Win10 updating terminology is changing again – but this time maybe it’s tied to a major improvement

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At least I have my fingers crossed. First, John Wilcox announced on the Windows IT Pro blog: IF YOU USE WINDOWS UPDATE FOR BUSINESS: Beginning with Wi
[See the full post at: Win10 updating terminology is changing again – but this time maybe it’s tied to a major improvement]

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woody wrote:

…a screenshot of the new Win10 version 1803 Windows Update Advanced options pane,

1903?

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woody

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Yes. Change made. Thanks!

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Problem is what does the bafflegab actually mean?

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WildBill

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Later this year all business users will be unpaid beta testers too. 😁

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abbodi86, Lars220, radosuaf, Microfix, AlexEiffel, woody

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Is MS try to be sued into oblivion? A couple of major IT screws that can be laid to having to a barely beta release will make some lawyers salivate. Home users have a hard time showing significant financial or physical harm. But a business could suffer either a significant financial loss or worse have someone killed or maimed (customer or employee). Depending on the nature you could have more than a civil damages. It would not be pleasant if an OSHA investigation found the primary cause was a W10 bug that was know to MS causing a software malfunction that killed someone; the sound you hear is MS cash register paying out.

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lurks about wrote:

But a business could suffer either a significant financial loss or worse have someone killed or maimed (customer or employee). Depending on the nature you could have more than a civil damages. It would not be pleasant if an OSHA investigation found the primary cause was a W10 bug that was know to MS causing a software malfunction that killed someone; the sound you hear is MS cash register paying out.

Do you have a scenario in mind for how a Windows 10 bug could kill or maim someone?

Did it ever happen with any previous version of Windows?

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Not a specific bug but as more equipment is computer controlled it becomes more likely that an OS bug could cause equipment malfunction. And some of this equipment can be dangerous if operated incorrectly. In the chemical industry, accidents sometimes require body bags to remove the dead, not a reassuring thought if you can trust the system to work correctly. And regulatory agencies like OSHA are required to investigate accidents and find the root cause of the problem. Once the miscreant is identified then they go after them. Plus most industrial and medical equipment have service lives of upwards of 20+ years and the original device programmers will have no idea what stupidities the OS vendor will pull during that period.

By forcing updates to be installed when the user may need to have a lengthy period of testing for safety overrides any local management ability to protect people. If this were the scenario in the future, the final OSHA report would be pointing fingers at MS as at least partially culpable. That would mean in any lawsuit, MS would also be on the hook for damages. This change seems to be half-baked at best as it appears no one considered the situation where delaying updates for a lengthy period is prudent practice for specific situations. What is probably saving MS right now is many of these systems are airgapped or isolated for the Internet so the risk is relatively small.

True I am talking about relatively rare edge cases but ones that could carry significant legal risks to MS. I doubt the EULA would protect them as MS is essentially insisting on full control of the OS updates. If MS has final control of when updates are installed, they have final responsibility for what happens when something bad happens. And consider this scenario is likely to make the mainstream press with the resultant horrible publicity when it eventually occurs.

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Elly

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lurks about wrote:

What is probably saving MS right now is many of these systems are airgapped or isolated for the Internet so the risk is relatively small.

So it’s the internet which will eventually kill or maim someone via Windows 10?

 

lurks about wrote:

If MS has final control of when updates are installed, they have final responsibility for what happens when something bad happens.

All business versions of Windows 10 can defer feature updates for up to a year.

 

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“Windows Update for Business” has always been a vague term since its inception more than three years ago. Sometimes it meant using Group Policy settings to control updates. But in this announcement it just means changing from the default SAC-T to the delayed SAC (previously Current Branch for Business). So anyone following Woody’s or Susan’s advice for Windows 10 Pro is using Windows Update for Business, whether they know it or not. And that delay which was originally four months, then two or three, is now being reduced to 60 days and then zero.

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, abbodi86, Lars220, NetDef, woody, AlexEiffel

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I agree with you completely.

I just wonder if Win10 Pro 1903 will have different options displayed than those in Win10 Enterprise 1903. Wilcox isn’t clear about that. He doesn’t mention “Pro” or “Enterprise” anywhere in the article.

Our own Susan Bradley has posted a comment on Wilcox’s post:

While the naming of the CBB/SacT was confusing, the fact that all businesses still want a date that we can deem that we’re past the beta testing phase of these releases is still needed.

I STILL have not received 1809 on my home Laptop due to icloud software being on there and thusly it’s held off until mid Feb.

We still need a time in the sand that we all trust your releases.  We don’t.  Work on that.

And may I say this just makes it more confusing, not less.

Here, here.

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, abbodi86, Kirsty, NetDef, WildBill, Elly

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My understanding of the whole thing is they do what they announced a long time ago, simply.

This means there are no more distinction between SAC-T and SAC, which means whenever a new version of Windows is ready to start infecting users, it is released to everyone who doesn’t set a deferral period.

SAC-T was just a milestone to the SAC release, which as Susan said, was a way to maybe estimate that Microsoft deems the release business ready, as in beta tested enough. And Woody sometimes said that he thought the SAC designation came too fast and the software was still not “business ready”, which is less long than saying “serious-user-with-no-time-to-loose-beta-testing-almost-ready”.

So what it means in practice seems to be this:

Definition: you use “Windows Update for business” when using the deferral period for feature releases and/or the SAC designation or its previous name to control updates, maybe in group policy only or maybe using the GUI also counts, that is not clear. In any case, it doesn’t really matter to be called a “Windows Update for business” user or not. Just use group policy to set the delay you want and stop counting how many angels fit on a needle. Anyway, do you really trusted Microsoft to implicitly set that delay for you anyway through their SAC designation?

In any case, at version 1903, Microsoft will secretly add, for one time only, and only if you had set the deferral for SAC not SAC-T, 60 days (because that’s the lowest delay they used for designating a release SAC after SAC-T was released I suppose) to whatever delay you had set. So, if you had no delay, 60 days. If you had 60 days, 120 days. If you had 365 days, well, maybe it will stay that way and anyway they won’t really let you go that far when the older version goes out of support.

Note that your delay setting is going to stay the same as before. It will never be changed, the additional 60 days is a one-time hidden thing in case you missed the memo.

After that, for each new version of Windows, no more hidden delay. The day the new version is released (what was called SAC-T before), the delay you set start to kick in. Simpler, no more difference on delays that starts on one of two moments with weird names. But, as Susan rightly pointed so, no more indication that a version is now ready for business like before. We all get the same semi-beta version at release, with the delay you set.

So, if you want to maintain the previous delay you had and you had it set to SAC before, you need to add 60 days to whatever delay you had. But in reality, that 60 days could have been higher or lower depending on the release. Microsoft, by lowering often from one release to another, simply states they believe that their software is good enough for business faster, which we can accept or not based on how well it went the last time they released a version (hint: remember those deletion of files?). In fact, Microsoft think their releases are so good that they are now SAC from the first release date, SAC-T isn’t needed anymore. They had decided that before the 1809 fiasco and they still maintain course despite what happened.

For me, it will continue to be 365 days, running the oldest version until it doesn’t get support. The majority of issues I had with Windows 10 upgrades were on computers that didn’t had the oldest version.

Conclusion: don’t worry too much about all this and just use group policy to set the delay to what you consider a comfortable level. Maybe rant to Microsoft that they no longer give any clue as to when they think a release has been tested enough for serious use, except through the implicit message that now they are always business ready the day they are released, which you are allowed to believe or not.

As for Woody’s hope about a once a year release, their message seems to clearly indicate they are just more proactive at testing complex features that will appear later, not that they won’t release another version in between. When you want something really much, you start imagining things that will confirm your bias. 😉

 

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Sigh

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Lars220

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AlexEiffel, we have to keep in mind that ultima ratio next to the 365 delay there is a GPO where it says stop updates / upgrades from DATE. so if you are not adopting the fast cycles you can use this.

ideally the update prevention time should have been the max support time so 18 months (or longer for fall releases), not 365 days.

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My experience has been with Pro.

Using 365 days doesn’t give you 365 days. In practice, I observed it gives you until there is no support anymore for the version you are running and if you are lucky, you even get a few weeks more of support past the official end of support date, then Microsoft will bug you to upgrade to the next oldest supported version.

Using 365 days is just a way to not upgrade for as long as possible in a reasonable scenario. I don’t expect 365 days.

Once a version is not supported anymore, if you don’t mind running unsupported, you just put your PC to sleep instead of shutting it down at night and you ignore the daily warning that you need to upgrade by pressing X once. I prefer to run supported so I end up upgrading, but I haven’t been forced as forcefully as people would think here to upgrade.

I don’t agree with Microsoft rapid update cycle and I much preferred the days of Windows 8.1 and before for update cadence and support, but I can’t say that considering their update schedule a given, it is not fair to remind me everyday that I run unsupported software and that I should update to be protected.

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alQamar wrote:

ideally the update prevention time should have been the max support time so 18 months (or longer for fall releases), not 365 days.

AlexEiffel wrote:

Using 365 days doesn’t give you 365 days. In practice, I observed it gives you until there is no support anymore for the version you are running and if you are lucky, you even get a few weeks more of support past the official end of support date, then Microsoft will bug you to upgrade to the next oldest supported version.

Using 365 days is just a way to not upgrade for as long as possible in a reasonable scenario. I don’t expect 365 days.

For the March and September feature updates over the last two years, the maximum update prevention time has been 18 months, to coincide very closely with the end of support for each version:

The next update is released after six months, but a years deferral puts it 18 months away. The end of support has not actually arrived before the maximum deferral time for the next version expired (in last two years).

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After reading this I – literally – went straight to Group Policy and increased the deferral period by 90 days.

I don’t want to get personal about Microsoft employees, but keep an eye on what John Wilcox posts. To put it (very) politely and diplomatically: He’s become one of the ones they bring out when they want to add some heavy spin to something of which they know people won’t approve. Last year he even said that 1809 was the most stable version of Windows 10 yet – right in the midst of the ongoing furore about its quality. (… And a release, by the way, that they still haven’t approved internally for the Semi-Annual Channel (aka Current Branch for Business).)

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, NetDef

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Choosing whether to update your OS or not should not be this convoluted.

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John Wilcox is a long timer at the company, a very respected and successful PUM for many years before his current position as a Waas evangelist.

And I have to concur that he knows the lay of the land, the software, and most importantly the direction of the product well enough that he’s the perfect one to help craft that blog post to spin it without giving away too much information.  But be assured he did not write that alone . . .

Reading between the lines, I think Woody nailed it with the speculation that W10’s future will devolve into a more sane annual release schedule for everyone.  I also suspect that the half year cadence will still be offered under a not-as-yet announced terminology – with hopefully an Opt-In measure instead of default.  But don’t hold your breaths . . .

(Mod notice, this was not posted anon by mistake.)

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John’s a great guy, by all accounts, but he’s recently been stuck at the receiving end of some very difficult PR posts.

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woody wrote:

Details in Computerworld Woody on Windows:
This is the same Microsoft, mind you, that released Win10 version 1809, which proceeded to permanently delete data, freeze machines, and cause so much mayhem it was withdrawn and re-worked for six months

Six weeks?

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alQamar

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Four months. 1809 was released on Oct. 9, 2018.

It’s still classified as “SAC-T” and not SAC.

It’s still being worked on – by Microsoft’s standards.

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alQamar

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1809 had “Microsoft recommends” in the pages this morning. Does that mean SAC?

 

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I don’t think that’s how it’s worked in the (recent) past. There’s no SAC line or date for 1809.

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alQamar

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That “Microsoft recommends” tag is another poorly defined Microsoft pointer. As far as I can tell, it has absolutely no relationship to SAC-T or, before that, to CBB. It seems to be something that somebody with editorial privileges for the page just decides.

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alQamar

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If this was Microsoft’s attempt at trying to be more simple and easier to understand, then they have failed. Spectacularly!

Here’s a crazy idea: instead of having these silly update deferral settings, scrap that entirely and just not force people — home and business users alike — onto your half-baked new Windows 10 versions?

If people want to go past the end of support date, that’s their prerogative. Right now, Microsoft, you’re causing more issues keeping businesses on their toes with your ludicrous update cadence and buggy, unstable software. Scrap the whole silliness and do it like many Linux distros do: people have a choice for rapid releases and can choose to postpone updates indefinitely (you can keep your six month cadence too if you love it so much!), and they can choose whether or not they want to be on the rapid release cycle, a stable release cycle where updates are only released after they’ve been extensively tested, and an LTSB cycle where it’s, well, LTSB. All available to everyone. All with full control over the update process. Heavenly bliss for everyone, rather than just to people who can pay to still not have the control they need.

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Elly

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I must be on a one year schedule already! I have yet to get 1809 on one new dell laptop, and a xps8700 desk top.

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in my opinion this change is correct but it will break GPO designs another time. And this change, same as Dual Scan will catch many admins and SysOPs pants down, because one is not obliged to read (MSFT) blogs and twitter in their work free time.

But apparently you have, too.Besides the regular changes we have seen (CB / CBB, later SAC / SAC-T), while some of them were just namings, we have a lot of confusion here and the ADMX is NOT prepared to cover up these changes. There are literally 6-7 restart policies and some do not even apply to all OS versions and not even to all Windows 10 / Server 2016+ OS versions, too.

I’ve made my plea to Ned because his title is deprecation motivator and he is a nice and communicative worker at Microsoft and I hope they will go off the schedule and change things, if they change across all versions. Because all the redesigns leave out any LTSC branches altogether.

Not that LTSC is designed for any upgrades, it is quite the difference but I simply do not want to use WMI filters or grouping my computers in OS version OU just to get on par with MS design changes where 4 GPOs (server, client and respecting testing groups) for Windows Updates is not enough.

https://twitter.com/tweet_alqamar/status/1097028558084603904

just my 2 cents as a specialist that is assigned to WU management.

MS should take care that not anyone has SCCM Configmgr finally or is fully expierienced with Azure Update management to get things right for WuFB.

 

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woody

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That’s exactly right.

Microsoft makes these decisions in an ad-hoc way, without planning how they’re going to implement it 6 months, a year, two years down the road. Mostly they’re going, “Oh my goodness, we need to get this fixed right now.” And then every year or so, they change the terminology again without planning out how it works.

“Current Branch for Business” wasn’t a brand. It was a con.

It’s a lot like the Win10 version numbers scheme. Nobody thought about the future consequences of, say, a Win10 version 2003 that’s not from 2003.

The Windows teams’ (there are two now) ability to plan and brand from a user’s point of view is horrendous.

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woody wrote:

Nobody thought about the future consequences of, say, a Win10 version 2003 that’s not from 2003. The Windows teams’ (there are two now) ability to plan and brand from a user’s point of view is horrendous.

Well maybe I am too pessimistic but I have forseen this after Windows 10 BETA 🙂

Windows 10 2003 / Server (2019) 2003 will happen, and just right then all harddying XP / Server 2003 users will again ask for updates 🙂 hahaha.

But Woody, I would not be surprised if they change this soon – and again. Same for Citrix by the way https://www.citrix.de/downloads/workspace-app/

 

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I do contract work for a large multi-national company.  As a consequence I have a third-party account and access to two of their domains to facilitate the work I do.

The two domains to which I have access (there are a bunch of domains) have hundreds of servers, thousands of PC’s and workstations.  The company has their own cloud, so locked down that Microsoft does not have access to it, other than through email.  The PC’s and workstations are on Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2016.  Any updates come through corporate IT, and none of them are Windows updates; they are updates to the proprietary software that the company uses.

The PC’s and workstations are merely portals to the servers where the software resides and to the Microsoft Exchange servers for email.  I use my personal laptop to connect via WiFi to Exchange, since my work entails creating log files and forwarding those files to the right people.  If I need to get into the network, I can only do that from a networked PC through my third-party account.

Passwords have a maximum life of 6 months, and if I let mine expire, I have to log in on a network PC in order to change it; I can’t change it via my WiFi connection on my laptop.

The company migrated to Windows 7 from NT 4, skipping everything in between.  There were a very few Windows 95 desktops scattered here and there, but they were mere portals.  I have heard no hints of migrating to Windows 10, but then I’m not anywhere close to that kind of loop.  I dare say that if they were to migrate to Windows 10, Microsoft would not have access to their network, any more than they do currently.  Updates would not be a problem for them then any more than they are now.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do to our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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anonymous wrote:

a stable release cycle where updates are only released after they’ve been extensively tested, and an LTSB cycle where it’s, well, LTSB. All available to everyone. All with full control over the update process. Heavenly bliss for everyone, rather than just to people who can pay to still not have the control they need.

LTSC (formerly LTSC) is not stable. It has the same issues as SAC but just with longer “support”.

And by definition MS does not patch code issues, unless they find it neccessary. also OEMs refuse to support LTSC by now because by definition new drivers are unsupported!

LTSC is spin-off of SAC in an overall freeze state – including all the errors SAC has.
Keep this in mind. The only difference is it has no apps, no store, not even Edge as a competent replacement to IE 10 (support end 2020).

This was one major in LTSC 2015, never fixed. Users cannot change default printers:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/devices-and-printers-window-loads-very-slow-in/98f7feaf-e321-440f-9b91-b1dd0c5b4f36

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1956454-windows-10-devices-and-printer-
takes-forever-to-load?page=4

Till today there is no bugfix. I’ve called MS several times and they declined to fix it on LTSC as it is not security relevant. One needs to a open a premium support case, and this MAY actually get triaged by Microsoft US.

LTSC is designed to have as less codechanges as possible, by definition they told me.

 

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AlexEiffel

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alQamar said:
LTSC (formerly LTSC) is not stable

I very much disagree. LTSB/LTSC is very stable and much more stable than SAC Win 10 Home/Pro/Ent, eg not forced auto-upgraded by M$ at least once per year. It is only that Win 10 Ent LTSB/LTSC 2015 is more buggy even though stable since it is based on the newly first-released Win 10 RTM Version 1507.

As for the printer bug in Win 10 Ent LTSB/LTSC 2015, it is common sense among tech specialists that they should not use a new freshly-released OS or software until the initial bugs have been worked out = should use Win 10 Ent LTSB/LTSC 2016 or 2019.
……. Similarly, avoid installing Windows updates on Patch Tuesday = wait for at least 1 week; avoid installing feature updates for Win 10 Pro/Ent on SAC-day = defer for at least 4 months after first release; avoid Win 8 = use Win 8.1; avoid Win 7 = use Win 7 SP1; avoid Win XP = use Win XP SP3; avoid Ubuntu 1810 = use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS; avoid Win 10 Home/Pro/Ent = use Win 10 Ent LTSB/LTSC if possible; etc.

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What all this change in terminology means is that M$ wants all Win 10 Pro/Ent users to be upgraded asap.

Those with default setting of 0-day deferment for feature updates will be forced auto-upgraded 60 days after the release of a new version of Win 10, eg those rich clueless kids who bought shiny new Win 10 Pro machines. Most IT Admins and tech-professionals set theirs to 90 to 365 days of deferment.
……. In comparison, Win 10 Home users or free beta-testers are forced auto-upgraded to the new version from the first day of release = cannot be deferred.

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anonymous wrote:

Those with default setting of 0-day deferment for feature updates will be forced auto-upgraded 60 days after the release of a new version of Win 10,

60 days will be added only once, for update to 1903, if SAC is set.

After that, when the SAC/SAC-T setting disappears, then 0 means 0.

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