14 DAY TRIAL // UPDATE: The May 2017 Windows 10 cumulative updates are live. Original story below.
Microsoft will roll out this month’s Patch Tuesday fixes in just a few hours, and as per the company’s release strategy, Windows 10 systems will also get new cumulative updates.
For Windows 10 users, cumulative updates are particularly important because they bring a system fully up to date, and installing the latest one always includes all the previously-released fixes for a specific Windows 10 version.
This month, Windows 10 Creators Update will also receive the second Patch Tuesday cumulative updates since launch, as the new OS version was launched on April 5 as a manual download via the Update Assistant and on April 11 (last month’s Patch Tuesday) on Windows Update.
In addition, systems running Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) will also get cumulative updates, and so will PCs that are still on TH1 (version 1511).
Full focus on security improvements
Since they will land on Patch Tuesday, today’s cumulative updates will be mostly about security fixes, and they will include patches for the vulnerabilities that Microsoft discovered in the operating system or software running on Windows 10. Furthermore, there will also be bug fixes for pre-installed apps like Edge, as well as improvements for the built-in modules, like the Windows kernel.
Starting earlier this year, Microsoft is also shipping delta updates for Windows 10 users, but they are only available via the Update Catalog and not released on Windows Update. This means IT admins can only download update packages including the changes introduced since the previous cumulative updates, but this of course means that they have to be installed only on systems that are already up to date.
Cumulative updates will require system reboots and IT administrators should keep this is mind when planning deployment across their networks.
We’ll update the article with more information when the cumulative updates go live, which is scheduled to happen at 10 AM PT (8 PM GMT+3) when the Patch Tuesday rollout officially begins.