Microsoft releases Windows 10 19H1 Build 18317, splits up Search and Cortana

New Windows 10 19H1 builds are coming thick and fast at the moment. With some builds the focus is just on fixing problems and making general improvements, but Insider Preview Build 18317 for Windows Insiders on the Fast ring is notable mainly because Search and Cortana are no longer linked.

Yes, that’s right -- instead of being part of the search bar, Cortana’s button now sits to the right of it.

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This is something that is rolling out to users (some insiders have had the update for a while now) so you may not get it immediately, but it should arrive soon.

Microsoft says: "clicking the search box in the taskbar now launches our experience focused on giving you the best in house search experience and clicking the Cortana icon will launch you straight into our voice-first digital assistant experience."

Other Search and Cortana settings have been split between the two, along with group policies.

Start reliability has been improved in this release, with Microsoft creating a new process, called StartMenuExperienceHost.exe, which is designed to protect Start from problems elsewhere in the OS. Start also no longer suspends, so will launch quicker.

You can now can now drag and drop font files from File Explorer into the Settings > Fonts page to install them, and the Windows Insider Program Settings page has been simplified.

In addition there have been a number of fixes and improvements made to the Windows Console. These include:

• Fixed spurious text artifacts being displayed when running cscope in a Linux VM via ssh
• Fixed GitHub issue 296 where the incorrect mouse button ID was being reported when a mouse button was released, resulting in an "unexpected mouse-drag behavior" regression
• Fixed GitHub Issue 313, enabling colors above index #15 to be set via VT OSC 4
  • Colors <= 99 fixed in this build
  • Colors > 99 fixed in up-coming build
• Corrected sizing issues for Linux alt-buffer apps (e.g. vim, emacs, etc.) resulting in more reliable resizing
• Fixed some issues with Consoles growing in height if scroll-forward is disabled
• Fixed ConPTY, enabling underline VT sequences to now pass correctly, allowing ConPTY-enabled apps (e.g. VSCode’s integrated terminal) to correctly receive and display underlined text
• Made ConPTY flush its output buffer before terminating ensuring apps receive all input and display correct output
• When running Tmux, correctly restore state after Win + D, resulting in Tmux’s last line of text rendering correctly
• Fixed Console to preserve a Console window’s currently colored text when executing Cmd.exe
• If using raster fonts, Console now correctly preserves the user’s font after running .NET Core code (which defaults to UTF-8 codepage 65001)
• Correct how Console scrolls text region, fixing how text is rendered in Linux' `screen`
• Significantly improved performance of ConPTY -- perf now very close to "raw pipe"

General changes, improvements, and fixes in this build include:

• Fixed an issue resulting in File Explorer unexpectedly having a lock on USBs when trying to safely eject them.
• Fixed an issue resulting in frequent bugchecks (GSODs) in the last two flights, citing an error with bindflt.sys.
• Fixed an issue resulting in frequent bugchecks (GSODs) in the last flight, citing error KERNEL_LOCK_ENTRY_LEAKED_ON_THREAD_TERMINATION.
• Fixed an issue resulting in not being able to connect to VMs using Hyper-V console after upgrading to recent flights. This issue also impeded the ability to connect to VMs with Enhanced Sessions enabled.
• Fixed an issue resulting in some full screen games showing a black screen in recent flights even though they worked in windowed mode.
• Fixed an issue resulting in CDP User Service periodically unexpectedly using a high amount of CPU in recent flights.
• Fixed an issue causing text in the Windows Security app to be incorrect or potentially missing altogether.
• Fixed an issue from recent flights where clicking the network button on the sign-in screen didn’t work.
• Fixed an issue resulting in certain devices not being able to wake from hibernation recently. There were two possible symptoms on wake if you were impacted -- one was a black screen, one was a screen that continued to say "hibernating…".
• Fixed an issue resulting in Display Settings crashing in recent builds. If you were impacted, this would have also had the symptom that clicking System or Ease of Access from the main Settings page may crash Settings.
• Fixed an issue with certain touch keyboard languages where pressing AltGr + [any key] on the full layout would dismiss the touch keyboard.
• Fixed an issue where Windows Sandbox wouldn’t launch on PCs with multiple GPUs.
• When Scan Mode is on and Narrator is on a slider, the left and right arrows will decrease and increase the slider. Up and down arrows will continue to navigate to the previous or next paragraph or item. Home and End will move the slider to the beginning or the end.
• The Narrator list of headings command now works as expected in Chrome.
• Improved Narrator support for Microsoft Teams.
• For cursor and pointer, fixed returning to the right mouse pointers when changing back to the original size and colors.
• Fixed an issue where some devices would fail to install an update with error code If you are updating from 18309 or newer this issue will be fixed for this update, if you are updating from a build prior to 18309 it will be fixed for the next update.

Known issues are:

• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will not work on the build and likely cause a bugcheck (GSOD). If you require WSL to work, please pause taking flights until the issue is fixed.
• The Windows Security app may show an unknown status for the Virus & threat protection area, or not refresh properly. This may occur after upgrade, restart, or settings changes.
• Launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bugcheck (GSOD).
• Clicking your account in Cortana Permissions doesn’t bringing up the UI to sign out from Cortana (if you were already signed in) for some users in this build.
• Creative X-Fi sound cards are not functioning properly.
• When attempting to update this build some S Mode devices will download and restart but fail the update.
• Night light functionality is impacted by a bug in this build.
• When you open Action Center the quick actions section may be missing.
• Windows feature update may fail but show up as a successful update in Windows Update history page. If this happens you will see more than one successful install for the same update in the history page.
• When performing Reset this PC and selecting Keep my files on a device that has Reserved Storage enabled the user will need to initiate an extra reboot to ensure Reserved Storage is working again properly.
• There is an issue impacting a small number of users enrolled in Microsoft Intune where they may not receive policies. Those policies are not applied and left in a "pending" state on the server. The workaround is to go to Settings/Accounts/Access work or school and "Disconnect" your Azure AD account and then re-enroll.
• Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly.
• Update Orchestrator Service stops working periodically. A fix will be included in an upcoming build. As a result of this issue, you may see an error on Windows Update Settings saying that the update failed to restart. If you see this, restarting using the power menu in Start ("Update and restart") should work, although there’s a chance that it won’t.
• Closing the lid to a laptop and re-opening can cause icons in the task bar to appear blank. To fix this open task manager and restart explorer.exe or reboot.
• If you download a theme from Microsoft Store, it won’t appear in Themes Settings.