Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Updating is hard to do

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(Image: PCWorld)

5 August 2016

Paul HearnsIt is a familiar story, unfortunately — you test and test and test and then deploy and things go wrong anyway.

Much had been made of the 2 August launch of the biggest update to Windows 10 since its launch. But when the day arrived, it was not without its trials.

The update was described as being “Full of New Innovations for Consumers and Enterprises,” with Windows Ink bringing “the Power of Windows to the Tip of Your Pen”, additional security features for “the Most Secure Windows” and the assistant Cortana helping users to be “more productive with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update” (W10AU).

That all sounded great, and there were several other fixes, updates and general tweaks rolled up into the package too.

Various sites and services advised on how to get the update immediately (by doing a manual check for updates, using the Upgrade Assistant) and the buzz was good.

However, over at Infoworld.com, Woody Leonhard, senior contributing editor, began documenting some of the less favourable feedback and experiences coming through. It seems all was not well with W10AU.

I was lucky enough to have a machine on the beta OS fast track, so I had been following the various builds released and liked what I saw of the update. I was looking forward to applying W10AU to a Surface Pro 4. Being a Microsoft device, it should be a breeze, right?

Well, firstly, I did a bit of checking and was able to confirm that one of the centre pieces of W10AU, the extended Cortana capabilities, was not going to be present for Irish users. This is because Cortana is not available at all in the Irish market. At every opportunity, I have asked Microsoft why this is and when it will be available and the best answers I have got have been localisation for the market and around six months. It still isn’t there and there is no timeline for when it will. The official word from Microsoft was:

“Cortana currently not available in Ireland. We will continue to work hard to expand Cortana to more customers around the world.”

I believe the Twitter response would feature a picture of a chap in a deer stalker and the hashtag: #NSS

Anyway, with all the other good stuff promised, I cleared a few minutes in the day and went to: All Settings -> Updates and Security -> Windows Update -> Check for Updates and waited.

Lo and behold, there was “Feature Update to Windows 10, version 1607”. I clicked to proceed and the download completed in a very respectable time, given the level of demand there must have been, and I began the restarting process to install.

All seemed well until after the second restart in the installation process, a message came up saying it was restoring the previous version of Windows.

Needless to say, I was somewhat perplexed. How could a Microsoft device, and a very current one at that, fail to implement such a critical update?

I tried again and repeated the process, only for the process to be repeated.

Two failed update attempts are all that attest to W10AU being there at all. (Image: Mediateam)

Two failed update attempts are all that attest to W10AU being there at all. (Image: Mediateam)

So with two failed attempts I thought I’d leave it for a while. On subsequent checks, the Check for Updates function now returns nothing, telling me my machine is up to date, despite also telling me it is running good ol’ Windows 10, version 1511.

Has Microsoft pulled the update?

Official requests for clarification had not yielded results at time of writing but at least two other Windows 10 machines to which I have access are now reporting the same thing, no updates available, and no sign of W10AU.

Subsequent update searches yield nothing. (Image: Mediateam)

Subsequent update searches yield nothing. (Image: Mediateam)

It would be terribly unscientific to condemn an entire release based on one experience, or even the base of experiences behind the likes of the Infoworld article, but it would appear as if something is wrong and that it is being addressed.

None of which bodes well for the Windows as a Service philosophy, which I must say, has worked well for me until this round.

Stay tuned for updates as they happen.

 

UPDATE: The Windows 10 Anniversary Update has most certainly not been pulled.

While it remains unclear as to why it is not visible to certain machines, I was able to update a desktop machine to the 1607 build over the weekend, though the Surface Pro 4, and another ultrabook remain stubbornly “up to date” on version 1511.

However, further reports are emerging of issues with machines appearing to implement the update correctly, but then hanging on restart, according to The Register.

 

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