Microsoft Issues Near-Final Build of Windows 11

With less than three weeks to go before its public debut, Microsoft has issued a near-final build of Windows 11 to testers. Build 22000.194 is now available to PCs enrolled in the Windows Insider Program’s Beta channel and to commercial PCs in the Release Preview channel.

As you should expect given the time frame, there are no new features. But Microsoft is now providing these PCs with a small handful of in-box apps that have been updated for Windows 11 and sometimes include new features, such Calculator, Clock, and Snipping Tool. These apps were previously released to Insiders in the Dev channel, which has since moved along to testing features that will be added to Windows 11 after its October 5 public release.

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Microsoft has also fixed several issues in this build, of course. The most notable, perhaps, is tied to Windows 11’s onerous and arbitrary hardware requirements: Now, virtual machine (VM) installs of Windows 11 will have the same hardware requirements as installs on physical PCs. This means that those who had previously successfully installed Windows 11 in VMs that do not meet the requirements (like Hyper-V installs with Generation 1 VMs) will not be able to upgrade to the new build.

And despite the time crunch, there are still many known issues in this build. Among them are serious problems with the Taskbar, Start, Search, Widgets, and Windows Sandbox.

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Conversation 21 comments

  • navarac

    16 September, 2021 - 2:00 pm

    <p>Some of the known issues in the Insiders Blog Post are pretty basic. It would put me off if I wasn’t already.</p>

  • sentinel6671

    Premium Member
    16 September, 2021 - 2:35 pm

    <p>Will have to see if I get this. I selected the "get me out at final" button and was kicked out after I installed the last build.</p>

    • nazmuslabs

      16 September, 2021 - 3:09 pm

      <p>That is because build 22000 is the RTM build. You likely won’t get these cumulative updates until after Oct 5 because currently you need to be in the beta channel to see them in Windows Update.</p>

      • sentinel6671

        Premium Member
        16 September, 2021 - 10:34 pm

        <p>Re-enrolled my Windows 11 VM into the Beta Channel, received the .194 build. Done. Zero issues. My VM is Gen 2 and the bare metal TPM of my Ryzen CPU is seen and used. I’ve had it turned on in the settings from Day 1 of creating the VM.</p><p><br></p><p>The internet does not need to go nuts here, the sky is not falling.</p><p><br></p><p>Will stay in Beta and get out on October 5th.</p>

  • madthinus

    Premium Member
    16 September, 2021 - 2:36 pm

    <p>Always annoy me when you don’t link to the insider blog post. </p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      16 September, 2021 - 3:30 pm

      <p>Reading the Blog post and the referenced announcement on virtualization, Its not clear to me how Windows 11 will work being virtualized. </p><p><br></p><p>Will the host hypervisor pass along the access to the TPM module to the Windows 11 guest? It sort of reads like, yes…as long as you use VMWARE or Oracle solutions. However, what about KVM/QEMU ? </p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        16 September, 2021 - 5:00 pm

        <p>The VM just uses an imaginary TPM like they do the rest of the system components.</p>

      • alastair87

        19 September, 2021 - 5:28 pm

        <p>I have tested it in QEMU/KVM with an emulated TPM v2.0 and it worked.</p>

  • innitrichie

    16 September, 2021 - 3:07 pm

    <p>The wow starts now. For real, this time.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      16 September, 2021 - 6:28 pm

      <p>Or not.</p><p><br></p><p>High probability this will just be SOS.</p>

  • StagyarZilDoggo

    Premium Member
    16 September, 2021 - 3:08 pm

    <p>I can’t believe they’re actually going to ship this thing with the stupid dual context menus in Explorer, where the new-style menu’s last item opens the old-style menu. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be taken out back and slapped with a rolled-up Volkswagen.</p>

    • bassoprofundo

      Premium Member
      16 September, 2021 - 3:39 pm

      <p>Yeah, gotta’ agree that’s rough… Hadn’t noticed that much until I had to do some very file management-intensive tasks yesterday, and it literally doubles the amount of clicks needed for what was already a click-heavy process. I see how it might make sense for basic users to mask that older, more-complex interface, but for those of us that use explorer addons that populate the right click menu with functions, YIKES.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      17 September, 2021 - 2:21 am

      <p>File Explorer would be annoying if I still used it as my file manager. Windows 11 has finally made me standardize on a 3rd party alternative, which I’ll only say is dual pane with tabs in each pane. That alternative still displays the traditional context menu.</p><p><br></p><p>From my perspective the Windows 11 taskbar is a much greater travesty.</p><p><br></p><p>What Windows 8 began, Windows 11 will accelerate: user acceptance of (or resignation to) using 3rd party desktop UI component replacements. For me, the Windows 11 taskbar is a lot like a screwdriver set with ALL the Phillips and Torx tips removed.</p>

  • crunchyfrog

    16 September, 2021 - 4:56 pm

    <p>I’d hate to be working on Microsoft’s Windows team right now. They probably have everyone chained to their desk in a basement until the code is finalized.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      16 September, 2021 - 4:59 pm

      <p>They are probably mostly working from home. I know if I were working 20 hours a day I’d want to be doing that from home.</p>

  • waethorn

    16 September, 2021 - 9:06 pm

    <p>Parallels will have to either keep the price of PD Pro low, or they’ll have to port the vTPM feature in the standard edition to allow Windows 11 to run on at least x86 hardware, otherwise Microsoft will have damaged their business model with their direction changes for Windows 11.</p>

  • Pierre Masse

    16 September, 2021 - 10:01 pm

    <p>I thought there would be a phase in Release Preview before they ship. I guess that won’t happen.</p>

    • taswinfan

      16 September, 2021 - 10:31 pm

      <p>Probabaly issues with the differences between windows 11 and 10. Release preview is basically reserved for win 10 it seems now. Might change after official release who knows. </p>

  • ghostrider

    17 September, 2021 - 5:23 am

    <p>Is it just me or is 11 looking more and more like ChromeOS these days? There are some striking similarities!</p>

  • LT1 Z51

    Premium Member
    17 September, 2021 - 10:28 am

    <p>I think Microsoft in typical "Big Corporation" mentality, has taken a primary UI (Task Bar, Start Menu, File Manager) and has said well it doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what our customers actually like or use we are going to copy the "Hip Kids" down the road so we can be "cool too"</p><p><br></p><p>The whole Task Bar thing strikes me as a blatent copy of the Dock, which most Linux systems and other OSes (like Chrome OS) have also "stolen" as a design motif. But there was nothing inherently wrong with the Task Bar, the Start Menu has had it’s ups and downs (Windows 8 was a low point), but Windows 10 was manageable (I still like Windows 7, but I do now have everything pinned to Windows 10 that I use so it’s OK now). </p><p><br></p><p>Change for changes sake isn’t good. Make it the default, force users into it even upon upgrade. But make it configurable back to the old way if you want. Like Windows 10, I think some of these "hard stances" will soften after user revolt occurs when Windows 11 goes "to the public"</p>

  • ibarskiy

    17 September, 2021 - 10:03 pm

    <p>Is it true that they are really depreciating a lot of useful power user type taskbar features? (Eg right click menu etc)</p>

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