Windows 10: You've got questions, I've got answers

Windows 10: You've got questions, I've got answers

Summary: [Updated] There's more to Windows 10 than just the revamped Start menu. I've been fielding questions from readers about the new release. Why is it called Windows 10? Does it really contain a keylogger? What happened to Internet Explorer? And where are the updates?

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[Most recent updates: October 23, 2014]

Note: If you used the native boot feature to install the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a VHD, you will be unable to install newer builds. For details, scroll down to "How do I install new builds if the Windows 10 Technical Preview is running on a VHD using native boot?"

On October 1, Microsoft officially unveiled a preview version of the next Windows release, due in mid-2015. Less than three weeks later they released the first significant update, build 9860.

I've been fielding questions from readers about the new release and how to deal with it. Here are some answers, with updates to include details about build 9860.

Why is it called Windows 10 instead of Windows 9?

Might as well get this question out of the way early.

Microsoft’s official responses to this question have been almost comically vague. It’s reminiscent of the decision to abandon the Metro name, which was also never explained in a satisfactory way.

So we’re left to speculate, and my best guess is that choosing the number 9 would imply that Windows 10 is just around the corner, followed by 11, 12, and so on. That's a recipe for delay, as customers play a "watch and wait" game.

One (unlikely) theory speculates that assigning 9 as a version number could wreak havoc with old versions hard-coded to search for Windows 95 or 98 version strings.

It’s more likely, though, that the name is about branding. This really is the last big release of Windows, with future updates coming in incremental form. As a brand name to stick with for the long term, Windows 10 is numerologically satisfying, almost ... perfect.

Or, alternatively, there’s the “dad humor” explanation: Seven ate nine.

What options are available for installing the Windows 10 Technical Preview?

You can sign up for the Windows Insider program and download the installer directly from a public Microsoft web page. If you have an MSDN subscription, the installer files are available on the MSDN download page.

For more detailed instructions, see "Hands-on with Windows 10: Installing the Windows Technical Preview."

What's the most recent version?

Microsoft released build 9860 on October 21, 2014, as an automatic update for anyone running the Windows Technical Preview.

The update, which occupies as much as 2.58 GB of disk space, appears in the Update & Recovery section of PC Settings.

Tech Preview Update Small

After the update is installed, the watermark on the desktop changes to reflect the new build number, 9860.

What's new in the build 9860?

See Microsoft delivers first update to its Windows 10 Technical Preview for Mary Jo Foley's report. I've put together a gallery here: What's in the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview update (build 9860)? It includes new features like the Notification Center, shown here.

02-9860-Notifications

 

Microsoft has also announced some important new security features for Windows 10 that are not yet available in the preview releases. (More details a little later in this post.)

Where’s the Enterprise edition?

The Technical Preview version available to the public via the Windows Insider program contains the same features as Windows 8.1 Professional and can be used as an upgrade for that edition. If you want the Windows 10 Technical Preview for Enterprise, go to this download page and register. You'll find a FAQ for IT Pros here.

The Enterprise edition is also available to anyone with a current MSDN subscription.

windows10-enterprise-info

The MSDN Subscriptions download page is also where you'll find checked and debug versions for use by developers.

Why does the Windows 10 download include a product key?

The Windows 10 Technical Preview shouldn’t require activation, but it is a preview release, so not everything goes as planned. In my testing, upgrading an installation of Windows 8.1 Enterprise resulted in this prompt:

windows10-activate

The solution was to look in the MSDN download area, where a product key is included in the product description (not in the product key field), with the text revealing that it's “for mitigation purposes.” If you’ve installed the Technical Preview from the Windows Insider site, go back to the ISO download page to see the product key.

Enter the new product key on the activation screen and you should be back in business.

Does Windows 10 really include a keylogger?

Here we go again.

With Windows 10, Microsoft has adopted a rapid-update development cycle. Maybe that faster pace is affecting the tech press too, because it took less than a week for the first Windows 10-driven conspiracy theory to burst onto the scene.

It started with a Friday-afternoon article in The Inquirer, a tech tabloid known for its breathless headlines and factually challenged prose. In true Inky fashion, the headline declared that Windows 10 "has permission to watch your every move," adding, ominously: "Its 'privacy' policy includes permission to use a keylogger."

From a legalistic point of view, this headline is cleverly constructed. It doesn’t actually say that Windows 10 contains surveillance software that monitors your keystrokes and sends a log of those keystrokes to Redmond. In fact, the implication that there is an actual keylogger embedded in the Windows 10 code is contradicted by this key graf, buried near the end of the story:

In other words, in effect, you are giving permission for Microsoft to screen your files, and in effect keylog your keyboard input. [emphasis added]

“In effect.” Not in actuality. And in fact there’s little evidence that the author has enough background in computer science or security to tell a keylogger from a key lime pie.

But the story was picked up by a few other sources and fits neatly into conspiracy theories, so here’s a bucket of cold water to pour on the rumors.

If there were really anything resembling a keylogger in the Windows 10 Technical Preview, it would be very easy to discover and document exactly what information it's transmitting. I've done a cursory check and can't find anything that matches that description. And I'm certain that researchers in the security and privacy communities would immediately publish details of their findings if they found something through a more thorough search.

I'll update this post immediately if any such evidence turns up. So far, there's nothing.

Look, the Windows 10 Technical Preview is an instrumented version. It collects information about your use of the product, including some text and voice input, and returns some of that data to Microsoft for use in tuning performance and improving voice recognition and spell-checking.

That’s a far cry from a keylogger, which is a surveillance tool that indiscriminately collects every keystroke on a PC and transmits it (usually surreptitiously) to a remote location.

The data collected by the Windows 10 telemetry tools is limited, but the process of collecting this information can result in inadvertent information disclosure. This isn’t a new problem: there are similar concerns that enterprise customers have to be careful when configuring Windows Error Reporting using released versions of Windows on production machines.

If you’re concerned that files you’re working with contain confidential information, you probably shouldn’t be using the Windows 10 Technical Preview to open them.

For the record, Microsoft’s response to these allegations is as follows:

With Windows 10, we’re kicking off the largest ever open collaborative development effort that will change the way we build and deliver Windows. Users who join the Windows Insider Program and opt-in to the Windows 10 Technical Preview are choosing to provide data and feedback that will help shape the best Windows experience for our customers. As always, we remain committed to helping protect our customers’ personal information and ensuring safeguards are in place for the collection and storing of that data. As we get closer to a final product, we will continue to share information through our terms of service and privacy statement about how customer data is collected and used, as well as what choices and controls are available.

What happened to the touch-first, plugin-free Internet Explorer?

In the Windows 10 Technical Preview, there’s only one Internet Explorer, and the alternate, Metro-style Internet Explorer version is still missing in action in build 9860.

That code is still buried in the Technical Preview, and if you’re comfortable with PowerShell you can download a script that re-enables it. That’s a stopgap, though, and definitely not a supported scenario.

It’s likely that there will be significant changes to Internet Explorer in later updates to these preview builds. Patience is probably the best strategy.

What are the keyboard shortcuts for working with Windows 10 virtual desktops?

Try these:

  • Create a new desktop: Windows key + Ctrl + D
  • Switch to previous desktop: Windows key + Ctrl + Left arrow
  • Switch to next desktop: Windows key + Ctrl + Right arrow

For this release, there's no way to save virtual desktop configurations.

How do I install new builds if the Windows 10 Technical Preview is running on a VHD using native boot?

A quick explainer for those wondering what that question even means. Native boot is a feature that was introduced with Windows 7 and is documented in this Knowledge Base article. With native boot, you can install a business edition of Windows 7 or later in a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file. The setup instructions in this article appear to be valid with the Windows 10 Technical Preview, in my testing.

The advantage of installing on a VHD is that you don't have to mess with disk partitions. Windows mounts the VHD file when it starts and treats it as though it were a physical disk. Your main OS remains on the disk itself, allowing you to easily set up a dual-boot system to see how Windows 10 will run on your hardware without creating a mess.

Although it's not well documented, this type of installation has a significant limitation. As this TechNet article notes, "If you boot from a VHD, you cannot upgrade the Windows version in the VHD to a newer version."

The only alternative is cumbersome. The short version is this:

  1. Create a new Hyper-V virtual machine using the VHD file (make a copy, if possible).
  2. Boot the VM from the Windows 10 ISO (attached as a virtual DVD).
  3. Run startup repair on the virtual machine.
  4. Start the VM and upgrade to the new build.
  5. After the upgrade is complete, shut down the VM, copy the updated VHD file to the location specified in the boot menu.
  6. Restart the PC, choosing the VHD option from the boot menu.

Those instructions are obviously incomplete and assume you are familiar with some very advanced Windows tools and techniques: Hyper-V, the Windows multi-boot process, and mounting VHD files. If you're unsure about any of those topics, I suggest that you steer clear of native boot for now, or use it only in test environments where you're not concerned about the possibility of data loss.

The modern (Metro) Skype app doesn't work in the latest build. Is there a fix?

On some systems, Skype hangs at startup after upgrading to build 9860. Follow the instructions in this forum thread to fix the problem.

What's still missing from Windows 10?

This is a very early release of Windows 10, and many of what should be its eventual signature features are still not enabled. In particular, you can expect Cortana to make an appearance at some point in the future, allowing voice interaction just as with Windows Phone. A notification center, also similar in appearance to Windows Phone, is also likely in future builds.

The most intriguing new feature, though, is one called Next Generation Credentials, which appears in the list of available local services but does not yet have a matching user interface.

next-gen-credentials

One day after releasing build 9860, Microsoft began talking publicly about the new security features. The most significant, which will apply to consumer and enterprise devices alike, is the new capability to build two-factor authentication into Windows 10 devices. Details here: Microsoft reveals audacious plans to tighten security with Windows 10.

More questions? Ask away in the Talkback section, or use the comment form to send me a note.

Topics: Windows, Enterprise Software, Microsoft

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Talkback

206 comments
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  • More questions?

    Feel free to ask questions about the Windows 10 Technical Preview here.

    As usual, I ask only that you play nice and resist the urge to get into personal back-and-forths.
    Ed Bott
    • Virtual Desktops?

      Is this the same feature as multiple desktops in UNIX's CDE, Linux's KDE/Gnome and OSX? I wonder why MS didn't implement this earlier; after all UNIX has been doing this since the 90's and it is a very useful feature to have.
      danixdefcon5
      • A question for the ages

        I used to get this question back in the days when I worked on the Windows 3.0 Resource Kit (1990) that had a 3rd party virtual desktop manager and the reason was that there were plenty of 3rd party ones available if people wanted multiple virtual desktops.

        The real question is why they felt a need to add one in as standard now since they've been around since they days of dot matrix printers and never really took off as a UI paradigm.
        Mike Galos
        • Probably the real answer

          is that, with so little else in the way of features, something was/is needed to justify an upgrade.

          If you have not noticed, Microsoft has not been coming up with much in the way of "must have features"since back in Windows XP, when support for very large hard drives and large mounts of RAM were included.

          Some of the things in Vista and 7 were welcome,such as the Aero interface, but with those being deprecated [out of stupidity and laziness it seems] they must come up with a few things which show they have been doing something other than thumb twiddling after the Start Menu, which looks like the weekend project of one of the system programmers' 10 year old children.
          chrome_slinky
          • Must have features

            Could you define what qualifies as a must have in an OS beyond software being able to control/interact with hardware? I've seen some nice things added since Windows XP in both 7 and 8. I've also seen some nice features added to OS X but I'm not sure if they qualify as must have. If you consider Aero a feature then I'm guessing you don't use the OS beyond loading a browser and typing/clicking.
            relwolf
          • Windows 9 version Windows 10

            Windows 9 was scheduled under Ballmer. When Satya and Gates were appointed, they turned everything around and V 9 was scraped.
            gbouchard99@...
          • Probably, the real answer

            is that he asked a question far above your ability to answer constructively?
            William.Farrel
          • Microsft redefined design language.

            Maybe you must have been sleeping for the last little while. Microft was the first OS to depart from Skeuomorphism UI to Flat UI, now everybody is doing it, Apple , Google, websites, apps so Microsoft wasn't busy being lazy and stupid thumb twiddling after the Start Menu, They were busy being a trendsetter.
            bxbbrian
        • The answer is that Microsoft struggles with completing...

          their software systems and usually get beat by third party developers who they then buy and bury if what they are doing is available on another competing OS. The larger issue is that overall, Microsoft is struggling to recover from the massive departure of their consumer customers to Macs and Linux machines. The Apple stores are full of people buying computers. The Microsoft stores and mall huts are full of air and game playing sales people who have no idea how to convince the masses walking past the booth that what they are trying to sell would be valuable.

          People all around me are flocking away from windows. The have discovered with their iPhones and iPads that it really is not necessary to live a life in fear of all of your data and your computer to suddenly be destroyed and oost you money to recover just because the vendor refuses to address security and stability in their software systems.

          Microsoft is still on a downward trend in popularity. The new CEO might be able to get the companies downhill acceleration reduced, but it's going to take a awful lot of effort to get the nose up. My estimate is that this year they will continue to struggle with price reductions and other "we can match them in price and performance" attempts, but Windows and the development platforms such as .Net are so behind the curve on stability and performance along with security (as has been a disaster in Microsoft's software for decades) that there is really little hope. The question is how hard will the hit.
          greggwon@...
          • Well, that explains your post.

            If you honestly believe that "Microsoft is struggling to recover from the massive departure of their consumer customers to Macs and Linux machines.", given usage numbers say other wise, then I can see why the rest of your post doesn't make any sense, whatsoever.

            But people believe what they wish to believe. Heck many still think Ghosts and Extraterrestrials walk among us.

            Doesn't make it fact.
            William.Farrel
        • It's most likely due to the rise of tablet and phone alternatives

          as with anything MS included in Windows in the past, given their market share of the desktop, including things like virtual desktops would get it dragged into court under "anti-competitive practices".

          And I think that the tablet community has given MS the freedom to now offer such things that they could not have offered in the past.

          If what they say is true, that Android, iOS, are indeed replacing "PC's", then that means that MS' market share is now much smaller, and one can argue that with that smaller market share they can now offer features without fear of reprisal.

          Apple could always operate that way because they are at a small overall percentage compared with traditional PC's, but now by sheer fact of how people wanted to classify tablets and phones, they've opened the door for Microsoft to operate the same way.
          William.Farrel
      • Yes, strange

        I agree - it does seem strange that MS hasn't offered virtual desktops before. Third party offerings have been available for many years, including one from Mark Russinovich (I think). Most of the third party ones were flaky, and Russinovich's was rather limited in features.

        Anyway, I'm glad we've got them now.
        Thack
      • Virtual Desktops have been available for years.

        They just weren't built-in. Microsoft has had a downloadable add-on package since Vista called "Power Toys(?)" which included virtual desktops and many other useful features. Personally, I prefer multiple monitors to virtual desktops, because it's easier to drag and drop between screens.
        BillDem
        • Yes, they have

          The one in Power Toys is the one I was referring to by Russinovich, I think.
          Thack
        • Yes and no

          They were unstable, poorly integrated with the system and inconvenient. Linux virtual desktops always were better and OS X virtual desktops much better. As is, Windows 10 virtual desktops are a failure of the start screen magnitude, but I hope this is just the first step since the direction is correct. It is so easy to look at OS X to see how the things should be done, even Microsoft should be able to do that.
          gak1
          • yes and no

            The virtual desktops provided by Windows PowerToys were crude. OTOH, the virtual desktops provided by LiteStep and other alternative shells were almost as capable as those in Linux. The functionality must have existed in Windows, but for some reason MSFT didn't want to let mere users use it well.
            hrlngrv 
          • You are correct...

            Windows NT as always had support for virtual desktops at the API level - MS just never chose to expose that functionality directly to users.
            codeslave
          • Could you explain?

            gak, you wrote: "Windows 10 virtual desktops are a failure..." Could you explain a bit more about why?

            I ask because I'm using them now and I find them to be great, simply because the implementation is exceptionally simple. The virtual desktops are integrated into the task bar and task switcher so smoothly that they feel completely natural, and like a natural extension of the existing UI.

            I think the problem is the naming: the feature isn't really virtual desktops, because you get the same desktop everywhere. Rather, it's about GROUPS of running programs, which you can switch in or out of view. In this respect it is completely different - and far simpler - than the virtual desktops we've had previously, both on Windows and other OSs.

            Thus there is no concept of moving programs from one desktop to another, because in reality there is only the one desktop (as far as the user is concerned). There are just groups of running programs.

            Bearing in mind MS allegedly held back on this feature because they thought it would confuse the average punter (and I agree), they've found an implementation that provide many of the advantages or virtual desktops, but which is far simpler to use.

            If you were expecting real virtual desktops, it's disappointing. If you were hoping for another "layer" of organisation for running programs, it's a success, in my view.
            Thack
          • Sorry!

            Sorry, you CAN move progs from desktop to another. My apologies.
            Thack
        • yep..

          we run Kubuntu with multiple monitors and you're absolutely corrent regarding multiple monitors over virtual desktops. but on the rare occasion whereby we need to run a native windoze app we launch a win machine as a VM guest out of host machine Ubuntu. And retain the OS's separately on separate monitors. that we we can access the internet via Kubuntu (much, MUCH safer that way... faster too). its an elegant way to get work done in BOTH OS's pretty much concurrently if one needs to.
          lewac