14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 May 2020 Update, also referred to as version 2004, was released a few weeks ago, and the rollout advances in stages as part of an approach that should provide Microsoft with the chance of blocking the update from being offered to devices that might experience issues.
So right now, the update is available for the following two limited sets of users:
- Windows 10 version 1903/1909 users who manually check for updates
- Windows 10 version 1809 devices as an automatic update
In both cases, devices must be eligible for the upgrade to Windows 10 version 2004 – this means that if Microsoft determines that a certain issue could happen on the device, the upgrade is automatically blocked. When the bug is resolved, the device should then be allowed to upgrade.
And right now, there are several known issues that have triggered upgrade blocks, and by the looks of things, users keep finding more and more problems after installing the May 2020 Update.
I upgraded to this new feature update earlier this week on my main laptop, and as it turns out, I’m not seeing any of the problems that users are complaining about. While there’s a chance that I’m just lucky, I must emphasize that the previous feature updates worked like a charm on my devices as well, so I’m guessing that the hardware configuration plays a key role this time.
In case you’re wondering, I’m using a Surface Book to write this article, but this doesn’t necessarily guarantee that everything works flawlessly. In the past, I’ve seen plenty of Surface users complaining of various issues with Windows 10 feature updates.
Right now, however, Windows 10 version 2004 seems to be a pretty solid release for me, with no major issue discovered in the time I spent running it.
If anything, I find it rather annoying that after the update, there are several Microsoft Edge shortcuts in the Start menu and all of them actually launch the Chromium-based browser that I manually installed shortly after the public release later this year. The dedicated icon used by Microsoft Edge legacy also launches the new browser, so it makes no sense to still be there alongside the new icon, both with the same name.
And given that I also installed Microsoft Edge Canary, Dev, and Beta, it’s not hard to imagine when I type Microsoft Edge in the Start menu.
But other than that, everything appears to be running pretty well and Windows 10 version 2004 feels a pretty smooth update so far. Of course, bugs will continue to make the headlines in the coming weeks, but this is something that’s not necessarily surprising. There are over 1 billion Windows 10 devices out there, and the more of them are upgraded to version 2004, the bigger the likelihood of people coming across problems.
The most important thing is for these issues to be limited because a widespread problem can easily turn the May 2020 Update into another flop, just like the October 2018 Update.
Back in October 2018, Microsoft released an update without first testing it in the Release Preview ring, and it all proved to be an awful idea. The October update shipped with a bug that caused the removal of user files stored in libraries, so Microsoft had no other option than to pull the update and continue working on it to ensure a smoother experience. The same update was re-released some one month later, but not without other smaller issues that convinced many users to delay the upgrade for as long as possible.