“New” Dell 7270 laptop running Win 10 V 1809 – Questions

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Hello,

I am getting my new refurbished Dell 7270 laptop started, and my first concern is that it is still on Win 10 Pro v 1809. I have followed PKCano’s guidelines for set up as much as I can before going online, but I do have a few questions now that I see what version it is.

I went through the Settings/Update and Group Policy and this is what I have:

In Settings>Update I have Pause Off, Semi-Annual Channel, Feature Update set to 250 (based on PKCano’s recommendation that this would allow me to connect and not get V2004 right off), Quality Update set to 0.

In Group Policy I have:

Computer Config>Administrative Tasks>Windows Components>Windows Update Enabled and Auto Updates set to #2 Notify before downloading.

Will these be enough to allow me to go online and run wushowhide and see what’s there? I do want to upgrade to 1909, but wanted to do it in an “orderly” way and wondered if 1809 was too far back for this to work easily. If I needed to be aware of anything else to set up ahead of time, I thought I’d check here.

And one additional question – I can’t fid where to set the connection to metered in 1809. Do I need to be connected first before I do that?

Can’t say I am that enthused about how it all looks so far – hopefully once I move to 1909 it will “look” better and be easier to manage. (Didn’t install Open Shell yet…)

Thanks so much!

 

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You do not need Pause or Metered connections with the Group Policy settings.

The Feature deferral you have (250-300 days) should give you v1909. It should be offered when WU scans, but the “2” setting should keep it from downloading until you click on the “Download” button. And it should let you hide anything else that is in the Queue you don’t want with wushowhide.
CAUTION: after you hide patches with wushowhide, they will still show in the WU queue until Windows Update scans on its own. If they are still in the queue, they will download/install. WAIT until WU rescans and be sure what you see is what you want (because what you see is what you get – remember WYSIWYG?)

(Metered connections is under Network\Status)

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LHiggins

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Thanks! Much appreciated!

PKCano wrote:

WAIT until WU rescans and be sure what you see is what you want (because what you see is what you get – remember WYSIWYG?

So how long does it usually take before WU will rescan? I’m not in a big hurry – just wondering!

Thanks!

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There is no set time. Write down the time/date after you hide anything and the patches are still in the queue. Then return to the queue periodically, see it the time/date has changed, and if there is anything still there you don’t want.

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OK – wushowhide shows a variety of updates for 1809, plus the update to 1909 – plus a variety of others – drivers, etc. Should I go ahead and hide the 1809 updates and just allow the 1909 to remain?

 

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[LHiggins]

And – one more monkey-wrench! I started wushowhide, selected updates to hide, and went to the next step to clear the queue – restarting – and I can’t restart without updating! No way to either shut down or restart without updating first. So – I am running Macrium now before anything else happens and will do a system restore, but it doesn’t look like I can avoid the updates!

I did try Alt+F4 as suggested on the Microsoft site, but that didn’t give me a clean restart option either.

ETA – OK I did have to choose Update and restart – it restarted, nothing downloaded or installed, nothing now shows in wushowhide, and the WU says that I am missing updates, but it won’t get any when I do ask it to check. Just gives me an error code. So…not sure where to go from here.

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by LHiggins.

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You should hide everything you don’t want.
Then wait for WU to rescan for updates so those you have hidden disappear from the queue.
If you have “2” set, the updates in the queue should not download on their own.

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OK – I think I’ve got the update issue figured out. I listed many in wushowhide initially, but then I couldn’t restart unless I chose  update and restart. I did figure out to turn the update service back on after the error message, and now it is just getting the update to 1909 and the MS anti-virus, so keeping fingers crossed that it is all OK.

Thanks!

 

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OK – I think I need some additional help. I have let Windows Update run for about 8 hours now – it was trying to get three updates – the feature update to 1909, one defender update and one malicious software update.

It would not restart or shut down until it got updates – so I let it start. It downloaded everything once, installed all but the feature update and then that would not install and it restarted the download itself again. The error code for the failed install was 0x8024200d.

The download ran again – I didn’t do anything to stop or restart it – and after it completed a second time, it started to install, and now, after just about 8 hours since it all started, it seems to be stuck at installing at 34%. Minimal hard drive activity, and I haven’t seen the install percent change in about 15 minutes.

I am about ready to shut the laptop down and see if it will all come back to life tomorrow, but wondered if there was anything that I could or should have done to make this work.

For information, initially wushohide listed about 10 different updates. I tried to hide all but the feature update to 1909, and what was when I couldn’t restart without letting the update run.

When I tried to check wushowhide, it is still showing the feature update to 1909 and three  defender updates.

I really can’t keep trying to download this feature update, and don’t know what to do to clear these failed installs, since it looks like this current attempt is going to fail again.

Suggestions? Thanks!

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Restart the PC. That often kicks the update back into life.

The 1909 update can be run locally – save multiple downloads of a 4GB+ file. Installing it separately whilst off the internet is worth doing, then you can go online and let it add patches.

The update to 1909 can be obtained from Heidoc.

cheers, Paul

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LHiggins

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[LHiggins]

Thanks Paul,

I’ve restarted it twice now, and it did start to install but seemed to hang at 25% this time. I’m going to let it run a while and see if it is OK.

Paul T wrote:

The 1909 update can be run locally – save multiple downloads of a 4GB+ file.

Not sure what that means – do I need to download and save several downloads to try – each is 4GB+?? How many would there be? Can they be saved to a thumb drive?

Will doing that supersede the, now three, downloads of 1909 that won’t install that are in WU?

I’ll see what happens in the next hour or so and then look into an offline install.

Or, since this is a brand new laptop, would it be better to restore the backup I first made before this all started? Or use the Dell recovery option to revert back to the original settings and start over??

Thanks again!

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by LHiggins.

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Try this. If it doesn’t work, then restore the image and try the same steps below again. Make the changes to GP offline before each step. Only hide drivers and the 4023057. Let it update .NET, Defender, MSRT, or any of the other safe patches.

If you can get back into Group Policy, set the Feature Deferral to 365 days. That way it won’t try to update 1809 AND upgrade to 1909 at the same time.

Let it finish updating 1809, then reset the Feature Deferral to get 1909.

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LHiggins

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That should be “saves you multiple downloads”.

cheers, Paul

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LHiggins

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Great – my internet is somewhat limited – so I really wasn’t happy seeing it download again and again! Thanks!

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Thanks! And a question – I went to the Heidoc site and can’t seem to find the Win 10 pro iso.

Do I download Windows-ISO-Downloader.exe and then can I see the Win 10 version that I am looking for?

Thanks!

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Download the ISO Downloader Tool to you desktop.
Double click on it to run it.
Get the v1909 IOS with the latest date that matches your computer – that should give you 18363.592
Copy/paste the ISO (don’t “burn” the ISO) to a backup HDD then you can remove it from your computer.

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LHiggins

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Good morning and thanks to you both! So – I let it try again, as I noted above, around 5 am and went back to bed. Got up and found that it had finally completed installing and was waiting for a restart. I clicked the restart button and after being at the blue screen “working on updates” stage and restarting several times it finally completed and is now on V1909 Build 18.363.1082. Whew!

To clarify the initial sequence – I had to go online to run wushowhide, which I did after getting my settings right as PKCano listed. Wushowhide showed about 12 updates – various drivers, defender, 1809 updates and 1909 feature update. I choseto hide all except the 1909 Feature update, changed the WU settings in Group Policy – disable, stop, apply – and when I went to the next step – clearing the update queue – restarting – I found that I had no restart choices other than “update and restart” or “update and shut down”. I have never seen that before, but that alerted me that there were already updates waiting in WU – and seemingly no way to get wushowhide completed and wait for those to fall off the list.

In any case – I then checked the WU list and it showed the 1909 update, plus a defender update and a malicious software update, so I said to go ahead, and that is when the endless loop started.

Over the course of hours, it did eventually download and install the other 2, but the 1909 kept going through a loop of “getting things ready” – “downloading” – which took hours, and then “trying to install” and failing. The update history showed 3 downloads and the failure error.

Since things seem to be OK now, I did set the deferral to 365 as PKCano suggested, and I will follow Paul’s advice and download a copy of 1909 to keep on-hand in case I need it. But to clarify – I set 365 in the WU advanced options – not in Group Policy – also where I had originally put 250 to get the 1909 update. Is that not correct – maybe I missed some step?

No idea why it behaved the way it did – and also no idea why using wushowhide as I always have would have caused that weird “update and restart” choice in the start menu. I hope that it doesn’t ever happen again! But – is there any way to override the start menu to allow it to restart so that wushowhide can complete even if there are updates listed in WU.

Thanks so much for all of the help! At least I can go ahead with getting other things set up on that new laptop. The bad news is – I still have my husband’s laptop to get September updates this weekend as well. Maybe tomorrow…

 

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LHiggins wrote:

But to clarify – I set 365 in the WU advanced options – not in Group Policy – also where I had originally put 250 to get the 1909 update. Is that not correct – maybe I missed some step?

Good, that’s where it should be set in v1909. Stick with the settings in Section 4 of AKB2000016 – no Pause needed and no Metered connections. The updates should stick in the queue and you have time to hide whatever you don’t want. Wait till the queue updates and contains only the patches you want, then click the “download” button to install.

When you have to upgrade to the next version (whatever it may be), the settings will need to be changed as per Section 5 for v2004.

You need to use the MCT and create an ISO for v2004 to stash away also, b/c 20H2 is coming shortly and v2004 will no longer be available through the MCT.

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LHiggins

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Good about the settings! I will keep all as it is, and hopefully things will be smooth from here.

Funny about it not allowing me to restart for the completion of the wushowhide steps without updating – hopefully that will never happen again!

And yes – I’m figuring out a copy of 1909 now and will keep a copy of 2004 once that finally happens, too!

Thanks again! 🙂

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PKCano wrote:

The updates should stick in the queue and you have time to hide whatever you don’t want. Wait till the queue updates and contains only the patches you want, then click the “download” button to install.

Sorry – one more question if I may. I just checked both WU and wushowhide now that 1909 is working. There are no updates showing in the queue as I hoped, but when I run wushowhide, it is still showing the feature update to 1909 as able to be hidden.

Since I already have that – should I go ahead and try to hide it – or just leave it alone and once the laptop checks for new updates it will realize that it doesn’t need 1909 and that will just disappear from the wushowhide list?

I was surprised to see it still there since I had restarted and i get V1909 listed in winver.

Thanks and sorry – this is becoming quite a saga, unfortunately.

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In the taskbar search box type winver and hit Enter
If you have v1909 18363.1082 – leave it alone.
You don’t have to keep messing with it. 🙂

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LHiggins

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Yep – that’s what I have. Good that I don’t need to worry about that again – LOL!

Enjoy the weekend – hopefully the “rest” of this will be smooth from here on out. Just downloaded and synced Firefox so I can at least be on the same laptop to see AW!

Lily

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An update for anyone who may be interested – LOL!

OK – so after playing around with the Dell laptop for about a week – update issues, blue screens, display not working, multiple restarts, other things – I decided enough was enough and sent it back to Dell. Got my refund quickly and it all just reinforced my feelings about Win 10. So for now, I’m going to cautiously keep using my old Win 7. Maybe a tablet instead of another laptop one day – one that runs something other than Windows – or a Mac!

Thanks everyone for the help here – guess it wasn’t meant to be!

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So the issue was the Dell laptop but you attribute it to W10?

cheers, Paul

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I’m not convinced that the initial issue with it insisting on updating to 1909, and then the subsequent problems getting it to do that – the long long dowloading issue, didn’t somehow contribute to its unreliability. Those, plus the endless need to constantly fiddle with Win 10 – settings, updates, etc, just wasn’t worth it IMO.

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do realize that support for 1809 home & pro editions end next month in November 2020, LHiggins:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-10-1809-end-of-servicing

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LHiggins

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Yeah, I wasn’t against the upgrade to 1909 – I was just not happy that there was no way to either restart or shut down the laptop UNTIL I downloaded 1909. I have never seen that before – instead of the usual shutdown button choices – restart, sleep, shut down – I had “Upgrade and then restart” and “Upgrade and then shut down” as the only two choices – giving me no option at that point other than to do the upgrade whether I was really ready to or not.

And once it started, as noted above, it ran and ran for hours, tried to install several times and redownloaded again several times. That download loop was my first concern, and there were plenty of others as well. There were things I did like about the Dell, but actually, in light of the recent Win 1909 settings screen header being changed without my knowledge or permission, I am just as glad to only have one Win 10 machine to deal with.

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