Microsoft has a blog post about what is new for IT pros in the latest release of Windows 10, version 1803. The version is officially released for end users and enterprises via the regular channels and MSDN.

For those that are deploying Windows 10 or that already have and are looking at the upcoming update, the post has some good information to start your research on the latest features included. Upcoming on May 22nd is a 1 hour webinar and a 24 hour AMA (Ask Me Anything) session for Microsoft to answer any questions you may have about the new release.

On Tuesday, May 22^nd, from 10:00-11:00 a.m. Pacific Time (PT), Pieter and Nathan will walk you through the latest features for configuring, deploying, and managing Windows 10 devices, as well as the security capabilities that can help you protect your data and devices end-to-end. There’s a lot to cover in just one hour so, instead of our usual live Q&A at the end, we’ll be hosting a 24-hour Windows 10 IT Pro Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) event on Tech Community that will start immediately following the conclusion of the live webcast and end at 11:00 a.m. PT the following day, May 23^rd.

Today, a new build for both fast ring and skip ahead users – Build 17661 has been released. Bringing in some new features, fixes, and a few new issues, it is the start for Red Stone 5 builds for the Fast Ring (Skip Ahead have been receiving them for a while). As usual, check out the Known Issues before updating, just in case there is a show stopper in there!

Known issues

• Certain notifications from Action Center may cause regular Explorer.exe crashes. We’re working to get this fixed in the next flight.

• VPN may not be working after updating to this build. To get VPN working again, delete the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Network\Connections\pbk* directories. Check if the VPN profile you need shows up already and if not, reinstall the appropriate VPN client app you need.

• After updating to this build and installing the latest app updates from the Microsoft Store, when you log in to additional user accounts on the PC there may be missing apps. You can run the following PowerShell script when logged in to users with missing apps on your PC to fix the issue: Get-AppXPackage *WindowsStore* -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

• On resuming from sleep, the desktop may be momentarily visible before the Lock screen displays as expected.

• When Movies & TV user denies access to its videos library (through the “Let Movies & TV access your videos library?” popup window or through Windows privacy settings), Movies & TV crashes when the user navigates to the “Personal” tab.

• We’re aware of an issue that causes Narrator to read extra text when invoking Alt + Tab, and we’re working on a fix.

• If you complete the setup for a Windows Mixed Reality headset on this build, the headset will remain black until it is unplugged and reconnected to the PC.

With the latest release of Windows 10 version 1803, Microsoft has also released the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for the build. For those administrators wanting to manage Windows Server remotely, be sure to grab this latest build.

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 includes Server Manager, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins, consoles, Windows PowerShell cmdlets and providers, and command-line tools for managing roles and features that run on Windows Server.

Microsoft has announced the newest version of it’s server platform – Server 2019, which will be available the latter half of 2018. There is a preview build available via the Insider program (sign up if you haven’t already, and try it out on test hardware or VM!).

Windows Server 2019 is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2016 – which continues to see great momentum in customer adoption. Windows Server 2016 is the fastest adopted version of Windows Server, ever! We’ve been busy since its launch at Ignite 2016 drawing insights from your feedback and product telemetry to make this release even better.

We also spent a lot of time with customers to understand the future challenges and where the industry is going. Four themes were consistent – Hybrid, Security, Application Platform, and Hyper-converged infrastructure. We bring numerous innovations on these four themes in Windows Server 2019.

A new build for Windows 10 Fast Ring insiders – build 17127 has been released. Again, another build with a few improvements, but nothing mind blowing being added as ‘new’. No new known issues as we get closer to the final release of this version.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

• We fixed an issue where if you had your phone linked to your PC prior to upgrading, you’ll find it has become unlinked after upgrading.
• We fixed an issue that could result in Microsoft Edge crashing when turning off certain extensions.
• We fixed an issue where Narrator would crash when using scan mode to read dialogs in Microsoft Edge.
• We fixed an issue resulting in the page up and page down keys not working when using Microsoft Edge in Reading View.
• We fixed an issue resulting in focus being lost after using WIN+A to close the Action Center.
• We fixed an issue where if you switched your formatting to Japanese without having the Japanese language in your language list, newly installed apps wouldn’t appear in Start.

Known issues

• There are currently no known issues for this flight however if any issues are discovered based off Insider feedback, we’ll add them here.

Michael Niehaus has a new blog post up that goes over a sensitive topic (and sometimes confusing) for many. When you install Windows 10, a set of applications are installed from the Windows Store. However, those apps are different based on a few things – the edition of Windows you are running and/or the type of account that you are using to log into the installation, and the region of the world that you are in.

So a quick summary: You’ll get games on Windows 10 Pro 1709 only when using local or MSA accounts; you’ll lever get games for AD or AAD users, or for anyone on Windows 10 Enterprise.

Also note that Windows 10 Pro for Workstations will soon have the same behavior as Windows 10 Enterprise, as described in the Windows Insider blog:

Productivity focused out of box applications: In the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, the out of box experience for Windows 10 Pro for Workstations draws from the Pro edition of Windows 10. One area where this is noticeable is the suite of applications installed out of the box visible as tiles in the start menu. In the next release for Windows, you will see for Windows 10 Pro for Workstations productivity and enterprise focused applications in place of consumer applications and games. This was one of the top feedback shared with us by our partners and users and we’re delivering this in our next update.

Also note that on Windows 10 Enterprise, you can turn off the installation of apps from the store altogether by configuring the “Turn off Microsoft consumer features” GPO or the equivalent MDM policy.

For those in the Windows 10 Fast Ring Insider group, build 17123 has been released. Of course, this won’t last long as the builds are coming much faster these days leading up to the final release of this version.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

• We fixed an issue from the last flight on PCs with the Dolby Access app installed and expired Dolby Atmos license, where the Windows Audio service (audiosrv) would crash with a stack overflow exception and the PC won’t have sound.
• We fixed an issue resulting in a bug check with the error message SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR in recent flights.
• As of Build 17063, a change was made that may have caused some older drivers to not load properly. This may have caused update failures or bugchecks (GSODs) shortly after the PC was rebooted. This build includes fixes for this that should prevent these update failures and bugchecks from occurring.
• Thanks everyone who’s shared feedback about our Embedded Handwriting Panel so far – we’re making a change such that if you clean install, reset your PC, or upgrade straight to this build from the Fall Creators Update this experience will be turned off by default. The setting will remain on for Insiders who have upgraded from previous builds where it was enabled, and can be turned on by anyone with a pen capable device via the “Write directly into text field” option under Pen & Windows Ink Settings.

Known issues

• If you had your phone linked to your PC prior to upgrading, you’ll find it has become unlinked after upgrading. You can relink your phone from Settings > Phone.

For some Windows Insiders, they may see some new privacy settings screens when installing the most recent build. There are several different versions. Microsoft seems to be more transparent with it’s use and ability to change some privacy settings. Of course, there is no “All off” when it comes to privacy in an OS like Windows 10, which does use a lot of data from online sources.

For our Windows Insiders who install today’s build, they’ll be able to experience this new set up for the first time. Not everyone will experience the same setup, however. For example, some will review their settings through a single screen set up where selections such as ‘Find My Device’ and’ Inking & typing’ are independent selections.

Build 17115 for Fast Ring Insiders on Windows 10 has been released. A lot of great fixes, but what I find exciting this round is the Known Issues part of the notes:

Known issues  

• There are currently no known issues for this flight however if any issues are discovered based off Insider feedback, we’ll add them here.

This is great news as we head into the last part before it is finally released to everyone! Great work Windows Insider team and to all the Windows Insiders! As usual, the team isn’t resting on their laurels, they are continuing to kick butt and work on this release as well as the next release!

For those of you that are interested in information security, Kali Linux is now available in the Windows Store as part of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. While this isn’t as great as a native Kali installation, it still brings some great tools to Windows. I know this might interest some people, as well as students learning about Kali, but most infosec professionals will most likely stick with the native installation. This is still pretty cool and I will definitely be playing with it and comparing it to the dedicated install of Kali on a separate machine.

While running Kali on Windows has a few drawbacks to running it natively (such as the lack of raw socket support), it does bring in some very interesting possibilities, such as extending your security toolkit to include a whole bunch of command line tools that are present in Kali. While not officially supported by WSL yet, we’ve tested running a desktop manager such as XFCE on WSL’d Kali…and it seems to work quite well. We will update our blog with more news and updates regarding the development of this app as it’s released.