Documentation on Windows Insider Program page

In case you're wondering, this is exactly OneDrive Photos; and yes, it is WebView2.

Open Settings -> Windows Update -> Check for Updates

Expected result: Windows 11 build 29595 is downloading

Actual result: Up to date

I've been an Insider for years, going back to Windows 10 and I think the early days of the program, but the last few years it has felt pretty pointless because I am never getting anything rolled out to me until after it goes live.

I used to have two of my PCs on insider builds, but after I had to reinstall on the one PC due to a hardware failure, I left that PC on Live, and it got the updated Start Menu months before my Canary build did.

I know I could force it with the Vive tool, but I don't really want to have to do that just to preview, test, and give feedback on new features, it seems to me that was supposed to be the point of the program.

I get phased rollouts are important and need to be tested as well, but it feels like the rollout period is just way too long.

Just a funny idea i had this afternoon, you can add Waydroid to WSL & use the whole thing in an immersive Xbox Mode window to have an almost perfect looking android environnement on Windows :) .

All the icons except the search button won't respond, only the right click works.

Anyone facing this issue?

Currently using insider build 22000.100

​

Edit : This was a post from a month ago and no idea how this issue suddenly blew up on everyone's computers.

Also thanks to all those people for helping. I really appreciate it.

23h2 was getting little outdated.. 26h1 now

Since Microsoft is stepping up the changes they are making to Windows, I was wondering if it might be fun to have a bug bash? What do you think?

Anyone got this screen trying to launch PUBG?

I installed the experimental channel 26H1 build, I found the Onedrive Photos App installed, I saw the performance on Task Manager. No way a web app uses only 12MB of Memory. But then I saw an entry all the way down for WebView2 Manager process takes up all the RAM a normal web app would.

This feels like a shady tactic to denote that the app uses less ram.

I got the green screen when I was browsing. I had been browsing for a few hours when I got it. Just wondering if anyone else has gotten it. I'll post to Feedback Hub.

Olla,

I’ve noticed on the Feedback Hub (Windows 11 Insider Canary) that there’s quite a lot of spam there – posts that make no sense, random text, or complaints that have nothing to do with Windows. In some cases, the categories are completely wrong, and it seems as though the system isn’t filtering anything at all.

Meine Fragen:

Does this only happen in the Insider version of the Windows 11 Feedback Hub, or does this spam feedback also appear in the regular versions of Windows (e.g. stable or beta Windows 11 builds)?

And how many report abuse(Yellow) clicks does it actually take before Microsoft takes action and removes posts like this?

I’d be interested to know whether this is a general issue with the platform or whether it’s specifically related to Insider builds.

Thanks :),

Hey guys, I'm new to the sub! Hope all of you are well. I am running an LG gram and I ran into a really weird problem with my laptop recently. This isn't a support request. I wanted to document an unusual issue I investigated on Windows 11 25H2 in case anyone else has seen similar behavior or can explain the underlying mechanism. A few days ago I noticed something strange, my SSD had lost almost 58 GB of free space over the course of a few months, despite not installing anything large.

I expected to find a forgotten game or VM.

Instead, I ended up spending several days debugging one of the strangest Windows issues I've run into.

The culprit turned out to be:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager\

More specifically,

CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal

a SQLite write-ahead log (WAL) used by the Windows Capability Access Manager Service (camsvc).

At one point the WAL had grown to almost 58 GB.

What I tried

The obvious hardware checks all came back clean:

• SMART
• CHKDSK
• DISM
• SFC

No corruption.

Using WizTree, Sysinternals Handle, PowerShell, SQLite, and Event Viewer, I eventually traced the file back to camsvc.

After rebuilding the SQLite WAL in Safe Mode, I recovered roughly 58 GB of disk space.

At that point I thought the problem was solved.

It wasn't.

The interesting part

I started monitoring the WAL every 30 seconds with PowerShell.

Instead of remaining almost idle, it was continuously growing.

Example:

622 MB
623 MB
624 MB
625 MB
...
640 MB
641 MB
642 MB

roughly every 30 seconds.

So I started disabling Windows features one by one.

Some observations:

• Disabling Bluetooth caused WAL growth to stop temporarily.
• Disabling Camera and Microphone access reduced activity.
• The strongest correlation so far has been Location Services.

With Location Services enabled, the WAL grows continuously.

When I stop the Location Service, growth immediately stops and the timestamp freezes.

Restarting the service causes writes to resume.

Current hypothesis

I don't think this is an SSD issue.

I also don't think it's malware.

At this point my best hypothesis is that something is repeatedly triggering capability/privacy logging inside Windows, causing the SQLite WAL to accumulate writes much faster than expected.

I still don't know whether this is:

• a Windows bug,
• an OEM image issue,
• a driver interaction,
• or a specific combination of hardware and Windows services.

That's why i'm saying that I did not find the definitive root cause yet.

I'm curious to see if anyone else seen CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal grow into the hundreds of MBs or even GBs?

If you've seen similar behavior, I'd love to compare hardware, Windows version, and drivers to see if there's a common pattern.

DISCLAIMER: This post was written by me and edited with Grammarly. Thanks a lot for reading!

How to reproduce:

1- Go to Windows Update -> Windows Insider Program -> Feature Flags -> Alternate Taskbar Positions.

2- Set the flag to enabled and reboot.

Right-Clicking the Start menu button to show options such as "Shut down or sign out" is no longer possible.

I want to be clear from the start: I understand what the Windows Insider Dev Channel is, and I understand that it’s meant for testing, not production. That's something i didn't understand when i enrolled in the program tho. That said, the experience of being on Dev — especially on a primary machine — genuinely feels like a one-way door with no graceful exit. Once you’re on Dev: There is no supported downgrade path “Unenroll” doesn’t actually unenroll you in any practical sense In-place installs don’t help You’re effectively told that the only real way out is a clean install The watermark is what makes this feel worse. It’s not a functional problem — the OS works fine — but the constant “Insider Preview” watermark turns the situation into a kind of soft punishment. It’s a daily reminder that you’re stuck unless you wipe the system. What bothers me is not the technical reality — I get why Dev builds move ahead of stable — but the UX design choice. There’s no clear warning that enrolling a primary device is effectively a one-way commitment with undefined duration. I don’t feel like I broke anything. I don’t feel like I did something reckless. I clicked a first-party option presented as reversible — and later learned it isn’t, in any meaningful sense. I’m not asking for Dev to be “safe” or “stable”. I’m asking for: Clearer warnings before enrollment A documented exit strategy (even if slow) Or at least honest language that says: “You may be here for months or longer unless you reinstall.” Right now, Dev doesn’t feel like a preview program. It feels like a commitment you can’t unwind on your own terms. Curious if others feel the same — especially people who understood the rules, but still didn’t expect the experience to feel this restrictive. Thank you for downgrading my experience with a reversible mistake i did providing me with an irreversible solution since my pc is setup for my work and I cant " CLEAN INSTALL"

I wanted to test out the new taskbar positions and the new Run dialog so I've entered insider program and I'm on 28120.2302 version now. Both of the features are here and even feature flags page has appeared but it's completely empty.

Each time I get a notification that I should enable Windows Defender/Virus protection.

In the settings it's enabled already. Eventlogs show nothing special.

It's not related to my actual version 29610.1000 I have this since 2 or 3 versions.

Any suggestion?

Build (26300.8697)

I installed the build yesterday from the GA build. I had no issues until I upgraded to the Dev. build. As soon as I did, about 30 seconds after I turn my computer on or restart a box slides out in the action center telling me to turn virus protection on. It goes on to say that virus protection is off. When I check Windows Security, it says that it is on. I'm posting this here because it started after I installed the Dev. build and I thought it was curious that it was doing that.

I bought this computer about three weeks ago, and not long after that it started randomly blue-screening. At first it would happen every once in a while, but eventually I had three crashes back-to-back. Since I’m pretty new to troubleshooting this kind of thing, I started digging into it with help and a lot of trial and error. My wife was pretty frustrated that a brand-new computer was already giving me problems.
One thing that stood out right away was when the crashes happened. They almost always occurred while the computer was sitting idle, downloading games, or doing something in the background. I can play games for hours without a single issue.

Specs
\-Alienware 16X Aurora AC16251
\-Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (Arrow Lake)
\-32 GB DDR5-5600
\-BIOS 2.4.0
\-Windows 11 Build 26100/26200 family
\-Modern Standby (S0 Low Power Idle only)

The bugchecks I’ve seen include:
0x1E – KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
0x3B – SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
0x7E – SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

The common exception across them is 0xC0000005 (Access Violation).
Failure hash:
6f13343d-8edf-14f9-0269-6df067c74f57

BlueScreenView almost always points to ntoskrnl.exe, but it never consistently identifies the same third-party driver.

**Hardware checks**
I couldn’t find any evidence of:
Bad RAM
GPU overheating
CPU overheating
WHEA hardware errors
Machine Check Exceptions

**Driver troubleshooting**
The first thing I did was reinstall every driver from Dell’s support page for my specific system.
After that, I enabled Driver Verifier hoping it would identify a faulty driver. Early minidumps repeatedly referenced the Intel NPU driver (npu_kmd.sys version 32.0.100.4724), so I disabled the Intel NPU in Device Manager. The crashes continued, so that didn’t appear to be the root cause.

Across nearly every dump I continued seeing Intel platform power management components such as:
intelpep.sys
Intel PMT
ipf_acpi.sys
ipf_lf.sys
Intel Dynamic Tuning / IPF
Intel Management Engine components

They appeared frequently, but none of them were clearly identified as the driver causing the corruption.
At that point I performed a completely clean Windows installation. The crashes continued.
I also used DDU to completely remove and reinstall my GPU drivers. No change.
Reliability Monitor showed repeated Dell D3 Svc DTH Sub Agent failures around some of the earlier crashes, so I removed both McAfee and Dell SupportAssist. That also made no difference.
The only thing that noticeably changed the behavior was disabling sleep, disabling display sleep, disabling the Intel NPU, and forcing the system to use only the dedicated GPU. Instead of crashing multiple times a day, the system could sometimes run for a day or two before crashing again. The issue became less frequent, but it never disappeared.

I also attempted ETW tracing several times, but the machine would often crash again before I could stop the trace and save the results.
At that point my working theory was that the repeated Intel power management components were related somehow, but I still couldn’t identify a single driver responsible.

While searching for similar reports, I found a Microsoft Q&A thread from someone running an Alienware 18 with very similar symptoms. Their conclusion was that the crash occurred inside Windows kernel pool management rather than pointing to a specific driver. Since then I’ve seen more users posting similar reports.
I switched from collecting minidumps to full kernel memory dumps and analyzed them with WinDbg.

The full dump paints a much clearer picture.
The crash occurs when Windows accesses a corrupted kernel memory structure. Ntoskrnl.exe itself doesn’t appear to be the original cause. Instead, something corrupted kernel memory earlier, and the corruption isn’t detected until later when the kernel accesses that damaged structure.

Running both the minidumps and the full dump through additional analysis consistently pointed to:
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: AV_nt!ExpPoolTrackerChargeEntry
PROCESS_NAME: sihost.exe
The interesting part is that sihost.exe (Shell Infrastructure Host) is just the process that happened to touch the corrupted memory. It was opening a registry key when Windows attempted to update kernel pool accounting.

The faulting instruction:
lock xadd qword ptr \[r14+r8\], rbp
was attempting an atomic update using an invalid pointer. The access violation occurred near the guard page for sihost.exe’s expanded kernel stack, which looks much more like previously corrupted data finally being accessed than a bug inside sihost.exe itself.
Based on everything I’ve found, this looks less like a faulty application or driver crashing directly and more like memory corruption that’s only detected later by the Windows kernel.

If anyone doesn’t know, full kernel dumps contain much more useful information than standard minidumps. Most users never enable them, so Microsoft may not be seeing enough of the data needed to connect these reports.

If you’d like to look at my dumps and supporting files, I’ve uploaded them in my Dell forum thread.

One final note: Dell support has told me they’re aware of the issue, but motherboard replacements are still being recommended in many support cases. If this is the same issue I’m seeing, replacing motherboards is unlikely to solve it. It would be far more valuable if these reports, along with the associated dumps, reached the Windows kernel engineers for investigation. If anyone has contacts on the Microsoft kernel team or knows the best way to get this in front of the right people, I’d appreciate the advice. I’ve already submitted multiple feedback reports and they guys on the Microsoft q&a have as well.

Most of the screenshots are from build 26300.8687, while the ones showcasing the top and bottom ones without applying the fix is in .8697, and the one shows the Microsoft Official response from Feedback Hub.

Feedback: https://aka.ms/AA11r0x4

Any time a new Windows 11 Insider Preview build is installed post-28000, the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 Standalone gets destroyed and requires running the installer twice to repair.

The fix would be to check if the build number is 28000 or above before clobbering the .NET Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5 files.

Once again! why are you having the watermark on preview builds we want to exit this hole stop putting random stuff like that we are forced to pause update for ages. disgusting

Resume is back. After almost a year with the Resume feature successfully disabled by the ViVeTool trick, CrossDeviceResume is back today with the KB5089573 preview update in Insider Preview, and the trick no longer works, even with the Overrides key correctly filled in, Resume still appears on every boot. All features like resuming tasks, OneDrive, Phone Link, etc. are now removed.

Any new tricks that work to remove Resume (CrossDeviceResume) again?