Tip: The Redstone 4 Magic Window is Closing

If you’re a Windows Insider looking to take advantage of Redstone 4’s “magic window,” as I call it, your time is about to run out.

Seriously, you should have done this already.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

As a reminder, users who enroll a PC in the Windows Insider program’s Fast or Slow rings are typically “stuck” in one of those pre-release build rings. You can slow things down—get in the Slow ring—or speed things up—with Fast—but you can’t get out. But then the magic window occurs.

The magic window is a period of time that occurs each time the development of a Windows 10 version winds down. During this time, Insiders can freely move their PCs out of the Insider Preview because it temporarily aligns with the product that Microsoft is shipping public.

For Redstone 4—e.g. the April 2018 Update, or Windows 10 version 1803—that window originally opened in late March. But because of a screw-up that was causing blue screens, Microsoft had to reset the build, so the magic window was extended, triggering a round of unfortunate activity in which users had to re-enroll PCs in the Insider Preview, get the new build, and then dis-enroll again.

If you haven’t already done this, your time is just about up, according to a tweet from Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar:

Windows Insiders: If you don’t want to start receiving [Redstone 5] builds, you should switch to Release Preview TODAY. Both WIP Fast and Slow will see RS5 builds….why, yes, SOON.

She tweeted that last night, so my guess is that Microsoft intends to release its first Redstone 5 build to the Fast ring of the Windows Insider program. If you wish to opt-out of that and stick with Redstone 4 for a time—which, by the way, I do recommend—move quickly.

Dona recommends sticking to the Release Preview ring, but I would opt out entirely. To do so, open Settings and navigate to Update & Security > Windows Insider Program and then click the Stop Insider Preview builds button. Choose
Then, “Stop Insider builds completely” the full-screen notification that appears, click Confirm, and then click Restart Now.

Go! Go! Go!

 

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 4 comments

  • webguynj

    04 May, 2018 - 1:42 pm

    <p>When I do this I am prompted with 4 options none of them say "Stop Insider builds Completely" another says Roll back to last version of Windows</p>

  • SabraPryor

    08 May, 2018 - 2:44 am

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Stop Insider builds completely” [</span></p><p><a href="Read This " target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">the full-screen notification that appears, click Confirm, and then click Restart Now.</span></p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC