New Windows 10 Insider Preview Fast and Skip Ahead Build 17661 - May 3 Insider

I'm going to use @Kari's method to upgrade my machine via viBoot later this evening.

Already downloaded via UUPDUMP and created .ISO via UUP2ISO.

smactilactus said:

Okay, this is to all, but especially for Wynona, but I have fixed everything. I rolled back my build to 17134.5 in settings, and then went right back to Windows Update and re-downloaded and installed this build. Now everything works great.

Yep, I did almost the same as you. Except I had originally done a clean install, so I just formatted that partition, and reinstalled Build 17661. So far, everything is good.

smactilactus said:

And the best news is I still have sets!!!!! Before I even started downloading this build again, I deleted Avast antivirus, and made sure all malware and antivirus services were deleted off of my computer. Then the download and install went perfectly well.

I had Sets before they withdrew it, so I may have it again. Haven't had time to check.

Curiously, I think the key to our problems is/was Avast Free. Now that it's no longer on this clean install, everything seems to work just fine.

smactilactus said:

Before I did this, I could not download any app. I could not delete any app. I could not even open device manager. Most of my apps were NOT working as well. But after the rollback, and reinstall, everything seems to be working very well.

Exactly! Once Avast Free was gone, things just worked as they should.

smactilactus said:

Btw, my copy, cut and Paste all work perfectly well, whether I use the context menu or keyboard shortcuts.

I was working with Edge because I couldn't install Firefox, and copy/paste would work sometimes, but I couldn't copy the link of a post here in TF and paste it into Skype as info.

Now that I have Firefox installed, all phases of cut/copy/paste seem to be working correctly.

Looks like we managed to get on the same page, even with a few edits done! :)

Got the iso the usual way now - in VM. I'm ready to do a clean boot and reinstall and if its OK I can copy the iso to my Onedrive and share it as a few people seem to be having problems. PM me.
VMware was run on Windows Server 2019 and here is my background. Notice that the expiration date has been moved to December. There is some method in this madness methinks.

smactilactus said:

Oh yeah. Glad you got it all worked out. That EVIL Avast Free!!!!!

But now that I can't use Avast, I'd love to know what the consensus is on this board of which is the better anti-virus/malware suite to use. Do you guys trust Defender (I've never liked it, and thus always shut it down), as I haven't used it in so long I'm not sure if they have improved it enough to be a stand alone. Or do most of you use a third party app, and if so which one? Thanks!

I was told today by a friend who is pretty security savvy to backup with Macrium and then just use Defender on my Insider machine. That if I got something bad, I could do a Restore.

She used to put Avast Free on machines she worked on, but lately, Avast has bitten us all. MBAM Free is good, but you have to manually check for nasties. I'm not too fond of that issue.

Here's a link you can check out for free AVs.

The Best 10 Free Antivirus Software 2018 - Best Free Antivirus

Well adding Hyper-V lead immediately to stopcode HAL Initialization Failed. I will pursue this. In the meantime I'm reverting back to RTM rs4. This is just nonsense. But I am uploading the ISO to my onedrive and you can PM me next week. I'm taking the train to the Big Apple this weekend.