Reminder: Upcoming Driver Release Schedule Dates

As the U.S. holiday season fast approaches, we wanted to remind you of the Driver Shiproom block out days, and what that means for the release of drivers that require “Microsoft Approval”.

The last day to submit a driver to start rolling out in 2020 is December 3, 2020. Drivers submitted after December 3, 2020 still have a 5 non-block out days to be released and could start release monitoring for certain cases but is not guaranteed. Any driver that is paused December 18 or later will not be resumed before the beginning of the new year.

A few examples:

• You submit a driver into HDC on December 3. This driver should complete “Microsoft Approval” and start the release monitoring phase by December 17.
• You submit a driver into HDC on December 11. This driver will make it into “Microsoft Approval” in December, but due to block out days, the first opportunity for it to get released to WU is January 4.
• You submit a driver into HDC on December 17. Due to block out days, it likely will not start “Microsoft Approval” until January 4, requiring several days of evaluation in the Windows Insider Population before getting approval to be released to WU sometime around January 14^th.
• A driver currently in release monitoring is paused on December 19. Due to block
• out days, the driver will not be able to be resumed until the earliest January 4.

For any case that requires a driver to be expedited, please follow the normal expedite process of opening a support ticket.