Current Status of Windows 10 October 2018 Update version 1809  

storageman said:

I've read that thing about a "seeker" or a signal of acceptance, but as many times as I have pressed that button, I've never have received a "Preview Release" thru windows update, only when I signed up to be an insider would I receive one.

Thanks for the response, I thought maybe there was another reason.

I also do, once in a while, check for updates despite of the warnings and just like you I have never had the bad luck of a preview release downloaded by inadvertence to my computer. If that were to happen, I would always be able to roll back to the state my computer was in before the download since I make it a good practice to backup my pc on a daily basis at night.

ddelo said:

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work over a metered connection.
The thing is that I have never tested its behavior over a metered connection, although I think that it shouldn't be affected, since it runs correctly when triggered by a scheduled task.
In my PC (not metered connection) is quite consistent in updating Defender every 8 hours, as I have set it to do.
The only time it doesn't do it, is mostly during weekends, when updates from Microsoft are very far apart and by the time it tries to update there is none available, or if within this 8-hour window an update has been forced by Microsoft and at the time it runs, no new update is available.

If you want to avoid scheduling a task, change the setting with PowerShell to something smaller than 12 (=twice a day), like 2 hours and see if it works.

That's ok.. yeah it doesn't seem to work with metered connection. I set one task to do the daily update at 1PM w/TS and it does it great. Debating on whether or not to add another daily task for like 11PM or a 9AM/9PM deal but I think I'm going to just leave it at one.

Update: I put it for 9AM and 9PM so I think that should be good. Unless there is a smarter twice a day split.
Windows sometimes releases platform updates at around 1PM on certain Tuesdays IIRC. I think that comes down via defender updates. I guess it can wait till 9pm lol.

storageman said:

I've read that thing about a "seeker" or a signal of acceptance, but as many times as I have pressed that button, I've never have received a "Preview Release" thru windows update, only when I signed up to be an insider would I receive one...

We are talking here about the "C" and "D" releases. The Patch Tuesday "B" release will be downloaded automatically by windows update. The C/D releases are stated by MS as being previews. As such they will not download and install automatically, you only get them when you click 'Check for updates'.

We also release optional updates in the third and fourth weeks of the month, respectively known as “C” and “D” releases. These are preview releases, primarily for commercial customers and advanced users “seeking” updates. These updates have only non-security fixes. The intent of these releases is to provide visibility into, and enable testing of, the non-security fixes that will be included in the next Update Tuesday release. Advanced users can access the “C” and “D” releases by navigating to Settings> Update & Security > Windows Update and clicking the “Check for updates” box.

Windows 10 monthly security and quality updates overview - Windows 10 Forums

ddelo said:

Although it doesn't make much sense (not to me at least), since the scheduled task works fine... you can't blame us for trying!
And yes, I think twice a day is just fine. Let's not get crazy with updating our AV.

I'm doing the two hour test with it even though it didn't work with 12 hour.
I'll let you know what happens.

Btw, these are the readings I get:



I'll probably stick with task scheduler in any case because with it I can set exact time which is nice.

ddelo said:

And @tomseys
a little helper for your test.

Copy the following code, paste it in notepad and save it as Get-WDUpdates.ps1
Then open PowerShell as Admin, go to the folder you have saved the script and run it:
.\Get-WDUpdates.ps1

This will give you a quick list of all Windows Defender updates, from the Events of your PC, hoping that you have not cleared them…

Code:

# Get Windows Defender updates, from Windows Event logs
# Created by: Dimitri (a.k.a ddelo), 21-Nov-2018

$UpdatesQuery = @"
<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0" Path="System">
    <Select Path="System">*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient'] and (EventID=19)]]</Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>
"@

$UpdateEvents = Get-WinEvent -FilterXml $UpdatesQuery

# Define a new array to gather output
$OutputCollection = @()

Foreach($event in $UpdateEvents)
{
    $xml = [xml]$event.ToXml()
    $Update = $xml.Event.SelectSingleNode("//*[@Name='updateTitle']") | Select -ExpandProperty '#text'
    
    $RegEx = "KB\d*"
    $KB = $Update | Select-String -Pattern $RegEx | Select-Object { $_.Matches }

    $output = [PSCustomObject] @{
              InstallDate =  $event.TimeCreated
              HotFixID =  $KB.' $_.Matches '.Value
              Title = $Update
              }
    $OutputCollection += $output | where Title -Match "Windows Defender"
    }

# Output the collection sorted and formatted on screen:
$OutputCollection | Sort-Object InstallDate | FT -AutoSize
Write-Output "$($OutputCollection.Count) installed updates found, on $(Get-Date -Format g)`n"

How do you go to the folder via Powershell? I have it saved on my desktop.