Microsoft Re-Releases Windows 10, 1809 – 30 Month Support Window Starts Today

To say that 2018 has been a rough year for Windows is likely an understatement; with two delayed releases of Windows 10 and activation issues, the year can’t come to an end soon enough. But if you have been waiting for version 1809, Microsoft is releasing the update to Windows 10 today.

Early last month, Microsoft pulled 1809 after it was discovered to be deleting user data for a limited number of users. Even though the impact of the bug was a fraction of one percent, when you are talking at a scale of 700 million users, the ramifications would be widespread if the update was delivered to everyone.

The company ultimately made the right decision to pull the update and now that the deletion bugs have been squashed, 1809 is available once again. But, unlike the release earlier this year where Microsoft aggressively rolled out 1803, the company is slowing down the cadence this time around.

More importantly, for commercial customers, today starts the 30-month servicing windows; this applies for all updates including Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.

It’s no secret that Microsoft has had a few issues with the quality of Windows 10 updates and the company is publicly stating that they are working to improve the hardening of each release before it makes its way to the public. The company has announced today that they will be increasing their communication regarding each build of Windows as well as doing a deep dive into their testing and validation processes for Windows.

Windows is an incredibly complex codebase that runs on a wide range of hardware. It’s this attribute that makes Windows, Windows. And the scale of complexity is enormous with the company saying that there are over 35 million application titles with greater than 175 million application versions, and 16M unique hardware/driver combinations.

These numbers show how diverse the Windows ecosystem is and how it is incredibly challenging to test and validate for each combination of hardware and software that is supported by Windows. While this doesn’t make it any easier for when your specific device blue screens or loses data because of an update bug, it does highlight how the company has to use creative testing validation before they can ship a new build of Windows.

Windows 10 1809 is still being called the October update and is available now in ISO, via Windows Update, and other areas where you can typically find the bits. That being said, if you don’t see the files right away with Windows Update, you may need to wait as there could be a blocking issue or you may not have won the lottery for being an early adopter of the release.