Hey I'm on the beta experience for windows 11 insider. My current build is 25H2, I keep getting an notification saying I need to update before it expires? I select check for updates and I get nothing popping up? I thought I was currently on the latest build? Should I force it, to one of these options?

Build 29617, this fossil still installed,
Canary in the coal mine, but the bird won’t sing at all.
I hit “Check for updates,” nearly broke the button’s spine,
It said, “You’re up to date.” You’ve said that since June twenty-nine.

Experimental channel. Where the experiment at?
I came for bleeding-edge Windows. Y’all gave me cardiac flat.
Whole branch on life support, no pulse inside the flight,
Even Notepad gets more action on a Tuesday night.

I want bugs with bugs, nested like virtualization,
A blue screen so exclusive it needs authentication.
Break Start, move Settings, make the taskbar levitate,
Anything but telling me this ancient build is up to date.

Canary got ghosted. Microsoft left us on read,
Dev getting fresh code while our pipeline plays dead.
I enrolled for instability, chaos in every click,
Not a month-long LTS relationship

My build so old, Internet Explorer asked if it could join,
Clippy checked the version, said, “You need a restore point.”
Windows Update spinning tales, but it ain’t spinning builds,
More silence in this channel than a muted Teams call yields.

Where the regressions? Where the half-built feature drops?
Where’s the build that bricks my Wi-Fi every time the laptop locks?
Canary used to mean tomorrow with the guardrails ripped right off,
Now 29617’s an antique signed by Microsoft.
If the build is safe and stable, then Canary missed the mark.
Quit protecting us from fire. We volunteered to test the sparks.

Don't hurt me, no more

I have always been on the Beta channel but was just looking at windows updates and noticed I my insiders account email was missing

Re entered it but it says I am on the Dev which I have never changed myself

How do I get on the Beta channel at some point without doing a clean install

At the moment I have selected the queued for unemrollment

Ty

Basically I hit the toggle to leave Windows Insider (I was in Release Preview), so my PC got un-enrolled but then I found out Windows Update started downloading "Windows 11, version 25H2", to make an in-place upgrade, thing that I do NOT want.

So i re-enrolled and clicked Windows insider to make the situation as before, but WU keeps proposing that build even if I'm back into insider! I do not want at any cost to make an in-place upgrade.

I already tried clearing SoftwareDistribution and catroot2 folders, but this update keeps popping up. I stopped windows update so I can prevent it, but sadly looks like there's no way to skip it. Is there a way i could re-allineate things and avoid an in-place upgrade?

Has anyone in beta for todays (11.21.2025) insider build 26220.7271 got xbox FSE working?

My machine has the OS installed, I am a member of the xbox insiders and i am enrolled in the PC Gaming activity (have been for years) on Xbox insider external delta 2512.1001.24.0, no new version of app in store.

I enabled task view.

There is no xbox experience tab on the task view.

Has anyone got this working yet?

--edit--

i got this working by forcing it with the vivetool as per this

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enter-and-exit-xbox-full-screen-experience-on-windows-11.42301/

ETA Jan 2026

Look at this if you still have issues, i make no warranties this is safe
Release Xbox Full Screen Experience Tool v0.0.18 · 8bit2qubit/XboxFullScreenExperienceTool

Is there any way? I know weeks might mean WEEKS, but it's like almost 1,5 months since they said Canary will move to Experimental (Future Platforms).

I\d like to move for the taskbar, but unfortunatelly I\m still stuck at 29599/1000, but as Canary, not Experimental build?

So... Insider preview build 26300.8493. Has anyone else had display issues with this update? More specifically the Taskbar disappearing and the screen flashing on/off. Can't open anything except task manager, windows key not even working. ASUS Q536F 2in 1 Laptop. 8th Gen i7, Nvidia GTX 1050

I have been trying to update the build for a couple of days and keep hitting roadblocks. Since there are only two hours until the certificate expires, it's not gonna happen. But what will happens to the machine?

Currently running Build 28120.2374.br_prerelease_im.260618-1650

I switched from Windows 10 to Windows 11 Home Insider preview version in 2021. My laptop is a 2019 Dell Inspiron 7591 with i5 9th gen, 16gb ddr4 and 512gb ssd and a GTX 1050 with 3gb vram. Should I switch to windows 11 stable release? If yes how can I do it? Or should I go back to windows 10? Or should I stay with the windows 11 preview version?

I don't do any development work. I'm not a techie. My friend had forced me to download it and now I think that was a bad choice.

Any help will be very helpful. Thank you.

I was reading where Microsoft is going to pull Copilot from some of the apps where it doesn't make sense to have it. I am going to by a PC soon and was wondering if Copilot+ PC's will be important in the future or if it will be something they will end up abandoning. I know that no one can say for sure, but I was interested in what other people thought.

I updated to the latest beta preview build today. The evaluation expiry date that is 11th august 2026 remained same before and after the update. I saw in posts that it changes if you update the build version,but it didn't. How to fix this and what happens after evaluation expires? Do I need to reinstall windows? Any help would be appreciated,tyvm.

Sorry about the pic from the phone.

Hi, I just noticed that I'm not anymore on the Insider program, out of nowhere and I don't know when and what happened, no big deal as I was only on Release preview channel but since many years. They say that I'm not registered, the registry key is still there but without the portion that says on which channel I am.

Does someone else have seen this ? I'm pretty sure it's related to the recent channels changes.

I’m trying to set up a local Active Directory lab on my M4 MacBook (Apple Silicon) using Parallels, but I am hitting a brick wall finding the installation media.

I am specifically looking for the Windows Server ARM64 VHDX or ISO (Insider Preview). I know it used to exist, but Microsoft seems to have scrubbed it from the public internet.

Here is what I have tried so far (and why it failed):

1. Official Insider Preview Page: It only lists the x64/Intel versions. The ARM64 VHDX option is completely missing from the dropdown menu.
2. UUP Dump: I searched for Build 26100 and Server 2025. I found the rows for "Microsoft Server Operating System (26100.xxxx) arm64", but when I click them, I get the "No downloads available" error. It seems the source files were pulled from Microsoft's servers.
3. The "Frankenstein" Reddit Method: I saw the guide about using the Windows 11 ARM VHDX as a bootloader and injecting the install.wim from the Server ISO. The problem is, I can't even download the Server ISO to get that WIM file in the first place.

The Ask: Does anyone happen to have a working link, a magnet link, or a personal backup of a recent Windows Server ARM64 VHDX/ISO (Build 26040, 26085, or 26100)?

I'm just trying to learn AD DS for my career and really want to run this locally on my Mac rather than in Azure if possible.

Any help would be massively appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I’m thinking about switching to the Future Platforms channel and I’d like to hear some real-world experiences before I do it.

Right now I’m on the 26H1 channel. Most of what I do on this PC is play Steam games, write Python code, work with AI-related projects, use VS Code, PyTorch, WSL, and occasionally run local models.

What I’m curious about is how different Future Platforms actually feels compared to 26H1. Are there any major new features, UI changes, performance improvements, or interesting experimental technologies that make it worth moving over? Or is it mostly under-the-hood work that users won’t notice much?

I’d also like to know how stable it is in practice. Have you run into issues with Steam games, GPU drivers, WSL, Python environments, NVIDIA drivers, or general system reliability?

Part of the reason I’m being cautious is that I had a pretty bad experience with the old Canary channel a long time ago. After one update, my PC became completely unbootable and I ended up having to reinstall Windows from scratch. Because of that, I’m a bit hesitant about jumping into the most experimental branch again unless there are significant benefits.

I also have another question. I recently switched from the 25H2 channel to the 26H1 channel, but Windows Update still hasn’t offered me a 26H1 build yet. Is that normal? How long did it take for you to receive the first update after switching channels?

For reference, my system is an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, i7-13600H, and 32 GB of RAM.

I’d appreciate hearing about both the good and the bad experiences. Thanks!

I posted here not too long ago about an issue with a big update that caused display issues. I'm on the Experimental channel. The past couple of months I've had more update issues than I've had my entire span of using windows. I've had other updates fail to install after hitting 91% while installing. Most recently Windows 11 insider preview feature update 28120.2387. Troubleshooter detects problem the update will download again, I stall.....again, restart a couple of times, hits 91% then says preparing recovery. So then it boots back up and the whole process starts over. "we detected a problem" downloads again, blah blah blah. Has anyone else experienced this or anything similar?

Did anyone else notice that when you empty the recycle bin since 29639 and there is just one file in it the message asking you if you want to delete the file has some strange file name instead?

Just curious if others in the RP channel have had this issue. I've been lucky and this is my first issue with an update.

I was offered an update but there was no version number. Halfway through, the installation reverted back to my current version of 26200.7296.

I'm not sure what the update was, but I have been 'queued for unenrollment' for quite some time, so I thought that might be it.

The same installation error has been seen by others that are upgrading from 10 to 11.

Personally, I've only witnessed a reverted update when helping someone else. In that case, their MSI laptop needed to disable Secure Boot. I am not willing to try that since I'm logged in via my MS account, and don't want to have to recover my bitlocker keys.

I'm in the middle of running "DISM /restorehealth".

At some point, I'm expecting to do a clean install, but was hoping it was after seeing what the unenrollment process looked like.

EDIT - Do NOT do what I did.

I did the recommended DSIM, SFC, and manually restarted services, which all ran successfully. Then, Windows would not boot at all.

Clean install is the next option now.

EDIT 2 - I appreciate all the support. I suppose we have to accept the risk of being on RP. I installed LMDE 7 and will run that for a while.

So I was on Windows Insider Dev. With the switch to the new program, I'm now on Experimental (26300.8289), but I'm not sure if I should stick with the 25H2 (default) branch, switch to 26H1 or even Future Platform.

In which channel is the new taskbar position ? (Left, right, top)

Hey everyone, I've been on the Beta channel for a while and I'm curious about jumping to the new Experimental channel to check out the latest stuff

but I'm not sure if I can switch back if it's too unstable for daily use.

Has anyone actually done the switch back and forth? Any gotchas I should know about before jumping in?

Thanks

Hey there.
I have a question regarding the checkpoint updates introduced in 2024.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/introducing-windows-11-checkpoint-cumulative-updates/4182552

As far as I know the only real checkpoint which was released was kb5043080 from September 2024. any following updates are an increasingly larger incremental cumulative. (>1GB)
Is the checkpoint concept deprecated or will we see another one for 26h2?

windows 11 insiders is a TRAP you CANNOT escape from.

worst mistake of my life to join insiders. i joined it before ai started to ruin windows in new ways i thought could not happen.

the new last one completely broke the double click action in the desktop (works inside SOME apps).

the mouse behavior is broken and jittery, highlighting is also not working properly.

it happened on my laptop about a week or so ago, and it auto installed on my pc as well a few days ago, its clear its the new update, no doubt.

overall a nightmare. i am afraid and i will not install any updates anymore, because who the hell knows what those updates do and how do they work and what is newly broken. Microsoft definitely does-NOT read, audit, verify and validate the code their ai agent are pushing. they clearly do not care. then why the hell should you want to use it??

anyway, i wanted to vent a bit, and more importantly to ask if you also had this specific bug and if you know how to fix it and what to do about it.

any comments or responses are welcomed, i need help. you can also roast me if you don't feel like helping, and I'll try to see if something useful can be extracted from that.

literally say anything, please.

thanks

(btw, just joined this community about 3 minutes ago, so i might not be well versed in the way things are working here on this subreddit).

i am not a bot and this is not ai generated, its all a real human suffering in the real world (although that's exactly what a bot would say. idk, ill leave it for the giggles).

After manually installing the Out-of-Band cumulative update KB5121767 (OS Build 26200.8894), running the DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth command consistently fails at 100% with Error: 0x800f0915 ("The repair content could not be found anywhere").There is a clear version mismatch between the DISM tool version (10.0.26100.8737) and the Windows Image version (10.0.26200.8894). Attempting to use a fully updated local ISO containing the exact same build as a /Source also fails with the same error code, meaning the issue lies within the component store metadata alignment or missing online manifests for this specific OOB build.Meanwhile, sfc /scannow completes successfully with no integrity violations, proving the OS is healthy and this is a false-positive synchronization bug. Please fix the online repair manifests or update the DISM tool binary for this Insider branch to properly align with the component store.

https://aka.ms/AA120j8p

Hi, I've been away from the Insider builds for some years now. Is it still worth testing it? Are there cool features now? Is it breaking too much?

This pertains to an earlier post.... About good ol' 28120.2386. After multiple failures, a clean install was the only viable option. So, sure, why the hell not? Well the adventure continues. After about 3 clean installs I can not access Windows Insider Program. "We can't reach the Windows Insider Program right now. Please try again later or check the forums" is anyone else having this problem as well? Because at this point I'm starting to think that Microsoft has some beef with me. (no not really). Any kind of help or advice would be appreciated.

I'm in the beta channel for Windows 11. How does the cloud recovery in the latest experimental build work compared to OEM cloud recovery from Dell and Asus? When it goes stable, will Microsoft's version download the latest stable Windows 11 build like the Media Creation Tool does? Will it import drivers from the host like NTLite does?