Microsoft's fifth major iteration of Windows 11 is approaching the release to the general public -the Windows Insider team today announced that Windows 11 25h2 was placed in the preview channel of the release, the last stop for most updates before they become available to everyone. That is about two months after the first Windowsbuilds with the 25h2 label was released to the other example channels.
Placing a new annual Windows update in the Release Preview Channel is analogous to the “release to manufacturing” (RTM) phase of recent years, back when updates were sent to physical media that had to be made. Building numbers for this version of Windows start with 26200, instead of 24h2's 26100.
The 25h2 update does not do much in itself, except to reset the clock for Microsoft's security updates (each annual release receives two years of security patches). Microsoft says that last year's 24h2 update and this year's 25h2 update “a shared service branch” use, which mainly means that there are no big differences between the two. Installing the 25h2 update on a PC can enable some functions on your 24h2 PC that had already been installed but were switched off as standard.
Microsoft says that installing the 25h2 update Powershell 2.0 removes and the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-Line Tool (both previously outdated), and that it enables IT managers to automatically remove a few pre-installed Windows apps from the Microsoft Store through group policy. But Microsoft has not said much about important, user-oriented new functions that are unique for the 25h2 update. The 23h2 update from two years ago was an equally quiet add-on for Windows 11 22h2.
