Friday, 22 January 2016

New Windows 10 preview embellishes Edge, but is a risky build for PC gamers

The latest Windows 10 Insider build does a bit of fixing up Microsoft's Edge browser, but gamers be warned, it also breaks some stuff and contains, in Gabe Aul's (corporate VP of engineering systems) words, "issues that will impact your PC gaming experience".

This is build 11102 of Windows 10 which has just been deployed to the Fast Ring, and the only new feature (aside from tweaking under the bonnet, which Microsoft has been doing a lot of lately) is a new history menu in Edge.

This allows you to right click on either the back or forward buttons, whereupon a menu pops up containing your most recently visited sites, allowing you to choose a specific website from that list and quickly return there.

Apparently this was a much requested feature, and in our opinion, it's a neat enough little trick to add to Microsoft's new browser.

Crash happy

In the blog post announcing the new build, Aul also noted there are a number of known issues, the most serious of which will affect PC gamers.

Essentially, some games will now crash when switching from a window to full screen, when changing resolution in the game, or indeed some titles may crash when launching the game.

Affected games include The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid V, although these problems could potentially hit any title. The mentioned games are just the ones Microsoft has witnessed this behaviour with.

So if you're a big fan of any of the above, it might be an idea to give this build a miss for now.

Users of build 11102 may also experience issues with screen readers (apps such as Narrator or Magnifier), and the Connect button has disappeared from the Action Centre.

Furthermore, when updating to this build, some folks may get an error saying that their wireless card isn't compatible with Windows 10 – if this is the case, you need to install the latest driver for your card, Microsoft advises.

Redmond is going to be pushing out builds to the Fast Ring at a quicker pace now, and so testers can expect to encounter more issues. Such is the price you pay for swifter deployment and getting to see new features sooner, but you can always switch away from the Fast Ring if you don't want to go this route.

Via: PC World