#Fail: Microsoft Cutting Off Windows 8.1 From Updates

From the “worst idea ever” file, comes this posting from the Microsoft Technet blog:

Since Microsoft wants to ensure that customers benefit from the best support and servicing experience and to coordinate and simplify servicing across both Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 RT and Windows 8.1, this update will be considered a new servicing/support baseline. What this means is those users who have elected to install updates manually will have 30 days to install Windows 8.1 Update  on Windows 8.1 devices; after this 30-day window – and beginning with the May Patch Tuesday, Windows 8.1 user’s devices without the update installed will no longer receive security updates.

This means that Windows 8.1 users – starting patch Tuesday in May 2014 and beyond – will require this update to be installed.  If the Windows 8.1 Update is not installed, those newer updates will be considered “not applicable.”

Now this doesn’t sound so bad, except that when you try to install the Windows 8.1 update, you have decent odds of running into problems. Check out the Windows 8.1 Update 1 Failing to Install with errors 0x80070020, 80073712 and 800F081F story on Infoworld to see what I am talking about. There are hundreds of posts there. The Answers forum also has complaints from users who are getting errors 800F0092 to 80070003, and there are no solutions from Microsoft. At least not yet.

So, this seems like a disaster waiting to happen to me. Yet Microsoft wants to push ahead with this. Perhaps they should get their house in order first before cutting off support to Windows 8.1 by helping the users who can’t install the Windows 8.1?

How about it Microsoft?

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The IT Nerd

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading