Windows 10 Fall Creators Update - Here is everything you need to know - Out Now!

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft will soon release in a few days of Windows 10 called Fall Creator Update. October 17 to be exact. This version of Windows 10 is Codenamed Redstone 3, the version 1709 Build 16299. This update is a continuation of sorts of last update which was called simply: Creators Update.

As always, the update will be released in waves. So, you might not get it on day 1. Discovered hardware/driver compatibility issues might delay the release for your system as well.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

OUT NOW!!!

• Released in waves
• Following a newer system to older system release order (also in waves)
• Force update by going here (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10) and pick: "Update Now" button
• To do a clean install, Media Creation Tool should be updated to get you Fall Creator Update (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10) Click "Download tool now" button to get Media Creation Tool.

Read more: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/17/get-windows-10-fall-creators-update/#E1IjcfgDJaYt4EbW.97

 

Remember:

• Backup your data before upgrading, if you are forcing it
• Uninstall your A/V and security software (beside Windows Defender), and restart your PC, before upgrading. Install them back once the update is complete. Normally it should be no problem if you ensure your security software are fully updated before starting the process, but just in case, as they are always reported issues since ever when it comes to these big updates (from Service Packs updates from the old days, to Windows 10 update builds)
• If you used a registry cleaner at some point, you increased your chances of having a broken experience after upgrade
• If you have had a virus or malware on your system that executed, as your A/V didn't catch it in time, then remember that your A/V doesn't fix registry changes or system file changes, and that can lead to broken Windows or failed update.
• Ensure that ALL your drivers are FULLY updated before starting the upgrade process (Keyboard (if any), Mouse (if any), Motherboard chipset, Audio, Graphics card, peripherals, and any other cards installed)

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

What’s New?
Let’s start with the most exiting feature for most people here, I think:

 

Task Manager now has per process GPU usage, and overall GPU stats.
You can now see how much a process uses the GPU and its video memory consumption! And under the “Performance” tab, you can see how much the GPU is used for each component (3D, Video Decode, Video Encode, VR, and more), how much dedicated memory is being used, and how much of the shared memory is used! A real nice surprised. You can also see driver version, DirectX version support, and more. Information not easily attainable now easy to see. So, if you face with GPU performance issue, you have new tools to adds to your troubleshooting arsenal of tools.

 

3

 

 

 

 

Game Mode

 

Improvement to Game Mode feature has been performed to work better with systems with 6 and 8-core CPUs.
 

Change High DPI Settings without restarting

 

You can now change the Display Scaling of Windows without the need to restart your PC or logoff and log back on. All running programs will adapt (assuming they are high DPI aware), and everything continues to look nice. In the past, only UWP apps and Windows GUI (task bar, start menu, etc.) was adapting, but Win32 programs and File explorer where scaled in “preview mode”, where they scaled as if it were an image, meaning the text and content would be blurry until you restart your PC or log-off and log back on to appear sharp again (again, assuming your program is high DPI aware).

 

Bash on Windows

A few improvements but large ones.

• You are no longer limited to Ubuntu for Bash. In fact, any Linux distro can be put into the Windows Store. You can get Ubuntu, OpenSUSE Leap 42, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server right now. And FedoraOS is expected to come soon. And the cool thing? You can install multiple of them, or all of them without any conflicts or issues.
• You can now communicate form Bash form 1 distro to another distro to another distro to Windows power shell to classic command prompt, and any order you want, like a mad scientist, bringing functionality of each distro in your hands.

• Better command prompt colors. The default colors where designed back in the old days of MSDOS considering graphic output color limitation of the time, and enhanced visibility of old CRT monitors. Now they have been updated to reflect the modern area. Blue text is now a lot more readable than ever before, same for the other colors. Colors will not be updated when you upgrade, only if you clean install you get to enjoy them out of the box. To get them, if you upgraded, you need to download and run the following utility: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/08/11/introducing-the-windows-console-colortool/
  Microsoft decided to do this to not override any custom colors, or if you prefer the classic colors.
  
  Before:
  
  After:
  

• Serial Device Support

• Ability to manually mount drives using DrvFs file system, giving you access to removable drives and network drives.

• Developer Mode is no longer required to use Linux subsystem feature of Windows 10.

 

Volume Mixer

While using the Windows 7 style, the Volume Mixer did get an update. Not visually however. You can now control the volume of UWP apps individually:

   

 

You can also select and disable Spacial Sound from the right-click menu of the sound icon on the taskbar.

 

Folder Protection

Protect folders from ransomware with Windows Defender. A new feature called “Controlled folder”, allows you to protect select folder such as Documents, Pictures, or any other, and it will block the program from processing doing changes without your permission, and you’ll be notified. You can add apps you trust to an exception list. This feature is disabled by default.

To access it, open Windows Defender panel, then go under “Virus & threat protection” > “Virus & threat protection Settings”, and enable at the bottom: “Controlled folder access”. From there you can add any folder form any drive to protect. Your personal folders are already added. And add an apps to the exception list to add through:

 

Power Throttling and new Power Management Slider
If the system runs on battery, Windows 10 will try to concern power by throttling running background process. This allows tasks to be executed successfully, but at a slower pace, preventing the CPU to clock higher to meet demand. This results in helping conserve battery life. The system uses a algorithm to identify the background task such as music playing from a minimized programs, programs focused by the user, and so on, to determine what to throttle or not. Supported CPU is needed, else it won’t do it.

The control of a system wide throttle is determined by the new Power option slider that is available on supported systems when you click on the battery icon:
 

       

On battery, settings it to the lowest settings will throttle the system down the most, lower the screen brightness, and disable OS level visual effects. As for best performance level, it will disable any throttling.  Desktop don’t have this option.

 

GUI

Noticed something a bit different from the image above? What you will notice is after upgrading to this build is the updated user interface. The new interface follows a new design language which Microsoft calls Fluent Design, which brings depth, light, material, and motion. You can read all about it here: https://fluent.microsoft.com/

Now, that said the Fluent Design language was NOT fully implemented. That is only bringing some of these elements, and the full one will be coming with the next update, sadly.
So right away you’ll notice that the notifications are more polished, and the Action Center is too cleaner in appearance.

 

 

 

In addition to this, control buttons are shown when you roll over each notification on the action center to dismiss each notification, or you have ‘x’ button on the group that will show when you roll over to dismiss the whole group. You can also swipe to the right the group or a specific notification to dismiss it.
The buttons of the action center have also been adjusted

 

And you will see this kind of changes here and there trough of the OS. Already, you may have noticed that the Windows Store apps on your current version of Windows has been updated, and that follows the new Fluent Design language.

You’ll see more of it in various applications which you probably already notice today if your Windows apps are updated, like the Calculator or the Store apps, so I won’t get in.

 

 

Start Menu

• You can now scale the Start Menu horizontally smoothly.

• You now scale the start menu diagonally

• You can now scale it with touch and pen

• Scroll bar will shrink when cursor isn’t near them.

• Right-click menu has icons for easy menu identifying

 

 

My People

On the taskbar you have a new feature called “My People”. This feature allows you to pin your select contacts to your taskbar for the ability to quickly chat with them via Skype, or other supported messaging apps. Simply right-click on the taskbar, and pick “Show people on the taskbar”, and the people icon will show. Click on it, and from there you can add people in your contact to show on the task bar. Then you can quickly click/tap on their picture (like the blurred one bellow), and directly chat with that person via SMS (Windows 10 Mobile only), Skype, Mail (to quickly e-mail someone), or any other programs that support this feature.

 

 

 

Update Share window

In addition, you now have direct access to your favorite contacts in the Share window, for easy sharing. They are based on people you chat the most with.

 

 

 

OneDrive

You no longer need to download all your OneDrive content to your PC to view all content (something it did automatically from a clean installed, if you didn’t recover the folder from previous backup). Now, they stay in the cloud and you download them as you need them. Just double-click on it, and it will download the file, and open it as expected. You have an icon next to the text that indicate if the file is on the cloud via a cloud icon, on your system with the green checkmark, and syncing witch a blue loading circle icon.

 

 

It even shows up in List view:

 

You can even mark it to always have the file downloaded locally no matter what. You do this by right-click on a file, and pick “Always keep on this device”, (select: “Free up Space” to revert), and now you’ll get a greener check mark icon on the file.

Notice the file A4.txt having a different green check mark than A2.txt. A4.txt has been selected to Always keep on device.

 

Emoji panel anywhere

Simply hit Win + [.] keyboard shortcut on any text box or document, to get the emoji panel that you see below. Once open, you can type to search for an emoji as well. At the bottom, you have your different group, and in some groups, you can pick the skin color of your emoji where it applies.
The box appears next to your Insertion “|” cursor is located on the text box or field.

 

To search for an emoji, simply type it. Like in the following example, I types: “check” (without quotes), and got the following:

 

The new emoji are following the newly released Emoji 5.0 standard added to UTF standards for cross platform compatibility. Please note that you need the latest version of iOS, Android (Android Oreo), fully updated Windows 7, 8 or 10, or fully updated Windows 10 Mobile to have the receiver of what your sending be able to see the all the emoji’s and not get “?” or a box or something instead. If not, only some will work, while other not. For example, if it supports Emoji 4 or version 3, they are the same emoji, but have less of them.
Touch screen keyboard was also updated with the new Emoji’s

 

 

Swipe Keyboard - WordFlow
Swipe touch screen keyboard, called WordFlow arrives to Windows 10. Designed for tablets, you have a mini keyboard like on smartphone where you can swipe to enter words. It works well, does the job.

 

 

Edge

• Adding Favorites improved. You can pick a location where to store the favorite.
• Pin web pages to task bar.
• Ink in PDF documents
• Read PDF and Websites aloud. Great for those who want to hear a page out while doing something else, or have visibility disability, or problem reading the screen.
• PDF and EPUB render improvements.
• You can now annotate in EPUBs.
• Edit Favorites stored in your Favorites list.
• Pressing F3 key after doing a search will jump to the next search result. Shift+F3 will go on the previous one.
• “Add tab to favorite” menu item added when you right-click on a tab.
• General improvements in terms of performance and bug fixes.

 

Settings panel

• Phone linking. Link an Android or iOS phone to your Windows 10 system, and you can send content like a web-page to open on your PC. This works via the Cortana app on your phone.
• Cortana Settings. Cortana settings now has its settings located where it makes more sense: In the Settings panel.
• Video Playback settings. Located under Apps > Video playback, you have settings to enable/disable HDR video, enable/disable auto enhancement of videos, and more.
• Storage Sense has been updated (Under System > Storage > Change how we free up space), you can set Windows to automatically clear your Download folder by delete files that are more than 30 days old, and delete “Windows.old” folder sooner at 10 days instead of 30 days.
• Remote Desktop settings are now in the Settings panel.
• Magnifier options to the Settings Panel under Accessibility section.
• Game. New Gaming related options added, including: TruePlay a built-in anti-cheat feature. Disabled by default.
• Xbox Live Network connection test.
• Other more minor changes throughout the Settings panel.

 

Windows Updates

• It will no longer download updates aggressively consuming all your bandwidth! That is right! Online gamers, video streamers, rejoice! It will be far more conservative. And the best part: Configurable!
  
  
  
  Simply go to Settings > Updates & Security > Windows Updates > Advanced Options > Deliver Optimizations, to access the options that you see above.
   
• Faster Update process. Microsoft moved many operations that it does during the update process out of the system, part of the Windows Update system. This means that it will take more time to reach “100%” if you pay close attention to the Windows Update panel as it downloads and installs an update, but the installation process that it needs to do when you restart your system will be faster. This means that you’ll be back up on your feet a bit faster now. Less waiting.

 

Photos app
Fire up the Photos app, and click on the button at the top: Create. You can add your music, set pictures/video order, and it generate live the video for previewing. Add music (comes with some samples), text add filters. You can save it in different video quality.

 

Cortana

• Ability to connect to other smart home devices like speaker, Nest, and other devices.
   
• Web search results directly in Cortana:
  
• New commands. By popular demand (sadly): “Hey Cortana, Restart PC.”, you can ask her to lock your PC, sign out, and it off. You have a confirmation to do, where you need to answer Yes on some of them, like shutdown and restart. You definitely want to check the box to make Cortana work for your voice only, if you use the voice assistance via voice.
   
• Get missed called notification from your phone. New to Android (already supported for Windows 10 Mobile users). No support for iPhone users.
  
   

Mixed Reality Viewer

Fun little toy app. This new app where you can add 3D objects in the world pointing by your camera, creating a sense of augmented reality. As you move the camera, the 3D object perspective is adjusted, and you can snap a picture.

 

Beside of a fun toy, why it is there? It is part of Microsoft big push on Mixed Reality headsets (VR and AR). Already Oculus Rift has drop in price you now have Del,l Acer, and many other OEMs making their own affordable VR headsets as well. Microsoft wants to be in VR and AR field, and is building a lot of stuff around it. Already if you put a headset on, and you start the Mixed Reality app, you can interact with your apps in a 3D space which can be a virtual 3D world, or if you have a HoloLens, in reality (and it keeps track of which app was left where even if you change rooms. No idea how well it works. I don’t have one)

 

 

Bahnschrift Font

A new font included in the system. It is an OpenType Variable which is there to highlight support for it. It is a font that has an entire typeface family into a single file. No more having multiple font files. For bold, italic, semi bold, and so on. And this also means that you can have, theoretically, infinite possibility of italic level, boldness level, and so on. It also saves space.

 

To read more on the technology which this version of Windows supports, check out this article: http://www.alphabettes.org/responsive-variable-fonts/

 

 

Accessibility

• Color filters. You can now set color filters: Grayscale, Tritanopia, Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Grayscale Inverted and Invert colors.
• Integrated Eye Control for devices like Tobii 4C.

 

Others

• Recover Microsoft Account password from the lock screen.
• Windows can now setup your account after an OS upgrade to get you started more quickly. (It auto-logins after restart from the update to get your account up and running so that you don’t have to wait)
• Pen can scroll any content. No need to use the scroll bar to scroll with the pen.
• Many improvements to Inking and handwriting.
• Application Guard (Enterprise editions only)
• SMBv1 have been removed due to the massive security issue it causes. Newer, much safer version of SMB exists, but mass number of devices never upgraded. Even newer devices opt to support SMBv1 only with no plans for supporting the newer version. So now, they are forced to go with a newer version.
• Microsoft Enhances Mitigation Experience Toolkit no longer works. Windows Defender Exploit Guard replaces it.
• System Image Backup is now deprecated (still available)
• Paint is now deprecated (still available and continues to be installed)
• “Sync your settings” feature is deprecated. Still works and enabled. (Will be replaced by a new one later on)
• Screen Saver are gone from main option in the Settings. Can still be set through Group Policy, Control Panel, or registry. Screen Savers are phasing out.
• ReFS file format has been removed from the Pro edition of Windows 10. Only Windows 10 Pro for Workstation edition and Enterprise has it.
• Improved Privacy. When an app needs permission to privacy related device like Microphone or Camera, it will ask you for permission.
• Hyper-V now support virtual battery
• Hyper-V auto makes saves states and you can revert to (you can still makes manual ones as usual).
• UWP apps can now be executed from the command prompt, and pass arguments. More info: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/07/05/command-line-activation-universal-windows-apps/#E7MoxGmmzvY4LYOb.97

 

Release Date: October 17, 2017

Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/tag/windows-insider-program/

 

 

What's After?

• Codename: Redstone 4 - expected to be released March 2018.
• What is expected to have, if not cancelled or delayed:
    - Finish the implementation of the Fluent Design GUI language throughout the OS.
    - Timeline feature
    - OGG media container, Vorbis audio codec, and Theora video codec support.

 

Are you exited by some of the features of the Fall Creators Update? Which one caught your attention the most?

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

Seems cool but I need to know the RNG stats on it bricking my machine  

 

Looks like a lot of little changes that probably should have been there since day one. 

 

(also macOS has some of this already) 

[matt0725]

Last major windows update went awry somewhere and made me reinstall.. if this one goes smoothly it looks like I'll like it

[Zodiark1593]

Big update here. How to download it without killing my data plan though?

[tp95112]

Some good and some stuff I would never use like the moji panel. But the download limit panel is quite usefull

[NumLock21]

Finally!

A GPU graph!

[Shreyas1]

The best part is that it’s codenamed after Minecraft!!!!!!!!1!1!!11!!!!!! /s

[GoodBytes]

5 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Big update here. How to download it without killing my data plan though?

Once released. Fire up the Media Creation Tool and download Windows 10 at a coffee shop or somewhere to a  USB flash drive. Then come back home, insert the USB Flash drive and do Windows 10 update. Start it within your current version of Windows 10, and it will upgrade to the latest release.

[Delicieuxz]

In preparation of FCU, I've updated my Windows 10 system one last time and then re-disabled the Windows Update service so that this Windows 10 installation won't download any more updates, and won't become completely screwed up from the FCU, as happened with both the CU and the AU. I expect to not update my Windows 10 system again until I plan to do a full re-install due to buying new hardware or something, maybe in a year or two.

[captain_to_fire]

16 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Protect folders from ransomware with Windows Defender. A new feature called “Controlled folder”, allows you to protect select folder such as Documents, Pictures, or any other, and it will block the program from processing doing changes without your permission, and you’ll be notified. You can add apps you trust to an exception list. This feature is disabled by default.

I'm guessing this feature is disabled if I'm using a third party AV

17 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Power Throttling and new Power Management Slider
If the system runs on battery, Windows 10 will try to concern power by throttling running background process. This allows tasks to be executed successfully, but at a slower paste

*You mean pace 

How I wish Intel would follow ARM's big:LITTLE architecture of having separate power efficient core and high performance cores for their mobile ULV processors

20 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

It will no longer download updates aggressively consuming all your bandwidth! That is right! Online gamers, video streamers, rejoice! It will be far more conservative. And the best part: Configurable!

Finally! But I still wish they will bring back a Windows 8 feature of postponing update installation, hence reducing the need for restarts. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2011/11/14/minimizing-restarts-after-automatic-updating-in-windows-update/

23 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Recover Microsoft Account password from the lock screen.

Wouldn't that lead to exploits like lockscreen bypass or hacking an Outlook account?

24 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Release Date: October 17, 2017

It will be a waiting game for a lot of PCs. Not everyone will receive the update at that date.

[SquintyG33Rs]

45 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

The best part is that it’s codenamed after Minecraft!!!!!!!!1!1!!11!!!!!! /s

well redstone is a name for a real thing and a real place. minecraft kinda completely overshadows that fact but these companies have been naming their shit after mountains and lakes much more than video game references.

not that they'd have to worry about copyright issues in this case

[Cyracus]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Folder Protection

This sounds freaking amazing and I want it... only thing I really care about

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

(also macOS has some of this already)

well naturally they're gonna try to mimic the stuff their competitors are doing that users like

[TrigrH]

Quote

Windows Updates
It will no longer download updates aggressively consuming all your bandwidth! That is right! Online gamers, video streamers, rejoice! It will be far more conservative. And the best part: Configurable!

Well atleast windows 10 is usable now for people in Australia. kek.

 

Only took them what? 2 years?

[Shadestones]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Seems cool but I need to know the RNG stats on it bricking my machine  

 

Looks like a lot of little changes that probably should have been there since day one. 

 

(also macOS has some of this already) 

(cringe)

[LinusTech]

2 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

snip

 

 

Will they let me turn on my VPN now without going through a modern UI song and dance?

 

 

But in all seriousness, great post.

[kerradeph]

6 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Will they let me turn on my VPN now without going through a modern UI song and dance?

 

 

But in all seriousness, great post.

Don't the VPNs just get saved as an adaptor that you can enable and disable through the manage interfaces panel? That's all available just as it was through 7. Although there is the faster route of bringing up the action panel and hitting VPN. 

[LAwLz]

A handful of good things, and a handful of bad things.

Will SMBv1 support be completely removed, or will it be possible to turn it on again? My NAS uses SMBv1 and I doubt Netgear will update it (Thanks Netgear, you cunts. Going with Synology next time).

 

1 hour ago, kerradeph said:

Don't the VPNs just get saved as an adaptor that you can enable and disable through the manage interfaces panel? That's all available just as it was through 7. Although there is the faster route of bringing up the action panel and hitting VPN. 

The part in the manage interfaces menu is the same as in Windows 7, but in Windows 7 you could also connect to a VPN through the little menu you get when you left click on the network icon in the notification area.

 

Windows 7:

Click the network icon -> click on VPN name -> click connect.

 

Windows 10:

Click the network icon -> click on VPN name (launches the settings apps) -> click on the VPN name again -> click connect.

[kerradeph]

8 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Windows 7:

Click the network icon -> click on VPN name -> click connect.

 

Windows 10:

Click the network icon -> click on VPN name (launches the settings apps) -> click on the VPN name again -> click connect.

Ahh, I never dealt with VPN connections at the OS level on 7 and I've only done it once on 10 to confirm connection before politely calling a client an idiot. 

[kilgore_T]

being a MOTU - Windows user these updates fill me with dread

[Master Disaster]

I've actually clean installed my PC yesterday to get out of the Insiders program ready for this.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Task Manager now has per process GPU usage, and overall GPU stats.
You can now see how much a process uses the GPU and its video memory consumption! And under the “Performance” tab, you can see how much the GPU is used for each component (3D, Video Decode, Video Encode, VR, and more), how much dedicated memory is being used, and how much of the shared memory is used! A real nice surprised. You can also see driver version, DirectX version support, and more. Information not easily attainable now easy to see. So, if you face with GPU performance issue, you have new tools to adds to your troubleshooting arsenal of tools.

This is actually really damn cool 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Will SMBv1 support be completely removed, or will it be possible to turn it on again? My NAS uses SMBv1 and I doubt Netgear will update it (Thanks Netgear, you cunts. Going with Synology next time).

What model do you have? Must be rather old to not have a newer version of SAMBA support/Netgear firmware.

[Nup]

Awesome! A good bit of stuff to be excited about this time round. The GPU monitoring sounds wonderful. Also very happy with chnages to updates. Fingers crossed it’s a smooth update and doesn’t interfere with my machine! 

[LAwLz]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What model do you have? Must be rather old to not have a newer version of SAMBA support/Netgear firmware.

ReadyNAS Ultra 4.

I'll probably try enabling SMBv2 myself, but it will void the warranty. 

[aakopa]

Why is ReFS now locked out of the standard Windows 10 Pro?