Windows 10 October 2020 Update - Here is everything you need to know - OUT NOW

[GoodBytes]

UPDATE

The update is now released!

 

As always, the update is delivered in waves, and automatically paused to group of people if problem is detected.

For less chances of problems, it is best to wait for your wave to come. It can take a few weeks to a few months, all depending on how it goes.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest to:

• Make sure all your drivers are full updated. From printer, to chipset, to audio and graphics card.
• Make sure all your security software (anti-virus, VPN, etc.) are fully updated.
• Make sure that device manager isn't showing any hardware issues.
• Make sure that all your software is updated, including games with anti-cheat systems.

If you can't wait and want to upgrade now:

Simply download and run the Update Assistant found here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

(Click on "Update now")

 

Media Creation Tool has also been updated, which you can get it from the same link as above, just click on "Download tool now" button instead.

 

Happy Upgrading!

 

-----------------------------------------------------------

 

 

This October, in the heat of the new hardware reveal, Microsoft doesn't want you to miss them. So, they will be releasing a new version of Windows 10, here is everything you need to know about it.

 

Codename 20H2 the new update, as the title of this post would indicate, will be called October 2020.

This update is not really a major one, however, it does feature more user impacting features and changes.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE

This feature list is based on the Insider build. Some change might not make the cut (will be on the following update), and as a result might be wrong.

I'll keep this thread updated. An example of such case which will most likely won't make it, the new touch screen keyboard. Brought from Windows 10X to Windows 10. The new keyboard is more performant, feature gif support emoji's and looks nicer. Sadly, touch screen users will have to wait until next year (Only some Insiders have it).

 

What's new?

 

New Start Menu Look!

Gone the colored rectangles!

Gone the accent color background behind icons!

A fresh new look for your fresh newly system update at the end of the year!
 

Dark Search

Search panel of the Task Manager now features Dark Theme. Yup, finally got updated.

(See! Bing isn't so bad, It knows Linus! What other purpose one might use a search engine for? Anything else is just ridicules! Oh and, Tech Jesus... he's cool too... I guess...)

 

 

WSL2 now features GPU support

That's right! You can now make WSL2 use your GPU power!

Please note that you need the latest Nvidia or AMD drivers to utilize this, as the driver needs to have explicit support for this.
Microsoft says:

Quote

GPU compute: a feature that allows your Linux binaries to leverage your GPU, which makes it possible to do more machine learning development and data science workflows directly in WSL

Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/06/17/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-20150/

 

So yes, you can now use: NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL under WSL2.

Quote

Professional data scientists use their local machines for inner-loop development and experimentation. These users experiment with different training algorithms on small batches of training data, often tweaking parameters and architectures until certain accuracy criteria are met. When a promising configuration is found, it is common to push the entire workload into a hosted environment for full scale training on larger datasets.

Inside this inner-loop development on the local device, there are popular Linux-based tools, libraries, and frameworks which these users leverage in their day-to-day workflow. Training ML models is a time-consuming computational task even when using small datasets. To speed-up training, many of these tools use NVIDIA’s CUDA as the optimized path for GPU hardware acceleration, enabling data scientists to hardware-accelerate their training scripts on NVIDIA GPUs.

NVIDIA CUDA support has been present on Windows for years. However, there is a variety of CUDA compute applications that only run in a native Linux environment. In support of meeting professional data scientists where they’re at we’re adding support for CUDA inside WSL 2.

Source: GPU accelerated ML training inside the Windows Subsystem for Linux - Windows Developer Blog

 

Note, this is for Machine Learning / AI, not gaming.

That said, Microsoft did announce GUI support in WSL at this year BUILD event, so that you can run Linux GUI based programs with ease under Windows. But that has yet to be released.

 

 

WSL2 Improvements

• wsl –install command allows you to easily install WSL
• wsl --update command allows you to manage the kernel version of your WSL distros

 

2-in-1 Device Improvement

If you have a 2-in-1 device, you can now rejoice! When you switch to a Tablet mode, Windows, without the need to go in Tablet mode on its side, will make everything more spaced to make things more touch friendly! This is similar to the Touch Mode in Office, where the ribbon bar items are more spaced to allow easy interaction with your finger. The system will also no longer pop-up a notification asking you if you want to switch modes. You still have the same options as before, but now it won't annoy you.

 

Also, 'Tablet Mode" Action Center button is now gone on non-convertible and non-tablet devices. You can still access the option for the Full screen Start Menu in the Settings panel, if you want. But the option in Action Center has been removed.

 

 

Alt+Tab Now displays the New Edge Tabs
 

When you Alt+Tab, you now see your some, or all your Edge web browser tabs and directly jump to one!

By default, it will show only the 5 most recent tabs, and you can:

• Disable it
• Set it to 3 most recent tabs
• All

The setting is found under the Settings panel > Multitasking > Alt+Tab

 

 

Improved notifications

The notification got some minor GUI adjustments, making it more understandable from which app it is coming from. You now have the title of the program 

 

You can also notice that the "->" corner button has been replaced by "x". 

 

Change Monitor Refresh Rate from Settings

Under Settings > System > Display > Advance Display Settings.

You can now change your display refresh rate.

 

IPv4 and IPv6 IP and DNS From Settings 

Progress continues to the Settings panel migrating more things, as you noted with the previous improvements.

Now, you can configure the IPv4 and IPv6 DNS configuration and IP from the Settings panel.

Just go under Network & Internet > Ethernet (or Wireless). Then scroll to under "IP Settings" section, and hit "Edit" button.

 

 

Minor things

• Settings "System information" features a "Copy" button to quickly copy the system specs so that you can paste them somewhere.
• 647 new MDM policies across 56 ADMX files were added to enable commercial customers to configure policies that are also supported through Group Policies.
• You can now specify the default high performance GPU to use (for systems with multiple GPUs)
  

 

When?

Expected release to be in October. It has hit the "Release Preview" ring of the Insider Program. This the last stop before being officially released.

So as for now, it is coming soon.

 

Once it will be released:

• The best way to get it, is to wait for your wave to come, and if your system is compatible, you can upgrade it.
• You can use Media Creation Tool (it will be updated once the version is released) to force the update to the October 2020 release. But of course, you are by-passing the compatibility check, and you get what you get. If it works great, then Great! If you have issues, then you have 10 days from the day you upgraded to roll back.
• I strongly suggest, as always to:
  • Make sure ALL your drivers all fully updated to the latest version
  • Make sure ALL your security software is also fully updated.
  • Make sure ALL your software is updated, especially those who uses drivers (this includes games with anti-cheat systems in games and software and games with DRM systems)
  • Personally, I would get a step further and just uninstall your anti-virus (if you are using anything besides Windows Defender) before upgrading, and re-install it back once done. But that is just me playing it safe.

 

Like every time I do these threads, expect it to be updated. So, stay tuned!

 

Video Tour of some of the new changes:

 

 

What was before?

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TempestCatto]

Inb4 a mass of people flood the forums because the "update" borked their system and wiped all their porn.

[ACEHACK]

i am on the insider build fast ring and slow ring, on multiple machines, for my 2 in1 this update is not ready what so ever. they should delay this by another month for bugfix, before releasing it and realizing oh we broke peoples computers again. they already have a large list of system breaking bugs not fixed yet. 

[ACEHACK]

2 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

Ahhh more useless bloat to fill up my storage! And if I'm REALLY lucky maybe it'll botch the install and wipe all my data too!

 

It's so nice to be back here on Windows 8.1 with no updates, no intrusions, and no instability 

i love the updates, but this whole instability would have been minimized have they kept their qc and testing team.

[Arika]

Lol I'm still on 1909

[MrRavens]

All hail supreme leader GoodBytes lol.

[TempestCatto]

33 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Lol I'm still on 1909

I'm still on 1607

[circeseye]

Dark Search

Search panel of the Task Manager now features Dark Theme.......this already is implemented

 

Change Monitor Refresh Rate From Settings

Under Settings > System > Display > Advance Display Settings.

You can now change your display refresh rate........................................this has always been there

[RZeroX]

9 minutes ago, circeseye said:

Dark Search

Search panel of the Task Manager now features Dark Theme.......this already is implemented

 

Change Monitor Refresh Rate From Settings

Under Settings > System > Display > Advance Display Settings.

You can now change your display refresh rate........................................this has always been there

Neither of those features are in the current version of windows if you are running a preview build then you would already have them but not on the stable build.

[circeseye]

1 hour ago, RZeroX said:

Neither of those features are in the current version of windows if you are running a preview build then you would already have them but not on the stable build.

no....im not on a preview

youve always been able to change refresh rate in windows settings..been doing it for years

as for the dark it came out i believe during 2019 fall update....cant remember exact update last year, but remember was happy it was done, and was first thing i turned on because i have everything in dark mode if it allows

[RZeroX]

4 minutes ago, circeseye said:

no....im not on a preview

youve always been able to change refresh rate in windows settings..been doing it for years

as for the dark it came out i believe during 2019 fall update

Yeah the refresh rate thing has been there for a long time but that update is adding it to the advanced display settings so you don't have to change it with the

display adapter settings anymore, Yeah but that's not dark mode for the search it still shows up as white.

[circeseye]

Just now, RZeroX said:

Yeah the refresh rate thing has been there for a long time but that update is adding it to the advanced display settings so you don't have to change it with the

display adapter settings anymore, Yeah but that's not dark mode for the search it still shows up as white.

ah so they eliminated a step ok.....
and yea i see now..when i click the search yes it black but once you start typing then it goes white (facepalm) so they started the black but didnt do it to all of it

 

[poochyena]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

You can also notice that the "->" corner button has been replaced by "x". 

Thank you. It took me far to long to realize how to get rid of the notification since there was no X

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

But i liked the colored titles though, why would they remove that ?  

 

[circeseye]

1 hour ago, epicdotexe said:

Do you think they'll go the extra step and eliminate having to click five different things to get to the old sound control panel to change bitrates as well?

 

Maybe Windows 10 will slowly just turn back into Windows 7!

seriously...i hate how the sound panel is. 

[AnonymousGuy]

 

21 minutes ago, circeseye said:

seriously...i hate how the sound panel is. 

Every windows 10 setting menu / control panel item is absolutely horrific.  It's what happens when you have shitty project managers who can't just decide on one fucking interface so you end up with 5 different ones and needing to click 10 times to get back to the "old" one that's actually usable.  And then you get Johnny the Dipshit manager who also says "can you make it work with touchscreens?" so there's +1 of having giant fucking buttons and 72 point font.

[Doobeedoo]

Overall not bad, looks solid. Still waiting for complete settings unification and some improvements for fewer clicks to get to options and all. 
Neat for Start for more color absent accent. Also good for dark search, though still Task Manager and Properties window needs it.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

19 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Change Monitor Refresh Rate From Settings

Under Settings > System > Display > Advance Display Settings.

You can now change your display refresh rate.

Could this be used to force a higher refresh rate?

[Helpful Tech Witch]

8 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

No. "Overlooking" monitors can be done through the Nvidia control panel. Usually it's not very successful.

And seems to be impossible on amd. I like having a RX 480!

[Donut417]

Wonder if it will be less devastating than 2004 was for some. I don’t even think 2004!is even on my system yet, I’m always wary about these new updates. 

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Could this be used to force a higher refresh rate?

Hmm no. You can only select the refresh rate that the GPU driver reports to Windows as choices. So you need to create the refresh rate in the driver control panel (if possible), and then you can pick it in Windows (or pick it in the GPU control panel as you are right there).

 

Yes, work can be done to have Windows do this, but Windows tend to follow industry standards, takes time to setup.

Like GPU Temp in the Task manager... that took time for Microsoft to work with Nvidia and AMD so that things are decided for a reliable, won't be changed, API call that the OS can do to the driver. And even then... my GeForce 680, despite installing the latest drivers, doesn't get to be able to provide the info. So I have to stick (assuming I needed to know), to extra software which kept its, now, legacy, support of such old hardware, or old versions.

 

[wall03]

21 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

New Start Menu Look!

21 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Dark Search

the only 2 things I care/will even notice about in this update.

[wall03]

20 hours ago, Arika S said:

Lol I'm still on 1909

i might stay on 2004 until the bug fixes are out

[Arika]

11 minutes ago, wall03 said:

i might stay on 2004 until the bug fixes are out

the secret to to just let the update come as it does. don't go in and specifically look for updates to download the newest feature update, let it all happen automatically. By doing this i have had 0 problems with any windows update

[Bombastinator]

Here’s hoping it works out better than the iOS14 update. Got a notification on my phone that I needed to update so I blithely did and it turns out Google has been messing with YouTube and that is all messed up now.