Windows 10 Feature Update, Version 2004 - Subsequent Feature Updates

[DGeekMeister]

Recently I had to take my HP ProBook 470 G4 laptop back to the previous version of Windows 10 (feature update version 1909) following the catastrophically dreadful Windows 10 feature update version 2004 downloading onto my laptop and installing with out my knowledge or consent and suffering the dreaded Blue Screen of Death, audio and other issues.

It appears that Microsoft have failed to fix their 2004 feature update by removing it from their servers, fixing ALL of the known bugs in the software and then placing a fixed "bug-free" version of 2004 that can be downloaded instead.

I cannot afford to have feature update 2004 back on my laptop again unless Microsoft fix all of the known problems, so I have changed Windows feature update settings on my laptop a year into the future so that 2004 won't download again.

I assume Microsoft will issue in April/May 2021 a future Windows 10 feature update that supersede feature update version 2004.

Does anyone know whether it will be necessary to update to feature update 2004 before one can update to whatever supersedes 2004?

If Microsoft won't allow computer owners to "leapfrog" over feature update 2004 and install whatever supersedes it instead, are Microsoft going to fix properly feature update 2004 and if so when?

Hope the above makes sense.

Thank you.

[WAWood]

@DGeekMeister 

I don't understand your first part of your comments -- because MS specifically changed Feature Updates with 20.04 so that they were NOT pushed to customers anymore; instead, they showed up only under Optional Updates, and you had to manually download and install them.  So I fail to see how it automatically got installed on your PC.

There is NEVER going to be a bug-free Feature Update from MS, that is a not a realistic expectation.  There will always be bugs, some known, some unknown.  MS publishes a list of Known Issues with each Feature Update and it is never blank.  So, if you are waiting for a bug-free Update, you are going to wait forever.

And in fact, even though MS released the 20H2 Feature Update this week, they have already announced a major update to that which is out in preview mode right now.  So, there were bugs in that Update as well and it is not even a week old.

I wrote a TKB article here on the risks of the 2004 update and things you can do to protect yourself from that. I have another one that I have written about the 20H2 Update but I don't believe it has been published yet.

If you read my 2004 article, it talks about doing an Image Backup prior to doing an Update so you have something to restore FROM if the Update goes badly.  That is really all you can do.

Here is information on doing Image Backups:

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I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.