Microsoft is making big Windows 10 update changes starting with the May 2019 release

[The AchieVer]

Microsoft is making big Windows 10 update changes starting with the May 2019 release

Microsoft is making changes to the way it will be rolling out feature updates for Windows 10 starting with the 19H1/1903 release, which is now officially known as the "May 2019 Update." Here's what's new.

 

 

 

Microsoft is continuing to tweak how the Windows 10 update process works. The company is initiating  a number of changes, kicking off with the rollout of the Windows 10 19H1/1903 update. 

Unlike the case with previous twice-yearly Windows 10 feature updates, the next feature update, known as 19H1/1903, is getting several additional weeks of testing time in the Windows Insider Release Preview ring before rolling out to the mainstream.  

Next week, Microsoft will make Windows 10 19H1 available to Release Preview testers. It will also get a round of additional broader testing among employees at Microsoft, along with Microsoft's OEM and ISV partners. After these groups have a chance to bang on it for the rest of April, Microsoft plans to begin rolling it out to the mainstream some time in "late" May, according to Microsoft's April 4 blog post about its new update experience plans. As it has been doing recently, Microsoft will roll out the 19H1/1903 update gradually, providing it to devices where data indicates the update will have the fewest issues first. 

Business customers will be able to start testing the commercially-available 19H1/1903 update internally in late May, and Microsoft will use the late May date when it begins rollout as the start of the 18-month support period for Windows 10 1903. Microsoft officials said the May 2019 Update will be available in late May through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), Windows Update for Business, the Volume Licensing Service Center and for deployment using Systems Center Configuration Manager and/or other systems-management software. 

Even though Windows 10 19H1/1903 Build 18362 was completed in March 2019, (hence the "1903" designation), Microsoft is going to use "May 2019 Update" as its marketing name. It will still officially also be known as 1903, and its server complement will be called Windows Server 1903. Up until now, we'd all assumed Windows 10 19H1/1903 would be called the April 2019 update as we thought Microsoft would begin rolling it out to mainstream users in April, as it had done previously with other Windows 10 feature updates.

Microsoft  is also going to enable users -- particularly those using Windows 10 Home -- to have more control over when and how they get both security and feature updates for Windows 10 starting with the May 2019 Update. 

As rumored earlier this year, Microsoft will enable Windows 10 Home users to pause feature updates for up to 35 days. They will be able to do this in increments of seven days, five times. Up until now, Home users only had the option of choosing a time to install or "snoozing" updates. (Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education users already had the option to pause updates.) 

Microsoft is also adding to its Windows Update settings a new "download and install now" option for twice-yearly feature updates. That way, if customers use Windows Update to check for any kind of available update, they won't automatically be pushed to do a feature update just by the virtue of "seeking." Starting in late May, Microsoft plans to add the new "download and install" option to Windows 10 1803, 1809, 1903 and all future Windows 10 feature updates. 

There's only one exception to Microsoft's new, less-pushy update policy. If customers are running a variant of Windows 10 that is close to its end-of-support date, "Windows will automatically initiate a new feature update." (I'm not sure how "close" a user has to be to end of support for this to happen, but Microsoft says users will get some kind of notifications for some period of time before this occurs.)

 

 

 

Source

 

[Karlston]

Microsoft going to extreme lengths to ensure May update avoids mistakes of 1809

There'll be a month-long release preview phase, less aggressive end-user deployment, and more.

Enlarge / Windows is now perpetually under construction.

David Holt / Flickr

Microsoft really wants to avoid a repeat of the mess surrounding the release of the last Windows 10 feature update. Windows 10 version 1809, the October 2018 update, was found to have a bug that in some circumstances destroyed user data, forcing the company to suspend its rollout. It turned out that the bug had been reported but was overlooked, and even once that problem was resolved that version still suffered certain other awkward bugs.

 

Accordingly, the company is going to take a very different tack with the next feature update to Windows 10. Codenamed 19H1 and currently still branded 1903 (denoting it was completed in March of 2019), the next update was expected to be released as the April 2019 update. But that's not the case: it's going to be the May 2019 update, because Microsoft is being a great deal more cautious about this release. Next week, a build will be pushed to the Release Preview ring, which should provide around a month of testing before its expected release date.

 

This alone is a major difference as compared to 1809, as that release largely skipped the release preview ring for reasons that remain unclear. But Microsoft is going much further to make this release a success.

 

Enlarge / With a separate option to download and install the feature update, Windows Update should become much less surprising.

Microsoft

The first big change is a much greater level of user control. Previously, a Windows user might check Windows Update and be offered a monthly quality update, or a twice-annual feature update, with little obvious distinction between them. The former can install in just a few minutes; the latter could take anywhere from 20 to 80 minutes. To make things more predictable, the two kinds of update are going to be clearly distinguished. Moreover, users will be able to explicitly choose to install the monthly updates without getting the feature update. They'll retain this ability for months: for as long as Microsoft is producing security updates for the user's version of Windows, the feature update will be optional. Only when the version of Windows is approaching its end of life will the feature update be made mandatory.

 

The monthly fixes will also be easier to delay. As previously reported, all Windows users, including those on Windows 10 Home, will be able to delay the monthly updates for up to 35 days. Specifically, they'll be able to delay it by a week for five weeks, after which point the system will no longer permit any more delays.

 

When the update is installed, Windows will also try to be smarter about the timing. We've heard this before, and Microsoft has introduced features such as Active Hours to enable you to block out time during which you never want to be disturbed by an update. To this, Microsoft is adding the ability to have Windows adjust those statically defined Active Hours according to what it has learned of your preferred usage patterns.

 

Microsoft is also going to offer a new dashboard so that the status of the feature update can be more ascertained. Microsoft implements various temporary blocks to avoid known incompatibilities and enable third-party software and drivers to be updated, but this is very opaque for end-user, who can be faced with a situation where a system refuses to offer a particular feature update with no obvious indication of why. The new dashboard should make it much easier to discover what known issues and incompatibilities exist, along with the remedial action that can be taken (e.g. upgrading a particular piece of software) to unblock the update.

Enlarge / With the new dashboard, Microsoft is hoping it will be clearer what known issues are, and what their possible resolution is.

Microsoft

This is in addition to changes to Windows itself that should offer much greater clarity about detected incompatibilities and blocking issues.

 

Finally, Microsoft is hoping to be better at catching reports of low frequency, high impact issues like the 1809 data loss bug. The company will be using machine learning systems to try to identify reports of this kind of bug, and the system is going to look further afield. Rather than relying solely on bug reports made through the Insider Hub (which is the official way of reporting Windows 10 bugs, but which is unusable if, for example, your Windows 10 system won't boot), the new system is going to look at alternative sources of bug reports such as tweets and Reddit posts. More effort will also be spent trying to diagnose these faults to try to ensure that no genuine problem is overlooked.

 

With these changes taken together, there should be better early detection of any bugs and problems, and Windows users of all types will be able to avoid all of the early teething difficulties that have faced previous upgrades and updates. But it will also likely mean that adoption of the May update will be much slower than that of previous updates. If Microsoft sticks with its plan to leave the feature update optional until it becomes a prerequisite for support, many Windows 10 users may not find themselves upgrading for more than a year after its release.

 

Source: Microsoft going to extreme lengths to ensure May update avoids mistakes of 1809 (Ars Technica - Peter Bright)