Microsoft to pause optional non-security updates for Windows

by Mark Tyson on 25 March 2020, 13:11

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Windows 10

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After evaluating the public health situation and its impacts on customers, Microsoft has decided to pause all optional non-security releases (C and D updates) for Windows. This means OSes like Windows 10 version 1909 through Windows Server 2008 SP2 will only be receiving security updates (B updates). Microsoft will begin with this new policy in May, which indicates that it already has some other updates, perhaps feature updates for Windows already queued up or nearly complete for release in the meantime.

The above referenced C and D updates, which will be suspended, are usually delivered in the third and fourth week of each month, respectively. The next B update is expected on Patch Tuesday, which will be 14th April. If you remember the Windows story from earlier this week - we know Microsoft is currently preparing a patch for the 0-day remote code execution (RCE) flaw which is delivered by specially crafted Adobe Type 1 PostScript format fonts in documents.

Closing down work on things other than security flaws will help prevent those common of garden missteps where the Windows OS is updated and something gets spectacularly broken in the process - a bug or three are often missed despite Microsoft's hoard of Insider testers.

Engadget reports that Google is following a similar approach to Microsoft. Last week the Mountain View company announced that it had decided to pause Chrome updates while its remote working teams prioritise security fixes.

Back to Microsoft's business, and another change inspired by Covid-19 appears to be the decision to push back the end of service date (originally 14th April) for the Enterprise, Education and IoT Enterprise editions of Windows 10. Devices packing this OS will continue to receive security updates for an additional six months - until 13th October 2020.

HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Posted by philehidiot - Wed 25 Mar 2020 18:03
YAY! They're going to stop breaking things!
Posted by Gentle Viking - Wed 25 Mar 2020 18:22
Yes but sadly by not keeping them up to date.
Its like holding your hands over your eyes, and then cuz you cant see anything there is nothing there. / if a tree fall in the forest and no one is around to hear it, do it make a noise
Posted by winactive - Wed 25 Mar 2020 22:31
Too many patches let's learn from this and drop the cadence. Nobody's gaining from the current circus, seems like codemonkeys are justifying their salaries with quantity and not quality.
Posted by ik9000 - Wed 25 Mar 2020 23:25
winactive
Too many patches let's learn from this and drop the cadence. Nobody's gaining from the current circus, seems like codemonkeys are justifying their salaries with quantity and not quality.

SFAIK the clever brains from MS all left a while back, either through retirement, moving to new challenges, or out of despair during the reign of cpt dummy a few years back. They haven't had the best appeal for workers vs some of the other tech companies and seems to me have ended up with a load of eager but not top-bar folk who can only look at what other companies are doing and try to imitate it instead of doing their own thing. The cliches are myriad, but cutting off the branch you're sitting on is probably apt. A company failing to benefit from a dominant almost monopoly position and eroding its usp more and more with every release.
Posted by markzero - Thu 26 Mar 2020 04:44
They should stop all the non-critical security updates right now.
Who knows how many clinical staff or lab techs may get affected by the next equivalent of the February update that deleted or hid a lot of peoples' desktops?

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