First 20H2 Upgrade Offer Appears
The time before last when I checked WU on my 2004 PCs, I saw no upgrade offers. Yesterday afternoon when I checked again, the Lenovo X390 Yoga had qualified. As you can see from the lead-in graphic for this story, 20H2 is finally starting to make its way toward my stable of 2004 PCs. Still no offer on the Production PC (2016 vintage Z170 mobo with i7-6700 CPU), and I can’t check the Lenovo X1 Extreme (2018 vintage with Kaby Lake i-7) right now because my son uses that machine for his daily Zoom-based online schooling. But hey! Looks like the ice-up has broken, and at least a little bit of the trickle-out for 20H2 upgrades is now flowing our way. Good news.
Running the Update/Upgrade
As you’ll note from the lead-in screencap, this update appears as a Cumulative Update (CU) with the KB4580364 label. I just clicked the download and install button, and am doing some timing now. Here’s a timeline of how things went on this 2019 Vintage X390 Yoga (Kaby Lake i7-8565U CPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB Samsung OEM SSD):
00:00-00:17 Click button, wait for response
00:17-00:29 Download KB4508364
00:29-06:35 Install to Restart button appears
06:35-07:55 Reboot to black screen
07:55-08:14 Lenovo boot Logo transitions into Handling Updates
08:14-08:32 Desktop appears: Update/Upgrade complete
Total elapsed time: 08:32 minutes from start to finish. Very quick!
OK then, I learned that this CU-based upgrade is much, much quicker than a typical upgrade that uses Setup.exe and rebuilds the OS files. As promised, there’s no Windows.old left behind. Just for grins, I ran Disk Cleanup: it found only 373 MB worth of stuff to get rid of. Not at all the typical upgrade aftermath, which includes the entire old OS image and its supporting cast members. So then, I ran DISM ... /Analyzecomponentstore. It found 5 packages in need of clean-up, so that’s what I did next. As is pretty typical, this took a little while (02:46). Upon completion, it left one reclaimable package behind. Note: this single package remained present even after running component store cleanup a second time- — that’s interesting! In fact, it usually means some old upgrade (or rather, its constituent components) is now locked into the OS image, even though it’s orphaned or obsolete.
Concluding Unscientific PostScript
With one instance of this experience now behind me, it is close enough to the one I had when installing the so-called “enablement package” for 20H2 on my Lenovo T520 earlier this fall, I would say they were of a piece. This is indeed a speedy upgrade . . . err . . . update, and it leaves an update’s traces behind (not an upgrade’s by any stretch). I’m glad that this update is starting to reach my 2004 PCs, which I will keep turning into 20H2 PCs as that update/upgrade gets extended to them. Stay tuned!
Note Added 3 Hours Later
I just checked the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) setting for update safeguards to see if those might be responsible for blocking the 20H2 offer on my production PC. You’ll find that setting in Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Windows Update for Business, named “Disable Safeguards for Feature Benefits.” In the case of this particular PC it still doesn’t get the 20H2 update offer. So, I’m guessing a safeguard is NOT responsible for this machine’s continuing non-participation in the 20H2 upgrade. I’m still counseling myself to be patient, and still struggling with that very thing. Sigh.
Note Added 7 Hours Later
Now that the school day has ended, the X1 Extreme is available. It, too, has gotten the offer. I’ll be installing it shortly. Woo hoo! Only 3 more machines left to go. We’re making progress now. . .
Author: Ed Tittel
Ed Tittel is a 30-plus-year computer industry veteran. He’s a Princeton and multiple University of Texas graduate who’s worked in IT since 1981 when he started his first programming job. Over the past three decades he’s also worked as a manager, technical evangelist, consultant, trainer, and an expert witness. See his professional bio for all the details.