Windows 10 Feature Updates

The Creator Update. The aptly named Fall (emphasis on falling) Update. The 1709 Update. I don’t give a crap what you call them because they’re all the same thing — crap.

Windows 10 has basically embraced the “Windows as a service” concept. As the Tenth Doctor would say, “I don’t like it.”

Windows 7 was superior in the service pack aspect in that there was only one!

Not even ranting at Microsoft yet:

Before I begin shitting on Microsoft and their shitty feature updates, allow me to shit on software vendors who boldly proclaim to be Windows 10 compatible! This claim becomes contested when a Feature Update rolls out and bricks their shit software, but oh no, the software works, it’s Windows that’s the problem! Well, no, first, shut the hell up piece of shit vendor support team. You can’t go claiming your shit is compatible with Windows 10 when a once a year update comes along and makes your application implode, every damn bloody year. GO PATCH THAT SHIT DEAR GOD. At least I can DevOps my way out of your fail, BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR SOFTWARE BREAKING ON 100+ WORKSTATIONS EVERY YEAR, MAYBE EVEN TWICE A YEAR.

Oh man, this reminds me of the first thing I did at my previous company. I didn’t know any better then, but a senior tech wanted me to call like 50 people to install Office 365 on their…domain joined workstations. I genuinely believed there was a special reason I had to manually do that and endure dozens of people telling me they were busy and to call back later, but the reason turned out to be that the “senior” tech was an incompetent idiot who had never heard of the Office 365 Deployment Tool (or any way to deploy software, by the way Chocolatey is a godsend for MSP-life!!!).

I mean, thank god my powers have grown since then otherwise this would be one hell of a shitfest to fix EVERY GODDAMNED YEAR.

Now to Microsoft:

I hate what you’re doing with Windows 10. I fucking love using the OS, I fucking love Powershell 5.1, and my personal PC has no issues at all with Windows 10. But god damn your shit don’t scale. The madness of forcing 5GB+ updates is just mind-boggling. We have a cheapo client on a SINGLE fricken T1 line. HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO GET THOSE FUCKERS UPDATED?

But no, that’s not my problem with these feature updates. I don’t really give a shit about them being huge, I know I can just download the ISO once and use network share magic to install a Feature Update. It’s a problem for clients though, they bitch and moan about it taking hours to install. Regardless, my problem is the fact that currently there is no command line way of installing these damn Feature Updates!

SERIOUSLY! Usoclient.exe doesn’t work. The pswindowsupdate Powershell module will say it’s installed, reboot the computer, but then not kick off the installation. Our RMM won’t do it either. Nothing short of manually clicking the “Restart Now” button in the Windows 10 Updates page will kick off the update. Google this issue, and you will see this is true — there is no way to script this update. For some stupid goddamned reason, command line methods of restarting will just skip the Feature Update from taking boot priority.

I mean seriously. What the fuck.

The only alternative you’ll be able to find is to download the ISO extract the contents to a network share, then use a command like //wherever/whatever/setup.exe /auto upgrade. THIS IS ACTUALLY OKAY, except for one thing: this fucks over the MSP style of management. You’d have to make this share at every single client and then download and extract the share to every client. THEN you can push out the /auto upgrade command. No, Microsoft just couldn’t let Get-WuInstall -AcceptAll – AutoReboot be able to do it. Those assholes.

Don’t forget the dumbass clients:

HEY, LISTEN! HEY, LISTEN! I got you some feature updates! Oh fine, ignore me for three years!

I searched through our Windows 10 machines and found some clients had resisted updating and refused to click the Check for Updates button for apparently 3 fricken years because they were still on the 1511 Threshold Update. That’s right, these dumbasses were on the Original Update that went unsupported in October 2017, and had those stupid FULLSCREEN MESSAGES WARNING THEM OF SAID LOSS OF PATCH SUPPORT for SIX entire months before they had enough and called us to — get this — not install the 1709 update, but to GET RID OF THE POPUP. HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS THE IDIOCY IS JUST MIND-BOGGLING.

Oh, and when we try to update them, they shut off their computers afterhours. God fucking damnit.

So yeah, feature updates. A 1/10 idea.