The Windows 10 April Update (1803): The Littlest Big Update
by Brett Howse on May 25, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
Nearby Share
One feature that should be very useful to certain people is Nearby Share. This lets you quickly and easily share files between people from PC to PC, without having to send an email or use a messaging app as the transfer tool. Nearby Share works over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and will use Wi-Fi as the preference. In an office, this was something done via a USB drive most recently, but with wireless and Bluetooth in all modern laptops, it makes sense to leverage that to avoid a step.
It should be very useful in certain situations, and isn’t tied to an account so you can send to any nearby device. The receiver will have the option of accepting the file. It’s not on by default, but can be toggled on when needed. It’s definitely something you’d not want to leave on.
Easy Bluetooth
Windows 10 now supports a simpler Bluetooth pairing process for some devices which lets you pair devices with a single click. You’ll get a pop-up notification asking if you want to pair a device, and if you say yes, it’s all setup. Devices have to support this though, and ones that require PINs are not going to work with a single click setup.
Windows 10 S Mode
Windows 10 S launched with the Surface Laptop as its first device to offer the constrained version of Windows 10 that restricts users to only running apps from the Store. The idea was to keep people from harming themselves, and to keep performance levels where they should be, by not allowing people to just install whatever they want, and to keep apps in packages that allow for easy removal and less items running at startup. This is pretty much how any modern smartphone works of course, but the downside to it on Windows 10 was that the Microsoft Store is not known as one of the key selling features, so uptake and usuage of Windows 10 S had to be pretty small. With the April Update, this is replaced by Windows 10 in S Mode, which is just a setting that can be enabled on any PC to make it like Window 10 S was. It'll still likely never get used, but it's a much better solution than another version of the OS just for this purpose. There's reasons you'd want this of course - education being a great example - but the average consumer is choosing Windows for the legacy application support, so this new model is definitely the better way to handle it.
The drawback is that S Mode is a one-way setting at the moment. A machine can be set in S mode when imaged using an unattended.xml file and dism, but if it's set back to regular Windows 10, there's not a way to switch back and forth.
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Dorkaman - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link
I've had something similar too. WinAmp music pkayback would stutter/repeat the last second after a while. I think this is because I had AIDA64 open monitoring temperatures. I have reported the problem to Microsoft via the feedback hub so let us see what hapoens.juancarcus - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link
my computer crashed complete after the last update. The update took hours and after that this message popped up "sihost.exe.system warning". I had to downgrade my system and go back to the original windows 7 key. Of course, I had to pay for it. Thanks microsoft
BucksterMcgee - Sunday, May 27, 2018 - link
Hmm, seeing the RAID-0 caught my attention because the last few "cumulative" updates just before they released RS4 (aka the 1803 update) caused issued with my RAID based systems. I've also spoken to Peter Bright from ARS who also started having RAID issues around that time. So it might all be related.bananaforscale - Sunday, May 27, 2018 - link
2x NVMe in RAID0 as a boot drive is... unusual. Silly would be another word. *Why?*Minttunator - Sunday, May 27, 2018 - link
Yeah, this update bricked my home PC, my work PC and the home PC of one of my friends - luckily it was possible to roll back to a restore point and get the systems back online but I'm turning off updating for good. It's ridiculous that something this broken was released unto the masses.kmmatney - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - link
It went badly for one of my systems as well - specifically the computer had an older HD6850 video card that worked fine before the update. AMD doesn't support the card anymore and windows would no longer download the driver I was using before (which worked perfectly fine). After lots of troubleshooting without success, I replaced the video card. Not a big deal, but I wasn't expecting an update to force me to replace hardware.ChristopherFortineux - Friday, June 8, 2018 - link
Had to take a 6950 out of an old system to update awhile ago. The card worked after updating.prime2515103 - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
This update didn't go so well for me. I had problems with my screen flickering and videos crashing the driver (especially with Netflix, both in several browsers and the Win10 app). A cumulative update came up yesterday and seems to have fixed it, so far. I also required a firmware update from HP to get my printer working (it worked fine before the update). Thankfully they had it ready last month.ivanfreyes - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
Exactly what happened to mine. It flickered. Also, the size of the screen went up. It's magnified. It appear larger than it used to even if the zoom is 100%.ivanfreyes - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
Did the enlarged view also happened to you after the update?