New Windows 10 Insider Preview Fast+Skip Build 18941 (20H1) - July 18 Insider

- the updates are presumably structured to cover most system set-ups..
- there must be something unique in your case..

- I'd get on to the techs at MS directly, if I were you..
- I'm sure they'd like to hear from you..

I seem to be a little late to the party, but duties sometimes get in the way, as they have this past week. Writing tutorials for senior citizens new to computers or Windows 10 isn’t the easiest thing in the world . . . ask me and I’ll tell you.

OK, so a couple days ago Build 18941 was released and this morning is the first time I’ve been made aware of it. A Skype friend told me neither 18936 nor 18941 would install on his machine. I immediately checked my Insider Fast/Skip Ahead partition and saw that 18936 had successfully installed, so what’s up with that?

For the most part, I read the first post on any new Build release, so I settled down to read this one too. There were the standard (paraphrased) warnings about painful bugs, etc., so don’t install Insider Previews on your production machine. As always, there are links for further reading.

As I read, I noted the What’s new section, which had some stuff about the Korean IME which I’m not interested in, since I don’t speak Korean. However, since Microsoft releases updates worldwide, it looks to me like that should be included.

Then there was the changes, improvements and fixes section that had some interesting fixes. I’m sure that anyone whose issue was taken care of by one of these fixes could care less that there’s some Korean and/or Japanese stuff included. Just a thought.

Next was the Known Issues section which I always read; the usual gaming/anti-cheat, Realtek SD card readers, etc. are there. I think Tamper Protection is new; at any rate, I will be sure to turn that on. And of course, the Japanese IME doesn’t affect me because, well, I only speak English.

The one that stood out to me the most was the issue of Builds 18936 and 18941 not installing on a small number of machines. Reading here, I think small is inaccurate. Be that as it may, now I’m ready to see what’s what … but first, Microsoft’s 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.

Of note is that UUPDump as an alternative did bypass the issue for some, and for some it did not.

As stated above, I did indeed install Build 18936, so logically Build 18941 should install, since the two builds seem to be included in the same issue. However, if Build 18936 had not installed, at this point I would forego any attempt at installing Build 18941! Does that mean Build 18941 will or will not install? I will find out shortly.

So, here I go … will it or won’t it install? Only the Shadow knows …

Winuser said:

It's not unheard of to have bugs in any new Insider Build releases but to have two builds back to back that some users can't even get to install is ridiculous.

Sorry, but no, it's not ridiculous. Ridiculous was the 2nd build from last year not being released because it affected tens of millions of installs. With Insider Preview builds, you cannot ever expect 100% reliability - ever. You already know this. Everyone in here that uses an Insider Preview build knows this. If there are 1, 2, or even 5 builds that don't work for a small number of systems, then the program is accomplishing what it set out to achieve - we're one big ẞeta test for future versions of Windows. Not current, future. Not released to the general public, but something you have to actively sign up for, install, and maintain.

If you're not ready to test (and more importantly, if you're not ready for things to break) you really should not be using Insider Preview builds at all.

I'm not trying to be a dick, though I am coming across that way, but it is a matter of fact. No matter how many employees Microsoft has, and how many testbeds they have, things will slip by when you take into account just how many lines of code are incorporated into the OS. But, instead of having things slip by in final versions, now, we Insiders, are the 'second line of defense' to (hopefully) stop major bugs from slipping past. Obviously, even this system is not foolproof - last year's October build proved that.

But complaining about ẞeta builds that don't work - that is not really cool. You know it may not work.

I worked with a user last year (or 2017, forgotten which) for a long time trying to get a particular set of builds working on a system very similar to my own - I was able to install each upgrade flawlessly, and he was not. Same chipset, same generation CPU, similar RAM. He ended up finally upgrading his machine. Meanwhile I had 0 issues for the entire time he was having issues (this went on for 3-4 months, IIRC).

BugMeister said:

- the updates are presumably structured to cover most system set-ups..
- there must be something unique in your case..

- I'd get on to the techs at MS directly, if I were you..
- I'm sure they'd like to hear from you..

This. Instead of complaining, start writing to folks, asking questions, gathering data for bug reports. That's what we're supposed to be doing as Insiders.

Winuser said:

They know about the problem and decided not to fix it before they released a new build. How can one go forward if the darn thing won't even install?

Well, even negative result is some result. Maybe test to see on which computers it would install and where not and even why. This is second or third one that installed without a hitch.

What has Stranger Things have to do with this Insider Preview???

I know they use SurfaceBooks there but...still... (wrong Netflix series) why confuse OS release notes with other promotions? ....or is this quiz thing going to be a built in feature in next major release? If so, I think I might switch completely to something that keeps my focus on the things that gets work done and not stuff for personal or company amusement.