Who is getting 2004 automatically?

RPmtl · 21 Mar 2021

Is the May 2020 upgrade (2004) being widely released via Windows Update or is it something that mostly being installed manually? Friends have asked me about the "Windows 10 will reach end of service soon" notification yet they've not received any offer to upgrade when they run Windows Update.

I have five Windows 10 PCs of various vintages and even my two newest systems are not getting any upgrade to 2004 offer and I don't know anyone else who has.

Is the roll-out still being stalled or slowed to a crawl by MS due to problems that are still unresolved? I'm wondering what will happen when 1909 reaches its end of servicing on May 11, 2021 with a large number of PCs still not upgraded?

Ghot · 21 Mar 2021

RPmtl said:

Is the May 2020 upgrade (2004) being widely released via Windows Update or is it something that mostly being installed manually? Friends have asked me about the "Windows 10 will reach end of service soon" notification yet they've not received any offer to upgrade when they run Windows Update.

I have five Windows 10 PCs of various vintages and even my two newest systems are not getting any upgrade to 2004 offer and I don't know anyone else who has.

Is the roll-out still being stalled or slowed to a crawl by MS due to problems that are still unresolved? I'm wondering what will happen when 1909 reaches its end of servicing on May 11, 2021 with a large number of PCs still not upgraded?

Microsoft is pretty much on to 20H2 now. You can do an In-Place Upgrade to 2004 or 20H2
The value of the In-Place Upgrade, is that it leaves your programs and files... intact.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Will 2004, pop up in Windows Updates for those still on 1909... only Microsoft knows for sure.

Bree · 21 Mar 2021

RPmtl said:

Is the May 2020 upgrade (2004) being widely released via Windows Update...I have five Windows 10 PCs of various vintages and even my two newest systems are not getting any upgrade to 2004 offer and I don't know anyone else who has.
Is the roll-out still being stalled or slowed to a crawl by MS due to problems that are still unresolved? I'm wondering what will happen when 1909 reaches its end of servicing on May 11, 2021 with a large number of PCs still not upgraded?

No, the rollout seems well on the way to being complete now. Currently 61.8% of the world's Windows 10 PCs are on 2004 or 20H2 according to AdDuplex.

AdDuplex Windows Device Statistics reports - February 2021

I have six Win10 PCs (also of various vintages) and all of them were offered (and took) the optional update to 2004 through Windows Update, several of them on the first day of public release (27 May 2020).

Bree said:

27 May 2020 at 17:16
...so far where I have been a 'seeker' by checking for updates, two found it, the others didn't. Oddly enough they were two of my oldest machines, System One in my specs below and an old Acer Aspire One AOD270 netbook (2GB RAM, Intel Atom N2600, x86 W10).

How to get the Windows 10 May 2020 Update version 2004 - post #9

By mid-June all six had been offered 2004.

Bree said:

16 Jun 2020 at 21:05
Today my last two machines were offered 2004, so that makes the full set now...

How to get the Windows 10 May 2020 Update version 2004 - post #740

Since then they have all been offered and have installed the update to 20H2 through Windows Update.

I have seen a few other members report that their 1909 hasn't been offered it yet, but they seem the exception rather than the rule. Most of them then successfully manually upgraded to 2004 or 20H2.

retexan599 · 21 Mar 2021

I am one of those on 1909 to whom the upgrade has not been offered. I often get this pop-up in the notification area:

Who is getting 2004 automatically?-image.png

However, when I click on it and go to Settings and look for updates, it still says:

I am not in a dither to upgrade, but hope something pops before that May 11 date.

Bree · 21 Mar 2021

If you want to try a manual upgrade, then first make a system image with Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Then you can always go back to your working system in the upgrade goes wrong.

RPmtl · 21 Mar 2021

Bree said:

If you want to try a manual upgrade, then first make a system image with Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Yes I'm always careful to make a disk image before playing with my system and fwiw I prefer Paragon Backup & Recovery which also offers a free version. I might just have to upgrade manually if it doesn't arrive via a normal Windows Update. Still ... 61.8% running 2004 or 20H2 sounds like almost 40% of Win10 users will soon find themselves with an OS that MS considers 'end of service'.

dalchina · 22 Mar 2021

For those considering MS's 'safeguard' holds where an upgrade is not offered, this is worth reading.

How to Disable Safeguard Holds for Feature Updates on Windows 10

Upgrading and bypassing a safeguard hold is at your risk, so take due precautions.. create a full disk image of all partitions comprising your O/S - typically 4 for a UEFI installation. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for image files.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that upgrading from one Win 10 build to another will not result in problems where the PC is not specified to run Win 10. If there are problems, it then falls to you to fix them of course, or roll back to the previous build, which you can within 10 days by default (can be increased to 60- tutorial available) - assuming your PC is bootable after the upgrade.

Bree · 22 Mar 2021

RPmtl said:

.Still ... 61.8% running 2004 or 20H2 sounds like almost 40% of Win10 users will soon find themselves with an OS that MS considers 'end of service'.

More like 26.8%, those that are still on 1909. There are some 11% who have been seeing that warning for a long time, those that are still on 1903, 1809 or earlier.

You can see from the take up curves for each version that since Feature Updates became fully optional and were no longer forced (even for Home) then the initial take up has been slower. There's likely to be a significant minority that do their best to put off any upgrades.

RPmtl · 22 Mar 2021

Just a thought ... I have Spybot Anti-Beacon installed and it disables most of Window's telemetry. I've decided to disable its protections to see if important info about my system is being blocked from MS and that's preventing the upgrade from coming through. fwiw undoing Spybot Anti-Beacon's settings changes also got rid of the "Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization." message I was seeing on the "Diagnostics and Feedback" pane in the Privacy settings. I still checked all the Privacy options to be sure they're set the way I want. I shall see in the days to come what effect this will have ...

RPmtl · 29 Mar 2021

Update: The 20H2 upgrade came through for my Dell Optiplex 3020M (circa 2013) that I fitted with an SSD and use as a media computer to record and play back OTA TV shows. The process took only about 20 minutes (or less) and everything's still working fine.

One done ....four more still waiting for the upgrade offer.

- - - Updated - - -

I just used the Microsoft Upgrade Assistant tool to upgrade my oldest PC to 20H2.

It's a circa 2008 Intel DQ35JO microATX motherboard w/ 8GB (4x2) DDR2 RAM and an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.50GHz processor with Windows 1909 running on a Samsung 128GB SSD w/ 60% free space. It also has a generic USB3 PCIe 1x card, a Logitech USB wireless mouse, and a generic USB Bluetooth adapter which I left plugged in during the upgrade.

The update took a bit less than 90 minutes to finish the "Getting your Update Ready" part.
It then rebooted to a "Working on your update" screen with a % progress displayed.
Rebooted at 34 minutes with 27% complete
Rebooted at 35 minutes with 48% complete
Rebooted at 37 minutes with 75% complete
It then loaded straight into the Win10 UI at 44 minutes with "Hi, We've got some updates for your PC, This might take several minutes". All was finished at 46m15s. The whole process took 2h16m.

I opened the Device manager and everything was working fine. There were 4 Windows updates available which took another few minutes to download and install. I then ran Disk Cleanup to remove the 23.7GB of Previous Windows Installation(s) files as I have the disk image of the previous version if needed.

So that's 2 down and 3 to go. I'm impressed that MS is able to keep Windows 10 running on such old hardware and help keep older systems out of the landfill.

- - - Updated - - -

System 3 done in 95 minutes without problems using Upgrade Assistant:
Asus P6X58D-E (circa 2010), Win10-Pro 1909, i7- 960 CPU, 24GB RAM, Radeon HD5700 video, Samsung EVO SSD 256GB (OS/Apps), EVO SSD 1TB (Data+Scratch). Used mostly as a digital audio workstation.

Download + "Getting your Update Ready" = 60 minutes
(includes download time and my Internet speed isn't super fast)

"Working on your update" + "Hi, We've got some updates for your PC, This might take several minutes" = 35 minutes

3 done ... 2 still to do.

- - - Updated - - -

The last two systems are done without problems using the Upgrade Assistant Tool:

System 1: X99-DELUXE II mobo, Intel Core i7-6900K, NVIDIA GeForce GTX1060 video.

System 2: Lenovo ThinkPad x270, i7-7500U, 16GB DDR4 RAM w/ 256GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD
Of the 5 systems I was most worried about this Lenovo. But all's well