What to Expect in the Windows Spring Update

Microsoft VP John Cable explained what’s new in a February blog post:

• Windows Hello multicamera support to set the default as the external camera when both external and internal Windows Hello cameras are present.
• Windows Defender Application Guard performance improvements including optimizing document opening scenario times.
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Group Policy Service (GPSVC) updating performance improvement to support remote work scenarios.

A Windows insider blog post gave more details on the fixes in 21H1:

• Fix to an issue that causes a one minute or more delay when you open a Microsoft Defender Application Guard (WDAG) Office document.
• Fix to an issue that causes a WDAG container to use almost 1 GB of memory (working set) when the container is idle.
• Fix to an issue that causes changes that the Active Directory (AD) administrator makes to user or computer group membership to propagate slowly.

It will also improve Robocopy’s performance when copying files that total over 400 MB in size.

A smaller update focused on security performance improvements should mean less download and reboot time, which is never a bad thing. But what about the bigger features we were expecting? Well, these have been delayed to 21H2 when we expect Microsoft to deliver its Windows 10 ‘Sun Valley’ update. So we all need to prepare for a major Windows update and visual refresh later this year!