How long before being pushed to 2004?

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Hi!

I happily run Win 10 1903 with 365 days of feature update deferral. Installed it last year October. Obvious question: how long before I get pushed to the dreaded 2004? Is that 365 days from my install date (= starting to worry), 365 days from the ‘business ready’ or whatever it’s called today (= starting to worry) or 365 days from the introduction date of 2004 (= relief)? Lost a bit track of it all, honestly…

 

Greetings,

Ron.

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WSBirdLady

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[PKCano]

Deferral begisn when the version is released. 1903 has been out somewhere around 285 days. So your 365 is good for a while.
See Windows Lifecycle Fact Sheet. v1903 doesn’t reach EOL till Dec 8, 2020.

Look at AKB2000016 and read Section 3 about setting Target Release Version in Group Policy (also be aware of the caveat in the ***NOTE). When the 365 days is nearing end, you can set the Target Version to 1903 and should be good for a little while longer.

But really, you should go ahead and move to 1909. It is stable and doesn’t reach EOL till May 11, 2021. You will be cutting it close with 1903.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by PKCano.

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thokur, Coldheart9020

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Hi!

ok, thanks for the info! But how is this release date counted, wasn’t 1903 released somewhere in March or April last year? Or are we talking here about the old ‘business ready’-terminology (I just forgot how it’s called right now but you get the point…)? And is Windows 1903 considered to be the same as 1909? Or does 1909 give me even more time? Because from what I understand ‘upgrading’ to 1909 from 1903 is done within minutes because only some already available but ‘sleeping’ components will be activated. In other words: what’s wisdom: upgrading to 1909 in one of the coming weeks, or waiting until 2004 is matured and then go for that? It’s all about time of course. Deep inside I think going to 1909 might be the most interesting option, but when do I get pushed then to a newer version…?

Sorry for the many questions, but a few versions ago I knew exactly what to expect when. But I am rather lost nowadays.

Greetings thanks again!!!,
Ron.

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1903 and 1909 share the same core. They both get the same Cumulative Udates and Servicing Stacks. The difference is, the “Features” are turned OFF in 1903 and turned ON in 1909. So the upgrade from 1903 is easy – turn on the features.

The supported life of a version is around 18 months. The deferral setting in Group Police for Feature Updates is a maximum of 365 day. So if you want to extend beyond the deferral, you have to use the Target Release Version. But the caveat is that MS will upgrade you without warning at their pleasure. AKB2000016 explains all that.

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Hi!

ok, red this article. Somehow it all sounds extremely weird to me that nowadays Microsoft decides what happens on my computers. Problem is that upgrading is a very time consuming task. Have to uninstall AV-software before doing so, and also an image tool. Then upgrading for a few hours, hoping it works, reinstalling the mentioned software, making an image and so on.

Anyway, do 1903 and 1909 are considered to be different releases by Microsoft? In other words: does 1909 has an eol later than 1903? And do you happen to know the date when 1909 was declared to be ready for business use? If there is a difference, I might consider upgrading to 1909 one of these weeks. Otherwise I will set 1909 as target and probably do a complete fresh install of 2004, which is in the end a lot faster than upgrading. Too ridiculous for words of course, but that’s what Windows is nowadays.

Luckily, for my work I don’t use Windows anymore. The machines left here are oldies that will not be replaced anymore by new Windows-systems. It’ll be either macOS or Linux. However, right now they are in use for some (backup) tasks that come in handy and won’t run under Linux. That’s why I’d like to keep them running for the time being, with as little hassle as possible…

 

Greetings,

Ron.

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The “Windows Lifecycle Fact Sheet” is linked above.
1903 and 1909 are different versions with different release and EOL dates.
The information is linked.

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Hi!

yeah missed that one but found out myself. In fact, it seems that 1903 and 1909 are falling under something called modern lifecycle support. Which means that 1903 will be allowed to run until December 2020 and 1909 until even May 2021. So basically setting up the target release right now might even not be the best thing to do, only the deferral. The moment the update is available, I can delay it until December. Prefer to do the ‘micro-upgrade’ to 1909 then, which gives me another five months. I assume / hope that by then, 2004 is more or less stable. Probably there will be also a ‘micro update’ to something like 2009 or so later on. We’ll see. I just realized there is a huge amount of small print to wrestle through to understand somehow what to expect when. That’s just weird, why does Microsoft have to hide this basic information so deep and make it all so wildly complicated…? 🙁

 

Greetings & tnx again!

Ron.

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R wrote:

Somehow it all sounds extremely weird to me that nowadays Microsoft decides what happens on my computers.

Microsoft always decided what happens to your computer as the hardware is yours but the OS belongs to Microsoft to do with it whatever it wants. Read the ELUA you signed.

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MS finally pushed 2004 to my HP  last night, not sure what the hold up was, although I suspect the Nvidia  video card.
In any case, now Outlook won’t open hyperlinks…. (Win 10 Pro/Office 2007)
Something about “restrictions in effect on this computer. please contact your system administrator.”
Sorry MS….That’s me!

As Roseanne Rosanadanna would say….”It’s always something!”

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Jorge Troitiño, Biiljoy

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The thing is that Microsoft seems to consider our hardware also under their control since Windows 10. And they also want to control when it’s time to work and when it’s time to update. Indeed, that’s all in the EULA. And also the reason that there are no Windows production machines here anymore. The first year with 10 was a complete nightmare with numerous destructive crashes, instability, incompatible drivers, software and so on. Then, when Windows as a ‘service’ was pushed through it became a festival of updates and upgrades. We felt it becoming a cat and mouse game, where end users had to keep finding ways to avoid being pushed into yet another c*****y upgrade or update at the most inconvenient times.

Now there is only one pc and one Windows laptop left here. They will be running as ‘in case of need backups’. And even that is already a maintenance chore. If we don’t power them on at least once per week, the darn things get slow as thick you know what, because all kinds of updates, telemetry and who knows what more needs to be arranged. When they break down, they for sure will not be replaced anymore…

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Biiljoy

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check out this recent Neowin article titled “Microsoft starts force-upgrading users on Windows 10 1903 to 1909”

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-starts-force-upgrading-users-on-windows-10-1903-to-1909

since support for 1903 will be ending next month in December 2020, MS is starting to force upgrade 1903 users to at least the 1909 version.

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I was running Win10 Home 1909.  Interestingly enough, I was just force updated to 2004 last night.  I knew this was happening sort of randomly to various users, but I figured with 20H2 released I may not get pushed to 2004.  Just a head’s up that MS is still choosing some 1909 users that don’t have updates locked down to force up to 2004.  I did not seek updates … it just started downloading.

SO FAR, the update ran fine and 2004 seems to be running ok, so I guess things could be worse …

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