It’s a feature, not a bug. Microsoft has silently removed the ability to defer Windows 10 feature updates from the Windows Update page, starting with version 2004 of the OS.
The company has also updated the documentation for the operating system to reflect this change, terming it as necessity to prevent confusion. There may be some merit to this though, but at the end of the more options are always better when it comes to cases like these.
As worded:
“Last year, we changed update installation policies for Windows 10 to only target devices running a feature update version that is nearing end of service. As a result, many devices are only updating once a year. To enable all devices to make the most of this policy change, and to prevent confusion, we have removed deferrals from the Windows Update settings Advanced Options page starting on Windows 10, version 2004.”
Bit of a turnaround from the policy the company had been pursuing for a while now.
Redmond has allowed Windows 10 users, including those rocking the Home version of the operating system, to push back quality updates for 35 days since last year. Business customers running the Pro, Education, or Enterprise variants had the ability to defer updates for up to 365 days.
These updates were only being pushed to users who were running versions of the OS that were nearing end of support.
Anyway, it’s not like the ability to defer feature updates for business users of Windows 10 is being removed — just the manual setting within the Advanced options section of Windows Update is what’s being changed here.
This basically means that the control now rests with IT admins, who can now apply the changes via Group Policy. Individual users can also do this by firing up the Local Group Policy Editor.
Redmond has been quietly tweaking the way Windows 10 is serviced, and this latest change is part of optimizing the update process of the operating system based on what it calls user feedback. Which is another word for user complaints.
A little forewarning, however, would have been welcome here.
Don’t you think?
