Escaping Win10 Dev Channel without a clean install

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by bjf2000, Oct 16, 2020.

  1. bjf2000

    bjf2000 MDL Expert

    Apr 11, 2008
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    I can't believe I'm saying this, but if there were a way to "downgrade" from Dev to Beta channel, I'd probably do it. And this is coming from someone who's been on Windows betas of some form forever (and the most aggressive Insider builds since 2014).

    The Dev channel (used to be Fast ring until a few months ago) is the Wild West channel now that it's more experimental due to it no longer being tied to a future released version of Windows. There are big problems practically every week, so serious now that it's not a viable option for me moving forward. I haven't even been able to get on a new build in about two months due to a known GSOD issue, and if that's ever resolved, there are more like it waiting.

    Escaping the Fast Ring (not that I ever needed to) was relatively easy: you just had to wait for the right time. But surely there's some way to get out of Dev, a trick/hack whatever?
     
  2. Enthousiast

    Enthousiast MDL Tester

    Oct 30, 2009
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    No you can't go back from dev to beta/rp without MSFT providing the switch opertunity, it's announced by BLB that there will be one soon.

    Can you name one of the big problems with dev channel installs? And you should be prepared for he worst on dev channel installs anyway.
     
  3. bjf2000

    bjf2000 MDL Expert

    Apr 11, 2008
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    Oh REALLY?! That's incredible news. Do you happen to have the link (presumably Twitter) for when he said that? I wonder how that's going to happen given the build # differences?

    I'm marooned on 20201 due to DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION for certain Intel NICs (and perhaps others, but it seems to tie to Intel from the comments I've gathered). I could get another NIC and disable the one on the motherboard, but I'd rather not. That issue wasn't even in Known Issues until a couple builds ago, so we had to learn the hard way. There are just more of these sorts of issues now stacking up than Fast Ring.
     
  4. Enthousiast

    Enthousiast MDL Tester

    Oct 30, 2009
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    The blogs are down for maintanance.
     
  5. boe323

    boe323 MDL Expert

    Jul 19, 2011
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    Daft question but have you done a full uninstall of the nic driver and software?, each upgrade or install from windows update almost always breaks the mofs, 1 unregistered mof and it will trigger watchdog
     
  6. bjf2000

    bjf2000 MDL Expert

    Apr 11, 2008
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    It's just the driver, and no, it never occurred to me to remove it as I've never seen an upgrade issue related to this.

    I should note that it's not just me: there's a whole series of different Intel NICs (and a few Realteks, as it turns out) susceptible to this all of a sudden with 20206+. I don't know what a mof is (other than Microsoft Operations Framework), but let me know and I'll look into it and how it might connect to this issue, especially since you can apparently make it happen on demand.

    BTW, on a possible offramp from Dev Channel, MS has taken it under advisement as a request. There are a series of Feedback Hub items about it. It may or may not ever happen, but if it does I doubt it's imminent.