Windows 10's Sync Your Settings improves Windows 11 migrations, but it is late to the party
Microsoft released optional updates for its operating systems last week. The update for Windows 10, KB5009596, improves the Sync Your Settings feature to improve the migration experience to Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system.
The changelog provides the following information:
Adds a new feature called Sync Your Settings for users who are migrating to Windows 11, original release. You’ll use Sync Your Settings to automatically back up a list of your applications to your Microsoft Account. Then, you can quickly restore those application on a Windows 11, original release device. This new feature that will deploy over the coming weeks.
Sync Your Settings is not a new feature of Windows 10, as it has been part of the Settings application. Microsoft could have created an independent feature and called it Sync Your Settings as well, but this seems unlikely.
The new functionality adds a list of installed Microsoft Store applications to the linked Microsoft Account, making it easier to restore these on Windows 11 devices if the same Microsoft Account is used to sign-in. Microsoft revealed that it will roll out the feature to all Windows 10 devices "over the coming weeks".
Closing Words
The new Sync Your Settings feature improves migrations to Windows 11. It is unfortunate that the feature is being introduced months after the release of Windows 11 final, as users who migrated to Windows 11, for instance by purchasing a new device because their old computer was declared incompatible with the new operating system, did not have it at their disposal in the past months.
A direct upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 should keep data, including applications, installed. Most applications and programs remain compatible, and these should remain installed after the upgrade. Sync Your Settings is therefore mostly useful to users who install Windows 11 without selecting to keep data or start using a different device with Windows 11.
The new update is an optional update. Most administrators may want to wait with the installation, as Microsoft uses Telemetry data to detect bugs and issues. The update will be introduced as part of February's Patch Tuesday update, which Microsoft will release on February 8, 2022.
Numerous problems with this optional update being reported by Feedback Hub users.
Of course you need a Microsoft account and need to hand over reams of personal data just to transfer a few registry keys and various pref files scattered around the system.
Or just use Easy Transfer from Windows 7. Still works till this day on 10 and 11. Microsoft devs are dumb to not continue supporting it.
John G., block just driver updates with this script
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/sfchli/is_this_enough_to_make_driver_updates_optional/hup67vv/
unsurprisingly, made by aveyo
@Giourgau, thank you very much, I spent almost a whole day to understand what was happening, however after discovering that Windows Update was the culprit I didn’t know how to solve this problem. Thanks for the help provided and please have a nice monday and week! :]
Ok, let’s talk about improvements for a while: Windows 10/11 is unable to avoid AMD Radeon overwriting of newer drivers but they are talking about improving migrationes! There is no way to install latest AMD Radeon drivers because MS Windows Update downloads an OLD version of them, making completely unusable the AMD Radeon Software. “These version doesn’t match…”, it says, with a big smile, of course. And there is no good solution, because the most effective is to block updates, not a real option for the real life. Of course these headaches are non paid, every bug and every weird **** is free! So, please continue talking about easy migrations, improving migrations, improving the shame… You wouldn’t find sand in the desert, you MS Windows!
Classic Microsoft. Not only migrating Windows computers/installation is a pain they haven’t even attempted to make easier by standardizing where settings are stored and separating them from other data (some settings are stored in the Registry, others scattered in files across AppDara, ProgramData, and in some instances even in Documents or the program folder itself) they release misleading features (this won’t migrate non-OS settings, as some might take the name to imply) and release them at a random time instead of timing the release with their other releases, and continue to release Beta versions under the title Final version.