Microsoft Windows 10 Preview Build 14251: A New Development Cycle Begins.

True to Microsoft Corporate VP of Engineering Gabe Aul’s words, Insider builds are picking up the pace, as a new development cycle has begun, with Preview Build 14251. According to Aul’s announcement on the official Windows Blog, the latest Build version number does not follow the pattern just ended with Build 11102, due to the merge of two different code bases, created by different teams, during the early development of Windows 10. This has changed as the previous teams have merged into one, towards the next big update.

Bug fixes

Gamers rejoice, as Build 14251 brings solace to Insiders, looking forward to a fix to the issue that’s been affecting major game titles, including Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, and Metal Gear Solid V. The bug, acknowledged by Microsoft early on, has caused many major titles to crash, when switching resolution, forcing gamers to stick to a windowed/windowed borderless state which, while preventing crashes, does have an effect on framerate, aside from the annoying desktop background glaring around the gamer’s field of view, liable to occur on displays with a native resolution higher than the games.

Users of third party, and native assistive applications, such as Narrator, and Magnifier, will no longer experience crashes with this build.

Another issue has also been fixed, concerning File Explorer crashing with DPI settings higher than 175%.

Let’s not forget the nature of these builds

Choosing to be an Insider is a lot like choosing to be part of the Windows team, outside of the realm of regular consumers. This means, that while most builds so far have been stable and painless, there are occasional ones that will have us scratch our heads from time to time, as it’s been true with build 11102, much to the despair of gamers, and build 11082, where the Files transfer dialog box disappeared altogether, forcing Insiders to use Xcopy in the console to be able to copy or move files and folders around.

With that said, this build comes with a few minor annoyances Insiders should be aware of. The first of which is the WSClient.dll pop up error, which , in most cases, occurs upon logging in. This bug was originally reported in Build 11102, and can be fixed by typing the following line into the Command Prompt:

schtasks /delete /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\WS\WSRefreshBannedAppsListTask” /F

As a result of a change in the way Windows 10 handles memory, some apps may crash, or cause errors. Rebooting the PC is the only suggested workaround for this type of issues.

Finally, Developer Tools in Microsoft Edge, normally triggered by pressing F12 on the keyboard, will be unavailable, until the next Preview Build.