October 1, 2024 Microsoft has released this year’s Windows 11 feature update – 24H2. As usual for the past couple of years, these feature updates do not have a lot of drastic changes to UI or significant new features. Most of the time it is about polishing various aspects of OS, improving performance and security and so on. Although, this time it does have one feature that already caused a lot of negativity towards Microsoft. Main focus of this year’s update is (again) AI and Copilot. I will try to list and describe most of the new features and changes i was able to find out or try myself, but some AI stuff is only available on new computers with NPU chips. Also, after reading about various issues with this update, for the first time i am not updating my personal devices to this version yet and waiting for MS to work out all the kinks. Btw, Windows 10 22H2 is entering its last year of being a supported OS.
- The most visible UI change is added text labels to Copy/Cut/Paste/etc buttons that are shown when you right click a file. Although, Power users rarely see them and use keyboard shortcuts. It does look more intuitive now. And i have also learned, while playing with this, that row of these buttons can appear either at the top or at the bottom of context menu depending where on the screen you right clicked something (so, it is close to your mouse pointer). This just shows how often i am using this UI 🙂
- A more useful UI feature is a refresh button in the corner of Wi-Fi networks fly-out. This allows you quickly refresh list of networks, so you don’t have to close and re-open this menu or try to turn off and turn Wi-Fi back on to refresh it.
- Battery saver is renamed to Energy saver in Quick settings menu and now it is possible to enable it even when plugged in. It will dim the screen a bit and system will use less of power in general.
- Quick Settings menu now has a scroll bar, so you can use more of the settings. You can also rearrange them easily.
- One thing that not many will notice is when downloading files instead of showing one thick progress line under the app icon in the taskbar it shows one thin line for 100% of progress and then live updating thick line for actual progress, so user can easier visualize how much of a file has already been downloaded.
- Important thing for IT professionals. There is no enablement package update this time. It is a full OS swap type of installation. Which requires bigger download and more time to install. When approved in WSUS it downloaded 13 GB of data. Total installation time on a 4 years old laptop from hitting Check for updates and to final login window after restarts was about 3 hours (download took 10 min and final restart 15, so in between it took 2.5 hours to prepare it).
- I guess full OS upgrade was needed to install all the new AI features (btw, 24H2 has a prerequisite of security update from May, but most systems should already have it). One of them is the controversial Windows Recall feature. Which is taking screenshots of your activity and later with AI allows to search inside this data. MS has done some security and privacy improvements since the original announcement, but it still feels weird. It should not be active on EDU\Enterprise machines. But if you use Pro or just want to be sure it is off, you can use Intune/GPO to disable it. Will need latest admx update to see this new option in GPO. Important to know is that this and other AI features are only available on Copilot+ certified devices with NPU module.
- Windows integrated LAPS feature received some policy improvements and automatic account management option.
- Personal Data Encryption (PDE) allows to additionally encrypt files in Documents/Desktop/Pictures using Windows Hello authentication, so even local administrator cannot open these files. This feature must be enabled in Intune by administrator for mentioned folders. It is independent of Bitlocker drive encryption.
- Windows protected print mode is not relying on third-party installers for Morpia certified printers.
- LSA subsystem received more protection against credentials theft.
- Windows 11 now supports Wi-Fi 7 with increased network speed.
- Bluetooth LE audio supported for assistive devices.
- There should be new control to manage which apps have access to the list of Wi-Fi networks around (couldn’t find this menu).
- SHA-3 hash algorithm support.
- Windows Hello works with Passkeys for web services and sites.
- And Windows kernel became a bit rusty 🙂 Some parts of kernel are coded in Rust programming language that improves performance and memory safety.
- There is a number of SMB protocol changes and improvements, like firewall rule changes, support to block NTLM, alternative ports, SMB over QUIC, signing and encryption changes.
- MS also lists support for creation of 7-zip and TAR archives, but i can do this in 23H2. This is part of general confusion with all the servicing type and Moments updates. It looks like this feature already landed in other versions at some point.
- Copilot+ devices have access to various AI assisted features (aside from Windows Recall mentioned above), like Live Captions being able to translate any audio on device. Or Windows Studio effects to improve lighting in portrait mode, smooth your face, enable eyes contact, blur background, etc. Voice focus removes echo and other noise to make your voice sound clearer in conference calls.
- In Developer settings you can enable sudo command support. Which allows to elevate in existing cmd window on demand (so you can start session with regular user context, then elevate required command and go back to user context).
- File Explorer allows to duplicate tabs.
- Phone Link is now integrated into Start menu when your phone is integrated with Windows, so you can see its status and reach some menus faster directly from Start menu.
- Smaller things i have noticed while using 24H2 on my test laptop at work is new network icon animations. Wi-Fi icon has a running wave animation while it is connecting. Also LAN icon has cable portion of it blinking when there is issue with network connection.
- There are more features i see mentioned in various articles, but some of them like archive creation support are already available in older versions.
It looks like some of the new device models purchased from vendors already come with 24H2 version as the base image (e.g. with Autopilot). We have a small number of devices at work with this version already, although it has not been approved in WSUS or Intune.
I have seen various reports about BSODs, driver issues, non reclaimable 9GB of space used after update, systems locking up after 24H2 installation. One user on Reddit accidentally pushed this update to a number of machines in their org and they started to have issues with Office apps freezing. Some suggested it might be Crowdstrike related and that you need to run at least 7.19 version of it. Personally, i have also seen a few weird lock ups, network connection being lost without a way to reset and make it work again, then machine would get stuck while restarting and hard reset would be needed. I was thinking that maybe currently used version of Netskope is not compatible, but we also use Crowdstrike, so it might be one of them, or both. Also some users reported issues with old NET application after 24H2 update and they had to revert to 23H2. It is still too early to migrate to this version, need to do a more thorough testing and wait for all the vendors to update their agents.
Official release post for IT professionals:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/windows-11-version-24h2-what-s-new-for-it-pros/ba-p/4259108
ISO should be available for download at this address, but i had to use old trick with changing my browser’s user agent to Android to be able to download it:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
Windows build number is 26100
Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro versions will be supported until October 13, 2026.
EDU\Enterprise versions until October 12, 2027.