Here’s Why You Should Delay Windows 10 Updates

Within the next few days, Windows 10 April 2019 Update (version 1903) will be made widely available as a general release. While the update will arrive in stages, some businesses and consumers will start receiving the upgrade on day one. However, despite the excitement of a new release with lots of features, you should really consider delaying your Windows 10 builds.

Whether you’re an organization or an individual, holding back on updating to a new Windows 10 build is the best option. In fact, we would say it is essential. Before going into detail, the reason to delay an update is because first releases of major Windows versions are typically unstable and prone to errors.

The last thing users want is an operating system that does not function properly. All areas of a system can be affected, even simply browsing. It can be frustrating trying to watch a video, search for a PA ILottery bonus code, write a document, or send an email and finding Windows is broken because of an update.

In fact, Microsoft spent 2018 showing us exactly why waiting to grab a new Windows 10 update is the best thing to do.

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April 2018 Update: Exactly a year ago, Microsoft was preparing to launch Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803) and had even gone as far as releasing the RTM preview. However, that preview turned out to be broken and loaded with issues. Microsoft was forced to pause its plans to launch version 1803 on April 11.

The irony of the situation meant the delay almost saw Windows 10 April 2018 Update launched in May. Instead, Microsoft managed to sneak the release out on April 30. However, the early versions of the build were still buggy, and it wasn’t until June that version 1803 stabilized.

October 2018 Update: Worse was to come with the release of Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) on October 4. Early adopters who downloaded the platform through the manual update were plagued by an issue where Windows would delete their personal files such as photos and documents.

Microsoft paused the update before the flood gates opened. While on hiatus, the few million users who were unfortunate to already be on the October 2018 Update were plagued by issues. Among them were a ZIP extraction problem, a file association issue, an activation downgrade flaw, and a broken iCloud integration.

It was not until November that Microsoft re-launched the October 2018 Update, and even then it was only a cautious roll out.

Defer

All this shows that downloading Windows 10 updates immediately after release is a dangerous thing. It will probably leave you with a buggy OS at best and a broken machine at worst. Luckily, Microsoft has tweaked its annoying automatic update strategy to allow businesses to defer Windows updates for a few months.

Three new deferral options have been added to Windows 10 Business and Education editions. These are important as they allow organizations with multiple Windows machines to delay an update until it has stabilized through the release branch. As for consumers running Windows 10 Home, for future releases, they will be able to pause updates for 7 days without receiving any notifications. This is definitely the best thing to do although it won’t be available in time for Windows 10 April 2019 Update. Instead, consumers will have to make do with the current model of postponing updates but having to deal with pop-up reminders every day.

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