The old Chinese curse goes “May you live in interesting times.” Sounds innocuous, until you understand that what a reader of history might find interesting after the fact, someone who lived through such experiences might find disturbing or harrowing. In that sense then, I proclaim that Dev Channel Build 22538 gets interesting. Exactly what does this mean?
When Dev Channel Build 22538 Gets Interesting, Look Out!
I downloaded and installed this latest Build on my two test PCs yesterday, and finished up this morning. Everything went well, and finished in a reasonable amount of time. (That means under 30 min for both the X12 Hybrid [11th gen Intel i5/16GB RAM/512GB SSD)]and the X380 Yoga [8th gen Intel i7/16 GB RAM/1TB SSD].)
Things only got interesting when I started running the new OS version. If you shift the Start menu left (Start → Personalization → Taskbar → Taskbar behaviors → Taskbar alignment: Left), the Widget icon turns into a weather icon instead. Some users report getting a “weather bug” and temperature value. Others — including me — get only the weather bug. See the lead-in graphic for an illustration, as central Texas faces possible “wintry mix” today.
I was also in for a surprise the first time I remoted into the X12, using Remote Desktop Connection (.exe) . The Taskbar included only two icons. When I tried to run Task Manager to restart Explorer.exe (which usually fixes such behaviors) nothing was accessible. So I ended the remote session, logged into the X12 locally, and then tried again. Everything worked on a second attempt, thank goodness. Indeed, that was interesting!
Curiosity Prompts X380 Yoga Check
Curiosity led me to do likewise on the X380 Yoga. But it showed no such anomalies. Instead a flag from Windows Security informed me that memory integrity checks (Core isolation) were turned off. I had to restart to set things right, but that seemed to work OK, too. The flag was absent after the restart, and Windows Security offered a clean bill of health.
All I can say about the 22538 Build and Dev Channel builds for Windows 11 in general, is that they work surprisingly well. They’re supposed to have rough edges and not-fully-fleshed-out features and functions. I seldom find interesting things to report when I install and run them. It’s fun when things get interesting — at least, on test PCs where I don’t have to rely on them to get my job done.
Stay tuned: I’ll continue to report items of interest as I encounter them.
