Microsoft Changes Insider Preview Criteria, Fast Ring Builds To Roll Out Quicker

Microsoft pushed out Window 10 Insider Preview Build 14267 with updates to Cortana and Edge. The company also opened the Insider program up to Windows 10 Education Edition.

Microsoft said Cortana now has a way to search for music you are listening to. Microsoft added a button to the upper right corner of Cortana that looks like music notes. When you click on that icon, Cortana will listen for music and search for songs that it detects.

The favorites bar in Microsoft Edge received two small updates. You can now right click on the favorites bar to create new folders, and choose to show “favicons” only, rather than the icon and name. Both of these features will be welcome to anyone who keeps a large number of favorites.

Microsoft also added the ability to clear your browsing history automatically after each session. To set this up, open the settings menu, and under “Clear browser data,” click on “Choose what to clear.” There will be an option to enable “Always clear this after I close the browser.”

With the latest build, Microsoft Edge will also let you dictate where downloaded files are saved. Until now, Edge has always downloaded directly to the Downloads folder, but now you can enable a prompt that asks where to save each download. Microsoft said you can find this option in “Downloads settings.”

Microsoft said that preview build 14267 is the first Insider update available to Windows 10 Education Edition. Schools with valid Windows 10 Education volume licenses can opt in to the Window Insider program to “help shape the future for Windows for education customers.”

Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds are always released with a number of bug fixes, and 14267 is no exception. Microsoft said the following fixes have been applied.

Choosing “Reset This PC” under Settings > Update & Security > Recovery should now work as expected.You should no longer see a WSClient.dll error dialog after logging in.The front-facing camera should be usable again on PCs with Intel RealSense cameras and you should be able to use Windows Hello again.We fixed an issue where incorrect storage capacity was provided for the system volume (the hard drive in which Windows is installed on) under Settings > System > Storage.

Microsoft said there is only one known bug with build 14267, and it will affect Hyper-V clients that have more than one network adapter or vswitch enabled. If the update is applied with multiple adapters enabled, the virtual machine could lose network connectivity.

Microsoft recommended the following workaround:

Remove all the virtual network adapters connected to the vswitch, delete the vswitch and recreate it, then reconnect their virtual NIC to the new vswitch.Admin command prompt, do “netcfg -d” will wipe-out all the vswitch settings so that you can start from scratch.

Microsoft noted that it has made some changes to the release criteria for Insider builds: The fast ring builds will come out more frequently, and as a result, they could have more bugs than usual. The company suggested switching to the Slow ring if you rely on more stable builds.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

  • hst101rox
    I wonder what engine the use to search for music from sound snippets with Cortana? Sounds like Shazam
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    I wonder what engine the use to search for music from sound snippets with Cortana? Sounds like Shazam

    Bing? They've had this feature on stock WP devices for ages, they're just bringing it to Win10 now. It will be handy on mobile Win10 devices like tablets.
    Reply
  • hst101rox
    17532805 said:
    I wonder what engine the use to search for music from sound snippets with Cortana? Sounds like Shazam

    Bing? They've had this feature on stock WP devices for ages, they're just bringing it to Win10 now. It will be handy on mobile Win10 devices like tablets.

    Oh cool. Is it comparable to Shazam?
    Reply
  • thor220
    Microsoft, still trying to be Apple. It would be great if it could listen to some of my lectures and find relevant material but Microsoft is too busy trying to be Apple.
    Reply
  • heffeque
    All this BS is added to W10... hope they aren't dumb enough to add so much fail into Win2016 (Cortana, spyware, unwanted and forced updates, etc.)
    If they actually don't... I might even consider updating from 8.1 to 2016, but definitely not to Win10 (unless they back off with all the fail, which I highly doubt).
    Reply