[German]When upgrading a system to Windows 10 20H2 via WSUS there is a nasty trap that a blog reader pointed out to me. When upgrading, an existing Chromium Edge browser of the old system is forced to upgrade to an older Edge version. And Edge is not automatically updated afterwards.
Some Background
Administrators can upgrade Windows 10 clients to newer builds via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). For Windows 10 20H2 (October 2020 Update), there are two options:
- When upgrading from older Windows 10 versions, the multi-gigabyte feature update is rolled out via WSUS and installed on the clients.
- When upgrading from Windows 10 2004 to the 20H2, only a several hundred KByte Enablement Update is needed to unlock the features of the new Windows 10 20H2.
With the first mentioned variant of a complete upgrade, the old operating system is replaced by the new variant from the installation image. This is the variant that causes trouble.
Microsoft Edge downgrade during the upgrade
German blog reader CJ drew my attention the days in this comment to a problem when upgrading to Windows 10 20H2. He told me his experience when upgrading to Windows 10 20H2 from 1809 or 190x:
I am distributing the new Edge via MSI in the company. Latest [Edge] version 86.0.xxx on 1909 and 2004 is distributed and up everywhere, updating via WSUS. So far, so good.
If I do the Windows 10 update to 20H2 via WSUS now, the update will iron the [old] Edge 84.0 over it. Both EDGE versions in the program directory, but only 84.0 available.
It does a downgrade so to speak! You have to manually reinstall the MSI with the 86.0 version again, because the GPO can’t do that by itself. And the WSUS doesn’t help either… And a downgrade lock I could not (yet) find?
It’s already clear that a feature update will take the content of the respective installation image and set an integrated edge to an older version. Microsoft does not seem to provide daily updated installation images as feature updates on their update servers. And then it comes to the described scenario that after the upgrade the older Edge 84.0 instead of the actually previously existing Edge version 86.0.xxxx lands on the machine.
What surprises me is that the browser does not update itself automatically, but a new MSI installation has to be used for the upgrade. Of course, this only happens with a feature upgrade from Windows 10 version 190x (or 1809) to Windows 10 20H2, because only there the installation image is used. Can anyone confirm these experiences? Is there a remedy?