Seems like Microsoft may need to adopt Britney Spears “Oops I did it again” as its unofficial theme song after racking up a third unforced error with the way it updates Windows 10 devices.
Late Thursday afternoon, reports of an update that pushed devices from the build 1703 to 1709 began pouring in as users who were justifiably upset began taking to Twitter and forums to express their concern and outrage over the imposition. Being upgraded from 1703 to 1709, in and of itself, isn’t a huge ordeal, but the fact that the update forcibly disregarded users who enacted the newly implemented advance updating features.
Thanks in part to the Windows 10 Creators Update, users were imbued with the ability to become a bit more granular in how their devices accepted, downloaded and installed updates than had previously been allowed in older versions of Windows.
Users could opt to force their devices to wait until a new full version of the OS update is available by setting their update settings to Current Branch for Business which would allow devices to wait an additional 365 days before upgrading to the proposed update. Other update setting tweaks include allowing users to wait up to 30 days to install a newly received cumulative update.
Regardless of the roadblocks set up by users to ward off updates, the Windows team managed to bulldoze those permissions on Thursday and deliver a Windows 10 Spring (2018) Creators Update to devices choosing to stay on either the Fall (2017) Creators Update or even the older Anniversary Update (2016).
As part of damage control, Microsoft released KB4023814 (Knowledge Base Article) on Friday attempting to explain their most recent update gaff with this appending:
If you’re currently running Windows 10 version 1507, version 1511, version 1607, or version 1703, you can expect to receive a notification that states that your device has to have the latest security updates installed. Windows Update will them try to update your device, Windows 10 version 1607 and version 1703 are not yet at “end of service.” However, they must update the latest version of Windows 10 to ensure protection from the latest security threats.
Microsoft is aware that this notification was incorrectly delivered to some Windows 10 version 1703 devices that had a user-defined feature update deferral period configured, Microsoft mitigated this issue on March 8, 2018.
The appending verbiage came roughly 24 hours after user complaints began peppering the internet. There is no indication that Microsoft has sufficently solved its blundering update process, now three years in, but, at least its acknowledgment and response times are getting shorter.
That’s a plus, right?
