Windows Update Deferral

[juzzlukin]

I think it was last September when I deferred the Fall Creators update for 365 days.

I occasionally restore Macrium backup that was created after I set the 365 days deferral period, so it should be displayed the Windows Update advanced settings. But most often when I go to Settings>Windows Update >Advanced, the box for how many days the feature update can be deferred is "blank". Does anyone else has this same symptom?

Also, I'm also curious whether when a Macrium backup is restored, if the deferral time is reset back to the countdown it was set upon the creation of the backup, and/or if there is a way to check when the 365 day term will expire?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I think it was last September when I deferred the Fall Creators update for 365 days.

I occasionally restore Macrium backup that was created after I set the 365 days deferral period, so it should be displayed the Windows Update advanced settings. But most often when I go to Settings>Windows Update >Advanced, the box for how many days the feature update can be deferred is "blank". Does anyone else has this same symptom?

Also, I'm also curious whether when a Macrium backup is restored, if the deferral time is reset back to the countdown it was set upon the creation of the backup, and/or if there is a way to check when the 365 day term will expire?

I'm probably not the one who can answer this, but we are all struggling to control our Windows 10 Updates.

I deferred the Fall Creators update for 365 days. I believe there were two settings that were relevant. You wanted it to continue downloading and installing security updates to the existing version.

Some time around January or February, my system mysteriously installed the 1709 build anyway. Was it a mouse-click made in error? Can't say. I don't know how it happened. But the system just went forward and installed 1709 over the 1703 update of last year. I was expecting to have trouble with my dual-Boot (Win7/Win10) menu with boot-up difficulties, and at time 1709 installed, I didn't seem to.

Then a couple days later, the system would fail to post at boot time. Several resets and cold shutdowns would eventually get it working, but this was unacceptable.

I quickly decided to follow the routine that had set my 1703 build straight after those troubles. I got my Macrium Rescue bootable disc and chose the "Fix boot problems" option. Drive label assignments can cause trouble even with that, but once you have both OSes recognized, Macrium will fix the boot record and set everything straight again with the latest feature upgrade installed.

 

[amd6502]

My craptop is updating its windoze and dang it's unbelievably slow (yes, now the thought of an SSD seems nice). Is there any way to abort midway an update. It's taking hours. I don't quite see how it can take this long either. It's only about a 160gb partition for win10 and the rest of the 1tb drive is lunix partitions. I'm not sure what win10 update is freaking doing but the hdd is crunching nonstop.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure what win10 update is freaking doing but the hdd is crunching nonstop.

These days, an SSD for the OS partition is nearly mandatory!

 

[amd6502]

These days, an SSD for the OS partition is nearly mandatory!

For windose it sure seems like it! I've been meaning to replace the dvd (need to keep my 1tb storage) with a tiny SSD. Maybe I'll just add a small 60 or 120 gb ssd and migrate windose. linux only needs about 8gb for the ssd, so that leaves ~50gb and 110gb free for win10 partition.

 

[RLGL]

I do not understand why people are fighting the updates. IMHO the Spring update is the best version of 10 yet.

 

[mikeymikec]

I do not understand why people are fighting the updates.

There's a reason why most OS developers do not foist mandatory feature updates on their users: They're a lot more likely to cause problems than the most common alternative, being security updates only.

Furthermore, in the time I've been on this forum, I don't recall any users (even the biggest of MS fanboys) singing the praises of a feature from a Windows feature update (the closest equivalent I can think of was when Win8.1 replaced the invisible Start button with a visible one, but that was more of a "did MS really need time to figure this out?" situation IMO). In that case, what's the point of running the risk for the sake of features we don't particularly want or need?

Through my line of work, two computers that were happily running Windows 10 have had to seek alternatives after features updates: One went to the skip (it was already quite old and the investment to make it work properly on the latest Win10 update was IMO rightfully deemed pointless), and the other was 'downgraded' to Windows 8.1. Other computers I've had to do wipe-clean installs on because every other tactic I've tried/researched didn't work. This all costs time and money for what should have been an entirely avoidable situation.

If those feature updates were entirely optional (ie. the user opts-in, they only provided features and had no bearing on long-term security update support), I bet that maybe 10% of Windows users would apply them. Christ, the last time I upgraded to a newer version of Windows for the sake of an OS feature was going from XP to 7 because SuperFetch made a huge difference to the cold start times of software I used.

 

[bruceb]

You summed it up nicely. Microsoft needs to let us select if we want Security Updates Only or if we also want Feature Updates, which as you said, most of us do not want or need. Pretty sure Enterprise version has this feature. Maybe someone can figure out a way to add this feature to Home or Pro .. Maybe some registry keys need to be added.

 

[amd6502]

You summed it up nicely. Microsoft needs to let us select if we want Security Updates Only or if we also want Feature Updates, which as you said, most of us do not want or need. Pretty sure Enterprise version has this feature. Maybe someone can figure out a way to add this feature to Home or Pro .. Maybe some registry keys need to be added.

I think the worst situation is that your computer can be inoperable for a considerable amount of time, if you inadvertently agree to reboot, or if you the previous night "update and shut down" thinking that in the morning, it's just a quick and simple security update (typical update often takes just a minute or few minutes)--and turn out to be dead wrong, then it can be majorly annoying.

Some info like estimated update time, or gigabytes of files would be useful, as would an abort update and boot to previous update.

When linux installs a new kernel with an update, one can still get to the boot manager and boot the old kernel. Something like this would help a lot.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My friend had his Windows 7 64-bit shut down and restart to do updates. He said it did it automagically on him, while he was using it. He was surprised and upset.

I told him that Windows 10 would do that, if it had an auto-update and the user didn't reboot in a few days or a week or so, then it would shut down and restart on you.

But that was news to my friend and I, that Windows 7 would start behaving the same way. Is that a new thing?

 

[mikeymikec]

@VirtualLarry

I've heard of Win7 auto-restarting with an update before, but I've never seen it. I wonder whether someone typing and the "do you want to restart now or postpone" message appears and they hit the space bar which accepts the default option (probably 'restart now'), making them think it's happened automatically. Or an 'annoying message' appears and the user 'clicks it away' without reading what it said?

When linux installs a new kernel with an update, one can still get to the boot manager and boot the old kernel. Something like this would help a lot.

I think the 'Windows Rollback' boot option is meant to basically do that. A pity (at least in my experience) it doesn't work. Or maybe it only works when triggered from the Settings app... which would be great if the Windows installation worked sufficiently for the Settings app to work (on both of the occasions I previously described it didn't: one resulted in perpetual reboots that weren't BSODs, the other was a sufficiently mangled Windows install that the Start button and Settings app didn't work, no networking either despite Device Manager saying all was good).