Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with more Edge extensions and Ubuntu 16.04

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs and phones. This build adds new Edge extensions, authentication changes for NAS devices and home file servers, and updates to the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Windows 10 is a service. As we wrote in our deep dive on how Microsoft is still building Windows 10, this means Windows Insiders are getting new builds even though the operating system launched in July 2015. The most recent significant update is the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, released last month.

Microsoft is asking Windows Insiders for help testing Edge extensions. Turn Off the Lights gives a more comfortable video experience, Tampermonkey is a userscript manager, and Microsoft Personal Shopping Assistant collects your browsed products and lets you get price alerts for saved products.

In this build, shared devices on your home network may no longer be available in your home network folder and mapped network drives may not be available. This is by design for security reasons — just change your network to “private” or “enterprise” and you’ll be good to go.

Lastly, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will now install Ubuntu version 16.04 (Xenial) instead of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty). This change will only apply to Insiders installing new instances (lxrun.exe /install or first run of bash.exe) — existing instances with Trusty will not be upgraded automatically. You can manually upgrade your Trusty image to Xenial using the do-release-upgrade command.

The desktop build includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixed the issue causing Narrator to continually speak the progress of a song, e.g. update with the current time of the progress bar every second if you navigate to the progress bar while a song is playing in Groove Music.
• Fixed the issue where using the tab key to navigate the Settings app wouldn’t work.
• Fixed an issue resulting in Explorer.exe frequently crashing for some Insiders, particularly for those with multiple network switches.

Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number for PCs from 14931 (made available to testers on September 21) to build 14936.

This build has three known issues:

• Optional components may not work after upgrading to this build. To get it working again, go to “Turn Windows features on or off”, scroll down and check the right optional component and click ok. After a reboot, the optional component will be enabled again.
• Tencent apps and games will cause your PC to bugcheck (bluescreen).
• Running sfc /scannow in an elevated command prompt will fail at 20% with the error “could not perform the requested operation.”

If you’re OK with the above known issues and want to get build 14936 now, head to PC Settings, select “Update and recovery,” then “Preview builds,” and then click the “Check Now” button.

The corresponding Windows 10 Mobile build also includes a bunch of improvements and fixes, but Microsoft has yet to announce new devices for the platform.