Microsoft forces PCs running Windows 10 1809 to move to 1909

Microsoft has extended its Forced Update for Windows 10 PCs running the older version 1809, released 14 months ago, to the latest version 1909. “We are taking the next phase of our controlled feature update automatic launch process by including more machines running Windows 10 Home and Pro editions 1809 (October 2018 Update),” said Microsoft on January 21 in its Windows Health Dashboard.

It was on December 5 that the Redmond firm launched its forced updates process by announcing “the progressive update” of PCs running Windows 10 1809. Released on November 13, 2018, Windows 10 Home and Pro 1809 will be removed from Microsoft’s support list on May 12, which will not be the case for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education 1809 versions which have 30 months of support and will be supported until May 11. 2021.

The forced updates are a result of Microsoft’s April 2019 changes to the Windows 10 support terms. Instead of delivering each feature update to Windows 10 Home PCs and unmanaged Windows 10 Pro systems on a schedule. the company – since 2015, Microsoft chose when each device should download and install an update – Microsoft added the option “Download and install now” (DaIN -Download and Install Now) to version 1903, then l ‘has re-adapted for versions 1803 and 1809. This “Download and install now” option allows users to choose when they want to migrate from one version to another. And if a user does not apply the DaIN, the latest feature update will not be automatically downloaded and installed on their machine.

Impact: For the first time, unmanaged Windows 10 Home and Pro users were able to easily skip a feature upgrade According to the earlier rules, these users should have upgraded from version 1809 to version 1903 before later upgrading to version 1909. Except that customers cannot continue to run any version of Windows 10 indefinitely. When the current feature update comes to an end – at the latest within four months of its release – Microsoft steps in by downloading and installing the latest version. It is this process that Microsoft has just decided to extend for PCs still running version 1809 of Windows 10.

Skip the updates … with the help of Microsoft

By rolling back the update process for unmanaged Windows 10 Home and Pro systems, Microsoft has also changed the adoption schedule for each latest version. Prior to the changes last April, Microsoft had upgraded most home and small business Windows 10 PCs almost early in the release cycle for the new version. But, after the introduction of the DaIN option, it seems that the schedule reversed, and a significant number of users were still using the version from the previous year, even beyond its expiration date. In other words, many users had decided to wait until the end of support for one version before receiving the next replacement version. According to AdDuplex, the provider of analytical applications for Windows, 22% of Windows 10 PCs identified at the start of the week were running version 1809, down slightly from 25% in October. (AdDuplex did not communicate its release measurements for November and December).

Thus, four months from the end of support, 22% of computers were still running version 1809. If we compare this figure with the measurements made on Windows 10 1709 in December 2018 by AdDuplex, the old version only represented 6 % of all versions run on user machines, or about a quarter of 1809’s share at the same point in its lifecycle, also four months before version 1709 was released from Microsoft support. Windows 10 version 1709 was released on October 17, 2017, and Home and Pro versions 1709 were dropped from Microsoft’s support list on April 9, 2019.

This difference clearly shows the impact that the introduction of the DaIN option by Microsoft had last year: previously, a significant portion of updates were loaded upstream for all users, and mainly towards the beginning of the life cycle of the new version, whereas today old versions are kept until the end of their life cycle and beyond. It also suggests – and there’s no data to say otherwise – that unmanaged Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro users are kicking things off and letting Microsoft take care of the upgrade (which it does). publisher in the last few months of support). It therefore appears that such a large proportion of unmanaged Windows 10 Home and Pro users do not apply the upgrade, as our colleagues at Computerworld predicted last year. (Users forced to update their version of Windows 10 to 1809 at the end of 2018 didn’t bother to update their systems to version 1903, but they will receive version 1909 soon).