Anyone know if MS are addressing Insider build upgrade issues?

I have been an Insider since its inception. Until a few months ago I never once had an issue with an upgrade. Now it is a continuous cycle of fast ring upgrade failures for me and judging by the number of posts by others across a whole range of forums, it is a growing and serious problem.

Microsoft can not be unaware of this yet have remained silent, offering only simplistic boilerplate solutions which never work.

Can some organisation with a bit of clout not grill Microsoft and let us know why their engineers seem unable to solve this problem which has recurred for the last half dozen fast ring updates?

I am on 16199 now only because I reinstalled an earlier ISO and went through the upgrade process from there. I don't intend to repeat that exercise as reinstalling all my software, their settings and configurations and updates is a royal pain.

On that point, is it beyond MS to devise a way to replace the operating system and then reinstall the user's software? It used to be done I believe in the good old days!

cereberus

Well of course they will be addressing it.

From my point of view, as this has been going for most of 2017 for six or so builds, it seems MS are NOT addressing it. That is my point.

brianwall said:

I have been an Insider since its inception. Until a few months ago I never once had an issue with an upgrade. Now it is a continuous cycle of fast ring upgrade failures for me and judging by the number of posts by others across a whole range of forums, it is a growing and serious problem.

Microsoft can not be unaware of this yet have remained silent, offering only simplistic boilerplate solutions which never work.

Can some organisation with a bit of clout not grill Microsoft and let us know why their engineers seem unable to solve this problem which has recurred for the last half dozen fast ring updates?

I am on 16199 now only because I reinstalled an earlier ISO and went through the upgrade process from there. I don't intend to repeat that exercise as reinstalling all my software, their settings and configurations and updates is a royal pain.

On that point, is it beyond MS to devise a way to replace the operating system and then reinstall the user's software? It used to be done I believe in the good old days!

First of all, there is no "organization" that is going to take Microsoft to task for releasing buggy insider builds. That's the point of insider builds.

Second, other than the issues described in the release notes for each build, I've seen very few problems upgrading builds.

However, there comes a point, after many upgrades, that the system starts to get a little wonky and you pretty much have to do a clean install. That's just to be expected because insider builds are not fully tested, and therefore they sometimes leave old gunk behind in the registry or as files.

I just did a clean install on my main rig, which I haven't clean installed in over a year. If you're going to be in the insiders, you have to expect the occasional self-destructing upgrade. And once your system has become unstable, future upgrades will also be unstable until you do a clean install. That's pretty much the way of the insider.

You are missing the point possibly by saying the point of an Insider build is to iron out the bugs. Whilst that is patently true, it won't be any use if we can't install the next build!

This isn't a bug in the Insider build but a bug in the installation routine which is as far as I know, specially designed for Insider builds and not representative of how retail upgrades will work.

So it is right and proper to point out the installer bug to MS surely? And it is a major problem as seen by so many posts on so many forums and social media sites.

I am full prepared for dealing with bugs once a build is installed. That's why I'm an Insider and have been since inception.

No, it's not. And no, the upgrade is not any different between insider builds and retail builds. The retail build upgrade, however, is far more thoroughly tested. Upgrades from one insider build to another won't be as thoroughly tested, and therefore problems are more likely to occur.

As I said. Do a clean install if you start having upgrade problems. MS is not going to spend any significant energy on tracking down bugs from one insider build to another.

As the upgrade install routines are broken as seems to be the consensus, then it logical that this be given priority to fix surely? Without a fix, a large number of insiders will be excluded. I have lost count of the number of upgrade problems on all the forums I visit - it is not a minor problem. And if as claimed, the routine is identical to that used for the retail version then that makes it even more urgent.

brianwall said:

As the upgrade install routines are broken as seems to be the consensus, then it logical that this be given priority to fix surely? Without a fix, a large number of insiders will be excluded. I have lost count of the number of upgrade problems on all the forums I visit - it is not a minor problem. And if as claimed, the routine is identical to that used for the retail version then that makes it even more urgent.

Have you gone to the Feedback Hub to report your concerns?
I have been a part of the insiders program since the beginning and have had no major issues upgrading on three systems that weren't caused by a conflict with a third party program. The last being Acronis TI 2017. Once I removed it temporarily, the upgrade proceeded normally.
However, I have missed a couple upgrades along the way because of timing so there may have been other issues with upgrading. I can't say for those.