back to article What's broken in this week's build of Windows 10? Installing it, for one

Microsoft has released ISO disc images of the latest Technical Preview build of Windows 10, but not because they think every tester should install it. Rather, it's because a bug is preventing even some of the more aggressive testers from receiving it through Windows Update. The release, known as Build 10130, was released to …

  1. Dana W

    And people ask me why I won't use Windows anymore........

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Really doesn't matter these days when pretty much everything is, at best, beta software despite being called release. There are exceptions, usually with a significant upfront and/or support contract involved.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: releases as beta

        Really doesn't matter these days when pretty much everything is, at best, beta software despite being called release."

        Amen. Everyone complains when they can't get the newest release - of anything - fast enough then complain when that pushed out the door release is bug-ridden, as it always is.

        You get what you deserve.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          WTF?

          Re: releases as beta

          It really depends on the incentives. If there is an insurer involved (business risk insurance) then you tend to see contracts delivered close to on-time and within a certain multiple of budget. The insurers make just as sure as you'd like that specifications don't drift off into la-la land. And it's also come up in lawsuits but those are much trickier for both sides. The case around Oregan's medical insurance exchange vs. Oracle will probably be a yawner though. Oracle's lawyers are much better paid and talent generally does go to the side with the best pay. I expect the same everywhere else. Besides, they've (Oracle) have form here.

          When I was running special projects at my command, everything we did was backstopped to hell. Mathematical and logical (not quite the same thing) proofs, document, document, and document again. We were generally completing under time and well under budget and it wasn't padding that did it. It was having debugged processes that worked and a lot of study. Of course my/our incentive structure was quite different. Fuck it up and spend your some or all of your life in federal prison being guarded by a bunch of pissed off US Marines (who hate sailors anyway, not in my case though I love 'em as they do all the up close and personal stuff). BTW, hard labor, bread and water, or anything some military jury can come up with are all on the table. Different rules.

          Now that's incentive! Won't happen though. One other random thing that annoys me. I've been through all the various movements when it comes to software engineering and despite it being promised again and again, we really don't have a collection of thoroughly debugged, off-the-rack, reusable code parts. Yeah, we talk about API's, Frameworks, all of that, but by now it should have standard parts. We're still trying to be gunsmiths pre-assembly-line artisans, not cold-blooded manufacturers. Although given how outsourcing works to the rest of the world, at least they have the labor relations part right.

          1. Fehu
            Black Helicopters

            Re: releases as beta

            Of course my/our incentive structure was quite different. Fuck it up and spend your some or all of your life in federal prison being guarded by a bunch of pissed off US Marines

            Maybe that's why there are so few programmers/developers in the US Armed Forces. Most of the software used by our military is developed by contractors. If you mess up really bad, they just don't extend your contract. That hardly ever happens. Nice story, bro. Zelazny would be proud.

      2. petur

        Partly because software has grown so complex that if they would try to fix most/all the bugs before releasing, it would be outdated by then...

        Not that I like the current state of affairs, and this is why there are things like Debian Stable or companies liking Red Hat...

        1. Christian Berger

          Well things don't need to be as complex as they are now. Most of the complexity we have today is caused by bad software design.

          1. razorfishsl

            Actually it's "stupid user syndrome".

            some idiot invents some software and then some users install it.... later the OS maker decides on a buy out and incorporates it directly.... and the software..... some sort of photo utility that let's you take clearer pictures of your private parts to upload for the world to look at...

            This is why no one would EVER leave the holo deck on the Enterprise.....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      No,

      we didn't ask you. You just seemed to spout that on your own volition.

    3. Adam 1

      >And people ask me why I won't use Windows anymore........

      Because their beta testers in the bleeding edge stream of the unreleased version of their os had to download a full iso image rather than use windows update?

      1. John P

        Not everyone is having trouble with this. Successfully updated on VM, Lenovo Helix, and Surface Pro with no problems at all.

    4. Greg D

      Right, cos rational people base their OS decisions on test releases?

    5. Trixr

      Oh, come on. If you follow nearly any "nightly" build - any OS - you'll get knobbled at some time.

      For beta testers - kind of the "slow ring" in this instance (I will refrain from any equivalence with Microsoft and 'reaming') - sure, you expect the releases to be feature-complete and usable.

  2. Lamb0
    Linux

    A bit unnerving...

    ...especially for the few sheep paying attention so close to RTM. Thank your local guinea pig and prepare to be fleeced by the Windows application vendors, (especially the add-on market for functionality and appearance "fixes"), if not by Microsoft.

    My preferred Windows OS uses Aero... however WINE handles all my current legacy Windows software. I'll use a VM for the new version of Orbiter. Maybe before the year's grace period expires Win10 will be stable enough to upgrade from Win7... but I'm most unlikely to need software that requires Microsoft's latest attempt at lock-in.

    All MY Beta OSs are based on an ..IX kernel of some sort. ;<)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: A bit unnerving...

      The more I learn about W10, the less I could ever want it. I do have one machine, and aside from tablets the only machine, that will be connected to the 'net. Oh, I'll keep a VM with W10 on it and it'll run from the connected machine, but that's it and the reason being that I'm the goto person for answering/fixing those WTF problems.

      Long ago I switched over to using server operating systems as my main platform. Frankly it was the memory management for Windows 2000 Adv Server and 2003 Enterprise was not the same as that in the rest, either desktop or other versions of the server OS. I abuse computers. I torture them. (And someday, I expect they'll be doing the same to me, if they aren't already!) Only a hardware failure, or a bad driver (same diff, actually) would take those down. I'm comfortable with WS2012R2 Datacenter as well. Tough. Very tough. That's the long. The tl;dr (should of put that up top) is that I don't get that level of reliability on Windows any other way. Microsoft isn't going away here, I'll support and swear at it but my interest in where they are taking things just isn't there. Siri/Cortana/GoogleNow/Deus-ex-machina, sorry.

      I do want to see WS2016 Preview 3 (or whenever containers gets added). It's still only going to be in the 'net side of the house.

  3. Andy Non Silver badge
    FAIL

    Windows Update Faulty? Say it isn't so.

    Looks like my Windows 8.1 laptop will never be "upgraded" to 10 at this rate. Windows 8.1 update stopped working last year. Unable to resolve the problem. Even after reinstalling Windows 8.1 from scratch the same problem eventually came back again; so unless Windows 10 is finally made available as an ISO or downloadable installer then that computer will never get Windows 10 on it.

  4. Spamfast

    "Slow ring signups get cleaner, but later, code."

    Erm ... no. They get earlier code, or they get code later. They don't get later (i.e. newer) code.

    I'll get me coat ...

  5. Banksy
    Coat

    Fast ring

    Sounds painful.

  6. Owain 1

    , including new icons and

    You're kidding me. The headline feature is new icons?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: , including new icons and

      You're kidding me. The headline feature is new icons?

      That's the 'approaching RTM' lipstick.

      1. PNGuinn
        Trollface

        Re: , including new icons and

        @ PP

        You wouldn't be suggesting it's shaping up to be a pig by any chance?

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: , including new icons and

      It's a beta build, superseding one the previous week and it will probably be superseded itself this coming week. We are only getting it so that MS can avoid a major catastrophe at the end of next month when it is a load of real users (rather than volunteer testers) getting their real systems (not test systems) hosed along with the real data (rather than nothing important at all) lost.

      My personal experience is that this build is one of the 50% or so that haven't borked the update, but I'm sure MS will gather useful data about the systems being hosed this time around just as I'm sure they gathered useful data about my systems when they didn't work.

      If the posters on El Reg can't grok the notion of a beta test program exhibiting a few bugs then it is time to collectively slit our throats and let the cockroaches have a go.

      1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: , including new icons and

        Woohooo a job for me in IT at last.

      2. Joerg

        Re: , including new icons and

        Nonsense.

        At this stage 1 month before release it doesn't look even like an early alpha build.

        It is just a huge lazy mess. Windows 10 is a shame.

  7. Dan 55 Silver badge
    FAIL

    This is what's known as a show stopper

    And as such it shouldn't have any release apart from the developer build.

    I mean, what useful feedback are they going to get from it?

    1. dogged
      Facepalm

      Re: This is what's known as a show stopper

      Quite a bit since less than 20% of testers experience this "show-stopper".

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: This is what's known as a show stopper

        Ah, good enough for MS to RTM I suppose.

      2. razorfishsl

        Re: This is what's known as a show stopper

        So If there are 500 million installs of W10......., what's 20% other than the complete population of a number of countries....

        and if it only costs each one $5.00 USD to correct the problem... how much has M$ just set mankind back......

      3. a_yank_lurker

        Re: This is what's known as a show stopper

        20% install failure rate would a disaster on roll out. That number must be well below 1% to avoid negavive publicity. If this is a problem with the beta testers who presumably are more experienced I shudder to think what will happen on release

  8. Richard Lloyd

    Worked for me...

    I just updated to the latest 10130 build from a previous "fast" build this morning and it was fine. Still needed multiple reboots to do so for no good reason and I'm still keeping Classic Shell on even though the Win 10 Start menu is better than Win 8/8.1's.

    Now I'm just wondering when my HP Stream 7 will get its Win 10 pre-order pop-up...

  9. Joerg

    The Windows10 (aka Windows 8.2) facade and DirectX12 lies...

    What a huge mess it is the whole Windows 10 thing... which is actually nothing more than a Windows 8.2 with its name changed to make a fool of people.

    The whole "Windows 10 free upgrade" is another farce too .. it really seems that the activation key will get locked to the machine on which the upgrade from Windows7 or Windows8 is to be done the first time so no hardware upgrades will be allowed or the key would stop working....

    And DirectX 12 ? Well, Microsoft has been claiming for almost a whole year that with DirectX 12 on average there would be a +200% performance boost or more... BUT first games compiled and optimized for DirectX 12 just show an overall +10% performance increase with a bunch more 3D models on the screen and no real visual quality improvement at the rendering level.

    And the Windows10 Start Menu.. .what about it? Well, it is a huge mess with the childish awful unusable Metro/ModernUI apps and stuff embedded into it.. Microsoft still trying to force the crap on customers at any cost.

    Yeah they added Aero back but it doesn't make any sense because transparency of an awful UI design just sucks and doesn't make it look anything better.

    Icons, windows, control panels.. everything looks so messed up, cheap and poor and far from polished like never before.

    One would think that Microsoft was just in its early stages for a 2018 release at this point.. instead they are going to release this huge mess right now. Not even by a future ServicePack 3 or 4 they will be able to fix such an awful mess.

    Windows 10 is going to be the worst Windows release ever. Way worse than the atrocious Windows8 and 8.1.

    Windows Vista with its bugs and issues compared to Windows 8.x and Windows 10 nowadays looks like a masterpiece.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Windows10 (aka Windows 8.2) facade and DirectX12 lies...

      It's almost like the person in charge of the first Windows 10 TP left at Christmas 2014, and someone heavily involved in Windows 8/8.1 got promoted, because most of the functionality in TP1's Start Menu has now transitioned back into a Metro / Modern Style Menu with little to no, functionality.

      Stardock's Start10 (at its first attempt) was better than anything so far seen in Windows 10 Desktop, how does that figure?

      F8 'safe mode' needs to a least have an option that it automatically re-enables itself for the next 10 reboots, if for any reason a Windows Update fails, Windows fails to boot.

      I can't understand why they didn't use the basis of Windows RT/Windows 10 Mobile, but compiled on an Intel Processor, to produce a Live Bootable USB Version of Windows 10 Mini Desktop that runs as a desktop 'Live' OS, but just runs Modern Apps, i.e ditching the Win32 legacy. Sort of a full blown, WinPE of Windows 10.

      Not as a replacement product for 'full fat' Windows 10, but as a supplement product, as a support OS, Recovery Tools, Basic IE / Edge use / Office 365 Use, in the same way you can use a Ubuntu Live Bootable USB Installer.

      MS need to stop forcing things, and just give users the tools to let them choose, A 'live' cut down USB version of Windows 10, where you can use just Modern Apps, might actually be quite popular.

      MS could have given the USB 'live' version of Windows 10 Desktop away for free, and charged for the full desktop upgrade inc Win32 legacy, much more sensible.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @ Joerg:Re: The Windows10 (aka Windows 8.2) facade and DirectX12 lies...

      I was soooo ready to respond to your post and call you a Linux lubber but you have hit the nail on the head.

      And I am a MS man.. But day by day I see a Linux on the horizon. Which I hate to have to admit to but that's the stark reality. MS have lost the fucking plot big time styleee....

    3. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: The Windows10 (aka Windows 8.2) facade and DirectX12 lies...

      Windows 10 is going to be the worst Windows release ever. Way worse than the atrocious Windows8 and 8.1.

      I've got two letters for you: ME.

      'Nuf said.

  10. Steve 114
    FAIL

    Freeze 10

    Laptop here runs Build 10074 fine, but stalls on offered OS updates. 10130 image linked in TFA starts installing over it, then freezes without HDD activity at 6% ('error during sysprep operation'). A reboot (fortunately) auto-restores 10074. How can I recommend this freebie to friends and cousins with very diverse kit? Instead I've just told them how to remove/hide KB3035583, and will thus get a quieter life.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Freeze 10

      There's also KB2952664 which makes Windows 7 phone home even if you've opted out of CEIP. I've uninstalled both.

    2. Steve 114
      Thumb Up

      Re: Freeze 10

      Edit:

      After *five* cycles of auto-restore and auto-update, 10130 did install - no tweaks, no ISO, took 2 days ! Prior freezes were at different stages, some earlier than the last. Result looks fine, Classic Shell re-set properly, tile-vanish settings were neatly inherited and 'XP-look' preserved, icons at smallest size are quite smart. This here Jury is still 'out'.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Freeze 10

        Four cases of manslaughter? My jury would have found the accused guilty with extreme prejudice.

  11. Doctor_Wibble

    0x80146017?

    Is that like a 5-87?

    Or do we not have naked people walking around for this one?

    I pasted the code into the MS Answers website but didn't even get a haiku for my trouble. I shall of course write a letter to nobody and get nothing done.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Release ring or Strange Attractor?

    Not sure where you drew the conclusion that the slow ring is less buggy than the fast ring - that would imply MS has some sort of development process that converges upon a central, Platonic bug-free ring, which judging by the past 20 years of 'development', appears to not be the case.

    Instead, the development process seems to swirl non-deterministically around a vague mass we refer to as Windows, but which chaos theory refers to as a Strange Attractor - an object existing partially in our realm, and partially in an alternate universe in which marketing claims are actually true.

    The Windows Experience certainly has gotten a bit strange right around when we entered the Metro ring.

    1. Chemist

      Re: Release ring or Strange Attractor?

      "swirl non-deterministically "

      Whilst I agree with your sentiment AFAIK chaos (theory) is deterministic in that you can write the equations, however the system that the equations describe is so sensitive to initial conditions that it doesn't matter and appears to be random or pseudo-random very quickly

      See animation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To each what he deserves

    Imagine when they will screw the pooch at a large scale on Windows 10 Home where users can not postpone updating.

    It is not a matter of IF will ever happen, it's WHEN this will happen.

    1. h3

      Re: To each what he deserves

      Think it is more likely to be users of 3rd party junkware anti virus that have issues with this sort of thing.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Let's hope they fix the installation issue

    before official launch...

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Let's hope they fix the installation issue

      Not sure if I agree with you...

      It might be a very god thing that MS launches a product that doesn't install...

  15. druck Silver badge
    Happy

    Riiiight

    If you're keen to be sure you always have the latest Technical Preview of Windows 10, you should download the ISO image get therapy.

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