Did Microsoft release another Windows 10 update by mistake?
Back in October 2019, Microsoft released an update intended for Autopilot-powered devices to its entire userbase; the company pulled the update soon thereafter. It appears that Microsoft made a similar mistake in December 2019 when it pushed yet another update designed for Autopilot-powered devices to other devices.
"Windows Autopilot is a zero-touch, self-service Windows deployment platform introduced with Windows 10, version 1703" according to Microsoft. It enables system administrators to configure and set-up new devices to prepare them for use in production environments. The main idea behind Windows Autopilot is to make things easier for administrators and end-users alike, and it may also reduce deployment, maintenance, and management costs.
Microsoft acknowledged that the Windows Autopilot update KB4532441 was made available to non-Autopilot-powered devices. An addendum to the Knowledgebase support articles provides further information and the acknowledgement of the issue:
This update was available through Windows Update. However, we have removed it because it was being offered incorrectly. When an organization registers or configures a device for Windows Autopilot deployment, the device setup automatically updates Windows Autopilot to the latest version.
Our colleagues over at Windows Latest spotted the mistake and wrote about it on December 12, 2019. According to the information, administrators who ran a check for updates using the built-in Windows Update functionality of the Windows 10 devices would see the update returned (up to the point at which Microsoft removed the update).
The update would install but it would be offered again on the next check for updates. Microsoft claims that the update has no effect on devices not powered by Windows-Autopilot and that it should not have been offered to Windows 10 Home devices.
Note There is no effect on Windows Autopilot being offered to Windows 10 devices. If you were offered this update and do not use Autopilot, installing this update will not affect you. Windows Autopilot update should not be offered to Windows 10 Home.
Administrators who notice that the update is installed on their devices that are not powered by Windows Autopilot may uninstall the Windows Update like any other update.
I wouldn’t have been able to install this update anyway because my computer is a piece of shit, nearly the entire hard drive was taken up for “System and reserved”, and it needs too much space to even install an update, so I figured, why bother?
> nearly the entire hard drive was taken up for “System and reservedâ€
I noticed this too on a install earlier this week too. First time installation the UEFI BIOS was enabled and the system reserved was over ~70GiB… my jaw dropped to my toes… but had the space so continued until the installation failed from a key Microsoft storage driver.
Worked around that bug by kicking the BIOS into legacy mode, restarting from scratch, and tada the system reserved was only ~250MiB. Thought that was interesting.
Unfortunately the 1903 disc installation (no I don’t use disposable flash installations thank you) with Windows Update has the usual blue screen of death (BSOD) when browsing the internet in any browser. Next visit I get to try a few things to work around those bugs.
Glad I’m not all that interested in Windows 10 outside of a VM is all I can type.
A mistake from Microsoft? I’m shocked. How could this possibly happen with the glorious quality that ten thousand VMs and the mighty Insiders Program impart? It must be the work of highly advanced extra-terrestrials.
It must be the work of all those analytic AI telemetry programs playing so much chess on the side they forgot what their real job is.
It was NOT a mistake. It was an unintended release of a somewhat harmless update with potential for domain administrators to ensure system-wide security and stability in an ever-changing environment. Wait. It was released to home users? Oh yeah, that was a mistake.
From “Windows Latest”:
“Note: There is no effect on Windows Autopilot being offered to Windows 10 devices. If you were offered this update and do not use Autopilot, installing this update will not affect you. Windows Autopilot update should not be offered to Windows 10 Home.
Although Microsoft says there is no negative impact of this update on your PC, you can always uninstall the patch and those who removed the update haven’t encountered any issues in doing so.”
Not sure what the point of the article is–1. Microsoft made a mistake that doesn’t affect end users, so make it sound like MS is incompetent? 2. Make it sound like you know more than MS [superiority complex] and point a finger at the company? 3. Not having anything better to write for a Sunday article, [lack of a creative knowledge base] make up some type of dis-informative article as a forum for others to disseminate their negativity toward MS [an attempt to rally support against MS]?
It’s the tone of the article that shows ridicule for a company that does quite well.
If such an attitude exists with the writers and the site, perhaps the site and the writers should switch to a pure Linux blog; however, I rather doubt the ability of the writers when it comes to Linux.
Well, with Windows 10 they turned the entire end-user population into Beta testers. So they know to expect things like this.
Windows 10 itself was a mistake.
W10 is a black hole for RAM management, because it eats 50% whatever the kind of computer. In my opinion, W10 should compress by default all the whole RAM available when it is installed in a computer with less than 8Gb RAM. Despite the CPU usage, this should solve some trouble.
Till now, Microsoft was unable to achieve “break even” in it’s Windows 10 updates.
“break even” will occur when the number of new bugs introduced by an update will not accede the number of old bugs the update was supposed to correct.