Update 1803 to 1809 or 1903? Which is worse?

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With the imminent end of support for WIN10 1803, which newer version is LEAST worse? Assuming it is foolish to put oneself in a position not to receive further security updates, it seems that updating is a no-brainer. But with all the troubles 1809 suffered, and some of the problems 1903 continues to have, I shouldn’t ask which is better. Rather, I should appreciate feedback on which is least worse. I have ISO files for both available to install, and, of course, wouldn’t install 1909 for at least six months in any event.

Thanks for your opinions.

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Over the last few months I have been using 1903 for machines I get in here for repair. Either upgrade or fresh installations. I figure I’ll do the upgrade so my clients don’t have to fool with it. I’ve been running 1903 on 5 of our machines here with no issues and it has actually solved a couple quirky problems I had on 1809.

That said, I’m in no rush to upgrade my clients on 1809. Still having a hard time deciding what to do with my remote clients on 1803 since I don’t have physical access to their machines. I’m really thinking about moving them to 1809 and then to 1909 or whatever later down the road.

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The comments here suggest 1903 is mostly stable and as it’s been out for longer it should be the best choice. I have moved to 1903 and after fixing an issue with the search chewing CPU all seems good.

cheers, Paul

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If you’re talking Enterprise edition, then personally I’d go with 1809 as the lifecycle is longer than for 1903.

 

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I am referring to the Pro edition.

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On my old 32 bit 2006 XP-era Acer 5611 laptop I was unable to change to 1809 either updating from 1803 using Windows Update, the media creation tool or a downloaded .iso in a USB stick or DVD, or doing a clean installation from USB stick or DVD from scratch. The PC locked up at the 1st restart during installation in each case. After switching off and on again it started up in 1803 again and cleaned up the 1809 stuff. I assumed that this PC had reached the end of the W10 line.

A few months later (July 2019 IIRC), purely out of curiosity, I tried a 1803 to 1903 update using the update media tool and this worked without problem on the 1st attempt, so this PC has not reached the end of the W10 line after all!

So for this PC 1903 was 100% better than 1809

More generally, if a feature update to a W10 version N does not complete successfully, this does not necessarily mean that a feature update to a W10 version N+1 (or N+2 …?) will not complete successfully.

HTH. Garbo.

 

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Tchalms, FL Jack

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[EP]

the reason why the 1809 upgrade failed on that Acer 5611 XP-era laptop is because that laptop uses an Intel Core Duo “Yonah” 32bit processor and for some odd reason Win10 v1809 boot/startup files do not work with any Intel Yonah and Pentium M Dothan processor [yup, 1809 broke support for those old mobile Intel CPUs, failed to load and froze/hung on the windows boot logo screen with no animated circling dots]. but the 1903 version restored support for Intel Yonah & Dothan processors and that version worked okay. note that some of the Dothan based Intel CPUs (esp. 730, 740 to 750 have NX/XD support while other Dothan based CPUs don’t have XD support)

I tried clean installing Win10 v1809 x86/32bit (whether home or pro) on an old Dell Inspiron 640m (2007) laptop with an Intel Core Duo T2700 Yonah processor and the 1809 version did not work at all and froze completely on the boot screen.

make a note of this folks (esp. abbodi86, woody & patch lady Susan): the 1809 version killed support for old Intel laptop CPUs from the Yonah and Dothan series and will not work nor boot up with these processors and Microsoft never figured out how to fix that problem for 1809, not even with the recent 1809 cumulative updates like KB4519938 and KB4520062. only by skipping 1809 and going straight to 1903 will these old laptop Intel CPUs will work with that version.

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

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FL Jack, woody

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Garbo writes: Encouraged by W10 1903 installation on my old 2006 XP-era Acer 5611 laptop completing successfully, when the 1809 installation would not complete at all (see above), being presented with the option to download and upgrade to 1909 by Windows Update I thought I would try it. I had been offered 1809 via Windows Update which failed, but as this is not a full re-installation of Windows I thought this would have a better chance of success.

Two PC re-starts are needed during the 1909 feature update and on both the PC froze with a blank screen as the PC first started up before the BIOS screen (presenting me with F2 and F12 boot time options) usually appears. Remembering people previously having problems updating with peripherals attached, with the PC still in the frozen state I disconnected the USB connected mouse and the start-up resumed. (I know it is a laptop, but I prefer mouse to touchpad.) I re-connected the mouse a couple of seconds later and the re-start completed. I needed to do this for both re-starts during the update. I have not had to do this after the update completed.

(It is strange that the re-start stalled at such an early stage when I would expect the PC to be controlled by the BIOS firmware, not the Windows update software, but that is what happened.)

Despite these oddities, the feature update to 1909 on this old laptop was a success.

So my message: If your PC freezes during W10 1909 feature update re-start, try temporarily disconnecting any USB connected device such as a mouse for a few seconds, to see if the re-start resumes.

HTH. Garbo.

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CaddyH

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Unless you want to go through this decision again soon, I suggest going to 1903, unless you have a reason not to, such as a known incompatibility with some must have software, hardware, or with your computer.

Do a complete backup before proceeding; upgrade to 1903; then try it out for a while. If you like it, you’ll be good to go till Dec 8, 2020. If you don’t like it, restore the backup and then upgrade to 1809, and you’ll be good to go till May 12, 2020.

My experience has been that unless you have old hardware or software, any glitches with the latest version of Windows 10 will likely be minor and easily fixed.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Success! I have a 10″ Acer Switch 10 that has a 32GB “main drive”, 2 GB RAM, 32 bit Atom CPU. It came with Win 8 or 8.1 Home, but I did the Win10 Home upgrade. It’s great to carry to take notes, open my Keepass, Evernote, OneNote, or sit and read and think and write as the battery lasts several hours. A friend uses his to provide patches for his Boss ME-80 guitar pedal. It can’t do everything, but it’s nice for doing some things.

Anyhow, mine has been at v.1803 and I was afraid that it might be stuck there, since 1809 was having trouble installing with limited hard drive space. But some of you said that 1903 should work, so I tried it. It said that it needed more temporary drive space and asked to use my 64 GB SD card that holds my music files. I popped the SD card out and put in a USB flash drive with a blinking LED so that I could tell if anything was going on.

The first attempt to install 1903 failed with an error that prompted me to run the Windows Update Troubleshooter. The troubleshooter fixed two problems but did not fix the update database corruption error. So I ran the troubleshooter again, and the second run it fixed the corruption.

So I tried the v.1903 update again. This time I actually read the message that said it needed more main drive space, so I uninstalled everything that was easy to reinstall, like Google Earth, Opera, Firefox, etc. After removing that stuff, the update proceeded and after many hours (I just let it run overnight) it worked !!

I find it interesting that the Windows.old folder has 13.8 GB and the Windows folder has 11.2 GB. I’m going to wait to see when Windows Update automatically deletes the Windows.old, and I’ll try to keep an eye on the size of the Windows folder.

Thank you all for the info you provided.

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Tchalms wrote:

I’m going to wait to see when Windows Update automatically deletes the Windows.old

The .old file will be deleted in 14 days which are the amount of days you can revert to previous OS version.

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Tchalms

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Ten days: Delete your previous version of Windows

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Tchalms

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I have been using 1903 for several months, with no problems.

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I updated to v1903 in July (May update ha!) and no probs with it MikeyD215. On a 2015 sacrificial MSI laptop (Intel HM170 mobo, i7 cpu) and a 2018 desktop build (Asus Intel Z-370 mobo, i7 cpu) no problems. Some had network connection probs with an Asus-Realtek ethernet adapter, but my Asus mobo uses an Intel I219V NIC that is fine.

Have since updated both to the latest v1903 build 18362.449 with all the October patches and updates, that did not give either platform any problems.

Win10 Pro 20H2,backups with Macrium Reflect home edition

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So … today, three days after the update to 1903, a message said that the tiny “main drive” was low on space and asked if it could delete the old Windows. Fine with me. I clicked Delete and it did. I suppose it would have been interesting to hold out longer, but I’ll let someone else do that experiment.

Cheers!

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