For many users, upgrading to Windows 10 meant that future revisions of the operating system would be smooth sailing. Over the past few releases, we have seen the opposite in a lot of cases. It’s becoming common for a new release of Windows 10 to break hardware drivers or applications. Some users are also experiencing issues where the Windows 10 Creators Update is unstable or malfunctions after an upgrade.
It turns out, although Microsoft would like all us of to upgrade to each revision, the reality is, we don’t live in a perfect world. That’s why the software giant announced yesterday that it will be adjusting its rollout plan based on its customer feedback, moving to a new phased rollout approach.
Phased rollouts of Windows 10 is not new, in fact, the November and Anniversary Updates used this method of delivery depending on certain factors. Hardware that met requirements such as TPM 1.2 support, UEFI BIOS, and support for Windows Hello biometrics are ideal candidates.
Microsoft Phasing in Windows 10 Creators Update to Supported Devices
Our Windows 10 Help forums have chronicled some of the current issues users might experience attempting to manually upgrade or after installation. Some of these issues can easily be resolved using the guidance in our 12 step prep article. For others, avoiding the upgrade until Microsoft deems it fit for your system is the best recommendation. In a recent blog post, Microsoft detailed how it’s planning to deliver the Windows 10 Creators Update to hundreds of millions of devices over time.
While it is fantastic to see all the positive feedback on the new features and update experience in the Creators Update, we actually focus more on the issues users are reporting so we can improve the overall experience over time. Depending on the individual issue, we do one or more of the following:
- Document the issue and provide users more information on the issue, potential user impact, and (in some cases) specific guidance including troubleshooting or workaround/remediation guidance. You can find more information via our support channels, including the Windows community forum.
- Update Windows itself, or work with a PC, accessory, or ISV app partner to post a driver or compatibility update.
- Deploy a “block” to prevent further rollout of the Creators Update to impacted devices until an issue is resolved. Source
Microsoft provided the usual channels for upgrading such as the Upgrade Assistant and Media Creation Tool. I personally have noticed a number of users experience problems upgrading using the Upgrade Assistant; a small 5 MB installer, which kicks off the upgrade immediately. Switching to the Media Creation Tool or downloading the ISO file, then mounting it has proved more successful.
These alternatives are not guarantees everything will go well. The Upgrade Assistant and MCT only does a basic check to determine if your system meets the minimum requirements. If you own an exotic configuration with a line of business apps, it’s not gonna necessarily tell you what’s incompatible. The MCT is a little bit better, but not perfect either.
So, what’s the best way to upgrade to the Windows 10 Creators Update?
1. Wait until Microsoft offers it to your system through Windows Update. This has been the primary method since Windows 10 was launched in 2015. Delivery through Windows Update also guarantees that Microsoft has likely tested your configuration.
2. Check the manufacturer’s website for your model. If an OEM vendor such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer or Samsung say its compatible or not, follow their advisory.
3. Backup your system before initiating the upgrade. I can’t say this enough, yes, you are already running Windows 10, but it’s still Windows; it’s the complex 30-year-old code base. That means, just like previous versions, a successful upgrade is not guaranteed for one reason or another.
Microsoft is hoping to use its vast user base of 10 million Windows Insiders to help find problems before they release to the mainstream customer base. The company is also working with third-party hardware and software vendors to ensure compatibility. In the meantime, we just have to accept that, a slower pace is actually better in the long run.
Have you upgraded to the Windows 10 Creators Update yet? Let us know in the comments.
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Ziggy
April 26, 2017 at 11:43 pm
Yep, upgraded a little while back using the Media Creation Tool and, as per usual, it resulted in freezing issues with one of my older pc’s. Fixed that by turning many of the background applications to “off” as I don’t need them anyway.
Also updated to version 1703, build 15063.250 from the M/S catalogue hub. Now running pretty smoothly for a couple of days since initiated fixes as noted previously in my comment.
Next time I’ll definitely wait and will follow some of the suggested ideas in how to avoid future version updates of Windows 10 – invariably these have a nasty habit of breaking things especially on older machines.
P.S. I also ran a driver update, which (I think) also seemed to have helped.
StephenB
April 27, 2017 at 6:30 am
Just before the April 11th official release I upgraded three Win10 installations: a Dell touch laptop and a Dell tablet along with a virtual Win10 using Oracle’s VirtualBox hosted by a home built i7 Win7 system. All upgrades were done with the help of the Upgrade Assistant and all upgrades went smoothly. I have absolutely no complaints about the Creators Upgrade installation.
Bill
April 27, 2017 at 3:31 pm
Been trying to download this upgrade for 4 days now, have 36% of the download completed. 8 more days and I should have the entire thing. Microsoft needs to speed up their servers. I downloaded a 2 hour movie from youtube in 25 mins, so it’s NOT me.
Wine King
April 27, 2017 at 7:07 am
I tried the creation upgrade and it worked fine for a few days, then some apps stopped working so I was forced to take it off and that took ages .It did not want to leave my machine in fact I think some of it is still on as it keeps telling me to try again. Whilst on about upgrades the one big problem I have with Windows 10 is that Edge will not work with Norton WHY! I ask, I know they tell us to use Defender but Defender does not remove cookies, so I am forced to use IE and Norton.
Bill
April 28, 2017 at 1:53 am
If you are looking for a program that remove cookies try CCleaner.
Carrol
April 27, 2017 at 7:23 am
Guess I’m one of the lucky ones. I upgraded through Windows Update and have had no problems with the Creators upgrade on my Lenovo ThinkCentre desktop. All drivers, apps and programs are working flawlessly with no freezes. It boots up just as fast too. I couldn’t be happier.
Paul
April 27, 2017 at 7:28 am
Upgraded yesterday using assistant and everything seems ok.havent used it today cause i have one timy hitch.i have light sensitivity(photophobia) due to migraine meds and the brightness and display settings after the update is intensified (probably for sharper picture) which means i cant use my desktop till i sort this out.my sensitivity has increased in last couple of days unrelated to the update so ajustment in my meds is being done. As far as the upgrade went so far i didnt get any error messages yet.and i did two normal windows updates after the creators update.
Miguel Okstein
April 27, 2017 at 11:50 am
.Missing Icon Labels, Text and Icons in Windows 10 Creators Update Due to Comodo Antivirus and Incompatible Intel Atom Processors
That’s not truth. This happens to me in a clean install of Creator’s
Alan
April 27, 2017 at 1:42 pm
After 30 years of upgrading with troubles; I decided not to upgrade and stayed with windows 7 professional. But windows has found a way to inflict trouble on all my directories by changing the way that w7 directories update. EVERY TIME NOW THAT I SAVE A NEW OR OLD WP OR FILE AND I LATER GO TO THE DIRECTORY WHERE IT WAS SAVED – EITHER IT IS NOT THERE OR IT IS DATED YESTERDAY WITH NONE OF TODAY’S UPDATES.
I need therefore to save to a storage file and the document is in turn copied to the proper directory.
I implore you to reverse your latest change in windows 7.
Kevin
April 27, 2017 at 1:57 pm
Upgraded and Start Menu and notifications menu did not work. Had to do a clean install to get them to work..
Mary
April 27, 2017 at 2:11 pm
I updated 3computers using the Upgrade assistant and had no problems. I made sure I had all previous updates in before installing creator update. Thank you!
Jerry
April 27, 2017 at 4:10 pm
I upgraded my Lenovo desktop to version 1703 through Windows Update a week ago and so far it is working great, no problems at all.
Eby T
April 27, 2017 at 11:32 pm
Hey.i want to work with you..i started a new blog based on yours.please can you support me.
Wine King
April 28, 2017 at 1:26 am
Why not let me have more details
Ziggy
April 28, 2017 at 11:58 pm
Further to my initial comment, posted April 26, 2017: Said computer was constantly freezing, with multiple browsers (Edge included) and programs not responding. Couldn’t even boot into it.
For some odd reason the only way to boot was by getting into the bios and then exiting without making any changes, which then got me back to the desktop.
Was able to do an upgrade over an upgrade using the Media Creation Tool and, thus far, all good. This particular version is sure one hell of a …. breaker! Keep you posted…
Eyelai Lyekarugge
April 29, 2017 at 9:15 am
I think I’ll hold off a bit. The Anniversary update killed off the store and all other MS apps, they stay grayed out. Applying fixes found online never work more than a day or 2 then revert. Maybe CU will fix it, maybe it’ll break it worse. I have a lot of stuff installed and a fresh install would be tedious to say the least. This is a higher-end Skylake system; I have several AMD FX-based boxes for work that this doesn’t happen to.
Gennadii Pimakhov
April 29, 2017 at 2:39 pm
Wow !!! One whole day, from the very morning of Saturday, 29/04/2017, to midnight… and I now run Creators Update of Windows 10 !!! Hooray !!!
Thanks? Mr. Andre, for advices on Win10 Creators Update !!! I’ve tried many ways of yours, and voila! I did it… it’s not too easy, because it is HP Pavilion circa 2011/2012, but not it’s OK !!!
Bill
April 30, 2017 at 5:34 am
Finally got Creators update downloaded. The install took 18 hours. Can’t tell you how many times I was tempted to shut my computer off but my better half did that with her laptop about 6 months ago accidentally and ended up with a brick. It was old and I was going to replace it anyway. Haven’t bothered to wipe the drive and reinstall to OS yet. But 18 hours…. really?????
Richard
May 5, 2017 at 3:45 pm
Upgraded about a week ago. One 9F BugCheck and some logs and services failing like homegroup logs with 0xC0000035 including Muroc System Trace. Some DCOM Services failing to register in a timely manner. Connected Devices Platform Service was restored which I did not want. Getting new AppModel-Runtime errors which I did not have for quite a while.
Randy J
May 10, 2017 at 1:45 pm
I’m using an Acer Aspire E5-571-568M laptop (Intel (R) HD Graphics 5500) with a Samsung Syncmaster P2570HD monitor. I have been using this set-up quite happily with Windows 10 since I purchased the laptop about 18 months ago. THEN the latest Windows 10 update (Creator) hit my system via the automatic update “feature”. Immediately my laptop would no longer detect the Samsung monitor! It’s not just a case of not detecting this particular monitor. I’ve tried connecting to two other monitors by other manufacturers with the same result – no other monitor detected. I’ve spent countless hours scouring the internet and trying, unsuccessfully, every suggestion I could find to fix this problem. I’ve switched between VGA and HDMI, tried updating drivers, three (3) fresh installs of Windows 10, etc., etc. Something obviously got broken when Windows 10 Creator update was pushed to my computer. Can anyone help with this? I really need my large screen monitor for spread sheets. I’m going crazy trying to fix this. And please, please no more cute comments such as “Welcome to Windows 10. Good luck!”. They ceased to be humorous about 3 weeks ago.
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May 14, 2017 at 10:21 am
I upgraded through Windows Update and have had no problems at all with the Creators upgrade on my assembled PC. All drivers, apps and programs are working flawlessly without any sort of issues
Nathalie
June 30, 2017 at 7:53 pm
My daughter’s HP 15-AY103DX laptop that we just bought a month ago was prompted to update Windows last night so she did. Immediately, she started getting the “Blue Screen of Death”. After trying various fixes suggested on the Microsoft website that did nothing and researching solutions online, I called the Microsoft Answer Desk. The tech couldn’t figure out what the problem was either, and after trying different things (while the BSOD kept on happening at the same time!), had me download Windows 10 installation files from their website onto a flash drive and scheduled a call back from “Level 2” tonight for them to guide us through reinstalling Windows 10 on her laptop.
The Level 2 guy took control of her laptop tonight and looked at the current Windows 10 build (1703) and told us “This is the latest version of Windows 10, the Creator Update, have you made sure that your laptop is compatible with the Creator Update?” Well shoot, we’re just regular users, no we didn’t “make sure” of anything, your company is pushing the update to her laptop, it’s not like we have the choice NOT to update it because eventually, it will update itself. Plus, nothing says “oh and by the way, it’s the Windows Creator Update, your machine might not be compatible!”. So now he’s trying to roll back to the previous version of Windows and hopefully will do something so that the update isn’t continuously pushed to her machine?! If that doesn’t work, he said he would schedule an appointment for us at the nearest Microsoft store for THEM to reinstall Windows 10 for us here. And I’m thankful that we have another option if the restore thing doesn’t fix it but the nearest store is an hour away! I can’t help lamenting the loss if Windows 7 when we never had a problem at all…
Anyhoo, all of this to say that what is being proposed in the article “wait until the update is suggested to you via Windows Update” so you don’t have any problems because supposedly Microsoft will have pre-tested your machine to make sure that it’s compatible… isn’t accurate at all. As a matter of fact, I bought her this laptop back in May because her previous laptop had just become so corrupted after an update that we couldn’t even reinstall Windows at all, but at the time, I didn’t know to call the Answer Desk. Back then I suspected that the Creator update had caused the problem because my own laptop had just been updated to it and even though it didn’t destroy it, some of my programs aren’t working properly anymore (ironically, OneNote 2016 is one of the programs that is now buggy for me!), so I bought her a new laptop. And just a month and a half later… this. So I think it’s safe to say that they might be pushing Creator update in waves, but they clearly do not differentiate in advance whether to push to update to you by having analyzed your machine in advance.
Update: Restoring the previous version of WIndows did work apparently (I think she’s back to version 1607 now) Also, prior to starting the process, the tech had asked us when the update had been installed because apparently you only have 9 days to be able to restore to an earlier version. It’s been an hour and a half and we haven’t had the BSOD, keeping our fingers crossed. I did question what would happen the next time the update showed up again and he went ahead and blocked it permanently after verifying on the HP website that my daughter’s laptop was NOT on the list of Creator-Update compatible HP machines. Supposedly, it won’t prevent the next update after Creator from coming up so we hope we won’t have the same problem again although who knows if the next update will be compatible with her machine. Ugh.
And then he tried to upsell me on the Microsoft Assure Plan for $149/yr that supposedly covers 5 machines in your house and once you’re on the plan, you automatically get Level 2 techs right away and they can make Microsoft Store appointments for you if your machine can’t be fixed remotely. Problem is, I can’t find any official website about that plan anywhere, just a bunch of people complaining about having been scammed with it on the MS Forums. Oh and he also tried to upsell me on Office 365 because I have Office 2016.
Keeping my fingers crossed that the update has indeed been permanently blocked. Sorry for the long message, but I thought that perhaps reading this would help someone in the same situation, since that’s how I found out about the Microsoft Answer Desk in the first place.
Wayne Ruppersburg
July 26, 2017 at 6:41 pm
I upgraded from 7 to 10 during the free year via Upgrade Assistant. Got error messages resorted to using MCT ISO installation media for the upgrade.
Eventually, Clean Installed Creators Update 1703 Build 15063. Wiped the hard disk of all partitions and reformated it. Clean Install is superior to the Upgrade Install. Few people do it though because you lose everything.
Rick Alger
January 22, 2018 at 8:25 pm
runsetupplatformaction.cpp, Line:587 failed with error code 0x80070652 on windows 10 fall creator on ACER desktop, very frustrating.
Don’t want to reinstall from scratch but considering it.