Windows 10 Announced - Released 29-Jul-2015

Well, you will always see this, but it happened today on my Win 10 laptop, explorer.exe crashed probably because memory was running too low and I had to kill and restart a couple of older apps in order to see the tray-icons again. But the good news is that all of a sudden balloon notifications work again, so apparently their was something wrong with explorer.exe. So I welcome this design change that's coming up, because it's way too buggy. I'm glad that SpyShelter can finally give me notifications again.

 

Small update, I spoke too soon because balloon notifications once again don't work after reboot. I sometimes wonder if M$ doesn't feel any shame or what? I honestly don't see how some third party tool can interfere with balloon notifications. Like I said, yesterday explorer.exe crashed and restarted and suddenly it did work. Perhaps O&O ShutUp 10 plays a role, but I doubt it. I'm having too many stupid problems (DPI scaling making apps look blurry and MS OneDrive messing up Win Explorer) so I'm afraid I have to call Win 10 a flop for now.

 

Yes I have checked it all, it's not caused by any Windows setting. The only thing I can try to do is to disable all of the tweaks from O&O Shutup. It seems to be some kind of bug in Win 10 Home 1909 if you ask me, what a mess.

 

i never had any issues with notifications on w10. i suspect o&o might have something to do with your issue. for my money, you should install 10 from scratch and never use any sort of those so called w10 "privacy tools" again.

 

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21354
April 7, 2021
https://blogs.windows.com/windows-i...ncing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-21354/

 

To clarify, it's not about toast notifications. It's about balloon notifications, it worked again after explorer.exe crashed, so there is definitely something wrong.

I haven't disabled ShutUp 10 yet, but I did check all of the tweaks and I don't see how it can somehow block balloon notifications. But perhaps you can help me by installing SpyShelter, then I will PM you with Zemana's SSL logging tool. If you click on "start" SpyShelter should immediately give a balloon notification with "blocking network hooks". This technique is often used by banking trojans.

 

Yes I know, but as you can read in the article, you can bring them back. And it did work for a while in Win 10, the problems started when I used Notification Area Cleaner, but such a tool shouldn't be able to destroy a standard Windows feature. M$ should hire me to be in charge of quality control, I would sort things out real quick. I would fire every developer responsible for the Win Store, Win Explorer and OneDrive. Then I would fire everyone involved with DPI scaling.

https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/Notification-Area-Cleaner-for-Windows-7.shtml

 

Windows 10 will soon let you tell Microsoft how you use your PC

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...n-let-you-tell-microsoft-how-you-use-your-pc/

 

I'm sure they had no idea before this...

 

Windows 10 is getting a 'Windows Tools' control panel for power users

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...-windows-tools-control-panel-for-power-users/

 

RIP: Microsoft Edge Legacy nuked by April Windows Updates

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...t-edge-legacy-nuked-by-april-windows-updates/

 

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21359
April 14, 2021
https://blogs.windows.com/windows-i...ncing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-21359/

 

Microsoft moves Windows 10 21H1 to the Release preview channel

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ndows-10-21h1-to-the-release-preview-channel/

 

After months of not having build 2004 or newer offered in Windows Update, I just received a notification saying that support for build 1909 will end soon, and I was given the option to upgrade to 20H2. 20H2 is downloading now, and I'll let it complete the upgrade tonight.

 

Yes I read this as well, why would M$ stop supplying updates for Win 10 1909? So basically they force you to upgrade to the newest Win 10 which may or may not give all kinds of problems.

 

It's easier for them to just release updates for the newest builds. In addition to this, newer builds are more secure.

I doubt I will have issues with the 20H2. I've updated many computers to newer builds with no issues. My system hasn't been upgraded just yet, as I forgot to reboot last night instead of putting it to sleep.

 

The block just got lifted on my HP Spectre x2 with conexant audio drivers and 1909. Which is interesting because it hasn't received an updated driver, and there is no change to the status for the particular known issue that relates to my machine (safeguard ID is 25178825). Anyway I took the precaution of uninstalling the Conexant Smart Audio HD driver from device manager (and ticked the option to delete files) and then immediately proceeded to download and install 20H2 without doing the requested reboot after the audio driver uninstalled. It took 2.5hrs in total, but it worked! I'm now running 20H2

On completion, the "Drivers" section of WU historyshows that the conexant audio driver failed to install, but I do have sound, and the driver appears in my device manager - the exact same driver I had before, listed under "Sound Video and Game Controllers".

The only thing about my audio that does not seem to be working any longer, is the orange light on my keyboard that illuminates when when I've got the speakers muted. On restarting after completing the upgrade, the light was on and stuck that way, and after restarting a second time after getting further updates from WU, the light is now stuck on off. The button works in terms of muting/unmuting the speakers still, it's just the light indicator function that's borked. I can live with that.....

Good luck with your upgrade! Let us know how you get on.

 

The upgrade completed with no issues (as I had expected) and build 20H2 is running a bit faster on this system than 1909 was. For some reason, it disabled Windows Restore (as sometimes happens). Kerish Doctor notified me that it had been disabled, and let me enable it again.

The first two times two days ago when Windows started the upgrade process, it failed with an error before reaching the stage of requiring a reboot. I presume that WiseVector was causing the issues. So I exited it and also disable 360's protection, after which I no longer received the error.

My wife's laptop has Conexant audio and was one of the systems which had a block on updating. A few months ago I saw a post from someone who had resolved the issue by uninstalling the Conexant drivers and letting Windows replace them with generic drivers. A day later, the block was lifted for that user. In my case, it took a number of weeks for the block to be lifted, and I don't know if uninstalling the audio driver helped or not, considering how long it took.

 

Windows 10 feature update: Here's what to expect in the next release

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ate-heres-what-to-expect-in-the-next-release/

 

OK thanks, I guess I wil have no choice but to upgrade to Win 20H2. Hopefully it will fix a couple of annoying problems like with the Windows Store and balloon notifications not working.

 

Just got KB5001391 cumulative update preview for 21H1. It came with an apparent servicing stack. Didn't d/l or install very smoothly (or maybe my standards are a little high) but eventually it went thru. I restarted machine to check and the system was still jumping around after one minute (but cpu always stayed under 10% usage). Hopefully, this will settle down later. System otherwise seems fast and responsive.

Winver: 19043.962 (Insiders Beta Channel)