Which version/build of Win10 most stable?

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I’m very thankful for the recent post about where to legally download Windows!  My installation of Windows 10 “back in the day” stopped functioning correctly and I couldn’t do a repair install, likely due to a failing hard drive.

My question please, is which version should I download and try again on a new hard drive?  (a HDD, not a SSD)  I definitely want to avoid 1803, it would seem.  Should I get 1709, 1703, or go all the way back to 1607?  I just want stability and safety.

I very much appreciate all the update help here for how to avoid getting forced into the latest version of Win10.  I appreciate everything here!

Thank you so much in advance —   SBS

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF; Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 Build 19045.4780

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singbluesilvr
1709 is what gave me and my husbands computer such a difficult time. After it downloaded, I wasn’t able to get any updates. I have and HP laptop and it refused them all.  Hubby has a Dell and I had to keep trying to get it to add any updates on 1709.  I got to the end of my rope with reading and trying to manually download, so I removed all the downloaded updates that failed to update except for the first one that added 1709.  Then I did a search for updates and it began to load 1803 on its own. I was anxious about this, however, so far so good. I’ve had 2 cumulative updates and 2 security updates and they downloaded and actually updated.  I think each person has had a different experience with 1709 and 1803 but I have no idea what the cause of the difference may be.

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SingBlueSilver

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From a Home or Business perspective that Req. Networking as a prerequisite 1703 is probably about the best, I do believe last time @Woody mentioned it I do recall he’s still on 1703.

I haven’t had anything unsurmountable in the problems Dept. Since 1507 (Orig and Out of date) with any of them. As far as Internet access they all seem fine with that aspect of Networking, the Desktop Apps have all improved in stability over the nearly 3 years up to 1709 and Req. Min. if no intervention any more. Your right, certainly, to avoid 1803 as not only is it in its “last Stage of testing” on the unsuspecting world, but one or two key features i.e. Home Groups, and I think System restore are missing or “Depreciated” My pet “Grrrrrrrrr” is Networking on 1803 (still unresolved) so not had a chance to test or play with the feature’s. For Home use 1709 is fine for me Network works, after tweaking, 1703 has most if not all the Major Bugs “shook out” but only has a year of support left in it. Both 1709 and 1703 present no problems with clean installs on “Spinners” or SSD’s “OOBE” (Out Of the Box Experience, hey I don’t write this stuff its M$ 😉 ) I am not sure how you would define stability, the “Toys” work on all of them with a fair amount of stability however some core hardworking Business features Networks etc, Increasingly Driver Issues as Hardware Manufacturers struggle to keep up with the release pace and newer Win10’s occasionally not being compatible with old familiar Hardware that has worked for ages. Any way a few suggestions as generally when I am ready for a new version I normally “clean install” never upgrade after testing either at Home or Work on a VHD\VHDX although this time not bothering at home with 1803, but 1803 is on 2 x test machines at work Hope that’s narrowed it down a bit. 🙂

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SingBlueSilver

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Always the version which is released as LTSB/LTSC and server.
Today it is 1607.
In October 2018 this will be 1809, although you may wait other few months after the official release to filter out the most obvious early bugs.

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SingBlueSilver

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Assuming you are a home user?

Depends what version you have a digital licence for (Home, Pro etc..) but, whatever version you choose, you will inevitably end up on a version you don’t like, that’s the way the cookie crumbles with W10. Version 1703 or 1709 may be better for stability (due to being past initial betaware) but, they still both need user input/ tweaks to avoid telemetry, dodgy updates, app placeholders et al.

On another tangent, have you thought about linux based distro’s? There will be lots to choose from in the coming months as distro developers release their forked versions of Ubuntu 18.04 which in my MIND is safer than W10, as of typing 🙂

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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SingBlueSilver, BobbyB

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1703 is the oldest supported Home and Pro version. I would go with that one considering the needs you expressed. Then in the fall, 1809 will be out and you could follow ch100 advice. 1709 had lots of issues. I just went from 1607 to 1703 in late April when 1607 went out of support.

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SingBlueSilver

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You would have to explain “1709 had lots of issues” not based on web sites who have purpose of finding bugs almost everywhere, but on reality.
You may as well upgrade to 1803 and find that it does not have more bugs than other versions.
I can tell you about few of them and you tell me how many readers of this forum actually understand what is about.
– usoclient startscan no longer works as expected – this is the most annoying for me
– background apps cannot be disabled in some instances, but works for those who upgraded in place from a previous version. Smart people already found that a registry key from the previous versions is missing and by adding it, the issue can be fixed.
Any more issues?

On the other hand, the versions which are LTSB/LTSC and full server with Desktop Experience (another way of describing a GUI) are tested and maintained in the long term. They were beta in the early days, but are not inferior to the post-beta versions like 1703, 1709, 1803, which are in fact pre-beta versions for the next LTSC and server with Desktop Experience version.

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AlexEiffel

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Respectfully, I am not sure I understand your point. This user is on a Home or Pro version, so I would advise 1607 if it was something available to him, but I thought he would want something more “supported” for a home user, which is why I suggested 1703 until maybe the next LTSC version base this fall, which seems to go along the same lines as what you suggest. Or, he could go on 1709 or 1803 at that time waiting for 1809 to stabilize a bit.

To me, it boils down to having a simple rule that seems to generally work well in practice: the older version is generally more stable than the later ones. If you don’t need the latest features, why subject yourself to the risk of issues that will get fixed in the first few months? Knowing how Microsoft clearly doesn’t test well its feature upgrades by the clear obvious issues reported here, it is no surprise that not running the latest version is a strategy that contains less risk. Or, if we flip the argument, why would you not run the oldest inevitably more tested in the field release? Is there any compelling reason not to do so if you are not an IT pro?

I suggested 1703 because it is the oldest supported version for Home and Pro, it has proven quite stable, and Woody recommended it for a long time saying to hold off 1709 because he thought it was plagued by too much issues. I’m not sure he installed 1709 yet, but if he deemed it ok it has not been a very long time. A personal reason I have to clearly not go to 1803 is the forced web searches, which I find outrageous and it is still not clear if Microsoft names it a bug or a feature and if it might get removed at some point.

If you want an example of a bug, I can point out to the fact many people who hopped earlier than me on a later version got upgraded to another more recent version because Microsoft “forgot” to honor the deferral policies for a while. They didn’t on 1607. To me, it is enough. Later, after I got people at work forced on 1703 and ran it for a while and when MS a bit too quickly deemed 1709 semi-annual channel, the only PC we had not set our deferral policies on by mistake tried to upgrade to 1709 and ended up in a constant reboot loop while all others stayed put on 1703. I don’t have time to loose while Microsoft plays DevOps or whatever fashionable dev trend, forgetting that development itself is not the end goal, but making the right product is.

I understand your point about anecdotal issues being maybe blown out of proportion. If regular users here are a sample, we can see that people like Noel or me have more issues with 10 than previous versions. Those people are not people coming here because they had issues. Yes, it could still be anecdotal, but then I revert to my common sense rule that the older release has had more testing done in the field. And it is hard to deny that clearly testing isn’t up to the quality level we would expect nowadays, so more time in the field probably means more issues uncovered and fixed.

In an enterprise with many computers, the game is so different. You can more easily test, deploy to a subset, go back to another version maybe, but for a single user, avoiding this hassle by delaying the use of the latest feature updates might be a better strategy, in my view.

 

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SingBlueSilver, Elly

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Many thanks to all!

I’m running Win7 Home Premium on my primary computer and Win7 Pro on my backup.  I’m sorry that I didn’t mention that.  I’ll most likely be giving Win10 a go on my primary machine (Home version), although it would be nice to find Win10 Pro to use as a backup OS on my backup computer, come to think of it.  I don’t want to move on from Win7 but want to get Win10 while I still can, at least on one hard drive to use on one computer or the other, very likely still primarily using my current Win7 hard drive.  I’ll decide before downloading which computer thus whether Home or Pro.

And yes @Microfix, I am definitely going to look at some Linux distros.   🙂   I played with several in the past and I have a strong feeling that I’ll do so more in-depth in the near future.

Thanks again everybody, very much.  You folks are the best.

SBS

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF; Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 Build 19045.4780

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Please stay on topic. The topic is Win10 – not Win7/8.1 or Linux

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If you want stability, Pro version is better at helping you stay on a still supported version without being forced to upgrade to a newer version unless you use tricks that might not work in the future. Although, Pro’s ability to delay feature upgrades might get axed too at some point, who knows?

As the owner of the question, I think it is legitimate you express your needs and the fact that you consider Linux as well. The most stable version of Windows 10 might be one running in a VM with no Internet access, but then you would have to take the security issues into consideration and manage accordingly. 😉

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SingBlueSilver

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Have you considered moving to Windows 8.1, and installing Classic Shell? After doing that, you can configure Classic Shell to make Windows 8.1 look and feel exactly like Windows 7, so much so that you may forget you are running 8.1. This will give you an additional three years of a supported, pre-Windows10 operating system.

I am running Linux Mint, with Windows 8.1 running in a virtual machine for those rare instances when I am unable to perform a particular task in Linux. This setup works very well for me. If you have at least 8 GB of RAM and are running 64-bit Linux, Windows 8.1 will likely run so well that you won’t even notice that it is running in a virtual machine.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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SingBlueSilver

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I hadn’t thought of this!  Interesting and innovative idea.  Thank you for putting it out there.

As for VM, I love the idea of toggling back and forth between Windows and a Linux distro, saving the hassle of frequent rebooting and choosing.  But I’m a little light on memory for that: 4 GB, and it’s DDR2 so I can’t really upgrade.  I have a shop-built computer that I got on a blowout a bit after DDR2 was phased out (which I didn’t know at the time).  Has a good, fast processor for that era though, an Intel Core2 Quad 64-bit.  At least that much would be in my favor for VM.

 

MrJimPhelps wrote:

Have you considered moving to Windows 8.1, and installing Classic Shell? After doing that, you can configure Classic Shell to make Windows 8.1 look and feel exactly like Windows 7, so much so that you may forget you are running 8.1. This will give you an additional three years of a supported, pre-Windows10 operating system. I am running Linux Mint, with Windows 8.1 running in a virtual machine for those rare instances when I am unable to perform a particular task in Linux. This setup works very well for me. If you have at least 8 GB of RAM and are running 64-bit Linux, Windows 8.1 will likely run so well that you won’t even notice that it is running in a virtual machine.

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF; Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 Build 19045.4780

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My Linux computer has 4 GB of RAM, and the VM works well enough for me. I’m mostly in Linux, not Windows; and W8.1 is not that slow.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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SingBlueSilver

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Which version/build of Win10 most stable?

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I would have said 1703, but after my 1703 machines upgraded to 1709, I haven’t had any problems with it either. Both builds have been rock solid for me, on multiple configurations. Seems like 1703 is generally regarded as the “most stable” though, as 1709 has caused some problems for some users. (Not me, however.)

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SingBlueSilver

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I apologize.  My intent was only to give those reading and potentially responding more to go on as to which version(s) of Win7 I run, thus which version of Win10 I’d be upgrading to after somebody asked me Home vs Pro.  I won’t talk about Win7 further, now that I’ve put the requested info out there.

 

PKCano wrote:

Please stay on topic. The topic is Win10 – not Win7/8.1 or Linux

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF; Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 Build 19045.4780

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Age is not necessarily a good barometer of stability for an OS. Other than in the most general terms (i.e. patches released), Microsoft does not publish stability statistics. For instance, since 1703 is the oldest supported version IF it is getting fewer patches is that because it is now more stable or because there a much fewer people running it? How many patches have been released for 1703? To fix how many problems? At what rate were the patches released? When did they peak?  How many people were really affected by the patched issues?

I would consider a version less desirable if there was a problem which affected a large percentage of the user population rather than a version which had more individual problems but affected a smaller percentage overall.

BTW, on the machines I support they are all on 1803 except my personal machine which runs the latest Insider Preview build. These machines have gone through each release since 1607. None had any particular problem updating to the release or running it. IMO, if you take reasonable care (i.e. make an image backup) before upgrading you’ll be fine.

NOTE: For completeness – my machine has run every Insider Preview build since the program was started. In that time I had one build which I had a problem installing. That was cleared up in a few days by Microsoft. I’ve had two crashes of Win10 with all these builds. Yes, I’ve run into a few of the known issue along the way but nothing that made these early releases unusable.

 

--Joe

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AlexEiffel, SingBlueSilver

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Thank you @joep for mentioning patches.  I meant to include that in my original query.  I’m glad that you reminded me of the fact that stability “out of the box” is not always overall stability.  Or security for that matter.

So far I think I’m leaning toward 1703, 1709, and 1607, respectfully, in that order.  But I’m going to take a good look at how many patches, and why.

Thanks again –

SBS

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF; Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2 Build 19045.4780

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Singbluesilver Windows 10 Pro version 1709 remained the prominent and most stable on all my machines, both AMD and Intel based. Driver stability and connectivity being the two most important issues. This version remained stable throughout the Spectre / Meltdown train wreck in which MS so terribly got their microcode incorrect, not having to roll back a single system.

Cheers

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SingBlueSilver

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