Windows 10 Spring Creators Update: The Ultimate Changelog

Megalith

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Windows Central has rounded up all of the changes that the Spring Creators Update will bring to Windows 10 users when it is released next month. These include tweaks to fluent design that will improve the aesthetics of the OS, input improvements, and additions to the settings panel. There are some casualties, however, such as Homegroup.

The Windows 10 Spring Creators Update, also known as Redstone 4 is just about ready for launch, meaning it shouldn't be long before the rolls it out to the public. To prepare, here's a consolidated list of all the noteworthy changes coming in the next Windows 10 update!
 
Wow just great. Installing 2 systems right now with the latest version.. hope there not toast when this update hits :/ ya know it will be flacky.
 
Are these spring and fall updates like installing a new version of windows?

So should you just do a full reinstall with the new version instead?
 
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And still no telemetry opt out or control over updates. No thanks.

After the forced Fall Creators update thats full of bugs and screwed up a couple of my PCs, I rolled back to Windows 8.1 + Classicshell, blocked windows update including the telemetry backport they try to sneak into 7 and 8.1, and its been smooth sailing.

There's literally nothing I'm missing from 10 that I can't do in 8.1, and all of my games play exactly the same, all my hardware performs exactly the same (8700k, NVme drive, 1080 Ti, HTC Vive for VR).
 
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Are these spring and fall updates like installing a new version of windows?

So should you just to a full reinstall with the new version instead?

It's reinstalling Windows OS components, but the rest of your machine will be untouched. They call it "in-place" upgrading. You can't downgrade from a newer version, but Windows makes a full backup of your previous install so it can restore if necessary.

I use the insider program so I get new builds every few weeks and the process is pretty seamless. I get new features as they implement them instead of waiting for these big updates every 6 months. Downside is that sometimes they break stuff so you have to be prepared for that, just report bugs w/ Feedback Hub. Filing feedback will usually open a bug on the team in Microsoft to deal with. Unless you "up vote" a similar issues, where they just add your data to the existing bug.
 
Are these spring and fall updates like installing a new version of windows?

So should you just to a full reinstall with the new version instead?
Yes they're full installs masquerading as a delta update. Hence the 4GB download and windows.old folder afterward. That's why half your programs break or go missing, and your privacy, user settings and default programs get reset back to MS defaults. Any third party tools that block telemetry or updates get erased. Edge is back as default browser, cortana is back on, etc.

I used to think it was just technical ineptitide that these biannual updates couldn't delta update like the service pack days, but it's become clear they are doing them full-install on purpose since it resets everything and makes you MS compliant. The idea is that eventually you'll tire of fighting with the OS with tweaks, and just give in and let it happen.

Factor also they never really have meaningful new "features" despite being called feature updates, so they're just compliance enforcement updates sugar coated as something new, exciting, and "more secure".
 
And still no telemetry opt out or control over updates. No thanks.

After the forced Fall Creators update thats full of bugs and screwed up a couple of my PCs, I rolled back to Windows 8.1 + Classicshell, blocked windows update including the telemetry backport they try to sneak into 7 and 8.1, and its been smooth sailing.

There's literally nothing I'm missing from 10 that I can't do in 8.1, and all of my games play exactly the same, all my hardware performs exactly the same (8700k, NVme drive, 1080 Ti, HTC Vive for VR).

You're missing out :)

Literally everything you use connected to the internet has some form of telemetry. All those (internet connected) games you play *also* have telemetry. They also have more access to your system when run outside of the UWP sandbox.

Telemetry is integral to internet connected services. It's not going away, and nor should it. Telemetry discovers bugs before users even realize it. Telemetry tells companies how users are actually using their services/apps (not relying on the users to tell them), so they can prioritize features and drive their internal efforts. In my own personal applications/games I develop I *will* integrate telemetry because it's useful for making my product better.

Disclaimer: I work for a big evil company that collects lots of telemetry (oh the horrors). I've written the code to generate telemetry, I've looked at the results of the telemetry. It's incredibly boring stuff (everyone in our company hates working on telemetry because it's so boring).

Want to know how it's really used? Drives big fancy dashboards to show the leadership team the quality of our products/services. We have telemetry that feeds into some predefined metrics to show how many successful "sessions" a user has. If we notice that a high number of users are having failed sessions with a particular version of our product, we can dig further into the telemetry to find out what are the common failures.

Without telemetry we would have to rely on user reports, and users don't know what went wrong (we do, because we have telemetry and wrote all the software driving the product). Users will just say "oh the app crashed; the window disappeared; an error box popped up and I hit X, etc."

Telemetry is great.
 
And still no telemetry opt out or control over updates. No thanks.

After the forced Fall Creators update thats full of bugs and screwed up a couple of my PCs, I rolled back to Windows 8.1 + Classicshell, blocked windows update including the telemetry backport they try to sneak into 7 and 8.1, and its been smooth sailing.

There's literally nothing I'm missing from 10 that I can't do in 8.1, and all of my games play exactly the same, all my hardware performs exactly the same (8700k, NVme drive, 1080 Ti, HTC Vive for VR).

Forced fall update? I am still running Windows 10 without it.
 
users don't know what went wrong. Users will just say "oh the app crashed; the window disappeared; an error box popped up and I hit X, etc."
As a small time software developer I have to agree on this part. I've had people fill out my uninstall survey with things like "Oh, it didn't work" or "It crashed me" even though I have thousands of users who say that my software works fine for them. I've even had people swear at me in my uninstall survey. So yes, relying on users to give you good feedback is damn near useless.
 
Yes they're full installs masquerading as a delta update. Hence the 4GB download and windows.old folder afterward. That's why half your programs break or go missing, and your privacy, user settings and default programs get reset back to MS defaults. Any third party tools that block telemetry or updates get erased. Edge is back as default browser, cortana is back on, etc.

I am a part of Windows Insider - Fast Ring and I have seen none of those behaviours. Everyone's experience may be different, but this has, generally, been a smooth process.
 
Razer sharp anti-windows 10 edginess not withstanding, I'm looking forward to this and have had good experiences with the previous updates.
 
Can't wait for my PC to...

ezgif-4-53a866b62f.gif
 
im on the insider program haven't had any issues in years other than the whole DTS/optical licensing issue. everything I have installed has worked without issue, nothing has ever been reset like mentioned above, updates wait to installed like I told it too, tele stuff has stayed off, everything just works fine. most issues I see people talking about are being caused by other programs interfering or no drivers from manufacturer.
 
Literally everything you use connected to the internet has some form of telemetry. All those (internet connected) games you play *also* have telemetry. They also have more access to your system when run outside of the UWP sandbox.
That's fine so long as they collect data only for games.
Telemetry is integral to internet connected services. It's not going away, and nor should it.
Doesn't mean I won't try. Hell I use Linux.
Telemetry discovers bugs before users even realize it. Telemetry tells companies how users are actually using their services/apps (not relying on the users to tell them), so they can prioritize features and drive their internal efforts. In my own personal applications/games I develop I *will* integrate telemetry because it's useful for making my product better.
So we're the beta testers and they're too cheap to pay for testers.
Disclaimer: I work for a big evil company that collects lots of telemetry (oh the horrors). I've written the code to generate telemetry, I've looked at the results of the telemetry. It's incredibly boring stuff (everyone in our company hates working on telemetry because it's so boring).
I'm shocked, SHOCKED I TELLS YOU!
Want to know how it's really used? Drives big fancy dashboards to show the leadership team the quality of our products/services. We have telemetry that feeds into some predefined metrics to show how many successful "sessions" a user has. If we notice that a high number of users are having failed sessions with a particular version of our product, we can dig further into the telemetry to find out what are the common failures.
Sounds good and all but we know there are some who will use the data to abuse it and sell it off. Just like ads on websites. Some have one or two ads that are just jpeg's, and some have videos that start up and play audio. Hence, adblocker.
Without telemetry we would have to rely on user reports, and users don't know what went wrong (we do, because we have telemetry and wrote all the software driving the product). Users will just say "oh the app crashed; the window disappeared; an error box popped up and I hit X, etc."
Or pay for beta testers and stop releasing beta code as finished products.
 
Are these spring and fall updates like installing a new version of windows?

So should you just to a full reinstall with the new version instead?

It is just like installing a full service pack back in the day. The improvement is that you can roll back a lot easier than back in the Windows 7 and before days, if you have trouble after the installation.
 
Yes they're full installs masquerading as a delta update. Hence the 4GB download and windows.old folder afterward. That's why half your programs break or go missing, and your privacy, user settings and default programs get reset back to MS defaults. Any third party tools that block telemetry or updates get erased. Edge is back as default browser, cortana is back on, etc.

I used to think it was just technical ineptitide that these biannual updates couldn't delta update like the service pack days, but it's become clear they are doing them full-install on purpose since it resets everything and makes you MS compliant. The idea is that eventually you'll tire of fighting with the OS with tweaks, and just give in and let it happen.

Factor also they never really have meaningful new "features" despite being called feature updates, so they're just compliance enforcement updates sugar coated as something new, exciting, and "more secure".

*Sigh* If you say so, if you say so. o_O:rolleyes:
 
About the only thing in the list that I might use (actually unlikely) is the Timeline feature. The rest is just noise.
 
I''ve noticed that my PiHole server blocks your pc from accessing the telemetry servers.
 
That's fine so long as they collect data only for games.

Doesn't mean I won't try. Hell I use Linux.

So we're the beta testers and they're too cheap to pay for testers.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED I TELLS YOU!

Sounds good and all but we know there are some who will use the data to abuse it and sell it off. Just like ads on websites. Some have one or two ads that are just jpeg's, and some have videos that start up and play audio. Hence, adblocker.

Or pay for beta testers and stop releasing beta code as finished products.

So you trust game developers with your data more than Microsoft/Google? Better be safe and just unplug the Ethernet.

Doesn't matter how many beta testers they have, or how much money they pay for them. Software is imperfect and written by humans. Shit goes wrong, telemetry gets it fixed faster.

Please do tell me who wants to buy the data collected to assess the reliability of my company's services. Seriously, why would I want to sell it? I don't want my competitors knowing details about my services and how we improve our product. It's in the companies best interest to protect that data.

Or continue to believe this narrative that telemetry is evil and Microsoft is making millions off the knowledge that it took your machine 532ms to start-up "Calculator", but it was actually expected to start-up in less than 500ms. (Yes this is something that they would put in telemetry and show up on some dashboard).

And then you can continue to use Linux and live in the wasteland of unsupported hardware, shitty drivers, and a platform that only enterprise cares about. :)

I've had my own engineering services team ask me to update my network card driver because they determined my network speeds were too slow because they had telemetry that told them that. There are some things that telemetry improves *without* the user knowing something was wrong.

I've had other teams ask me how I was using their tool because they had telemetry saying that it was taking too long on my machine. They had advice on how to better use the tool for my situation and it saves me time as a result. I would have never known that there was a better way otherwise. It might not be much, but if it saves me a few seconds every day from waiting on the network, or waiting on these tools. Then that saves my company money because I can get work done sooner.

But yes, telemetry is evil and we're sneaking around, selling your data and swimming in pools of gold coins, or whatever you want to believe.
 
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About the only thing in the list that I might use (actually unlikely) is the Timeline feature. The rest is just noise.

Like all new features, Timeline needs work. I don't find it all that exciting.
 
i should really set that up one day.

oh laziness. I wonder if HDR is finally going to work.

Honestly it takes all of about an hour. Most of that is installing Ubuntu server and setting a static IP on the machine before installing Pi-Hole.
 
not sure when this showed up, was in one of the last two updates on insider preview, I think.
guess ill see what happens...

upload_2018-3-25_21-2-22.png
 
So you trust game developers with your data more than Microsoft/Google? Better be safe and just unplug the Ethernet.
No, I don't. But if they're collecting game data for game development, that's fine. Windows can collect data on everything. EVERYTHING! I really don't want my OS to be used for this. Which is why I run Linux.
Doesn't matter how many beta testers they have, or how much money they pay for them. Software is imperfect and written by humans. Shit goes wrong, telemetry gets it fixed faster.
What about the ECU in cars? How the fuck they get that right without telemetry?

Please do tell me who wants to buy the data collected to assess the reliability of my company's services. Seriously, why would I want to sell it?
Your company? Fuck I know what your company does. But where there's data, there's money.


And then you can continue to use Linux and live in the wasteland of unsupported hardware, shitty drivers, and a platform that only enterprise cares about. :)
Been doing it for a few years now. DXVK for the year of Linux!
I've had my own engineering services team ask me to update my network card driver because they determined my network speeds were too slow because they had telemetry that told them that. There are some things that telemetry improves *without* the user knowing something was wrong.
I think you're using the word telemetry for any data collection. Collecting data on your own network is not the same as collecting data on browsing history and what programs you often run. Remember according to Microsoft's "telemetry" nobody used the start button and everyone has a high speed reliable internet connection. Hence Windows 8 and Xbox One's disc verification system. Two things that basically tanked on poor decisions made based on telemetry.
 
So glad I'm using Linux, where updates are faster and don't brick BIOSes, unlike Windows. Oh and you still get to choose what updates you want.
 
No, I don't. But if they're collecting game data for game development, that's fine. Windows can collect data on everything. EVERYTHING! I really don't want my OS to be used for this. Which is why I run Linux.

What about the ECU in cars? How the fuck they get that right without telemetry?


Your company? Fuck I know what your company does. But where there's data, there's money.



Been doing it for a few years now. DXVK for the year of Linux!

I think you're using the word telemetry for any data collection. Collecting data on your own network is not the same as collecting data on browsing history and what programs you often run. Remember according to Microsoft's "telemetry" nobody used the start button and everyone has a high speed reliable internet connection. Hence Windows 8 and Xbox One's disc verification system. Two things that basically tanked on poor decisions made based on telemetry.


You don't know what data your games are collecting when you are running them outside of a sandbox. Sony got caught installing rootkits for their stuff, FlightSimLabs got caught dumping Chrome passwords for "anti-piracy" reasons. Yet you still trust game devs to run un-sandboxed... UWP and AppXs are the devil too, right?

You mean to say car software is perfect? What about unintended acceleration in Toyotas that resulted in multiple deaths and them getting fined 1.2 billion. That was the throttle system, but still car software. I'd sure hope they test it thoroughly, they have a bit of an obligation. People died because of that fiasco. A few bugs in a consumer OS though? Not really life/death. If you think modern cars aren't connected to the internet, you'll be disappointed: Hyundai Blue-link, Ford Sync, etc. Even if you're not paying, they're still collecting data.

Internal network or not, it's still diagnostic telemetry. I am not actively running a program to collect this data. When I run a browser and it records my browsing history, that is just data collection.Telemetry is specifically for diagnostics and analysis of a service remotely. Don't conflate the two.

Browsing history and frequent app usage doesn't fall under telemetry. You have access to all your history being collected (same as Google, you can look at your history). This stuff is used to power features like Timeline so you can find apps, documents, websites, etc. Which is incredibly useful for some people. Other people who prefer not to have their data stored can turn that off.

Do you consider crash dumps another evil form of data collection? That's been around since XP and would show up as the "Send error report" dialog. Now it's just automatically sent to Microsoft by default. It's another incredibly useful tool for diagnostics that some paranoid people attempt to turn off.

Best of luck gaming on Linux... :p
 
You're missing out :)

Literally everything you use connected to the internet has some form of telemetry. All those (internet connected) games you play *also* have telemetry. They also have more access to your system when run outside of the UWP sandbox.

Telemetry is integral to internet connected services. It's not going away, and nor should it. Telemetry discovers bugs before users even realize it. Telemetry tells companies how users are actually using their services/apps (not relying on the users to tell them), so they can prioritize features and drive their internal efforts. In my own personal applications/games I develop I *will* integrate telemetry because it's useful for making my product better.

Disclaimer: I work for a big evil company that collects lots of telemetry (oh the horrors). I've written the code to generate telemetry, I've looked at the results of the telemetry. It's incredibly boring stuff (everyone in our company hates working on telemetry because it's so boring).

Want to know how it's really used? Drives big fancy dashboards to show the leadership team the quality of our products/services. We have telemetry that feeds into some predefined metrics to show how many successful "sessions" a user has. If we notice that a high number of users are having failed sessions with a particular version of our product, we can dig further into the telemetry to find out what are the common failures.

Without telemetry we would have to rely on user reports, and users don't know what went wrong (we do, because we have telemetry and wrote all the software driving the product). Users will just say "oh the app crashed; the window disappeared; an error box popped up and I hit X, etc."

Telemetry is great.
Fine, leave telemetry on by default for Joe Average. By removing the option to turn it off, it's taking away control from the user. By doing this to an OS, they no longer own their own system. I see telemetry as a potential vulnerability myself, but it's doesn't bother me tremendously. What DOES bother me is forced updates. I've simply seen them break things too many times. Sure, it happens less than 1% of the time, but when it does, there's no limits to the number of problems it creates. Sometimes the solution is the same day. Other times it's never. I like to get my computer to a stable point and keep it that way for a few years. Updates that I have no control over and that give me no option to roll back make that impossible to guarantee.

Blazestorm said:
But yes, telemetry is evil and we're sneaking around, selling your data and swimming in pools of gold coins
Are you implying Microsoft is NOT doing that? Why was Windows 10 released for free again?
 
So you trust game developers with your data more than Microsoft/Google? Better be safe and just unplug the Ethernet.

Doesn't matter how many beta testers they have, or how much money they pay for them. Software is imperfect and written by humans. Shit goes wrong, telemetry gets it fixed faster.

Please do tell me who wants to buy the data collected to assess the reliability of my company's services. Seriously, why would I want to sell it? I don't want my competitors knowing details about my services and how we improve our product. It's in the companies best interest to protect that data.

Or continue to believe this narrative that telemetry is evil and Microsoft is making millions off the knowledge that it took your machine 532ms to start-up "Calculator", but it was actually expected to start-up in less than 500ms. (Yes this is something that they would put in telemetry and show up on some dashboard).

And then you can continue to use Linux and live in the wasteland of unsupported hardware, shitty drivers, and a platform that only enterprise cares about. :)

I've had my own engineering services team ask me to update my network card driver because they determined my network speeds were too slow because they had telemetry that told them that. There are some things that telemetry improves *without* the user knowing something was wrong.

I've had other teams ask me how I was using their tool because they had telemetry saying that it was taking too long on my machine. They had advice on how to better use the tool for my situation and it saves me time as a result. I would have never known that there was a better way otherwise. It might not be much, but if it saves me a few seconds every day from waiting on the network, or waiting on these tools. Then that saves my company money because I can get work done sooner.

But yes, telemetry is evil and we're sneaking around, selling your data and swimming in pools of gold coins, or whatever you want to believe.

It's very easy to parse through userdata and glean personal information. Queue FB stories, and Market Researchers... You need not be on social media to have yourself majorly exposed.
 
not sure when this showed up, was in one of the last two updates on insider preview, I think.
guess ill see what happens...

View attachment 61949

And just to head off others who will make this claim, no, it is not Microsoft trying to force you to use a MS account just to get paint. You do not have to have an account to download stuff from their store, only certain things.
 
I used to think it was just technical ineptitide that these biannual updates couldn't delta update like the service pack days, but it's become clear they are doing them full-install on purpose since it resets everything and makes you MS compliant. The idea is that eventually you'll tire of fighting with the OS with tweaks, and just give in and let it happen.

I always suspected that people who tried to argued that it wasn't intentional were being wilfully deceptive in order to further pro Windows 10 propaganda. It was always overtly intentional, to me.


Yes, diagnostic telemetry is exactly the same as Facebook's data mining (and sharing). You're so sweet to point that out.

It is, because "diagnostic" is PR, and doesn't mean 'limited to', and also doesn't mean 'we don't sell this data'.

Nvidia is as greedy a corporation as Microsoft and Facebook are. And they've both been, from the start, putting on the most disingenuous of PR faces to go with their PR talk to down-play what data they're collecting and how they're using it.

But, for these companies, collecting data is about getting a foot in the door. Once it's there, they'll collect as much as they can, about everything they think they can get away with. The more they collect, the more people they can sell it to for money.

Look at Nvidia's GPU pricing, anti-competitive practices, and paid social media troll propaganda tactics: They aren't a company that chooses to do what's right when they can do something else to make more money.




It sounds like Megabyte found a job as Microsoft, Facebook, and Nvidia's business strategist after Reboot ceased production.
 
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Yes they're full installs masquerading as a delta update. Hence the 4GB download and windows.old folder afterward. That's why half your programs break or go missing, and your privacy, user settings and default programs get reset back to MS defaults. Any third party tools that block telemetry or updates get erased. Edge is back as default browser, cortana is back on, etc.

I used to think it was just technical ineptitide that these biannual updates couldn't delta update like the service pack days, but it's become clear they are doing them full-install on purpose since it resets everything and makes you MS compliant. The idea is that eventually you'll tire of fighting with the OS with tweaks, and just give in and let it happen.

Factor also they never really have meaningful new "features" despite being called feature updates, so they're just compliance enforcement updates sugar coated as something new, exciting, and "more secure".

this. quite frustrating. the last major "update" broke something which caused the FPU performance of my CPU to drop by about 80%. i would have stutters and second-long freezes during normal usage and abysmal gaming performance. i was gone after i performed a "repair" with a bootable USB but still. that sucked.
 
So glad I'm using Linux, where updates are faster and don't brick BIOSes, unlike Windows. Oh and you still get to choose what updates you want.

LOL! Windows does not brick bios's. Also, if you are dumb enough to flash your bios in Windows, if you can instead do it from the bios, you get what you deserve.
 
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