 right now?? (Score:3)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Monday July 13, 2015 @07:50PM (#50103423) Journal

    My hunch is MS does not want piracy.

    Since I am grandfathered in with the insider program I can download. I am doing this now so I have a free VM image for my labs as MS made it clear it is a free upgrade for registered as well as beta fresh installs as a thank you for the insider program.

    I can't wait until it updates to RTM and I can finally get RSAT tools to make it useful as a virtual joined computer. In the meantime I am stuck with time bombed versions of 8.1 for the labs. 10 being light and EFI means very light resources and fast boot times :-)

  • I saw it on a coworkers machine and we were both disappointed.

    The whole endless list menu is way too long.
    Love the Single Letters too to make it longer still. /S

    If this was a tablet Ok fine but this is gonna cause training issues.

    • Fortunately Classic Shell still works on Win10 and it's even targeted for support by same.

    • If you are on the desktop mode, click on the bidirectional / arrow on the top right corner, and it will collapse to almost a Windows 7 like menu, except for the icons still being large. I hope there will be a way to shrink that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep, I was disappointed with it at work too. I'll stick with W7. Even Mac OS X and Linux are disappointing these days. Or maybe I'm old. :(

  • Has anybody tried Skype on Windows 10? Does it work? It crashes the moment I start it up on my Winbook in either tablet or laptop mode

    • yes it works on the machines that we have run it on. Be aware that there is a modern version and a desktop version. use the desktop version because i think the modern one may be going away and the modern one does not always start for me after a reboot so you can miss messages if you forget to start it.

  • I'm on 10166 but when I try to launch Visual Studio I get a bad install warning on some of the choices to start it.

    I loaded Steam and tried defense grid 2 but the video drivers aren't working properly.

    Start up and surfing is faster than Ubuntu 14 was on the laptop - so that was an eye opener.

    I hate that windows is moving to type it to find it, I prefer list it and click it.

    I don't want to remember what what I need to use. I want the list of stuff so I can find what I need to use.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kubajz ( 964091 )
      I am really happy that Windows is moving to "type it to find it". That is what I always appreciated about Linux - if you're a serious computer user, typing will always beat the mouse pointer. So new users can still scroll and seek but I will be grateful for the typing - both for apps and my files.

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