14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently announced that in December 2020 the company wouldn’t ship any cumulative update previews for Windows 10 devices.
The change wouldn’t affect the typical Patch Tuesday cycle, so security updates would still go live according to the standard calendar next month, only that users wouldn’t get any new previews for the cumulative updates that Microsoft is expected to release.
“Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won’t be any preview releases for the month of December 2020. Monthly servicing will resume with the January 2021 security releases,” the software giant says.
Driver changes
In addition, Microsoft announced that drivers would also be part of a calendar update as part of the typical slowdown happening during the holidays.
“As the U.S. holiday season fast approaches, we wanted to remind you of the Driver Shiproom block out days, and what that means for the release of drivers that require “Microsoft Approval”. The last day to submit a driver to start rolling out in 2020 is December 3, 2020. Drivers submitted after December 3, 2020 still have a 5 non-block out days to be released and could start release monitoring for certain cases but is not guaranteed. Any driver that is paused December 18 or later will not be resumed before the beginning of the new year,” the company explains.
Drivers that are submitted on December 3 would go live on December 17, while those published on December 11 would only be released on Windows Update on January 14.
Furthermore, drivers that are sent to HDC on December 17 wouldn’t be shipped to devices earlier than January 14, Microsoft explains.
The typical schedule would be restored for both cumulative updates and new drivers published on Windows Update after the holidays.