Microsoft releases Windows 10 Redstone 5 Build 17711

It looks as if Microsoft is back on its weekly release schedule for Windows 10 Redstone 5 preview builds. Build 17711, for Insiders on the Fast and Skip Ahead rings, offers a number of improvements and changes.

These include Fluent Design tweaks, the usual raft of Edge additions, and improvements to display settings and the registry editor.

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The Edge improvements this time around include additional themes for learning tools, and line focus which highlights sets of one, three, or five lines to make it easier to read articles. There’s a new consent box for saving autofill data, and the PDF toolbar can now be summoned by hovering your mouse at the top.

The Fluent Design update adds depth in the form of shadows for popup controls. You can see an example of this below.

The display improvements include a new Windows HD Color page under Display Settings which reports your system’s HD Color capabilities and lets you configure compatible features.

Finally, when you type something into Regedit a drop down box will now appear with suggestions to help you complete the next part. Pressing Ctrl+Backspace will now also delete the last word for speedier backing up. Ctrl + Delete deletes the next word.

General changes, improvements, and fixes in this build include

• Fixed the issue that had regressed the time it takes to remotely deploy and debug a UWP application to a local virtual machine or an emulator.
• Fixed an issue that could result in any surface that used reveal (including Start tiles and Settings categories) going totally white.
• Fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing a 0x80080005 error when upgrading to recent flights.
• Fixed an issue where the "You are getting an update" dialog displayed unexpected extra characters.
• Fixed an issue where aborting a shutdown would break input in UWP apps until rebooting.
• Fixed an issue in recent flights where attempting to pin Settings categories to Start would either crash Settings or do nothing.
• Fixed an issue resulting in Ethernet and Wi-Fi Settings unexpectedly missing content in the last flight.
• Fixed a high hitting Settings crash impacting pages with Get Help content, including Touchpad Settings, Accounts Settings, and Family and Other Users Settings pages.
• Fixed an issue that could result in Sign-In Settings being blank sometimes.
• Fixed an issue where advanced keyboard settings might unexpectedly show "some settings are hidden by your org".
• Fixed an issue where creating a system image from backup and restore in control panel would fail on x86 machines.
• Turned off the acrylic background in Task View -- for now the design will return to how it shipped in the previous release, with acrylic cards instead.
• Fixed an issue where after using voice to ask Cortana certain questions you may not be able to ask her a second question with voice.
• Fixed an issue that could result in explorer.exe crashing if certain apps were minimized when switching to tablet mode.
• On the Share tab in File Explorer, updated the Remove access icon to be more modern. Also made some tweaks to the Advanced security icon.
• Fixed an issue that could result in the console forgetting the cursor color on upgrade and it getting set to 0x000000 (black). The fix will prevent future users from hitting this issue, but if you’ve already been impacted by this bug, you’ll need to manually fix the setting in the registry. To do this, open regedit.exe and delete the ‘CursorColor’ entry in ‘Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console’ and any sub-keys, and re-launch your console window.
• Addressed an issue where the audio driver would hang for many Bluetooth speakers and headsets which support the Hands-Free profile.
• Fixed an issue resulting in the Microsoft Edge favorites pane scrolling sideways instead of up and down on mouse wheel in recent flights.
• Fixed a few issues highly impacting Microsoft Edge reliability in the last few flights.
• Fixed an issue resulting in Internet Explorer losing all settings and becoming unpinned from the taskbar with each of the last few flights.
• Fixed an issue resulting in ethernet not working for some Insiders using Broadcom ethernet drivers on older hardware in the last flight.
• Fixed an issue where remoting into a PC running the previous flight could result in just seeing a black window.
• Fixed an issue that could result in certain games hanging when typing into the chat window.
• Fixed an issue from the last flight where text predictions and shapewriting candidates wouldn’t appear in the touch keyboard’s candidate list until backspace is pressed while typing.
• Fixed an issue where when Narrator started you would be presented with a dialog that informed the user of the change to Narrator’s keyboard layout and the dialog might not take focus or speak after Narrator has started.
• Fixed an issue where when you changed Narrator’s default Narrator key to just caps lock the Insert key would continue to function until the caps lock key was used as the Narrator key or if the user restarts Narrator.
• Fixed an issue where if your System > Display > Scaling and layout is not set to 100 percent, some text might appear smaller after reverting "Make text bigger" value back to 0 percent.
• Fixed an issue where Windows Mixed Reality might get stuck after going to sleep and display a persistent error message in Mixed Reality Portal or a "Wake up" button that doesn’t work.

Known issues in this build include:

• Progressing in the work on adding dark theme in File Explorer and the Common File Dialog -- you’ll notice improvements in this build, although there are still a few things left to do. You may see some unexpectedly light colors in these surfaces when in dark mode and/or dark on dark text.
• In certain chases on PCs with multiple monitors, all the windows may appear shifted "up" and the mouse responds to the wrong location. The workaround is use Ctrl + Alt + Del to bring up the task screen and then hit cancel. Repeat as necessary.
• When you upgrade to this build you’ll find that the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc) no longer have an acrylic background.
• Microsoft is working on improving settings for HDR videos, games and apps in a new Windows HD Color page under System > Display. Some things temporarily will not work; notably, some users will not be able to enable/disable HDR display support.
• Applications that use ICC color profiles may encounter errors such as Access Denied. This includes the Color Management control panel, and color profile switching on certain Surface devices.
• When you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues, or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.
• You may find your secondary displays don’t render correctly. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and then cancel and that should resolve it.

Known issues for Narrator

• Microsoft is aware of an issue causing Narrator speech to fade when waking from sleep mode and is working on a fix.
• When the Narrator Quickstart launches, Scan Mode may not reliably be on by default. Try going through the Quickstart with Scan Mode on. To verify that Scan Mode is on, press Caps Lock + Space.
• When using Scan mode you may experience multiple stops for a single control. An example of this is if you have an image that is also a link.
• If the Narrator key is set to just Insert and you attempt to send a Narrator command from a braille display then these commands will not function. As long as the Caps Lock key is a part of the Narrator key mapping then braille functionality will work as designed.
• There is a known issue in automatic dialog reading where the title of the dialog is being spoken more than once.
• The state of a Narrator command such as toggling Scan Mode on and off, volume up and down, voice speed, changing verbosity and context verbosity commands may not be announced when executed.

Known issues for Game bar

• The framerate counter chart sometimes doesn’t show up correctly over known games.
• The CPU chart shows an incorrect percentage of usage in the top left corner.
• Charts in the performance panel don’t update immediately when clicking through tabs.
• The user’s gamerpic doesn’t display correctly, even after signing in.

Photo credit: charnsitr / Shutterstock