Microsoft Pushes Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17744 to the Slow Ring

In yet another sign that Redstone 5 development is nearing completion, Microsoft has delivered an older Windows 10 Insider Preview build to the Slow ring.

“Today, we have released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17744 (RS5) and KB4459375 to Windows Insiders in the Slow ring,” Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar notes in a post that first went live over 10 days ago. “KB4459375 includes a single fix for the issue causing PCs to bugcheck (BSOD) when logging out of your user profile or shutting down your PC. KB4459375 is [also] packaged using a new design that Windows Insider preview builds can download and install more efficiently.”

You can learn more about that new update packaging design from Microsoft. What’s more interesting to me, in a way, is that build 17744 isn’t the most recent Windows Insider Preview build. That build first shipped out to Fast ring testers on August 21. More recently, on August 24, Microsoft shipped build 17746 to the Fast ring. Since Microsoft stopped adding new features several builds ago, these two builds are presumably nearly identical, save for that BSOD fix that is now included with the Slow ring version of 17744. In other words, yes, Windows 10 version 1809 (Redstone 5) isn’t just feature complete. It’s pretty much done.

Also notable, perhaps, is that build 17744 is only the second Redstone 5 build that Microsoft has provided to the Slow ring. The first one was build 17738, which shipped to the Slow ring on August 23. Which is rather astonishing when you consider that the first RS5 build arrived way back in February.

Anyway. The end—of RS5 development—is nigh.