I'm seeing reports that Microsoft is getting pushy trying to get folks off of Win10 version 1803.
For example, Terry Muench on AskWoody says:
Thank you Microsoft for force-feeding me W10 v1903. I have been blocking it (first v1809) for months using WUShowHide. On Sat 10/19/2019 I got the DREADED (We’re here to help you) UpdateAssistant popup giving me a few minutes to save my work before starting the Upgrade. Fortunately I was able to Cancel. I checked the #4 UpdateAssistant Tasks in Task Scheduler — which I had Disabled — and Microsoft had re-Enabled them. I Disabled them AGAIN and thought I was set.
No such luck. Later in the day I got the popup again, and cancelled again. Yet later I was remoting to another machine to backup an Oracle VBox VMDK (virtual drive) and forgot about UpdateAssistant. When I checked back on the Desktop it was too late — the Upgrade was underway. I think KB4023814 was responsible for UpdateAssistant running amok.
I hope others can learn from this. MICROSOFT IS GOING TO PUSH those on v1803 — which ‘expires’ on Nov 12 — to Upgrade to v1903. By any means necessary.
If you aren't yet ready to move to 1903 — the five buggy patches we've seen in the past six weeks (KB 4515384, 4522016, 4517211, 4524147, 4517389) might, uh, give one pause — you can still manually move from 1803 to 1809, if you’re using Win10 Pro.
There are detailed step-by-step instructions in my Aug. 12 article, Is Windows pushing you to upgrade? Don’t be bullied. There’s a middle path. In Step 2, use 180 days for the feature update deferral setting. That’s all it takes. You’ll end up with Win10 version 1809. That’s the version I use on my production machines.
Win10 Home customers aren’t so lucky. You need to use the metered connection kludge and even then there’s no guarantee that Microsoft will keep its mitts off.
You'll have to move off 1803 at some point, but official patches should be good until December Patch Tuesday at least.
Don’t let Microsoft push you until you feel comfortable making the leap. We’ll help at AskWoody.