Windows 11 Insider program stupidity
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My main PC has been on the Release Preview track of the Windows 11 Insider program for a while now.
Well, I say "has been", but if I want to be entirely truthful, it was on the Release Preview track, but isn't any more because I just did a "nuke and pave" on it.
It's still on Windows 11, but a new installation, waiting for me to reinstall special drivers (Razer keyboard, Omen mouse, NVidia graphics, etc.), system utilities (above all BitDefender and VirtualBox), and apps (especially Office 2019, Steam and GOG Galaxy) and games (whatever I feel like messing with in Steam and/or GOG, plus ESO and GW2).
But why did I do that?
Well, it turns out that a few months back, Microsoft did something truly stupid in the tracks of the Insider program. The Release Preview track was previously on builds in the 23000 series (specifically 23481), but got demoted to the 22000 series, and therefore wouldn't let me have new 23000-series builds.
The consequence was that eventually the signing certificates of lots of components expired on 15 September, notably Task Manager (watching a UAC popup saying that "taskmgr.exe is from an unknown publisher and do I want to run it" was an experience not to be repeated if at all possible) and NTDLL.DLL (which caused VirtualBox to refuse to launch VMs...).
And unfortunately, promoting the machine to the Dev track (which is on the 23000 series) didn't help because the breakage was enough that 23561 wouldn't install.
So I saved all my interesting data on an external disk and did a nuke-and-pave. Sigh.
And I won't be putting the machine back on the Insider program.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
And I won't be putting the machine back on the Insider program.
There's your problem.
You used a real machine. Way back when I played with insider builds, I only did that inside a VM (well, also because I didn't have a spare machine - businesses can be stingy like that)
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@dcon No, my problem was that Microsoft did something monumentally stupid which meant that anyone on the Release Preview track got screwed over.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
Microsoft did something monumentally stupid
could not be reached for comment, because his PC was stuck at a UAC prompt.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
My main PC has been on the Release Preview track of the Windows 11 Insider program
How much does it pay to be Microsoft's Alpha tester?
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@TimeBandit said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
My main PC has been on the Release Preview track of the Windows 11 Insider program
How much does it pay to be Microsoft's Alpha tester?
Apparently not enough money going in the correct direction.
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@TimeBandit said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
How much does it pay to be Microsoft's Alpha tester?
I wouldn't know, because Release Preview is, in effect, late Beta or even RC. And of course, I get to see new stuff sooner. (This line of argument isn't quite as applicable here as it is to MMORPG closed and open betas...)
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@Arantor That, too....
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
I wouldn't know, because Release Preview is, in effect, late Beta or even RC.
We all know that what Microsoft consider release quality is Beta at best
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
So I saved all my interesting data on an external disk
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@TimeBandit said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Windows 11 Insider program stupidity:
I wouldn't know, because Release Preview is, in effect, late Beta or even RC.
We all know that what Microsoft consider release quality is Beta at best
Honestly, every OS is still in early access, but no one has figured that out yet.
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