[German]A small note for owners and administrators of Windows 10 systems. Microsoft suspends the rollout of drivers and preview updates in December 2020. They probably don't want to create update stress over the holidays.
Preview updates suspended in December 2020
I had already briefly mentioned it in the blog post Patchday: Windows 10-Updates (November 10, 2020). In December 2020 Microsoft will suspend the rollout of preview updates for Windows 10. On the Windows Update History page you can find the following entry in the descriptions for various Windows 10 November 2020 patches:
NEW 11/10/20
IMPORTANT Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won't be any preview releases for the month of December 2020. Monthly servicing will resume with the January 2021 security releases.
This is due to the limited activities of Microsoft during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won't be any preview releases for the month of December 2020/2021.
Preview Updates are the optional updates for Windows, which are provided in the third and fourth week of the month. The content of these updates will be rolled out as a security update on patchday (2nd week) of the following month. The deployment is intended to give administrators in companies the opportunity to test updates for compatibility in advance. Microsoft had already carried out the same action in May 2020 in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic (see Microsoft suspends optional Windows Updates from May 2020). Preview updates for Windows 10 were resumed in July 2020 (see Microsoft resumes optional updates from July 2020), but remained suspended for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 as well as their server counterparts.
Driver updates suspended in December 2020
Furthermore, Microsoft also suspends the updating of drivers via Windows Update in December 2020. Device manufacturers can only set up driver updates at Microsoft for testing and distribution via Windows Update until December 3, 2020. This is stated in this Techcommunity article from November 10, 2020. The following rules apply to driver vendors:
- You submit a driver into HDC on December 3. This driver should complete "Microsoft Approval" and start the release monitoring phase by December 17.
- You submit a driver into HDC on December 11. This driver will make it into "Microsoft Approval" in December, but due to block out days, the first opportunity for it to get released to WU is January 4.
- You submit a driver into HDC on December 17. Due to block out days, it likely will not start "Microsoft Approval" until January 4, requiring several days of evaluation in the Windows Insider Population before getting approval to be released to WU sometime around January 14th.
- A driver currently in release monitoring is paused on December 19. Due to block
- out days, the driver will not be able to be resumed until the earliest January 4.
Microsoft has published the following calendar sheets for the months November 2020 to January 2021, which show when the delivery of drivers via Windows Update is blocked.
(Driver block 2020/2021, Source: Microsoft)
On all days marked in the calendar sheets above, no drivers are delivered. Days marked in red indicate Fridays and weekends where driver updates are blocked. The days marked green mark the patchday including the day before and the day after, where Microsoft also sets a driver update blockade (see Windows 10: Microsoft allows feature and driver update blocks). The blue marked dates represent holidays, where also no driver updates are rolled out.
For the calendar sheet December 2020 I assume that the green marked dates 14, to 16. Dec. is an error. The B-week with patchday is on December 8th, one week earlier.
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