Microsoft has re-released the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. Version 1809 was originally released and started to roll out on Tues, 2nd October. However it hit a sticky wicket pretty quickly and Microsoft decided to cease the OS software’s deployment. There were a few problems being reported with 1809 but the biggest was probably the user file ‘deletion’ bug. I’ve used inverted commas there because later Microsoft revealed that the user files weren’t usually deleted, just squirreled away somewhere, so were recoverable. That was a relief to many as file locations affected by the bug included the important personal Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders.
On 10th October, Microsoft reckoned it had fixed the known issues in Windows 10 October 2018 Update and decided to re-activate the process for its Windows Insider Community. It seems that enough peaceful water has now passed under that bridge so the firm has started to roll out the update more widely – to the Windows 10 using public in general.
A Windows support article published yesterday evening says that Windows 10 October Update (version 1809), Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server, version 1809 are now being rolled out to users. Microsoft recommends that you wait for the feature update to be offered to your device automatically.
Coinciding with the above, Microsoft published a blog post concerning the Windows 10 Quality approach for a complex ecosystem. Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President, Windows, discussed the Windows as a Service history of Windows 10 and thought it was important, for transparency, to talk about the wobbly 1809 rollout (my words, not his).
Fortin started by talking about the sheer scale of the Windows 10 ecosystem with over 700 million active users – using all sorts of hardware, firmware, driver and software configurations. It was asserted that trends at scale are very encouraging, showing a steadily declining customer incident rate (see chart above). The blog post is well worth a read if you are into software development or deployment.
