Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14251 Insider

Hi folks.

A lot of the problems seem to be when you have a whole slew of 3rd party apps such as Pale Moon etc.
Remember these are TEST insider builds so a lot of test code Ms uses in these builds might not play too well with a load of 3rd party applications - particularly if those applications don't stick rigorously to Windows API's - and even in this case Windows might change a couple of these while developing code.

The Insider builds are basically not meant to be used as a 100% stress test production environment so do expect some features to cause problems.

I agree though base functionality (like in the previous build with progress bar not working) should ALWAYS work properly.

Still if you don't like the risk don't sign up for the program. I'm quite happy to test this stuff -- if you take backups regularly you can always revert -- and unless you specifically need to test physical hardware why not run these builds on Virtual Machines.

Cheers
jimbo

blutos cousin said:

If you don't have any compelling reasons for WMP VLC and KODI ( XMB ) are probably better alternatives and for music. & VLC plays anything throw at it unless it's from another planet or a BD or some weird 4K !

The embedded Windows 10 Groove Music run time tile app beats WMC and you can import, music library's ,files and tracks in there then select playback from album ,artist, song ,genre etc ,.

Groove Music has the usual meta data and cover art web scrapers if you haven't tagged them already and VLC is the S* for video and Kodi is decent and they are free :)

BTW VLC plays HEVC X-265 codecs now quite happily - works fine for 4K monitors. Whether you can find genuinely 4K multi-media is a moot point -- most of the commercial stuff is upscaled HD anyway - at least for the moment.

PLEX and Chromecast handle HEVC X-265 too so it's up to your hardware whether it plays or not. VLC IMO is probably the best out there currently -- always works and is available on Linux too - No probs on a CENTOS Linux machine either - however that's for another Forum.

For your own stored music and Internet radio why not use (Free) Logitech media server. Handles FLAC streams great too. Locally play on any computer with squeezeplayer which will connect to the server. Mobile phone app will also connect.

My trouble with commercial music services is that the music is usually compressed - even at 320kbs it doesn't compare to lossless FLAC played into a decent sound system.

Cheers
jimbo

BunnyJ said:

I do and I know that I'm running a risk but I'm all set to re-install everything and get up and going in a few hours at most. It might take about 2 hours to install 10240 and upgrade to the latest build then about 2 more hours to reinstall the rest of my main tools. Not really that hard,

I do the same on my machine--not on the wife's though--she's not into OS Russian roulette...

What I do is every time I move to a new build and everything is running well, I'll clone my C:\partition to a partition on another drive and also run Windows backup on my c:\ partition. This a fairly quick process that I run in the background when I'm web browsing--takes maybe 45 minutes, tops. But, it helps that the only thing on my c:\ partition is the OS, utility programs, and device drivers. My installed programs all reside on other partitions. So if something gets badly hosed it takes very little time to be up and running again. It would take me days to reinstall all of my programs and games from scratch.

waltc said:

I do the same on my machine--not on the wife's though--she's not into OS Russian roulette...

What I do is every time I move to a new build and everything is running well, I'll clone my C:\partition to a partition on another drive and also run Windows backup on my c:\ partition. This a fairly quick process that I run in the background when I'm web browsing--takes maybe 45 minutes, tops. But, it helps that the only thing on my c:\ partition is the OS, utility programs, and device drivers. My installed programs all reside on other partitions. So if something gets badly hosed it takes very little time to be up and running again. It would take me days to reinstall all of my programs and games from scratch.

I just use the free version of Macrium Reflect to make an image on an external drive. I keep a few days' worth, so I can roll back as needed. Usually takes less than 10 minutes to restore the full installation.

It's taken me from #8 to now to get this build running, I had the download stuck at 42% for nearly three days!