Microsoft has just released the first major Windows 10 update of the year, version 2004 a.k.a. the May 2020 update, and, to no one’s surprise really, there are a few issues that will cause users no small amount of headaches. There are no reports of disappearing files yet, thankfully, but some Windows 10 owners might want to hold off from updating immediately. Fortunately, this time Microsoft has found a way to inform users before they taking the plunge.
To be fair, having Windows on billions of computers with billions of possible hardware combinations makes it harder for Microsoft to have a perfect rollout. Some hardware, however, is more common than others and some bugs are so egregious that it makes you wonder how those escaped Microsoft’s notice in the first place. While it might be logistically impossible for Microsoft to test and uncover all those cases, the least it could do is to immediately inform users of reported issues and block those updates from even touching affected systems.
Fortunately, it is now more actively doing both. The release information page for Windows 10 version 2004 has quite a list of known problems affecting a variety of hardware. Those range from issues with Realtek Bluetooth connections (ironic since easier Bluetooth connection is one of the highlights of this release) to incompatibilities with older NVIDIA graphics cards.
Not all users, however, will know about this list in the first place. That’s why Microsoft is now showing a notice when an update isn’t yet available for a particular system rather than making them wait or, worse, making users find ways to force an update. Microsoft initially announced that the version 2004 update will be available initially for users on versions 1903 and 1909 unless they happen to have the hardware listed on the Windows page.
The latest Windows 10 update dumps a ton of new features that were held back from the “lighter” update last year. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will officially adopt a “tick-tock” release cycle, which would make this year’s second update another maintenance release focused on cleaning up whatever mess it made and will make all the way to October.