Windows Update - Defer Feature and Quality Updates in Windows 10  

NavyLCDR said:

It is still available in Group Policy Editor:

Bree said:

As yet we don't know if that works any more in 2004 as the are no new CUs. The first opportunity to test it will be this coming 'Patch Tuesday', 9th June.

Tested today, and the group policy did work to defer updates in 2004.

MS just only removed the defer feature updates option in 2004 from the WU Settings in order to "prevent confusion"

Microsoft removes manual deferrals from Windows Update by IT pros 'to prevent confusion' | ZDNet
Windows 10 V2004: Defer Feature Update removed | Born's Tech and Windows World

but doing it thru group policy still works (assuming at least Win10 Pro or higher edition is used)

Why not set connections as metered via a Registry hack? That works even on Windows 10 Home.

Matthew Wai said:

Why not set connections as metered via a Registry hack? That works even on Windows 10 Home.

Because those who have Pro have long enjoyed the ability to defer rather than block updates, and the flexibility to set independent delays for Quality (cumulative) and Feature updates.

In a typical scenario a small business user could defer cumulative updates for a week to allow time for any 'known issues' to be discovered and, if serious, temporarily increase the defer time to 30 days to wait for the next CU to fix it. Meanwhile, Feature Updates would be deferred for, say, six months to allow time for the (inevitable) new bugs to be fixed.

For such a user that needs a reliable machine for their business, hacking the registry is not what they want to (or are prepared to) do. They just want to set some defer times to avoid being disrupted by bad updates, then forget about it and let it keep them safe from unexpected disruption to theirs business.

This has worked well for the past five years, it's going to anger a lot of small businesses that MS have removed it.

Bree said:

Because those who have Pro have long enjoyed the ability to defer rather than block updates

Metered connections block auto-updates but not manual updates.
Also, hacking the registry does not affect the machine's reliability.

Matthew Wai said:

Metered connections block auto-updates but not manual updates.

Metered connections have to be supervised each month on each machine if updates are to be received after a safety delay, whereas deferring updates is a set-once-and-it's-automatic-forever procedure.

But as deferring updates via group policy is still available, I really don't see what the problem is for small businesses or anyone.

NMI said:

...as deferring updates via group policy is still available, I really don't see what the problem is for small businesses or anyone.

The skill set required to tweak a couple of 'defer' values in Settings is much lower than that needed to understand and use the Group Policy Editor effectively. A small business has better things to do with their time than learn new Windows skills.


You and I know what we're doing, but IMHO it's an unnecessary complication for a business user that probably has far more pressing worries in these current times.

Bree said:

The skill set required to tweak a couple of 'defer' values in Settings is much lower than that needed to understand and use the Group Policy Editor effectively. A small business has better things to do with their time than learn new Windows skills.

Yes, and speaking for myself, I favor the quickest/smoothest path to *checking* a setting, and being able to check it via Windows Update Settings is superior to gpedit.msc in that regard.