Windows 10 Build 14951 - Some Major Pain for Mobile Insiders
On Oct 19, MS released Windows 10 Redstone 2 branch build 14951 to Insiders for both PC and Mobile.
On the PC side - The build continues the expansion of Ink capabilities via new features like Ink support for both Photos and Camera that allow markup of images and a Protractor and Stencils.
Additionally the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) was updated to support the 16.04 Ubuntu (Xenial) release and the ability to launch Windows apps from WSL was also included.
Finally there were about a dozen or so published fixes.
The build installed with no issues on all my test PCs.
Mobile was a very different story however and ended up causing quite a bit of pain.
It started with getting the update itself. When I first ran Phone Update, the new build displayed, but showed a weird message that stated that I needed to plug in or click on download. With either method, the download started by never progressed beyond 0% - even though WiFi was showing a lot of traffic.
Initially I figured okay - maybe it's a little slow and let it stand overnight. Next morning it was still @ 0% - so I started checking Windows Feedback Hub (WFH).
The WFH was loaded with folks experiencing the same thing and it was effectively across every platform from Lumia 535's through to the latest HP Elite X3. The problem was that once you started the update and it "stuck" at 0% downloaded, there was no way to reset the Phone update or force a new check for updates.
By Thursday evening, there was a MS Community thread up on the subject and the Phone team acknowledged the issue and was working on a fix.
MS then published several options for forcing the failed download to clear and publishing a new one.
What they described a the Fast method involved manually setting the date forward 7 days, checking for updates, that would force a time out on Phone Update and then resetting back and re-running the update.
I tried that method and while it did clear the old failing download and showed me a new one, the download itself would fail with an 0x80242006 error and any reboots or attempts to repeat the fast method would fail.
The Fast method also exposed a pretty serious bug in the Windows Calendar app. Once the date was set forward, the app would show the new date, but when you set it back - it stayed at the forwarded date - even after a reboot.
So I ended up trying the what MS called the Medium Effort fix. This involved the dreaded hard reset of my phone. As I've mentioned many times, MS has done a terrible job with WM10 in terms of truly clearing apps / settings from legacy devices.
So a hard reset suddenly means that while you do get a reset WM10 build (in my case 14946) - you also end up with this portfolio of legacy apps that have nothing to do with Windows 10. And it doesn't matter if you either try and Restore from a backup for not. So then you end up spending hours cleaning up all the crap and waiting for store updates, etc.
The good new was - the hard reset did allow me to download and install 14951.
The bad news is that it took the better part of 5 hrs to go through the the various methods, resets, cleanup, updates, etc. I didn't finish getting the phone completely back to "normal" until this morning, so nearly 2 days later.
So a couple of thoughts here. While sure this is all beta testing, this kind of glitch is uncalled for considering Windows 10 Mobile is well over a year old with dozens of builds deployed.
Second, while over the air (OTA) updates are the current standard for deployment, to be honest it's slow and not always reliable. As a Windows Phone enthusiast who has been flashing phones since 2003, having an image/USB tool is much more effective. In the past - you would download an image, connect the phone via USB and run a flashing tool and bang in 10 minutes you had that new build.
The goal here is to test builds, not always the OTA update system.
And while MS does have the Windows Device Recovery Tool (WDRT), MS does NOT support loading test builds this way, which is a mistake in my opinion.
As I have mentioned in the past posts, the last time I tried to use the WDRT it didn't even show me the original WP 8.1 build for my device. So at this point there is NO return - ever.
Bottom line is this - MS released build 14951 for PC and Mobile. The update provided some new Ink feature for devices that support Ink. But they created a large amount of pain for Mobile users with a failed distribution. While this seems to happen once or twice in a branch cycle, MS really makes it painful for Insiders to recover and they need to address that.
On the PC side - The build continues the expansion of Ink capabilities via new features like Ink support for both Photos and Camera that allow markup of images and a Protractor and Stencils.
Additionally the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) was updated to support the 16.04 Ubuntu (Xenial) release and the ability to launch Windows apps from WSL was also included.
Finally there were about a dozen or so published fixes.
The build installed with no issues on all my test PCs.
Mobile was a very different story however and ended up causing quite a bit of pain.
It started with getting the update itself. When I first ran Phone Update, the new build displayed, but showed a weird message that stated that I needed to plug in or click on download. With either method, the download started by never progressed beyond 0% - even though WiFi was showing a lot of traffic.
Initially I figured okay - maybe it's a little slow and let it stand overnight. Next morning it was still @ 0% - so I started checking Windows Feedback Hub (WFH).
The WFH was loaded with folks experiencing the same thing and it was effectively across every platform from Lumia 535's through to the latest HP Elite X3. The problem was that once you started the update and it "stuck" at 0% downloaded, there was no way to reset the Phone update or force a new check for updates.
By Thursday evening, there was a MS Community thread up on the subject and the Phone team acknowledged the issue and was working on a fix.
MS then published several options for forcing the failed download to clear and publishing a new one.
What they described a the Fast method involved manually setting the date forward 7 days, checking for updates, that would force a time out on Phone Update and then resetting back and re-running the update.
I tried that method and while it did clear the old failing download and showed me a new one, the download itself would fail with an 0x80242006 error and any reboots or attempts to repeat the fast method would fail.
The Fast method also exposed a pretty serious bug in the Windows Calendar app. Once the date was set forward, the app would show the new date, but when you set it back - it stayed at the forwarded date - even after a reboot.
So I ended up trying the what MS called the Medium Effort fix. This involved the dreaded hard reset of my phone. As I've mentioned many times, MS has done a terrible job with WM10 in terms of truly clearing apps / settings from legacy devices.
So a hard reset suddenly means that while you do get a reset WM10 build (in my case 14946) - you also end up with this portfolio of legacy apps that have nothing to do with Windows 10. And it doesn't matter if you either try and Restore from a backup for not. So then you end up spending hours cleaning up all the crap and waiting for store updates, etc.
The good new was - the hard reset did allow me to download and install 14951.
The bad news is that it took the better part of 5 hrs to go through the the various methods, resets, cleanup, updates, etc. I didn't finish getting the phone completely back to "normal" until this morning, so nearly 2 days later.
So a couple of thoughts here. While sure this is all beta testing, this kind of glitch is uncalled for considering Windows 10 Mobile is well over a year old with dozens of builds deployed.
Second, while over the air (OTA) updates are the current standard for deployment, to be honest it's slow and not always reliable. As a Windows Phone enthusiast who has been flashing phones since 2003, having an image/USB tool is much more effective. In the past - you would download an image, connect the phone via USB and run a flashing tool and bang in 10 minutes you had that new build.
The goal here is to test builds, not always the OTA update system.
And while MS does have the Windows Device Recovery Tool (WDRT), MS does NOT support loading test builds this way, which is a mistake in my opinion.
As I have mentioned in the past posts, the last time I tried to use the WDRT it didn't even show me the original WP 8.1 build for my device. So at this point there is NO return - ever.
Bottom line is this - MS released build 14951 for PC and Mobile. The update provided some new Ink feature for devices that support Ink. But they created a large amount of pain for Mobile users with a failed distribution. While this seems to happen once or twice in a branch cycle, MS really makes it painful for Insiders to recover and they need to address that.
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