Microsoft puts Windows Updates on a diet with 'differential downloads'

Final-bloody-ly.

The number of Windows and related updates that just pull, say, the WHOLE of the .NET Framework again, for a few small changes is ridiculous.

This is the kind of problem we should have solved back in the dial-up days, not just now.

Now it's sends the list of what's installed to MS?

Prior to the MS's spyware shenanigans, Windows Update would only pull down the list of available updates and figure things out itself.

This was generally because people don't like sending MS an exact list of everything installed on their PC.

Looks like MS are really going all in on "fuck privacy".

Not really a suprise, given corporate-think these days...

Whoopee feckin do, Microsoft discovers deltas for the masses at last. About time, it's been de facto in parts of the Linux world for a long time.

"will only pull the changes you need"

So no more new crAPPS in the start menu and other not user requested "features". Not

And the "telemetry" is sucked in to balance the link and peering at the exchange. Right.

Ummm

I'm sure that we were told previously that Windows 10 devices share updates on a P2P basis to reduce the load on downloading from the mothership (read to reduce MS's costs).

So.. How will that work with differential updates then ?

I can only see two outcomes here

1. Not at all - Complete revamp and its now all back to MS and they are cloning another Linux approach (about time too)

2. They have implemented a full P2P type service and the deltas are coming from the peers

I wonder which one it is ?

Agree with other comments about privacy. Wonder what gets sent out the door or what a 3rd party can find out about your PC's update needs..

So how does this work for a reasonable systems administrator??

Who is maintaining a bunch (100?) of W10 PCs?

Ideally he would like to have only one update path to a local store so he doesn't tie up bandwidth for all 100 downloads to "the latest". Keeping updates "internal" to an organization makes the proofing of said updates (do they work? do they break things?) easier to do and publish the results for internal use.

All of this "E.T. Phone Home" stuff looks nice for individuals, but when you need to scale it up, things can get a little bit clogged up.

Oh, well wait and see, and let the BOFHs of the world get a new boss along the way.

Remember they have already told us that we can no longer cherry pick updates..

Remember they have already told us that we can no longer cherry pick updates therefore the system will only have to know the last month you updated the OS on, as everyone will have the same set of updates installed.

no ones mentioned OSX yet...

Apple too give huge downloads for any update.

And while Windows 10 is now gathering all kinds of information about you. The apple store, from where all your software must come, knows what you have installed but still just gives you the multi-GB file.

If you are using W10 then you already lost your privacy, so at least this looks like a good thing to come out of MS.

Windows 10 media ceation tool - "Something happened?'

You have to ask how much bandwidth has Microsoft paid for and wasted, over the years, because of Clunky Windows Update.

Microsoft has so much recent history at being bad at this. The Win10 media creation tool. Let's hope the group that wrote the Win10 media creation tool were never involved in the differential update, Windows Update release.

When Windows 10 was first released, rather than give users (on Windows*) a straightforward ISO to download through the browser, MS forced the use of a special tool instead - the Windows 10 media creation tool 'heap of shit utility' software to create an ISO/USB Install of Windows 10.

*oddly Linux/Mac users were offered simply, the US version (but not UK version) ISO directly, instead of using the tool, via the tool's webpage, Linux Mint has a tool built-in to write such ISOs to USB.

Whoever wrote the Win10 media creation tool hadn't a clue about rationing/reusing the amount of download bandwidth used/amount of disk space used.

This tool seemed to have been a last minute add-on for Windows 10, but crucially, formed the front and centre, of the whole experience of installing Windows 10. It was a complete unmitigated disaster. It was plainly, never tested.

Microsoft never thought/designed this software with SSDs in mind, i.e. limited disk space PCs.

The largest file - 32/64Bit (Both Image) was around 6GB

The tool failed to check disk space.

Tbe tool failed to ask where to store the files, stored everthing on the C: Drive.

If the download link broke, there was no resume feature.

It expanded the compressed download format of 6GB, into another file of 6GB, again, no choice to save to a different location other than the C: drive.

So for this tool to work, the machine needed around 20GB of space free, more than most Windows 7 Users running SSDs, and crucially with no warning before software was run.

The media creation tool would just fail, mostly after downloading the first 6GB, (at 99% or part of) as it was expanding the file into the second 6GB ISO file with the meme/cryptic message 'Something Happened'.

Back in XP ish times MS Updates used to cache locally if you employed an HTTP caching proxy (Squid say). So after the first machine the rest were incredibly quick..

Now with secure connections not so.

Don't really care how long an update takes to download as that's done in the background.What pisses me off is that I click "Update & Shut Down" so that me PC updates and then shuts shuts down, not so that when I next turn on it takes 30 minutes to install the updates I've already told to bloody thing to install.

Has to be a way for the PC to reboot if needed, then shut down after all updates actually installed so when I power up next time it's ready to go straight away.

Slightly off topic, but el Reg's picture editors seem to be running out of images that might in some way be tangentially related to 'patch'. Now we're reduced to someone getting a plaster put on.

How about something like this next time?

My approach to Windows updates

What I did was...

- Get slightly annoyed that the only new Windows PC I could buy came with Win10

- Take new Windows 10 PC home

- Disconnect home router from Internet

- Set up PC

- Connect to home wireless network

- Designate home wifi as metered connection (Windows Updates won't work over a metered connection)

- Reconnect home router to Internet

Ooooohhh.. Myyyy. Goooood!!!

This is soooo the future, like!

(And they are even too stupid to just implement it quietly, so they don't have to be embarrassed about why it took them so many decades. No, make a song and dance about how dumb you have been all this time. Does this mean that the algorithm that figures out what needs updating will also be overhauled so it doesn't run in quadratic time?)

Is it just me, or could an alternative headline have been

"Microsoft discover Synaptic"

?

Windows 7 SP1 Clean Install

Having treated my Win7 laptop with Maginot Line defences (an apt example since nasty Windows 10 Nazis just walked around it) and having not updated since November 2015, I thought a clean install would blow all the cob and interwebs out. (Shame I was too stupid to neglect an SSD install). The basic install was all finished in about 25 minutes or maybe less and then came the dreaded Update button depression.

The first run lasted about 7 hours while I was studying erstwhile site such as this one in an attempt to gain valuable intellectual knowledge to lodge into the cavernous pit between my shell likes. Got tired of Dinsdale nailing said cavernous pit to floor and was hoping a full cavernous pit would halt progress of said nails. Anyways, I digress. After several Update attempts I built up the courage to leave my non Samsung supplied li-ion battery to run by itself, unattended like. THIRTY-ONE HOURS later, I was the proud parent of a 271 Update baby. In my exuberant excitement I failed to record the time taken to install the 271 bloody updates however I can say that once they had finished and the updated Updates and the updated, updated Updates and the updated, updated, updated Updates, etc etc, had finally finished, it totalled 364 Updates.

A Windows 8.1 clean install I left running overnight and was rewarded with 301 Update totalling 1,977MB for the first Update round. I am ashamed to say that I haven't yet migrated to a Linux flavour but I am looking at things like WSUSOffline and Autopatcher because waiting so long to got old real quick and I don't like handing a newly installed device to the owner and telling them, "Oh yes, I have left the Updates for you to do." Not real flash when they are paying you for the install and who knows what the idiots are going to install, you know like Silverlight!?

Patch updates?

That's nice - now how about you work on not having to reboot my PC any time something changes? Someone please explain to me why an update to MS Office requires a reboot in this day and age?