Microsoft explains why it delayed Windows 10 version 1803 release

Microsoft planned to release the Spring Creators Update for Windows 10, Windows 10 version 1803, last Tuesday on the April 2018 Patch Day.

The company decided against the rollout of the new version of Windows 10 in what seemed like a last minute attempt at preventing that a buggy release hit consumer systems worldwide.

Microsoft did not reveal back then why it decided to delay the release of the new version; in fact, the company never confirmed that April 10, 2018 was the day that it planned to release Windows 10 version 1803 to the public.

Rumors started to spread quickly after journalists with sources inside Microsoft started to claim that Microsoft delayed the release. While most experts agreed that the delay must have been caused by a larger issue that Microsoft detected in the last minute, speculation ranged from a serious security issue to bugs that decreased system stability.

Microsoft revealed yesterday evening on the official Windows Experience blog why it had to delay the release of the Windows 10 Spring Creators Update:

As Build 17133 progressed through the rings, we discovered some reliability issues we wanted to fix. In certain cases, these reliability issues could have led to a higher percentage of (BSOD) on PCs for example. Instead of creating a Cumulative Update package to service these issues, we decided to create a new build with the fixes included.

Microsoft noticed a bug that caused an increase in reliability issues on machines build 17133, the build of Windows 10 version 1803 that Microsoft selected for distribution to release systems.

The bug led to an increase in Blue Screen of Deaths according to Microsoft and it may have caused other issues as well as Microsoft gives BSODs as an example but does not reveal other issues the build may have caused.

Microsoft could have pushed a day zero cumulative update for the operating system if the bluescreens and other issues occurred during use and not during boot or installation.

Closing Words

While I don't have access to all the facts, I think that Microsoft did the right decision in postponing the release of the next Windows 10 feature update. Windows customers don't lose anything as they may continue to use the version of Windows 10 that is installed on their devices.

Past releases have shown that even smaller Windows updates result in an increased number of bugs and issues that Windows users experience after installation. Bigger feature updates are no exception to that,