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https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/2d538a3bf232edbfe194d97753203963-1024x683.jpg ADLaM creators Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry in Portland, Oregon. When they were 10 and 14, brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry set out to invent an alphabet for their native language, Fulfulde, which had been spoken by millions of people for centuries but never had its own writing system. While their friends were out playing in the neighborhood, Ibrahima, the older brother, and Abdoulaye would shut themselves in their room in the family’s house in Nzérékoré, Guinea, close their eyes and draw shapes on paper. When one of them called stop they’d open their eyes, choose the shapes they liked and decide what sound of the language they matched best. Before long, they’d created a writing system that eventually became known as ADLaM. The brothers couldn’t have known the challenges that lay ahead. They couldn’t have imagined the decades-long journey to bring their writing system into widespread use, one that would eventually lead them to Microsoft, which has now made their alphabet available in Windows and Office. They wouldn’t have dreamed that the script they invented would change lives and open the door to literacy for millions of people around the world. Read the entire story by Deborah Bach on Microsoft Story Labs and listen to the brothers talk about their experience through audio clips produced by Sara Lerner. The post ADLaM: Find out how a new alphabet is helping an ancient people write its own future appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18945 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. If you are one of the few Insiders who accidentally received Build 18947 earlier this week, see this forum post where we recommend you rollback to the previous build and then update to today’s build to be on the best path forward. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. What’s new in Build 18945 Introducing a new Cortana experience for Windows 10 We are beginning to roll out a new Cortana experience for Windows 10 as a Beta to Windows Insiders in the U.S. This new experience features a brand-new chat-based UI that gives you the ability to type or speak natural language queries. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/98342454fedd31eecbe33ea73bac89ab.png It supports most of the Cortana features people enjoy using on Windows, such as Bing answers, Assistant conversations, opening apps, managing lists, and setting reminders, alarms, and timers. And we’ve added some new features we think people will enjoy: Cortana now supports both light and dark themes in Windows. We have created a new, less intrusive screen for “Hey Cortana” queries so you can stay in the flow while you work. We have updated Cortana with new speech and language models, and significantly improved performance – making it faster and more reliable than ever before. Not all the features from the previous Cortana experience are available just yet. As a Beta, we plan to add more features over time with updates to Cortana from the Microsoft Store. To get started, choose the Cortana icon on the taskbar next to the search box. You can also leverage the speed and convenience of voice with improved speech recognition by simply saying “Hey Cortana”*. You may need to sign-in with your account to get started. *Note: This requires enabling this functionality in Settings > Voice activation privacy settings – Talk to Cortana. If you’re an Insider in the U.S. and are not seeing the new experience, please be patient as we’re slowing rolling it out. Additional markets and languages will become available at a later date. You must be signed in to use Cortana. Historically, there were quite a few skills that could be used unauthenticated (Bing answers, open apps, Assistant conversations) but this is no longer the case. Only limited skills are currently supported in the new experience. Don’t worry we’ll be bringing back many skills over the coming months. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Improvements: Added connecting via localhost to WSL 2 Linux apps from Windows and global WSL configuration options You’ll now be able to connect to your WSL 2 Linux networking applications using localhost. For example, the image below shows starting a NodeJS server in a WSL 2 distro, and then connecting to it in the Edge Browser with localhost. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/2d3f5e66e4733c8eaa92c0190e7b0019.png Additionally, we’ve added global configuration options for WSL. These are options that will apply to each of your WSL distros. This also allows you to specify options that relate to the WSL 2 virtual machine (VM), as all your WSL 2 distros run inside of the same VM. The most exciting option that you’ll get access to in this build is being able to specify a custom Linux kernel! For the full details on what’s new in this release, check out What’s new for WSL in Insiders Preview Build 18945 on the Windows command line blog. Accessibility Improvements Narrator now provides a more efficient reading experience when reading messages in Outlook or Windows Mail When the message is opened, Scan Mode will turn on automatically. This allows the user to use their arrow keys to read the message in addition to all other Scan Mode hotkeys to jump through the text of the message. Email messages like newsletters and marketing content are often formatted using tables to visually represent the look of the message. For a screen reader user, this information is not needed while reading the message. Narrator now recognizes some of these situations and will remove the information about the table to allow you to quickly move through the text contained in the message. This lets you to be much more efficient while reading these types of email messages. Known issues The cursor may not move to the location last read as Narrator auto-reads when an Outlook message is opened while in Scan Mode. Narrator will start reading when replying to a message. Press the control key and move to the top of the message to write your reply. Narrator’s Outlook folder reading has been enhanced for an optimal triaging experience As you read through your emails in Outlook, such as the inbox, Narrator now reads the information more efficiently. Each line item now starts with the status of the email, such as unread, forwarded, etc., followed by the other columns, such as from, subject, etc. Column headers will be silenced and columns with no data or that have the default (expected value) will be silenced, such as normal importance or unflagged, etc. While in Outlook, headers can be turned back on by pressing Narrator + H which will toggle their reading on and off. Text cursor indicator Have you ever had an issue finding the text cursor in the middle of a large amount of text, during a presentation, or on the screen in an educational setting? The new Text cursor indicator will help you see and find the text cursor wherever you are at any time! Select from a range of sizes for the text cursor indicator and make it a color easy for you to see. Or, personalize the color of your text cursor indicator to your personal preference. In the Ease of Access settings, open the new Text cursor page, turn on the text cursor indicator, and never lose track of your text cursor ever again! https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/937f9791031d2b1116f53d8a6d3ba915.png Known issues Text cursor indicator color and size might not persist when you sign in. To work around that, simply turn off and turn on the “Use text cursor indicator” setting again. Occasionally, you might see that the text cursor indicator stay on the screen or reappear after the app has been closed or the page contents have scrolled away. Updated File Explorer search rolling out to all Insiders Over the next few days, the new File Explorer search experience will be rolling out to all Insiders in the Fast ring! Thanks everyone who’s shared feedback so far and helped us to improve the experience. Please don’t hesitate to share any other comments – you can file feedback for this area under Files, Folders, and Storage > File Explorer in the Feedback Hub. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/58a76144379ef910a14cbff515633a65.png General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We have fixed the issue causing some Insides to experience install failures with error code c1900101 due to a compatibility bug with a storage driver on their device. We’ve made a few fixes to improve reliability when installing a Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 distro. We are extending Windows Defender ATP capabilities beyond the Windows OS and as a result are renaming to Microsoft Defender to reflect our cross-platform approach to endpoint security. We fixed an issue where Settings might crash if you selected Activation under Updates & Security. If your network connection is unexpectedly disconnected, the Miracast banner will now have a close button for you to use if needed. We fixed an issue where the Performance tab of Task Manager wouldn’t expand from a collapsed state if you double clicked on the text. We’ve updated the Details tab of Task Manager so if you right-click a process, Provide Feedback will now be listed after End Task and End Process Tree (rather than between). We fixed an issue where the network icon in the taskbar might show that there was no internet, even though there actually was connection. We fixed an issue impacting Windows Hello reliability in recent flights. We fixed an issue where if you manually updated the DNS server settings in Settings, it wouldn’t apply. We fixed an issue from the previous two flights resulting in mobile hotspot unexpectedly turning off if enabled. We fixed an issue that could result in the system hanging after resume from hibernation. We fixed an issue potentially resulting in the error, “MMC has detected an error in a snap-in and will unload it.” when you try to expand, view, or create Custom Views in Event Viewer. Known Issues There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders. Occasionally, the candidate selection in prediction candidate window for the Japanese IME doesn’t match with the composition string. We are investigating the issue. Insiders may notice some changes in Magnifier with today’s build. These aren’t quite ready yet for you to try, but we’ll let you know once they are in an upcoming flight. Your Phone app – Expanding phone model support for Phone screen We are continuing to expand support for Phone screen. Today, we’re excited to announce the feature availability for these devices: Samsung Galaxy A6, Samsung Galaxy A7, Samsung Galaxy A9, Samsung Galaxy A10, Samsung Galaxy A20, Samsung Galaxy A30, Samsung Galaxy A50, Samsung Galaxy A70, and Samsung Galaxy S8 Active If you have any of these devices, try out Phone screen and give us your feedback. We will continue to expand this list of devices over time. Join the Bing insider Program Gear up for the Primetime Emmy Awards and check out nominated series, actors, and actresses. Bing lets you explore every nominee, from Game of Thrones to Veep. Did your favorite shows score nominations? If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18945 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Thanks for staying up-to-date on the Windows Admin Center journey! This release contains fixes and improvements to the Windows Admin Center platform, with some iterative updates to some of your favorite tools and experiences. Azure cost estimates – Azure hybrid integrations within Windows Admin Center now include a hyperlink to Azure, to discover and understand the estimated cost of that service once onboarded. Performance Profile updates – A new feature introduced in 1906, Performance Profile (available in gateway settings) now includes import and export capabilities. Import virtual machine – You can now conveniently rename VMs during the import process if we detect that the VM’s name already exists. VM tag support for clusters – In addition to the VM tag support for Hyper-V servers in v1906, you can now add/edit tags for Failover and HCI clusters. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/d17041eb5948d1859130154be653e27a.png Pending reboot banner – Windows Admin Center now includes a banner on the Overview tool that notifies you when a reboot is pending on the server/computer being managed. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/fe4a6e613c283ed30e00fe9c3dd9dace.png Known issues Network – If you have configured an Azure Network Adapter, the value under Microsoft Azure Virtual Network Gateway Address will be formatted as a hyperlink but leads to an invalid address. Chrome users may see 403 Forbidden response from WAC after upgrading. The workaround is to close *all* open chrome tabs (make sure there are no chrome.exe processes running). After restarting chrome, everything will function normally. We have an error message that makes this clear, but chrome users with multiple windows admin center tabs open during upgrade will not see the message. Performance Profile – There is a known issue where Performance Profile can’t be turned off when multiple instances of Windows Admin Center are running on a single desktop. To turn off Performance Profile, ensure that only one instance (browser window) is open with Windows Admin Center. This will be fixed in the next release. How to Download Registered Insiders may download Windows Admin Center Preview 1907 directly from the Windows Server Insider Preview download page, under the Additional Downloads dropdown. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see Getting Started with Windows Server on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. Terms of Use All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Windows Admin Center Preview 1907 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the summer batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. Thanks to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, you’ll be able to take full advantage of the newest version of the Sticky Notes app. With this most recent version, you can sync and backup notes across your phone, laptop and desktop — all your devices. Now, you can also jot down a note on your PC and look it up on your phone, using applications such as Microsoft Launcher, Microsoft OneNote for Android and Microsoft OneNote for iPhone. And bonus— the app is faster and more responsive, too! Check it out in action: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/7c9cbad802ba59a500f00ce783baa978.gif Go to the video to see more of what you can do with Sticky Notes. If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: Sticky Notes synced appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

During E3 in June, Xbox announced their commitment to bring more choice to the PC gaming community with the launch of Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta). The commitment to PC gaming doesn’t stop there, especially now that the Xbox Super Game Sale has kicked off at Microsoft Store. The Xbox Super Game Sale is the time to save big and stock up on top-rated PC games, find a great deal online or at your local Microsoft Store on a new gaming PC, or pick up cool new gaming accessories like monitors, keyboards, mice and headsets. You’ll need to hurry and jump all over these deals because the Xbox Super Game Sale ends July 29. 1. Save up to 50% on popular PC games for Windows 10 https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/c8d6a892d3d274a18e9106df974937c9-1024x640.jpg Save up to 50% on popular PC games for Windows 10 like “Sea of Thieves Anniversary Edition,” “Age of Empires: Definitive Edition,” “Astroneer” and more. There’s over 70 deals on popular PC games during the Xbox Super Game Sale and many support Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning one purchase gets you the game on Xbox One and Windows 10 with cross save capability (PC hardware requirements may vary for games on Windows 10). 2. Save big on select gaming PCs and accessories https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/f70a9a75e2510e3cf182571f57caf63e-1024x759.png Thinking about upgrading your gaming rig? Take advantage of savings up to $300 on select gaming PCs from Razer, Dell, Lenovo, MSI and CyberPower ($400 off in Canada). There’s also deals on cool gaming accessories including monitors, keyboards, mice, headsets and more. Offers available now through July 29 unless otherwise noted. Save $200 on the Dell G3 15 Gaming Laptop with NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti, now $599 ($250 off in Canada, now $799). Get $300 off the Razer Blade 15 Gaming Laptop with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card ($400 off in Canada). Save $100 on the Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming Laptop with Intel Core 9th Gen processing, next-gen NVIDIA GeForce graphics ($150 off in Canada). Get $200 off the MSI GS65 Stealth THIN-047 Gaming Laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GTX1060 ($300 off in Canada). Save on select HyperX gaming accessories including PC gaming headsets, keyboards and mice. Save $80 on the curved 27-inch MSI Optix MPG27CQ Gaming Monitor ($99 off in Canada). July 21-27: Get $300 off the Razer Blade Stealth 13 RZ09-02812E71-MSU1 Laptop with NVIDIA GeForce MX150 and Intel Core i7 ($350 off in Canada). July 19-29: Get $40 off the LucidSound LS35X Wireless Surround Sound Gaming Headset for PCs ($55 off in Canada). July 22-29: Save $20 on the curved 27-inch Asus ROG Strix XG27VQ Gaming Monitor ($40 off in Canada). 3. Take advantage of great in-game deals in free-to-play game favorites https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/14943d1e97159a638c72032d251faec2-1024x640.jpg Level up with great deals on add-ons in free-to-play games like “Roblox,” “Asphalt 9: Legends,” “World of Tanks Blitz“ and many more favorites. There are great deals that will help you unlock bonus content, add power-ups and special features, and load up on loot. 4. Save $200 on the Samsung HMD Odyssey+ https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/6a669f4f5abb2d1590d85b5beb6f019c-1024x576.jpg Immerse yourself in the virtual world and save $200 on the Samsung HMD Odyssey+ Windows Mixed Reality headset with controllers, now just $299 ($250 off in Canada, now $399). Immersive gaming adventures await with the Samsung HMD Odyssey+. This Windows Mixed Reality headset combines cutting-edge technology with thoughtful design for a premium virtual experience. 5. Save on Xbox digital games, Xbox One S consoles and accessories https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/de81c94300d97c1c7404cb10ebd79acd-1024x640.jpg Just because you prefer PC gaming, it doesn’t mean that you can’t also enjoy console gaming, too. The Xbox Super Game Sale has a ton of great deals on Xbox games, consoles and more. It’s worth checking out before the Xbox Super Game Sale ends on July 29. Save up to 70% on Xbox digital games including popular games like Tom Clancy’s “The Division 2,” “Gang Beasts,” “Call of Duty: Black Ops 4,” “FIFA 19 GEN 4“ and more. Get three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for the price of 1* (66% savings). Discover your next favorite game and enjoy all the benefits of Xbox Live Gold, plus over 100 high-quality console and PC games. July 19-21 (US only): Save $50 on the Xbox One S including the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. July 19-21 (Canada only): Save $80 on the Xbox One S and $60 on the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. July 19-21: Save $10 on select Xbox One Controllers online ($15 off in Canada). July 21-29: Save $10 on the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gaming Headset for Xbox One ($15 off in Canada). Xbox Super Game Sale deals are available online or at your local Microsoft Store, so take advantage of these great deals before they end on July 29, 2019 (or as otherwise noted above). Availability and pricing varies by location. May not be combinable with other offers. Other limitations may apply. Not valid on prior orders or purchases. See webpage for each offer’s specific details. *Three Months for $14.99: Not valid for existing subscribers. Limit: one offer per account; credit card required. Offer valid from July 16, 2019 9:00 a.m. PDT though July 29, 2019 11:59 p.m. PDT and only through link in this offer, in all Xbox Game Pass markets excluding Quebec and Russia. Offer cannot be combined with any other offer. After promotional period, subscription continues to be charged at the then-current regular quarterly price (subject to change), unless cancelled. Plus applicable taxes. Credit card required. Game catalog varies over time. The post 5 ways PC gamers can save big during the Xbox Super Game Sale appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18941 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you wish to remain on 19H1, please change your ring settings via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program *before* taking this flight. See this blog post for details. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. What’s new in 18941 Updating the Korean IME Earlier in this development cycle, we released updated versions of both the Chinese and Japanese IMEs. As part of our ongoing efforts to modernize and improve your typing experience in Windows, today we’re rolling out an updated version of the Korean IME to all Insiders in the Fast ring. This update is going out with the goal of making the IME more secure, reliable, and more beautiful to look at. For those who’re familiar with typing in Korean, the changes will be most noticeable if you write in Hanja; we have a new candidate selection window that uses modern controls and clearer typography: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/979b17213f8db107036f4084aff2d6cb.png We have also improved the algorithm used for text prediction when writing Korean using the touch keyboard. Text suggestions should now be more accurate and relevant to what you are writing. With this change, we have a couple of known issues we’re working on addressing: Typing very fast in Notepad can cause the IME to stop working. If you experience this, restarting Notepad should resolve it. Pressing hotkeys, such as CTRL + A, in while in the middle of writing a Hangul letter has inconsistent behavior across apps. We started rolling this change out to a small portion of Insiders a few days ago, and appreciate the feedback shared so far! Your feedback helps make Windows is better for everyone, so please don’t hesitate to continue sharing your thoughts and experiences. General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue resulting in some users experiencing a large amount of lag when using the previous flight. We fixed an issue where explorer.exe would crash if you started a File Explorer search while in a OneDrive folder. We fixed an issue where if you searched for advanced Windows Update options, the search result would open to the main Windows Update Settings page, rather than the advanced one. We fixed an issue where Settings would crash if you clicked on the microphone section under Privacy Settings while audio recording was in progress by a Win32 application. Known Issues If you have attempted to install Build 18936 or Build 18941 and experienced install failures with error code c1900101 – see below section regarding this issue. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders. On occasion, the candidate selection in prediction candidate window for the Japanese IME doesn’t match with the composition string. We are investigating the issue. c1900101 Update Issue A small number of Windows Insiders attempting to install Build 18936 and Build 18941 may experience install failures with error code c1900101 due to a compatibility bug with a storage driver on their device. The PC will attempt to install, fail, and successfully roll back to the currently installed build on the PC. Attempted re-tries to install the build, either manual or automatic, will not bypass this issue. A fix is forthcoming, but there are no known workarounds currently. Note: By default, the update will attempt to install (3) times. Users may pause updates if they experience this issue and want to bypass the re-try attempts. There are also certain rare cases in which a PC may get stuck in a “boot loop” (repeatedly rebooting over and over without getting to the OS) due to this issue. If your PC has gotten into this state – you can follow these steps to get your PC back into a working state: Create a bootable USB recovery drive following these instructions. NOTE: UNCHECK “Back up my System files to the recovery drive”. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/4545bd7ea68970a4d7c286f24e96dffd.jpg Boot your PC from the USB recovery drive created in Step 1. Launch Command Prompt. In Command Prompt, type: bcdedit /enum {default} Text similar to below will appear: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/fbc4f7dc42ab76862404d202d12c7585.jpg If the description element says “Windows Rollback” and the device element starts from ramdisk, proceed to Step 7. If you don’t see any of the elements from Step 5 – DO NOT PROCEED. Take a note of the recoverysequence GUID value in the {default} entry. In Command Prompt, type: bcdedit /default {GUID from Step 7 exactly as it appeared} In Command Prompt, reboot your PC by typing: wpeutil reboot Once your PC reboots, you will see two boot entry choices the first one will be “Windows 10” and the next one will be “Windows Rollback”. Select the “Windows 10” option and that will enable to boot you back into the previously installed build. The rollback code will kick in and clean up the rollback entry, so it won’t be there on subsequent boots. Ready to venture back into the Upside Down? Stranger Things is back on Netflix, and Bing wants to see how much you know. Take Bing’s 10 question quiz to prepare for a third season of The Mind Flayer wreaking havoc on Hawkins, Indiana. If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18941 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

This week in Las Vegas, at Microsoft Inspire, our annual partner event, I had several conversations about the year we’ve had and what is next for the industry, including opportunities to bring the latest innovations to our mutual customers. Together we are building incredible momentum, truly transforming industries and redefining the art of what is possible. As we move into this new fiscal year, I am particularly energized by the traction I see with open cloud engagements – and the collaborative nature of our partnerships with companies across the world. This morning’s news of our extensive and multi-year strategic collaboration with AT&T is another example of partnering to deliver unique solutions for our mutual customers, leveraging the strength of AT&T’s network and our cloud expertise. We expect our customers to benefit across a range of scenarios where 5G can enable critical near-instantaneous communications across industries. For example, imagine a first responder using AI-powered live voice translation to quickly communicate with someone in need who speaks a different language. Microsoft will be AT&T’s preferred cloud provider for non-network applications on Microsoft Azure and support AT&T as it consolidates its data center infrastructure and operations. In addition, AT&T will provide most of its workforce with robust cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools with Microsoft 365. Unilever, a company whose products touch 2.5 billion consumers every day, also made a big impression this week at Microsoft Inspire. Dave Penrith, chief engineer at Unilever, joined me onstage to showcase how digital is empowering the company’s nearly 155,000 employees globally to do their best work with Microsoft 365 (including Teams and Yammer). Unilever is also building custom apps that harness real-time insights from data with PowerApps and Power BI and using Azure IoT’s digital twin technology to represent the physical production lines in its Valinhos Dove factory to digitize its supply chain network. Of course, Microsoft Inspire is just one moment in time. Over the past 12 months, we’ve made headway across a diverse set of customers and industries. Earlier this year, in the health care industry, we announced a seven-year, strategic cloud partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). WBA will harness the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud and AI platform, Microsoft 365, health industry investments and new retail solutions with WBA’s customer reach, convenient locations, outpatient health care services and industry expertise to make health care delivery more personal, affordable and accessible for people around the world. Most recently, UCLA Health shared how they are moving to our cloud to help speed research and improve patient care, and our new multi-year strategic alliance with Providence St. Joseph Health will harness the power of Azure and AI to deploy next-generation solutions in health care and power their employees with Microsoft 365 and Teams. These are just some of the recent examples that highlight Microsoft’s customer-first approach. In fact, the world’s leading companies choose Azure for their mission-critical workloads, including more than 95 percent of the Fortune 500. In addition, this year we shared stories with retail industry leaders like Walmart, Kroger, Gap, Inc., Albertsons Companies, Starbucks, Neiman Marcus and Coles, and in the automotive industry with Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen and Renault Nissan Mitsubishi. With manufacturing, Airbus demonstrated how HoloLens and mixed reality are helping double its life-to-date aircraft production while improving quality, safety and security. We continue to invest in technology partnerships to ensure Microsoft’s cloud is the best platform for our customers not only to access all their data, but to understand, process and act on that data to innovate. Microsoft’s open cloud approach has been demonstrated time and again. We continue to advance our Open Data Initiative with SAP and Adobe, including progress announced earlier this year empowers customers like Coke, Unilever, Walmart and HP to build data models that meet their enterprise needs. In the past quarter, we announced a strategic partnership with Dell Technologies to provide customers with a fully native, supported and certified VMware experience on Microsoft Azure and the ability to extend Microsoft 365 and Windows Virtual Desktop. We announced a cloud interoperability partnership with Oracle using Azure services like Analytics and AI, and are continuing our work with Red Hat to make its extensive portfolio of technologies available on Azure. Plus, we announced last week that Service Now, running on Microsoft Azure, will enable enterprise customers in certain highly regulated industries, such as government, to accelerate their digital transformation and drive new levels of insights and innovation. It is humbling to see all the ways our customers and partners are embracing technology. Whether large or small, companies are driving new experiences and solutions across every industry, redefining innovation and creating impactful change for the future of their businesses and employees. Their journeys are powerful, and we are fortunate to have the opportunity to be their trusted partners along the way. The post Looking back, looking ahead: Customers are driving capabilities for their business and people appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are releasing 19H2 Build 18362.10005 to Windows Insiders in the Slow ring. As a reminder, Windows Insiders in the Slow ring who are on the Windows 10 May 2019 Update will be receiving 19H2 via servicing as a Cumulative Update and not a full build update. In addition to the fixes included in KB4507453 for the May 2019 Update, 19H2 Build 18362.10005 includes the following changes and improvements: Windows containers require matched host and container version. This restricts customers and limits Windows containers from supporting mixed-version container pod scenarios This update includes 5 fixes to address this and allow the host to run down-level containers on up-level for process (Argon) isolation. A fix to allow OEMs to reduce the inking latency based on the hardware capabilities of their devices rather than being stuck with latency selected on typical hardware configuration by the OS. Key-rolling or Key-rotation feature enables secure rolling of Recovery passwords on MDM managed AAD devices upon on demand request from in-tune/MDM tools or upon every time recovery password is used to unlock the BitLocker protected drive. This feature will help prevent accidental recovery password disclosure as part of manual BitLocker drive unlock by users. A change to enable third-party digital assistants to voice activate above the Lock screen. Please note that these changes and improvements are currently OFF by default in this build. As mentioned previously, we may ship features in these updates turned off by default and turn them on via controlled feature rollouts. Doing this helps us gain better feedback on overall build quality. With today’s 19H2 build, we are testing this experience. Our plan is to quickly follow-up with another 19H2 build that turns these features on for a subset of Insiders and proceed from there based on feedback and quality. As always, Insiders are encouraged to report any issues they experience with these updates through Feedback Hub. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10005 (19H2) appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/7bb901e9df5a11cb1b0162998e03e6cb-1024x683.jpg Jody MacDonald working with Z by HP Jody MacDonald has had many challenging assignments, but for the award-winning photographer, a six-week trek testing an all-weather camera through the Sahara Desert stood out. During the day, the heat was unbearable, the nights freezing. She slept on top of iron ore, on the world’s longest train. She encountered huge sandstorms. With extreme weather conditions like this, her gear gets banged around a lot as it travels on the backs of donkeys, pickup trucks and small aircraft. She needs powerful, physically durable equipment. In 2018, she became a Z by HP ambassador as she tried out a new HP ZBook x2, replacing her MacBook Pro. With it, she’s experienced a level of detail and ease of use in the editing process she’s never had. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/7478e5a0a503406821b5d33f07ebc0c6-1024x683.jpg Rik Oostenbroek working with Z by HP For digital artist Rik Oostenbroek, sunset and dusk at home in the Netherlands are also prime times for inspiration. His favorite color is orange, which also happens to be the national color, and his work reflects that in intricate swirls, flames, sparks, leaves and abstract shapes. His art, like the nature that surrounds his environment, changes and grows organically with different textures and shapes. He also decorates his home in orange accents, like the light bulb in his office and his steel desk. Even as he moves about, orange makes its mark – in his watch and on his shoes. He had spent his entire freelance career – 10 years – working with Macs, and he had grown frustrated. The system’s performance issues were huge for him, as was the difficulty in upgrading and installing new parts. So he decided to switch to an HP Z4 late in 2018. Find out how MacDonald and Oostenbroek use Z by HP at Microsoft Stories. The post Find out how Z by HP helps creative pros up their game appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the summer batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. Thanks to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, you’ll see fewer interruptions when Windows updates. Now you have the option to let Windows Update adjust active hours based on your device-specific usage patterns. We know that sometimes, updates can come at inconvenient times. So, now you’ll be able to pause both feature and monthly updates for up to 35 days (seven days at a time, up to five times). And when there’s an update requiring you to restart your device, you’ll see a new notification: a colored dot on the Power button in the Start menu and on the Windows icon in your taskbar. Check it out in action: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/0bac71607c00a47afc6568e1fa1ebb9a.gif If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: More choices for updates appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18936 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you wish to remain on 19H1, please change your ring settings via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program *before* taking this flight. See this blog post for details. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. What’s new in 18936 Your Phone app – Phone screen now available on more Surface devices As promised, we’re excited to expand the availability of the phone screen feature to more PCs. With the latest driver update in the Windows insider rings (Marvell 15.68.17013.110), the following Surface devices will preview the phone screen feature – Surface Laptop, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 5, Surface Pro 6, Surface Book, and Surface Book 2. If you have one of these devices, give it a try and let us know what you think! Quick Event Create from the Taskbar Do you ever open the clock and calendar flyout to help organize your thoughts while making plans? We’ve been working on making it easier to create new events and reminders, and are happy to announce that as of today, all Insiders in the Fast ring should see this when you click on the date in the taskbar: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/8d2574887d38126b440746bdba07aa80.png Pick your desired date and start typing – you’ll now see inline options to set a time and location. We’re looking forward to you trying it out! Let us know if you have any feedback. Go passwordless with Microsoft accounts on your device For improved security and a more seamless sign-in experience, you can now enable passwordless sign-in for Microsoft accounts on your Windows 10 device by going to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options, and selecting ‘On’ under ‘Make your device passwordless’. Enabling passwordless sign in will switch all Microsoft accounts on your Windows 10 device to modern authentication with Windows Hello Face, Fingerprint, or PIN. Don’t have Windows Hello set up yet? No problem! We’ll walk you through the setup experience on your next sign-in. Curious how a Windows Hello PIN is more secure than a password? Learn more here. Please note: This feature is currently being rolled out to a small portion of Insiders and the above option may not show for all users in Settings. If the toggle isn’t showing for you yet, check back in a week so. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/b80d0c06fd59633b6c75a281acaae79c.png As always, feedback is always welcome! Please leave comments in Feedback Hub > Security and Privacy > Windows Hello PIN. General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue that was causing failures when installing games via the Xbox app in the previous flight. We fixed an issue resulting in the Photos live tile potentially drawing outside the bounds of the tile. We fixed an issue where the emoji panel would crash when high contrast was enabled. We updated the disk type text in Task Manager’s Performance tab to now match the size of the other subtext on that tab. We fixed an issue resulting in items not launching in the foreground when selected from the taskbar jump list of certain apps. We fixed an issue that could result in the virtual desktop thumbnail in task view not updating after moving a window to a different desktop. Running Windows Sandbox no longer requires Administrator privilege. We fixed an issue resulting in the composition string not being shown in certain apps when typing with the Japanese IME. We fixed an issue resulting in certain apps crashing when typing with the Chinese Pinyin IME. We fixed an issue resulting in certain games unexpectedly just showing a black screen when run in full screen mode on some devices recently. Known Issues A limited number Insiders attempting to install Build 18936 may experience install failures with error code c1900101 due to a compatibility bug with a storage driver on their device. The device will attempt to install, fail, and successfully roll back to the currently installed build on the device. Attempted re-tries to install the build, either manual or automatic, will not bypass this issue. A fix is forthcoming, but there are no known workarounds currently. Note: By default, the update will attempt to install (3) times. Users may pause updates if they experience this issue and want to bypass the re-try attempts. Insiders may notice some changes in Magnifier with today’s build. These aren’t quite ready yet for you to try, but we’ll let you know once they are in an upcoming flight. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders. Join the Bing Insider Program Wimbledon is here, and Bing has everything you need to stay up to date. Check out both men’s and women’s competitions, latest news on the tournament, and top ranked players in one place on Bing. Want even more? Test your tennis smarts with a quiz! If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18936 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are pleased to release a new Insider preview build of the Windows Server VNext Semi-Annual Channel editions. Available Content Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview The Server Core Edition is available in the 18 supported Server languages in ISO format and in English only in VHDX format. Windows Server Core App Compatibility FoD Preview Windows Server Language Packs Windows Admin Center 1906 Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, click here. The following keys allow for unlimited activations of Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel Previews Server Standard: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV Server Datacenter: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W This Windows Server Preview will expire July 31st, 2020. How to Download Registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. See the Additional Downloads dropdown for Windows Admin Center and other supplemental apps and products. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see GETTING STARTED WITH SERVER on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. For Windows Server, use your registered Windows 10 Insider device and use the Feedback Hub application. In the app, choose the Windows Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. In the title of the Feedback, please indicate the build number you are providing feedback as shown below: [server #####] Title of my feedback See Share Feedback on Windows Server via Feedback Hub for specifics. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. For Windows Admin Center, Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities. Terms of Use This is pre-release software – it is provided for use “as-is” and is not supported in production environments. Users are responsible for installing any updates made available from Windows Update. All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. Thanks, Dona The post Announcing Windows Server vNext Preview Build 18932 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18932 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you wish to remain on 19H1, please change your ring settings via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program *before* taking this flight. See this blog post for details. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. What’s new in 18932 Eye Control Improvements We’re continuing to extend and improve Eye Control based on your customer feedback. With this release, we have improvements in the following areas, which we invite your feedback about through the Feedback Hub and Microsoft Accessibility Feedback Forum. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/3d7031e7b66f789f14f2fbfe4c05d593.png Drag-and-drop: One of the most requested features, performing mouse drag-and-drop, is now implemented in Eye Control. When turned on from within Eye Control’s settings screen, the precise mouse control tool now allows mouse drag operations, as well as the ability to combine clicks and drags with Shift and Ctrl modifier keys. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/84845ffb1c2b836aeb4094cca99d03b7-225x300.png Pause: We’ve made improvements to the pause experience. Selecting the pause button completely hides the launchpad. When dismissed, the launchpad reappears when you briefly close your eyes or look away from the screen. This allows uninterrupted viewing of full screen content, like watching a video. Similarly, it also allows eye gaze enabled applications to be used without triggering Eye Control features, useful if playing the recently launched Eye First applications. Switch support: Previously, Dwell was the method for clicking a button. Dwelling is the act of fixing your eyes on part of the screen and keeping your eyes there for a specific amount of time. In this release, we’re adding a second activation method, switch. In this method, dwell is used to select the target, but clicking a button is done with switch. Currently switches on joysticks, or devices emulating joysticks, are supported. Under the hood: People wishing to develop their own gaze enabled applications can do so using the open source Gaze Interaction Library in the Windows Community Toolkit. In this revision of Eye Control, the user interface is implemented using the same code that is in the Gaze Interaction Library. Settings: We have updated settings to allow you to manage more Eye Control features. This includes enabling some of the new features and more fine control of the numeric values that change how responsive the system is to eye movements. This allows for a more customized and natural feel for your Eye Control experience. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/15ec5ac1c1d5b2e478cb079430f6661f.png Other Accessibility Improvements Narrator will now automatically start reading webpages and emails: Do you want to hear the most valuable content faster? Narrator now automatically starts reading webpages when they are loaded. Narrator will start reading at the main landmark, if there is one, or will fall back to a reasonable paragraph. Narrator will also start automatically reading emails when they are opened in Outlook and the inbox Mail applications. If you find experiences that aren’t working well, please send us feedback. The Magnifier UI now works with dark theme and text sizing options. The image below shows two Magnifier windows. The top one is in Light theme and default text size; the bottom one is in Dark theme and the text is scaled at 125%. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/de481f98e1f21217695432f8e3b4fb25.png Refining your notification settings Over the last few releases, based on your feedback, we’ve been working on giving you more control over potential interruptions. Introducing Focus Assist to automatically suppress notifications when you’re trying to stay in the moment and not get distracted, and adding the option to use middle click to dismiss notifications if you want to quickly make a notification toast go away. One thing we’ve heard from you, though, is that our notification settings aren’t easily discoverable. In addition, once you find the settings, they can be difficult to understand. In order to address this, we’ve begun rolling out a few changes, including: When you receive a notification toast, there will now be an inline option to turn off notifications for that app, or head to the app’s notification settings. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/d843da7ed38ce584dc10d5e09e29d04d.gif When you dive into an app’s notification settings, you’ll find that we’ve added pictures to help articulate the impact of a certain settings. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/9bda3a3d19763b910e6f9db7083dcf05.png Prefer to have all your notifications muted? You no longer have to go to the old sound control panel to do that – we’ve added it as a top-level option in Notification & Actions Settings. But wait, there’s more! We’ve also added a new direct link at the top of the Action Center to manage notifications, so it takes one less step to get to Notification & Actions settings. To make room for this we’ve moved the “no notifications” text down to the middle of the Action Center, which also means your eyes don’t have to traverse as far to see it when you launch the Action Center from the bottom of the screen. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/1dfcf6c7a78fc04fd7400f8e16b4a468.png Finally, ever dismissed a notification you wanted to disable, and went to Notification & Actions Settings only to find the list of notification senders to be really really long? You can now sort the list by which apps most recently sent notifications. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/2c59596426cab544a7a8380354b4ac74.png We hope you like these changes! They’re currently available for a portion of Insiders in the Fast ring, and we’ve seen positive results so far. We’ll let you know once they are available for all Insiders. If you have any further feedback about notifications, please don’t hesitate to share it with us here. Your Phone app – Phone screen & Notifications features Hello Windows Insiders. Today, we’re bringing additional new features to the Phone screen, which includes the ability to one touch tap and integration with Notifications. Try out these preview features and give us your feedback. Enabling touch functionality You will now be able to interact with your phone screen using one-touch tap and long press. This handy feature will allow you to conveniently open apps, select items, click on links, and more, directly on your touch-enabled PC. Notifications integration with Phone screen We’re pleased to launch Notifications integration with Phone screen for Insiders with the May 2019 update or newer. If Phone screen is set up, your notifications will open in Phone screen allowing you to interact with your keyboard and mouse. If Phone screen is not supported or set up, clicking on notifications will take you to your notifications feed instead. Note that your text message notifications (SMS, MMS) will continue to be available within the messaging node. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/07/635a3a666fdff5cae5e6d3452c2bd4f1-300x168.png Your Phone Notifications available to all users Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback over the last few weeks to help us improve the Notifications feature in the Your Phone app. We’re happy to announce that this feature is now gradually rolling out to all Windows 10 users with the April 2018 update and newer. It may take a few days to show up within Your Phone app, so keep a look out! Phone screen requirements Select Android phones running Android 7.0 or greater Samsung Galaxy S10e, S10, S10+, S9, S9+, S8, S8+ Samsung Galaxy A8, A8+ Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Note 8 OnePlus 6, 6T [*]Windows 10 PCs with Bluetooth radio that support low-energy peripheral role [*]Minimum Windows Insiders Build 18338 and above [*]Android phone must be on, within Bluetooth range of the PC and connected to the same network as the PC Known issues Touch gestures (e.g. swipe, flick or pinch) won’t work Touch will behave as mouse, so trying to drag to scroll in some apps may behave differently and select text instead of scrolling Some games and apps do not support mouse interactions and won’t recognize touch interactions from the PC either Always on display will not be shown on the phone screen displayed on the PC Blue light preferences will not be applied on the phone screen displayed on the PC Other audio besides screen reader feedback will play out of the phone speakers, not the PC These features will gradually roll out to Insiders on 19H1 builds or higher, so it may take a few days to be available. We’d love to hear your feedback. You can report issues under Your Phone > Settings > Send feedback General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We’re in the process of converging settings sync engines to reduce complexity and improve reliability of sync. As of today, the older settings sync engine will be turned off for 20H1 builds and changes made to settings that have not yet been migrated to the new settings sync engine will stop being sent and received until that work is complete. Some settings may not be migrated. The full list of settings that have been supported for sync are available here, but the list is subject to change during 20H1. Synced settings that are impacted by this change include settings pertaining to taskbar orientation, wallpaper, theming, and others. If there’s a setting you’d like to particularly be prioritized as we work on this, please let us know. Please note, you may notice a one-time receival of synced settings changes after you upgrade or reset your PC, but after that it will stop. We’ve updated our indexing behavior to exclude common developer folders, such as .git, .hg, .svn, .Nuget, and more by default. This will improve system performance while compiling and syncing large code bases in the default indexed locations such as user libraries. We fixed an issue where the update might have failed the first time you tried to download it with a 0xc0000409 error code. We fixed an issue where recent updates might have failed with a 0x80070005 error code. We fixed an issue for Home editions where some devices couldn’t see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. We fixed a race condition resulting in some Insiders seeing a large number of explorer.exe crashes in recent builds. This is also believed to be the root cause for some Insiders finding that Control Panel wasn’t launching – please let us know if you continue seeing issues after upgrading to this build. We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders finding that their File Explorer search box was rendering in an unexpectedly small space and crashed when clicked. We fixed an issue where Settings would crash if you tried to add a language on the previous build. In Word, after showing a “flash message” on a braille display, Narrator is now correctly showing just the current heading. We made a small backend change to the updated Windows Ink Workspace to help improve the launch time. We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager unexpectedly showing 0% CPU usage in the Performance tab. We fixed an issue that could result in a black remote desktop window for a few seconds when disconnecting from a remote desktop session. We fixed a issue resulting in Direct3D 12 games crashing in the previous flight. We fixed an issue that could cause certain apps to crash when you input Asian characters. We fixed an issue for the Chinese Pinyin IME where, if you were in the middle of finalizing a phrase and clicked away, the next thing you typed wouldn’t show the characters. We fixed an issue with the Chinese Pinyin IME where the mouse over highlight could get stuck on a particular candidate in the candidate window. We fixed an issue with the Chinese Pinyin IME where the candidate window wouldn’t display when typing in the Microsoft Edge search box (Ctrl+F). We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to use touch to open context menus on websites in Microsoft Edge after using pinch to zoom in and back out. Narrator search mode will now reset scoping to all elements each time it is opened. The data looks good, so we’re now rolling out the fix for taskbar unexpectedly dismissing when invoking Start if set to autohide to all Insiders in Fast. We fixed an issue where the Bluetooth Hands-Free audio driver (bthhfaud.sys) could get stuck when making or breaking a synchronous connection-oriented (SCO) link to the headset. This would cause all audio on the system to stop working until the system was rebooted. Known Issues If you’re seeing failures installing games via the Xbox app, you can retry the install. If it continues failing, you may want to roll back to Build 18922. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders. Join the Bing Insider Program Make math fun. Discover new things about numbers with Bing. Check out different numbers and see what makes them have parity, prime, happy, weird, or triangular characteristics. If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. Join all Microsoft Insider programs Insiders frequently ask us about all the Insider programs that Microsoft offers and how they can join. We’ve pulled all of Microsoft’s Insider programs together into one cohesive and accessible landing page to help you connect to them. See all the Insider programs now. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18932 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today, we are talking about the next steps we are taking at continuing to evolve Windows 10 servicing and quality with the next feature update for Windows 10. This release has been referred to as 19H2 with Insiders. 19H2 will include a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features, and quality enhancements and will be delivered to customers running the May 2019 Update using servicing technology (like the monthly Cumulative Update process). For Insiders, this means a few differences to how they will get 19H2: Insiders will need to be in the Slow ring and on the May 2019 Update to receive 19H2 bits. 19H2 will be delivered to Insiders in the Slow ring via servicing as a Cumulative Update and not full build updates. Some Insiders may not see the new features right away as we perform controlled feature rollouts (CFRs) to gain better feedback on overall build quality. Specific to CFRs, we may ship features in these updates turned off by default and turn them on independently of bits getting downloaded to Insiders’ PCs. Even though we will be delivering 19H2 to Insiders in the Slow ring through servicing, we plan to continue to publish blog posts for each of these flights and include information on anything new and notable and any known issues that might be included. For more information on what 19H2 means for Windows 10 servicing and quality, we recommend you read John Cable’s blog post here. We are also releasing 19H2 Build 18362.10000 to Insiders in the Slow ring today. This update contains two behind-the-scenes changes designed for OEMs and does not contain anything visible to Insiders. We’re using this update to test our process and servicing pipeline for delivering these updates to customers. 19H2 updates to Insiders will also be cumulative with the latest May 2019 Updates. For example, today’s release also includes the same improvements and fixes contained in this Cumulative Update released for the May 2019 Update here. Going forward, these updates will continue to contain the same improvements and fixes released for the May 2019 Update in addition to new 19H2 changes. As always, Insiders are encouraged to report any issues they experience with these updates through Feedback Hub. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10000 (19H2) appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Today, as part of our commitment to transparency, we are providing an overview of how we plan to further optimize the delivery of our next feature update. This optimization is specific to devices running the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. For devices running earlier versions of Windows 10, the process remains unchanged. In April, we announced enhancements to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update experience with an increased focus on user control, quality and transparency. These were a collection of improvements based on requests from customers like you to make the Windows update experience better with less disruption. With the next Windows 10 feature update, we’re taking this further. Next feature release of Windows 10 The next feature update for Windows 10 (known in the Windows Insider Program as 19H2) will be a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features and quality enhancements. To deliver these updates in a less disruptive fashion, we will deliver this feature update in a new way, using servicing technology (like the monthly update process) for customers running the May 2019 Update who choose to update to the new release. In other words, anyone running the May 2019 Update and updating to the new release will have a far faster update experience because the update will install like a monthly update. For consumer or commercial users coming from versions of Windows 10 earlier than the May 2019 Update (version 1903), the process of updating to the new release will be the same as it has been and work in a similar manner to previous Windows 10 feature updates, using the same tools and processes. As this release is a September-targeted release of Windows, commercial customers using Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions of version 19H2 will continue to enjoy 30 months of servicing; for more specific information see this blog post. Next steps As with all our feature updates, we utilize a multifaceted quality strategy that includes automated and manual testing and leverages the Windows Insider Program to obtain user feedback and data on quality. The next update to Windows 10 will be no different. We will begin releasing 19H2 builds to Windows Insiders in the Slow ring starting today, with new features being offered in future Insider builds as they are ready. Note: some Insiders may not see the new features right away as we are using a controlled feature rollout (CFR)1 to gain better feedback on overall build quality. Broad availability of the next update to Windows 10 will begin later this calendar year. We will share further details on Insider Preview builds as we release each new build for both 19H2 (Slow ring) and 20H1 (Fast ring). Windows Insiders who have opted into the Fast ring have been providing feedback on 20H1 builds from our development branch since February 14. We will provide more information on new features as we get closer to the launch of the next update to Windows 10. We are continuing to evolve how we deliver a great Windows 10 update experience to our customers and ecosystem and look forward to hearing your feedback. Note: 1 Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR): A method to progressively rollout new features by gradually increasing the audience in a controlled manner. The post Evolving Windows 10 servicing and quality: the next steps appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the summer batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. Thanks to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, you’ll see improvements to the Your Phone  app that debuted with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. This is the app that gives you instant access to your recent Android phone’s photos and texts on your PC – no need to dig for your phone to text or email yourself photos. You can find out more about its original features in our post from earlier this year. There’s more you can do with your messages with the most recent update. You can now attach emojis, GIFs or images directly to your texts, as well as in-line reply to incoming messages. Check it out in action: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/1a68f3b32232d74b114b2feb6e70ea00.gif You’re also able to send and receive deep link URLs in your messages and see unread messages and threads. In addition to conveniently dragging and dropping photos directly to an email, presentation or desktop, you’re now able to save images directly to your PC by right-clicking on the image. Find out more about Your Phone. If you like this kind of information, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: Your Phone app gives you more to do with messages and photos appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the summer batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. Thanks to the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, you can brighten up your settings, experiences and desktop with the new Windows light theme. Check it out: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/50f3662a60b92e650742ecce7af3ed26-1024x498.jpg To try out the new light theme, go to Settings > Personalization > Colors, and select Light in the “Choose your color” dropdown. And don’t worry, if you’re a fan of the dark mode, that’s still an option too! Check out our tip for how to enable dark theme for File Explorer. If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: New Windows light theme appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18922 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you wish to remain on 19H1, please change your ring settings via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program *before* taking this flight. See this blog post for details. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing the features in this build on your device? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. What’s new in 18922 Language Settings Improvements The Global Language Experience team has improvements in Language Settings to make it easier for you to see the current state of your language settings at a glance. The new overview section lets you quickly know which languages are selected as default for their Windows display, Apps & websites, Regional format, Keyboard, and Speech. If everything looks as expected you can quickly move on, you can click one of the tiles which will take you to where you need to be to change that selection. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/7b8d884f6ff2fbc142e560933a840664.png We also found through usability studies and feedback that some users didn’t understand what the different language features empowered them to do or why they might be greyed out. In response to this, we’ve reorganized the language features installation page a bit and added tool tips with descriptions. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/1bfdc85ccd03dad10eee834626bfc447.png Feedback Hub updates Based on your feedback, we’re updating the Feedback Hub with a new feature called Find Similar Feedback! When you go to log a new piece of feedback, you’ll now see a section that looks to see if there’s any existing feedback that sounds similar to yours. You can now choose to automatically link your feedback to that existing feedback (rather than creating a new piece of feedback). This is currently in the process of rolling out to Insiders with version 1.1904.1584.0 – we look forward to you trying it out! https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/c67a6e209342e034d1a283279b0f4c52.png We’ve also updated the Thank You page a little bit, so that now there’s a direct button to share your feedback if that’s what you wanna do (rather than having to go find your feedback afterwards in the My Feedback section). Thank you for all the feedback you’ve been sharing with us – we hope you like these updates! This is currently in the process of rolling out to Insiders as an app update in the Microsoft Store (version 1.1904.1584.0) – we look forward to you trying it out. General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders getting Windows Update error 0x80010105 when updating to recent builds. We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders getting Windows Update error 0xc0000005 when updating to recent builds. We fixed an issue where the Action Center background was unexpectedly opaque in the quick action section. We fixed an issue where if you used the spacebar to switch to a different Focus assist state in Settings, keyboard focus would unexpectedly jump to the Have a Question? Section. We fixed an issue with the Bopomofo IME where the character width would suddenly change to Full width from Half width. We’ve added a tip to the Bopomofo IME settings that Ctrl + Space can be used for toggling conversation mode. We fixed an issue where, when using the Japanese IME with Excel, if you’d turned off Japanese input-mode by clicking the input-mode indicator, the input-mode would revert back to “Hiragana” every time focus moved to another cell. Based on feedback, we’ve updated the Chinese Pinyin IME settings to now refer to Default mode, rather than Input mode. We fixed an issue for some of the Insiders with the updated File Explorer search experience, resulting in suggested results in the search dropdown not responding when clicked. Thanks for reporting this! We’ve made a few small design tweaks to the updated Windows Ink Workspace, including changing the overflow menu button to new use an ellipsis icon. Note – this feature update is still in the process of rolling out. We’re now starting to roll out the updated Settings header again after addressing an issue with the OneDrive entry – appreciate your patience! Known Issues This update might fail the first time you try to download it with a 0xc0000409 error code. For Home editions, some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders. We’re investigating an issue where some users are reporting that File Explorer search is rendering in an unexpectedly small area and clicking it results in a crash. Known issues for Developers If you install builds from the Fast ring and switch to either the Slow ring or the Release Preview ring, optional content such as enabling developer mode will fail. You will have to remain in the Fast ring to add/install/enable optional content. This is because optional content will only install on builds approved for specific rings. Join the Bing Insider Program Who will be the next world champion? Keep up with the latest World Cup games with Bing. Check out matches, stats, and news about the FIFA Women’s World Cup and take a quiz to test your knowledge. If Cricket is more your sport, be sure to keep up with your favorite ICC Cricket World Cup teams and watch match highlights. If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18922 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

One of the many remarkable things about artificial intelligence is that while we tend to think of it as something that will have a big effect in the not-too-distant future, it is already transforming people’s lives in profound and powerful ways today. In factories and warehouses, AI is improving workplace safety by scanning thousands of videos to detect potential risks. In the U.S., researchers are exploring how AI can help public health organizations around the world prevent the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola, Chikungunya, and Zika by detecting the presence of pathogens in the environment and stopping transmission to humans before outbreaks can begin. I believe this is the true promise and challenge of AI – using these new technologies to create a healthier and safer world for everyone. Now that AI has given computers the ability to recognize words and images, discover patterns in complex systems and reason and learn much like people do, it is enabling our devices to behave more naturally and more responsively. This is transforming how we understand the world and augmenting our uniquely human talents and abilities in ways that will enable us to begin to find answers to some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. This is particularly true when it comes to human health. Today, it is possible to imagine a world where we have discovered new approaches that enable us to address some of our most pressing challenges in healthcare, including heart disease, chronic illnesses, and cancer. The good news is that innovators around the globe are already working on these issues. From detection to preventive care and personalized medicine, the opportunities to us AI to improve outcomes and reduce costs appear to be nearly limitless. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2019/06/MS-News-Premonition-Jackson-Ethan-137-1024x683-1024x683.jpg Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft researcher who is leading Project Premonition. (Photo credit: Brian Smale) In India, for example, Microsoft is proud to work with Apollo Hospitals, one of nation’s largest private healthcare companies, to use AI to improve detection of cardiac illnesses that cause more than 3 million heart attacks in that country every year. Until now, it’s been difficult for doctors to identify patients who are at risk for coronary disease because most prediction models are based on studies conducted in Europe and North America and don’t apply well to Indian populations. For example, high LDL cholesterol, which is a significant cause of heart attacks in western countries, is less common in India. Our approach is to combine the rich data and deep expertise that Apollo offers with Microsoft’s powerful cloud and AI capabilities to develop a scoring system to identify patients in India who are at high risk for suffering a heart attack. To do this, a team of Apollo clinicians and data scientist started by reviewing more than 400,000 patient records from its hospitals around the country and found that nearly 60,000 patients had suffered a cardiac event after a health checkup. The challenge was to uncover the risk factors in the data that existing models had overlooked. To do this, they uploaded all the data they had collected to the cloud using Microsoft Azure and then worked with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning services to search for hidden correlations. The team started with 100 potential risk factors and 200 lab data points. Using the massive computing power of the cloud, they trained machine learning algorithms to find the statistical significance of each factor in the occurrence of future heart attacks. This enabled them to create a model that identified 21 risk factors in Indian populations. Dr. K. Shiv Kumar, Apollo Hospitals’ chief of Chief of Cardiology, said the resulting model is twice as accurate at predicting the probability of future coronary disease as previous models. Not only is this transforming how physician’s conduct preventive health checkups, but they are now developing an AI-powered app that would allow anyone to find their heart risk score without visiting a doctor for a detailed health checkup. In China, Ray Zhang, CEO of a startup company called Airdoc, recruited a team of engineers to develop an AI-based diagnostic tool that can instantly detect signs of chronic illnesses including diabetes, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, age-related macular degeneration, and more – simply by taking a high-resolution image of the back of the eye. The device takes advantage of the fact that examining the human retina is an effective way to assess the health not just of the eye, but to look for evidence of other diseases. To create it, the Airdoc team used thousands of retinal scans to create an algorithm using Microsoft Azure’s machine learning capabilities that is trained to look for tiny abnormalities such as specks, spots, and deformed blood vessels that can be warning signs for a wide range of health issues. The Airdoc device is similar to the scanner optometrists use for routine eye exams. To use it, a patient sit on a stool, place their chin on a padded brace, and look into an eyepiece. The algorithm then automatically adjusts the angle until a green cross comes into focus and captures a high-resolution, medical-grade image that is instantly uploaded to the cloud, where it takes less than a second to conduct a detailed analysis that rates susceptibility to a long list diseases as either low, medium, or high. The results are then sent to the patient’s smartphone, with a recommendation to seek professional medical help if there are signs of potential problems. Currently, the Airdoc device can recognize signs of more than 30 diseases. Eventually, it will be able to detect 200. The plan is to make it available in more than 1,000 hundreds optical retail stores across China over the next few years. The Airdoc device significantly reduces the amount of time physicians will need to spend reviewing and assessing scans, so they can focus more on identifying and treating patients with serious health issues. The potential to provide a simple and inexpensive way to detect not just eye problems but a wide range of diseases has the potential to transform when and how people begin treatment for chronic illnesses in China and around the world. We’re also working with the Princess Margaret Cancer Center at University Health Centre in Toronto to redefine cancer treatment through a remarkable new approach called “single cell sequencing” that enables doctors to analyze the genetic makeup of every single cell in a cancerous tumor and then select a combination of drugs that is optimized to kill the greatest number of cancer cells. Typically today, doctors try one drug at a time to find the most effective combination for each individual patient. By utilizing the power of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and the cloud, single cell sequencing is enabling doctors to predict how every cell will respond to each of the thousands of compounds that are available for cancer treatment and then create a truly personalized therapy based on the specific genetic characteristics of each cancerous tumor. Azure also provides a common platform for sharing medical data and analytic tools with researchers and physicians across the country. Scientists at Princess Margaret Cancer Center now envision a time in the not-to-distant future when this kind of detailed genomic analysis will be available for every patient in Canada. These examples are just the beginning when it comes to the outpouring of AI research and innovation Microsoft and its partners are involved in right now – and not just in healthcare. In future posts, I look forward to sharing how Microsoft is also helping innovators and entrepreneurs use the power of AI to transform the industries of agriculture and education. The post Harnessing the power of AI to transform healthcare appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are pleased to release a new Insider preview build of the Windows Server VNext Semi-Annual Channel editions and Windows Admin Center Preview 1906. Available Content Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview The Server Core Edition is available in the 18 supported Server languages in ISO format and in English only in VHDX format. Windows Server Core App Compatibility FoD Preview Windows Server Language Packs Windows Admin Center 1906 Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, click here. The following keys allow for unlimited activations of Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel Previews Server Standard: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV Server Datacenter: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W This Windows Server Preview will expire July 31st, 2020. What’s New in Windows Admin Center Preview 1906 Thanks for staying up-to-date on the Windows Admin Center journey! As our first preview release following the last generally available release in April, Windows Admin Center preview 1906 includes several new preview features: Updates tool: you can now select individual Windows updates to install, a top user request. Windows Admin Center connectivity settings: We’ve heard from users that are in completely disconnected environments that they would prefer to have a setting in Windows Admin Center where they can specify they are offline, so there will be no notifications about Azure hybrid functionality, extensions updates, or other actions that require public internet access. To give this a try, enter msft.sme.shell.connectivity as an experiment key in Settings-> Development -> Advanced, then visit the new Connectivity settings item. You can select Gateway to restrict online access, or Azure and Gateway if you want to access Azure features only, but nothing else on the public internet. In a future release, this menu item will also provide you with a complete list of URLs so that you can configure your firewall to block all traffic by default and explicitly allow only specific traffic to known services. Virtual machines tool: Import/Export VM – We’ve added Import/Export buttons to the Virtual Machines tool for importing VMs from and exporting VMs to a local volume or remote file share. When importing VMs, you have the option to create a new VM ID, and copy the VM files or use them in-place. [Known issue] When importing a VM and creating a copy of the VM files, if you choose a local volume or cluster shared volume as the destination, it will be saved to the volume’s root folder instead of under the “Hyper-V” folder. This will be fixed in the next release. For now, you can use the Browse button to manually navigate to the actual folder you want to import the VM to. VM tagging – Similar to the UI for tagging connections in Windows Admin Center, you can now tag VMs on a Hyper-V server! In the Virtual machines tool’s Inventory tab, an “Edit tags” button has been added to manage tags. These tags are saved on the Hyper-V host server and can be accessed by other admins. [Known issue] VM tagging is not supported in the Failover Cluster or Hyper-Converged Cluster UI yet. Tags will not show up in the clustered VM view and managing tags from this view may unintentionally overwrite or delete existing tags. Performance improvements – Significant performance improvements have been made to reduce page load time in the Virtual machines tool. Improvements to Azure integration functionality: The Azure Hybrid services tool now loads content from a feed, so that new services can be added at any time without an update of the entire tool. From the Account menu in setting, you can now switch between multiple Azure accounts. When adding a server or Windows PC to your connection list, you have a new option to log in to Azure and browse your Azure resources for the specific server or PC. [Known issue] At this time, Windows Admin Center only enumerates your Azure resources, but cannot guarantee connectivity. Windows Admin Center ecosystem developers: you’ll find a new menu item: Performance Profile, in the Windows Admin Center settings under the Development heading. This new tool will record your browsing session, tracking the times of each request and page load, so that you can identify opportunities to improve performance. How to Download Registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. See the Additional Downloads dropdown for Windows Admin Center and other supplemental apps and products. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see GETTING STARTED WITH SERVER on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. For Windows Server, use your registered Windows 10 Insider device and use the Feedback Hub application. In the app, choose the Windows Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. In the title of the Feedback, please indicate the build number you are providing feedback as shown below: [server #####] Title of my feedback See Share Feedback on Windows Server via Feedback Hub for specifics. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. For Windows Admin Center, Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities. Terms of Use This is pre-release software – it is provided for use “as-is” and is not supported in production environments. Users are responsible for installing any updates made available from Windows Update. All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. Known issues -Windows Admin Center Preview 1906 Network – If you have configured an Azure Network Adapter, the value under Microsoft Azure Virtual Network Gateway Address will be formatted as a hyperlink but leads to an invalid address. [20420185] Azure Update Management onboarding – If you have already installed the MMA agent, or install the agent using the new integration for Azure Monitor, you will not be able to onboard the server to Azure Update Management through the UI in Windows Admin Center. If Azure Update Management is already configured (whether through Admin Center or another way), you can still onboard the server to the Azure Monitor Virtual Machines Insights solution using the Windows Admin Center UI. Chrome users may see 403 Forbidden response from WAC after upgrading. The workaround is to close *all* open chrome tabs (make sure there are no chrome.exe processes running). After restarting chrome, everything will function normally. We have an error message that makes this clear, but chrome users with multiple windows admin center tabs open during upgrade will not see the message. Windows Server Bug Fixes Fixed an issue where a local user’s last logon time output from “net user username” may not be recorded even when the user has accessed the server’s network share. Fixed an issue when attempting to update Server Standard to Server Datacenter, results in error “Error: 1168. An error occurred while applying target edition component setting. The upgrade cannot proceed.” Fixed an issue when domain trust was broken when the recycle bin configured on the domains carrying the trust. Fixed an issue where an invalid file was being created in %Systemroot%\System32\LogFiles\Sum by User Access Logging. Windows Server Known Issues Using ntdsutil.exe to move of the Active Directory database files may fail with error: “Move file failed with source <original_full_db_path> and Destination <new_full_db_path> with error 5 (Access is denied.)” Auto-logon configured by login scripts may fail to work properly Status of online/offline files icon and status bar may not display an accurate status. OfflineFiles event manager logs will show the actual state of the files. PowerShell may report an incorrect NdisPhysicalMedium result on IPoIB adapter Applies to App Compat FOD MMC.exe only: Multiple Active Directory Users and Computers snap-ins added to the same MMC.exe instance could show inconsistent or no data on part of the snap-ins after adding extra columns to the UI view. Wokaround: for UI user management, use a separate MMC for each ADUC (DSA.MSC) snap-in. Scheduled startup tasks may fail to run. An event is logged, ID 101 with the error code ERROR_LOGON_FAILURE when the failure occurs. DCPromo fails if the interface metric of the physical NIC is larger than Loopback Interface Renaming a domain controller may update incorrect attributes in Active Directory (msDS-AdditionalDnsHostName, msDS-AdditionalSamAccountName and servicePrincipalName attributes) leaving orphaned data behind (ValidateSPNsAndDNSHostNameActual) Domain Controller rename updates incorrect attributes in AD leaving orphaned data behind (ValidateSPNsAndDNSHostNameActual). This can be reproduced by adding a new FQDN, setting it as primary, restarting the domain controller, then removing the current FQDN. Checking the msDS-AdditionalDnsHostName, msDS-AdditionalSamAccountName and servicePrincipalName attributes will incorrect values. Self-service users cannot install Feature on Demand (FOD) packages and Language Packs for Windows Server Update Service (WSUS), System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and Autopilot scenarios. After disabling and re-enabling SR-IOV capability on a NIC on Linux VM, Windows may report “Error applying Network Adapter changes.” Details will show “The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service encountered an unexpected error: Call was canceled by the message filter. (0x80010002).” A side effect of this failure is that the VM will remain in a stopping state when shutting down the VM, and cannot be restarted without a power reset When deploying a controller VM, after the last reboot in the deployment process the controller VM is not visible. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows Server vNext Preview Build 18917 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/01130a2efffac7f1e98f4f9b61f894c2-1024x588.jpg Four new “Eyes First” games where eye motions control the play are now available on Microsoft Store for Windows 10 PCs: “Tile Slide,” “Match Two,” “Double Up” and “Maze.” Windows 10 eye-tracking APIs power these games, which can be used with or without Windows 10 Eye Control*, a key accessibility feature for people with speech and mobility disabilities. The “Eyes First” games are reinventions of popular games and a fun way to get familiar with eye control and learn the skills to apply to other eye gaze-enabled assistive technologies. Challenge yourself to complete the “Tile Slide” puzzle in the fewest number of moves; exercise your memory playing “Match Two”; sharpen your math and strategic thinking playing “Double Up”; and see how fast you can get your lost puppy home, without getting lost yourself, in the “Maze.” Compete with friends and family for high score honors! And the twist? You play by using your eyes! Find out more on the Accessibility Blog. *To play Eyes First games or to use Windows Eye Control, you need a compatible eye tracker device and Windows PC with Windows 10 April 2018 Update (or newer). See more information in Windows support. These games can also be played in the classic ways via mouse or touch. The post Control the action with your eyes in 4 new ‘Eyes First’ games on Windows 10 PCs appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the summer batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. If you feel like your life is too cluttered, some of you might find respite in the simplified Start layout that comes with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. New Windows 10 users – those who have new devices, new user accounts and clean installs – will see the new Start layout by default when they start up. Existing Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Windows 10 May 2019 update can choose to quickly uninstall apps or unpin groups of tiles, as they’ll see their original Start menu layouts carried over. The simplified layout contains a sleek one-column design and fewer tiles. Check it out in action: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/f71bae6574b65306fab9f5b6a782b57d.gif If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: Start, simplified appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

At Microsoft, we’re on a journey to empower every person on the planet, including people with disabilities, to achieve more. A recent blog post, entitled “Inspired by Insiders: Accessibility,” shared how we are creating experiences that support our users’ needs. We are collecting, analyzing and acting on feedback from users; we are increasingly customer driven, some might even say we’re becoming customer obsessed. If you haven’t read the blog, please do. I highly recommend it. In this blog post, I am happy to share how our latest update, the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, delivers on our mission by continuing to act on user feedback, in particular feedback from people with low vision or who are blind. We’re continuing to make Windows 10 easier to see and easier to use without a display with Narrator. Making Windows easier to see Bigger, brighter mouse pointers In the previous release, we made it easier to make text larger across Windows. Already, more than 900,000 people are using larger text to make Windows 10 easier to see. Many of the same users indicated that while larger text was great, they were having trouble tracking their mouse pointer especially on high resolution displays. You now have more ways to see Windows 10 your way, with the addition of new bigger and brighter mouse pointers. In addition to making the pointer larger, you can choose from a recommended set of bright highlight colors or you can also change the pointer to your favorite color by going to Settings > Ease of Access > Cursor & pointer. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/6ff82ac8cc1c87db849bff26b255f1a8-1024x705.jpg Magnifier improvements For some users with low vision, the combination of setting larger text and mouse pointers makes Windows easier to use. Others prefer using Magnifier. We made several improvements to Magnifier in this release, including new defaults for Magnifier settings and smoother interactions when you opt in to Keep the mouse pointer… Centered on the screen. Now, Magnifier will follow along with what you type and as you navigate Windows with your keyboard, e.g. navigating up and down a list with arrow keys, by default. And, we’ve reduced jitter when the mouse is centered on the screen, which is an option many people use to make their mouse pointer easier to find by keeping it in a predictable location. Making Windows easier to use without a display, with Narrator Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made another round of improvements to Narrator, which is our built-in screen reader for people or who are blind. We’ve made Narrator easier to learn, more natural and responsive, and easier to use, including with popular applications like the Chrome web browser. Narrator is easier to learn In the previous release, we introduced Narrator Quick Start, which is a built-in tutorial that helps users learn to accomplish common goals like browsing the web or reading and writing email. Many users indicated that while the Narrator Quick Start was great, they were having trouble finding all the Narrator resources. So we made easier to do just that. We consolidated Narrator Settings, which were located in multiple places to make it easier to personalize Narrator and we created the new Narrator Home to make it easier to access the Narrator Quick Start, User Guide and Settings; and to provide feedback to improve the Narrator experience directly to our team. We even made it possible to minimize the Narrator Home page to the Windows System Tray to remove Narrator from the Alt + Tab sequence so you don’t have to hear about Narrator every time you want to switch applications. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/661e9314c39083311c94488fb988abc3-1024x689.jpg Narrator is more natural and responsive We improved the way Narrator handles common phrases. For example, phrases like “$2.7 billion dollars” are now read “two point seven billion dollars” instead of “two point seven dollars billion.” And, we reduced the number of times Narrator pauses mid-sentence, which made it difficult to proofread a document in Word or read an article on the web. We made Narrator more succinct, e.g. with improved URL reading, and we gave users more options to control what Narrator speaks. You can now hear as much or as little detail as you want about application controls and text. For example, if you are reading a digital book or a long paper and all you are interested in is the text content, you can set your Verbosity level to 1 and you will not be bothered by other information that may be present on the page. On the other hand, if you are actively authoring a paper and need to know all of the text formatting and control information, dial up your Verbosity to 5 and you won’t miss anything. We made it easier to download and install additional voices. Now you can download and install voices without having to install a complete language pack. For example, although I speak and type U.S. English, I often prefer U.K. English text to speech voices. Now I can install these voices without having to install the full U.K. English language pack. Go to Settings > Time & Language > Language and choose Add a preferred language to add specific language features. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/da5c075eba73997fd0fcf785535c0cce-1024x934.jpg And finally, we improved Narrator responsiveness with applications like Word and Outlook. Narrator is easier to use, including with popular applications like Chrome We’ve added support for Chrome, so Narrator users can have a choice of browsers. We also added new ways to navigate that users need and expect. You can now move by sentence when navigating text, e.g. in an eBook, document or web page. And, you can now use Narrator reading commands to seamlessly read the contents of the any application, from top to bottom or from bottom to top. For example, you can move by character, word, line, sentence or paragraph from the top of the Windows Settings application to the bottom without interruption. Finally, we continue to make it easier to consume content with Scan Mode. We made it easier to browse the web and read mail messages by focusing Scan Mode commands in the browsing content area or canvas, and message content area. You no longer have to worry about unintentionally navigating into the browser or mail application frame. And, we improved the way Scan Mode works with some controls. For example, you can now use your left and right arrow keys to adjust a slider control while in Scan Mode and you will be able to correctly identify editable combo edit boxes as Narrator will announce these as Combo Edit controls. Some of the new Narrator shortcuts introduced in this release include: Windows logo key + Ctrl + N: Quickly Access Narrator’s Settings Narrator + 0: Reads the advanced details of the control being focused on, e.g. for a link this will read the entire URL Narrator + V: Increase verbosity levels Shift + Narrator + V: Decrease verbosity levels Narrator + 5 twice quickly: Read current item spelled out Please keep the feedback coming Thank you to the many people who have provided feedback — both positive and constructive — to help make Windows accessibility delightful. If you’re interested in providing help or suggestions, we welcome your feedback via the Windows Insider Program. The features referenced in this blog were shared with and shaped by Insiders. Whether you’re using and Insider build, or a generally available version of Windows, Windows 10 makes it easy to share your thoughts and suggestions — just press Windows logo key + F to launch the Feedback hub and share what’s top of mind. Finally, if you are a customer with a disability (of any kind) and need technical assistance, the Disability Answer Desk is there to assist via phone and chat, and in the U.S., we also have an ASL option for our customers with hearing loss (+1 503-427-1234). Please contact us, we are happy to help. The post What’s new in Windows 10 accessibility appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18917 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you wish to remain on 19H1, please change your ring settings via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program *before* taking this flight. See this blog post for details. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head on over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing the features in this build on your device? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. What’s new in 18917 New download throttling options for Delivery Optimization We’ve heard from our users with very low connection speeds that setting download throttling as a percentage of available bandwidth isn’t providing enough relief in reducing the impact on their network. That’s why we’ve added a new option to throttle the bandwidth used by Delivery Optimization as an absolute value. You can set this separately for Foreground downloads (downloads that you initiate from Windows Store for example) or background downloads. This option already exists for IT Pros who use Group Policies or MDM policies to configure Delivery Optimization. In this build, we’ve made it easier to set via the settings page. You can access this option via Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/95fcd9500d8bba29db2b6b2b6597b4db.jpg Narrator improvements Data Table Reading Improvements: We’ve optimized the information you hear with Narrator when navigating a table using table navigation commands. Narrator now reads the header data first, followed by the cell data, followed by the row/column position for that cell. Additionally, Narrator only reads the headers when the headers have changed, so you can focus on the content of the cell. Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 WSL 2 is a new version of the architecture that powers the Windows Subsystem for Linux to run ELF64 Linux binaries on Windows. This new architecture, which uses a real Linux kernel, changes how these Linux binaries interact with Windows and your computer’s hardware, but still provides the same user experience as in WSL 1 (the current widely available version). WSL 2 delivers a much faster file system performance and full system call compatibility, which lets you run more applications like Docker! Read more about the release of WSL 2. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/f646f6133daa63bf34b72085084f2a7f.gif Windows Ink Workspace Updates As we mentioned last week, you may notice that Windows Ink Workspace has changed on your PC. That’s because we’re updating the Windows Ink Workspace experience and starting to roll it out to some Insiders. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/06/50f4a778f5f443cf61e30128c4e331cf.jpg As part of this, Windows Ink Workspace now takes up less screen real estate, and we’re converging our whiteboarding experiences with a new direct link to our Microsoft Whiteboard app. Microsoft Whiteboard is a freeform digital canvas where ideas, content, and people can come together. It includes an infinite canvas, optional backgrounds (including graph paper and solid dark grey) to choose from, rainbow ink support, multiple pages, and generally addresses much of the feedback you shared with us about Sketchpad. If you used Sketchpad, don’t worry – we saved the sketch you were working on in your Pictures folder. We heard your feedback, and we’ve streamlined the Windows Ink Workspace for you. Stay tuned as we continue to evolve! Once the new experience arrives on your PC, please take a moment to try it out and share feedback via Feedback Hub under Desktop Environment > Windows Ink Workspace. If the Windows Ink Workspace icon isn’t visible in your taskbar, you can show it by right-clicking the taskbar and selecting “Show Windows Workspace Icon.” General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue where some users experienced a 0x8007000E error code while downloading the build due to high RAM consumption. We fixed an issue where users couldn’t use the desktop Features on Demand “add a feature” option. We fixed an issue where dragging the emoji and dictation panels was unexpectedly laggy. We’re in the process of rolling out a change in this build to address an issue where if the taskbar was set to autohide, launching the Start menu would first hide the taskbar before bringing up the Start menu. We fixed an issue resulting in the Start menu and taskbar going 100% transparent on secondary monitors or after projection. We’ve updated the new File Explorer search experience to now be dark when used in dark theme. Note – this experience is still in the process of rolling out. Thanks everyone who’s tried it so far and shared feedback, we’ll let you know when the rollout expands. We fixed an issue where Windows Security would crash if launched from Settings when using an Arabic display language. We fixed an issue where the audio service might hang on shutdown if spatial audio was turned on. Known Issues This update might fail the first time you try to download it with a 0xc0000409 error code. For Home editions, some devices might not see the “update installed” on the update history page. For Home editions, some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. We are aware of an issue with the Bopomofo IME where the character width is suddenly changed to Full width from Half width and are investigating. We’re investigating an issue where some users are reporting that File Explorer search is rendering in an unexpectedly small area and clicking it results in a crash. Known issues for Developers If you install builds from the Fast ring and switch to either the Slow ring or the Release Preview ring, optional content such as enabling developer mode will fail. You will have to remain in the Fast ring to add/install/enable optional content. This is because optional content will only install on builds approved for specific rings. Join the Bing Insider Program This month, celebrate Pride! Explore and discover news about Pride month, the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, and LGBT activists. If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18917 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

In January 2019, we launched our journalism grant partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Our first recipients are already midway through their data journalism training and now I’m thrilled to introduce the recipients of the second phase of our program. Kelechukwu Iruoma and Ruth Olorounbi comprise a team investigating the toxic effects of oil spillage in Ogoniland, Nigeria, which has led to poisoned farmlands and compromised reproductive health. An estimated 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled since 1958: This makes an annual average 240,000 barrels of crude in the Niger delta, destroying the local livelihood and the very population’s survival. An award-winning investigative freelance journalist, Iruoma covers environment, education, agriculture and health in Nigeria. He is a reporting fellow of ICFJ and International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), and has been trained by the organizations as Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) and Global Rights Nigeria. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2019/06/Iruoma-headshot1-150x150.jpg His reporting partner Olurounbi is the business editor at Per Second News, a U.S.-based organization. The Wole Soyinka Female Leadership and ICIR fellow has covered development and human right issues, business, and agriculture for more than 10 years. When she’s not writing, the award-winning journalist mentors young girls in her local community. The second project is one man’s cultural retrospective on a country’s re-emergence to a superpower and tourist destination. Philip Cunningham’s story will take him across the globe, about 7,000 miles from his New York base to Beijing. A seasoned broadcast reporter, producer and documentary filmmaker who started as a Chinese history researcher and tour guide in China, he has worked with outlets like PBS, ABC, NBC, BBC, NHK and CCTV and has witnessed key events like the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, the 1999 anti-U.S. demonstrations, and the 2008 Olympics. His goal is to create an immersive travel odyssey of Beijing across time and space that’s at once personal and political, cultural and historical. In addition to plumbing his photo and video archive, a past Nieman Fellow and Fulbright scholar, Cunningham plans to revisit key locations — some of which have changed beyond recognition. Since his first visit in 1983, not only has China changed radically, but so has journalism and the toolkits for a documentarian. A student’s retelling of one of his own stories inspired Cunningham to explore how the latest technologies might enrich the age-old art of storytelling. https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2019/06/5d011c1ccc877-5d011c1ccc87dCunningham-pc-head-shot-1.png-150x150.png Two very different stories, both told and amplified through immersive storytelling. Supporting these three journalists has been part of our larger effort to help newsrooms and journalists deliver impactful stories and empower them through technology to find, create, and share information in unprecedented ways. We operate on the industry and individual level: be it hosting workshops at NICAR in southern California and the upcoming GEN Summit in Athens, working directly with newsrooms like the AP or Recode or assisting individuals like our ICFJ grant recipients, our goal is help journalism in what is our shared values: the pursuit of truth so that people and communities can make the best decisions in their daily lives to guide their future sustainability. We look forward to sharing stories on what the ICFJ grantees are learning and how they are affecting change in these communities. Please visit ICFJ to see and support all the tremendous projects it is undertaking–and while you’re at it, wish the center a happy 35th anniversary. The post Microsoft announces ICFJ immersive storytelling grantee winners appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...