Windows 11 gets a fix for a nasty CPU bug that slowed down your PC
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Windows 11 insiders have witnessed the release of a new test version that fixes some nasty bugs, including a few related to File Explorer, and adds some minor new features to boot.
Windows 11 (22H2) build 22621.898 has reached the release preview channel and there is a major bug fix for an issue with File Explorer that was causing high CPU usage, slowing down your PC, which sometimes occurred when opening a file.
Another issue where File Explorer completely crashed when closing context menus and menu items has also been fixed.
There are a ton of other bug fixes besides this one, as you might imagine, with the full list in Microsoft’s blog post (opens in new tab).
As for new features for build 22621.898, there are some small but useful additions here, including combining Windows Spotlight with Themes under Personalization settings (making Spotlight easier to find and enable, Microsoft explains).
In addition, OneDrive users now get storage alerts telling them when they’re running out of online storage on the Systems page (in Settings). There is also the option to buy more storage from the Settings menu.
Microsoft also made a small additional change, which now allows users to tell the total amount of available storage from all of their OneDrive subscriptions combined.
Note that all these elements are still being tested, but with any luck, will come to the release version of Windows 11 soon.
Analytics: Critical part of the Windows 11 interface
Those are some useful additional additions, but nothing major – the main focus here is a lot of bug squashing, and some vital work on that front too. File Explorer is the central part of the Windows user interface, so it’s good to see that the CPU slowdown issue is now resolved – and indeed the one that completely knocked Explorer over (never a good thing, of course).
We’re looking forward to some bigger changes coming to Windows 11 aside from bug-smoothing, and indeed we’ve just heard about one we’ve been eagerly anticipating for a while: the ability to ungroup apps on the taskbar.
In other words, a “never combine” option that was always present on Windows 10, but was dropped for some unfathomable reason for Windows 11. That’s a big step forward, at least in our book, although that said, it should have been a choice from the start (fewer options are never a good thing in general).
Through Newwin (opens in new tab)