Start11: don't treat Windows 11 22H2 Insider builds as Insider

Build 22623 is identical to 22621 general release

Published on February 27, 2023 By erbkaiser In Start Menu Products

Start11 currently locks off several features dealing with taskbar management if it detects the user is running a Windows Insider build.

Unfortunately, this is also applied to anyone stuck on a Release Preview build of Windows 11 22H2 with build numbers 22622.xxx or 22623.xxx, despite these builds being identical to the release builds 22621.xxx. These Insider builds were separate to test tabbed explorer or not, and after 22H2 came out both got bumped up a bit to bring them to parity with general release, but as the build number is one or two digits higher, there is no way to fully unenroll Insider yet.

See the linked Microsoft blog about what 22622 was for. 22623 was the update for 22621 and 22622 to get to parity.

As Windows 11 23H1 is cancelled and 23H2 is still months away, this means anyone like me stuck on an Insider build has no option but a full Windows reinstall to get back to release channel and use all features of Start11.

To be specific, my systems are running 22622.890 and 22623.891.

I suspect Start11 must be using some version number blacklist to cut off the taskbar features from what it sees as Insider builds. Hopefully, this can be turned off for the two builds I mention.

Comments

Neil Banfield

on Feb 27, 2023

quoting post

Start11 currently locks off several features dealing with taskbar management if it detects the user is running a Windows Insider build.

Unfortunately, this is also applied to anyone stuck on a Release Preview build of Windows 11 22H2 with build numbers 22622.xxx or 22623.xxx, despite these builds being identical to the release builds 22621.xxx. These Insider builds were separate to test tabbed explorer or not, and after 22H2 came out both got bumped up a bit to bring them to parity with general release, but as the build number is one or two digits higher, there is no way to fully unenroll Insider yet.

As Windows 11 23H1 is cancelled and 23H2 is still months away, this means anyone like me stuck on an Insider build has no option but a full Windows reinstall to get back to release channel and use all features of Start11.

To be specific, my systems are running 22622.890 and 22623.891.

I suspect Start11 must be using some version number blacklist to cut off the taskbar features from what it sees as Insider builds. Hopefully, this can be turned off for the two builds I mention.

The reason for this is not because of an action we have taken it is because the preview you are using has a new taskbar and the release version of Start11 does not have support for it as it is in insider versions only. Those features do not work on that version of Windows and enabling the options in the UI wouldn't make them work. It may look similar but it is significantly different in how some bits work (the tray area in particular)

As it has now moved into release preview this has actually caused an issue as the new taskbar has shown up in an earlier build number than before and so those options are still enabled in the UI but do not work and the tray is getting lost entirely.

We have a new version of Start11 ready which hopefully will go into Beta this week which has support for the new taskbar but this is where the bad news comes in. I cannot promise it will function on your builds as they are quite old as the latest release will be sub version 1324 not 890/891 so there is a real risk they will not function as expected.

Our policy on insider releases will remain however, things should work unless Microsoft make significant changes like they did with a new taskbar but we do not offer official support as Microsoft do not support them so we are not going to. We do not turn features off unless there is a specific need to do so because of changes.

Honestly unless a user has a very good reason for needing to use experimental software I would urge everyone to stay as far away as possible from the Insider releases. As you have seen it is easy to get stuck on them and as Microsoft themselves warn there may be issues

Microsoft have announced an offramp for those stuck on builds however : https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/02/16/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-22621-1325-and-22623-1325/

That said you need to be using a newer version of Windows 11

erbkaiser

on Feb 27, 2023

Thank you for the exhaustive reply.

I will see if I can get a newer build in Windows Update by going to the beta branch and hopefully get the offramp.

dcatz

on Feb 27, 2023

Microsoft didn't cancel 23H1, it was never planned. Windows 11 was always going to be one major update a year with a bunch of minir "moment" updates in between. The next Moment is scheduled to come out next month :

https://thewincentral.com/windows-11-22h2-moment-2-update-new-features-demoed-in-a-video/

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