New Cumulative Nonsecurity Updates

[Kurt Mackie]

Do the new cumulative nonsecurity updates arrive on "D week," or the last Tuesday of the month? Is it a fixed schedule for their arrival each month? Are they test releases or should they just be deployed as completed products? How do you want organizations to consider these updates?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

As we announced in a blog (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2017/04/24/new-update-options-for-windows-10-1703/), the cumulative updates with new non-security fixes will be release between Patch Tuesday updates.  These shouldn't be considered "pre-release" or "test" in any way - they are exactly the same fixes that will be in the cumulative update released on Patch Tuesday.  This just gives orgs an opportunity to validate that chunk of the Patch Tuesday payload earlier.  Or if they are experiencing a non-security-related issue, to get a fix faster.

Initially this does tend to happen with the "D week" (fourth Tuesday of the month), but could happen earlier as we get farther down the path for a particular release.