How to get the Windows 10 Spring Creators Update early
Windows 10 users and administrators who can't wait to upgrade PCs to the soon to be released Spring Creators Update for the operating system may download official files right now to run the update early.
Windows 10 1803 build 17133 is the official version of the Spring Creators Update. It is available on Microsoft servers as ESD files which you can convert to ISO and then install on Windows 10 PCs.
The very first thing that you need to do is download the right version from Microsoft. You can check out the master list of available versions on Pastebin.
The list is divided into different groups:
Bootable Client Consumer Multi ISO Edition in 32-bit and 64-bit versions:
- Windows 10 Home
- Windows 10 Home N
- Windows 10 Home Single Language
- Windows 10 Education
- Windows 10 Education N
- Windows 10 Pro
- Windows 10 Pro N
Bootable Client Business Multi ISO Edition in 32-bit and 64-bit versions
- Windows 10 Education
- Windows 10 Education N
- Windows 10 Enterprise
- Windows 10 Enterprise N
- Windows 10 Pro
- Windows 10 Pro N
Copy the right download URL, e.g. http://fg.ds.b1.download.windowsupda...58afb0c864.esd for the 64-bit U.S. English consumer version and load it in your browser. The ESD includes all listed editions of Windows 10.
The 64-bit downloads have a size of around 3 Gigabytes, the 32-bit versions a size of about 2.2 Gigabytes.
Decrypt the ESD file
Now that you have the ESD file on your device, it is necessary to decrypt it so that it is turned into an ISO image.
You need the program Wimlib for that which you may download from here. Additional downloads for the ESD Decrypter tool are listed on Pastebin.
Note: The program comes as a 7z archive which you need to extract using a compatible archiver. You may use 7-Zip for that or another archiver such as Bandizip.
- Copy the downloaded ESD file to the same directory that you extracted the archive to.
- Right-click on decrypt.cmd and select "run as administrator" to run it with elevated rights.
- Select "Continue including all editions" on the first prompt. You may use other options here, for instance to continue by including a single edition instead.
- Select "Create Full ISO with Standard install.wim" on the next prompt.
The process may take a moment to complete. It depends largely on the performance of the system but should not take longer than a couple of minutes.
The batch file creates an ISO image that you can burn to DVD directly or copy to USB by using the Windows USB/DVD Download tool.
Closing words
I will wait at least a month before I even thing of upgrading production machines to the new Windows 10 version. Past releases have shown that things can go wrong terribly during upgrades and that Microsoft is busy fixing issues that come up after the release of the new Windows version.
