Microsoft will slow down update releases in December 2020

Microsoft announced this week that update processes will change in the month of December 2020 for its Windows operating system.

December is a month in which development slows down in many tech companies due to many employees being away for the holidays.

Microsoft is one of these companies, and that means that update releases and other processes will slow down in December 2020.

The change does not affect security updates, as these will be released on the second Tuesday of December 2020 on the last Patch Day of the year. The change does affect so-called preview updates that Microsoft releases for its operating systems, as these won't be released in December 2020.

If you check the November 10 Patch Day support pages right now, you are informed at the top that preview updates won't be released. See KB4586781 as an example.

IMPORTANT Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won’t be any preview releases for the month of December 2020. Monthly servicing will resume with the January 2021 security releases.

The next preview updates will be released in January 2021 again.

There is a similar situation for driver releases. Microsoft partners have until December 3, 2020 to submit new drivers in order for them to be rolled out in December 2020. The following explains the entire process:

• Drivers submitted on December 3 or before "should complete Microsoft Approval" and "start the release monitoring phase by December 17".
• Drivers submitted after December 3 may get Microsoft Approval but it won't get released until January 4.
• Drivers released late in December, e.g. on December 17, won't likely get Microsoft Approval in December 2020. The approval is granted in January, and the release will start around mid January in that case.
• Drivers that are released already but get paused may not be resumed until January if they are paused in mid- to late December 2020.

Administrators who only install the security patches in a given month won't notice any changes to the update schedule as these are still provided by Microsoft. Those who install the preview updates on the other hand, will not be able to do so in December 2020 as none will get released.

Now You: do you install preview updates? (via Deskmodder)

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