14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out Threshold 2 earlier this week as the first major update for Windows 10 that comes with significant improvements to both the operating system itself and the pre-installed apps.
But as far as the latter part is concerned, it turns out that Threshold 2 is actually making some changes to the app lineup that some people might not be aware of.
A post on reddit reveals that Threshold is resetting the default apps on Windows 10 computers that are installing the updates, although such a change isn't mentioned during the setup process.
But at the same time, Threshold 2 also reinstalls the apps that you previously removed, such as Xbox and Edge, all of which come with the operating system. Windows 10 ships with a series of pre-installed apps, and users can remove them with PowerShell commands, but after installing Threshold 2, all of them are brought back on your PC.
Some apps no longer working
As we told you yesterday, Threshold 2 also removes desktop software during the installation process, but only if any app is flagged as incompatible.
Microsoft spent a lot of time trying to get all apps to run smoothly on Windows 10, but it turns out that software incompatibilities still exist in Threshold 2, so if any program is marked as incompatible, it's automatically removed during the setup process.
A full list of the incompatible apps is not yet available, but Speccy, CPU-Z, and many others are said to be unsupported on Threshold 2 for now. Of course, it's all a matter of time until their developers actually fix these compatibility issues, but for the moment, there doesn't seem to be a way to manually address errors.
Threshold 2 is being rolled out in stages, so until you receive the update for your PC, the chances are that some of the software compatibility issues that you might come across could actually be fixed.
Update: it turns out that file associations are also reset, so even if you installed Acrobat Reader to open PDF documents, Windows 10 Threshold 2 still uses Edge as the default option.
Thanks for the tip, @neamielualarau!