From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Tomshardware indicates that if you're on 24H2, Microsoft
has a plan to auto-upgrade you to 25H2 ("inbound, pressure to be
turned up"). As otherwise, Windows Update for 24H2 would stop
sometime around Oct.2026 . I don't think it's a total
coincidence, that April Patch Tuesday brings the PCA 2023
installation into your UEFI and the timing of 25H2 installer
activation could be tied to some registry progress flag
indicating PCA 2023 is present.

winver.exe # check the version and patch level
# 26100.8037 , the 26100 part is 24H2

For better control of this, you can pro-actively install it instead.
That will allow you to make a backup before you begin. Run setup.exe
off your ISO or your media to upgrade-in-place.

The newest Rufus release is

https://rufus.ie/en/

rufus-4.13p.exe Portable Windows x64 1.9 MB 2026.02.17

If your 24H2 was installed with Rufus for hardware reasons
(no TPM like on my Test Machine), you can use Rufus to create
a USB stick for your 25H2 activities. The Test Machine may already
be at 25H2 (I'll have to check).

You will need 25H2 media (an ISO file). The size of the ISO, makes
no difference to USB stick users, but for someone working with
optical media, the ISO is normally large enough to require
a dual-layer DVD, and you may not have as many of those in
your cake-box supplies. If you mount the ISO in File Explorer,
you can install 25H2 (setup.exe) from the virtual DVD drive
that produces. If you make optical media or a USB stick,
that (in addition) prepares you for "clean install" work,
in case of a calamity of some sort.

Running the Setup.exe found on your 25H2 Rufus stick, takes
advantage of any bypasses you set when building your Rufus USB flash stick.

It's not clear, how stupid this process is. Like, on the Test Machine
with no TPM, if it was really at 24H2, would the 25H2 auto-installer try
to do it anyway, then roll-back after a quick failure to install ?
That would be my guess as to how it would work. It's unlikely Windows
Update would detect the upgrade cannot work.

If you have "Get the latest updates..." switched ON in the
windows Update section of Settings, then that might well accelerate
the process of bringing in 25H2, over a 24H2 installation. If you had
an installation of 23H2, you might need to upgrade manually :-)

Paul
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Tomshardware indicates that if you're on 24H2, Microsoft
has a plan to auto-upgrade you to 25H2 ("inbound, pressure to be
turned up").

Yes, that already happened on both my laptop and my wife's Mini-PC in February (Feb 18 and Feb 25), after the monthly Windows Update update
cycle.

As otherwise, Windows Update for 24H2 would stop
sometime around Oct.2026 . I don't think it's a total
coincidence, that April Patch Tuesday brings the PCA 2023
installation into your UEFI and the timing of 25H2 installer
activation could be tied to some registry progress flag
indicating PCA 2023 is present.

winver.exe # check the version and patch level
# 26100.8037 , the 26100 part is 24H2

For better control of this, you can pro-actively install it instead.
That will allow you to make a backup before you begin. Run setup.exe
off your ISO or your media to upgrade-in-place.

I think that is a bit overdone. If you want to "pro-actively install"
25H2, just click the 'Download & install' button. As has been said many
times before, most of 25H2 is already on your system, it just needs to
be enabled.

Can the 25H2 upgrade fail? Yes. Is it likely to fail? No. If it
fails, can you recover? Yes (roll-back, repair install, etc.). But by
all means, make an extra image backup before you click the button.

[...]
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 4/5/2026 6:24 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Can the 25H2 upgrade fail? Yes. Is it likely to fail? No. If it
fails, can you recover? Yes (roll-back, repair install, etc.). But by
all means, make an extra image backup before you click the button.

It did fail. An error during Migration Phase.
I tried a second time after changing the BCD file
and that wasn't it.

I downloaded a newer 25H2 ISO from Microsoft, and
that installed OK. At some point, the migration
procedure changed (the second ISO was marginally faster).

One thing that migration did for free, is the WSL2
container for Ubuntu got compacted for me. If Windows Update
lightweight version had run, that might not have
happened.

By using my backup, I was able to roll back the OS
the three times that I needed.

Why didn't 25H2 "auto-appear" in my Windows Update dialog ?
It's because I use GRC InControl to freeze the release.
And when I use an ISO to do an install here, I also disconnect
the network cable, so "random/long unlabeled downloads"
are not attempted, to annoy me when I want to get this
stuff over with. Microsoft has all sorts of janky behavior
I just hate -- including delaying the Security Update
for the month until some arbitrary "hours of usage" pops by.

Originally the intention was to use the 25H2 ISO I already
had, as then there would be zero downloads and just
the execution time would be involved. But that did not
pan out. I've used the 25H2 media to install Win11 on
two machines here, so the originally downloaded ISO has
already been used. My daily driver has been sitting
at 24H2 as an experiment, and no explicit attempt was
made by Microsoft to upgrade over top. I suspect
at least one registry setting was changed by Microsoft,
but there are four settings that InControl uses and
the rest were still there. InControl, managed to stay
in control, and that was the experiment. Now, the
experiment is over.

Paul


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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Paul wrote:

On Sun, 4/5/2026 6:24 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Can the 25H2 upgrade fail? Yes. Is it likely to fail? No. If it
fails, can you recover? Yes (roll-back, repair install, etc.). But by
all means, make an extra image backup before you click the button.

It did fail. An error during Migration Phase.
I tried a second time after changing the BCD file
and that wasn't it.

I downloaded a newer 25H2 ISO from Microsoft, and
that installed OK. At some point, the migration
procedure changed (the second ISO was marginally faster).

One thing that migration did for free, is the WSL2
container for Ubuntu got compacted for me. If Windows Update
lightweight version had run, that might not have
happened.

By using my backup, I was able to roll back the OS
the three times that I needed.

Why didn't 25H2 "auto-appear" in my Windows Update dialog ?
It's because I use GRC InControl to freeze the release.
And when I use an ISO to do an install here, I also disconnect
the network cable, so "random/long unlabeled downloads"
are not attempted, to annoy me when I want to get this
stuff over with. Microsoft has all sorts of janky behavior
I just hate -- including delaying the Security Update
for the month until some arbitrary "hours of usage" pops by.

Originally the intention was to use the 25H2 ISO I already
had, as then there would be zero downloads and just
the execution time would be involved. But that did not
pan out. I've used the 25H2 media to install Win11 on
two machines here, so the originally downloaded ISO has
already been used. My daily driver has been sitting
at 24H2 as an experiment, and no explicit attempt was
made by Microsoft to upgrade over top. I suspect
at least one registry setting was changed by Microsoft,
but there are four settings that InControl uses and
the rest were still there. InControl, managed to stay
in control, and that was the experiment. Now, the
experiment is over.

Paul

My InControl is set at 24H2. Are you going to update all to 25H2 now the experiment is over?
--
<Bill>

Brought to you from Anchorage, Alaska


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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 4/5/2026 1:33 PM, Bill Bradshaw wrote:

My InControl is set at 24H2. Are you going to update all to 25H2 now the experiment is over?

It's quite possible everything W11 in the room is now 25H2.
One installation was held back, for monitoring.

Paul
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Paul wrote:

On Sun, 4/5/2026 1:33 PM, Bill Bradshaw wrote:

My InControl is set at 24H2. Are you going to update all to 25H2
now the experiment is over?

It's quite possible everything W11 in the room is now 25H2.
One installation was held back, for monitoring.

Paul

I am not updated yet. So I downloaded the 25H2 iso and have a bootable usb. But I am scared to use it. It gives two options. The first is to install which says it will delete all my files. The second is a repair install.
Would the repair install do what I want and leave my files and programs
alone? I would also use the usb on a second computer.
--
<Bill>

Brought to you from Anchorage, Alaska



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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Bill Bradshaw wrote:

I am not updated yet. So I downloaded the 25H2 iso and have a bootable usb. But I am scared to use it.

Download using the installation assistant

<https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11>

no need to write it to USB, just mount the .iso as a new drive letter
and then run setup.exe from there
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Mon, 4/6/2026 12:57 PM, Bill Bradshaw wrote:

Paul wrote:

On Sun, 4/5/2026 1:33 PM, Bill Bradshaw wrote:

My InControl is set at 24H2. Are you going to update all to 25H2
now the experiment is over?

It's quite possible everything W11 in the room is now 25H2.
One installation was held back, for monitoring.

Paul

I am not updated yet. So I downloaded the 25H2 iso and have a bootable usb. But I am scared to use it. It gives two options. The first is to install which says it will delete all my files. The second is a repair install. Would the repair install do what I want and leave my files and programs alone? I would also use the usb on a second computer.

Booting from the media you make is for Clean Install ("nuke and pave" day). Booting from the media is also for when the machine is broke, you need a Command Prompt and CHKDSK (in Troubleshooting, there is a Command Prompt).

As Andy indicated, using the media while the OS is running, is an opportunity to do a "Repair Install" (same version as winver.exe indicates as
a value for the media to use). Or, you can do an "Upgrade Install"
(some version greater than what winver.exe says). For these, you
have the option of plugging in your media for the job, but
the ISO file itself can be mounted as a virtual DVD (faster read
performance). Right click the Windows.iso file and select
"Open with File Explorer", make File Explorer to open it, and it
knows your request is to mount the ISO.

The reason mounting an ISO works in the year 2026, is the first phase
of a W10/W11 install is the "copy phase". Once the copy phase is
complete, the installer no longer needs the media at all. If there
is a reboot (that causes the virtual mount to disappear -- ISO
unharmed), when the installer comes up in the second phase,
it has all the files it needs to finish the install.

*******

Since you are doing an "Upgrade Install", keeping all your
programs, files, and settings, there is no absolute need to
make a USB key or a DVD. You can do everything required with
the ISO9660 file "Windows.iso". Right click it. It may say
"Mount" at the top of the Context Menu. However, if you
have Imgburn installed, Imgburn takes the place of the
word "Mount". For those people (me), you instead select
"Open with" in that right-click Context Menu and "open with
File Explorer", and that causes the mount and gets around
Imgburn having hogged the menu spot.

The reason we make media, is on the off chance we happen
to need a matching media for OS repairs. On occasion, if
I use an old enough media, I'll be told "you can't do that
from this media". For certain repair operations, I might
be a bit better off with close-to-matching media.

*******

Well, this isn't the end of the post :-)

Users with ten year old machines are not "smooth sailing" for
Windows 11. They installed 24H2 using their Rufus stick.
If you Upgraded W11 over W10, you could run Setup.exe on the
Rufus USB stick (while W10 was running). There is then, still a
requirement to use a Rufus stick for 25H2. Whatever "modifications"
Rufus makes to the installation goods, it is again necessary for 25H2.
So instead of mounting the "Windows.iso", you can make
your Rufus stick and run the Setup.exe off that while
the OS is running. And any bypasses you selected while
preparing the Rufus USB stick, are again applied.

Usually for the Rufus, there might only be one tick box
minimum that is needed for bypass (that's so the install
will finish). While there are other controls in there,
doing 25H2 over 24H2 might not need the other tick boxes.
Shouldn't make a difference to add in more of the tick
boxes.

After an Upgrade Install is finished, in an Admin Terminal do

manage-bde -status # See of the OS is encrypting the C: partition

I will run that right now, as I forgot. All partitions not encrypted.
This is to ensure I have not set a maintenance-trap for myself.
There is no greater fun in an emergency, to finding a
prompt saying "please enter your Recovery Key" when you don't
have a recovery media of some sort with the number on it.

On one install here, when I ran that, it said "encryption operation
in progress". If you select to turn that off, the encryption is
reversible (with time). It does not have to walk up to the
end of the disk, before you can back out the crypto. The disk
can be half-encrypted, and you can back it out.

Paul


Paul



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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 4/5/2026 6:24 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

<SNIP>

From: Security Now Podcast #1073

Starting this week, Microsoft has begun force-upgrading unmanaged
devices running Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro editions to Windows 11
25H2. According to the company's Lifecycle Policy site, Windows 11 24H2
will reach end of support in roughly six months, on October 13,
2026. Also known as the Windows 11 2025 Update, Windows 11 25H2 began
rolling out in September to eligible Windows 10 or 11 devices as a minor update installed through enablement packages less than 200 KB in size. Microsoft said in a Monday update to the Windows release health
dashboard: “The machine learning-based intelligent rollout has expanded
to all devices running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11, version 24H2
that are not managed by IT departments. Devices running these editions
will no longer receive fixes for known issues, time zone updates,
technical support, or monthly security and preview updates containing protections from the latest security threats.

These devices will automatically receive the update to Windows 11,
version 25H2 when they're ready. No action is required, and you can
choose when to restart your device or postpone the update.”
Those who don't want to wait for the automatic upgrade can manually
check whether the update is available in Settings > Windows Update and
click the link to download and install Windows 11 25H2. If you're not
ready to upgrade, you can also pause updates from Settings > Windows
Update by selecting the amount of time you'd like to pause them.
However, you must install the latest updates after the time limit has
passed.

Microsoft also provides a support document and a step-by-step guide to
help users resolve problems encountered during the Windows 11 25H2
upgrade process. Since the March 2026 Patch Tuesday updates were
released, Microsoft has issued several emergency updates,
including one that addresses a known issue breaking sign-ins with
Microsoft accounts across multiple Microsoft apps, such as Teams and
OneDrive. It also pushed out-of-band updates for hotpatch-enabled
Windows 11 Enterprise devices that fixed a Bluetooth device visibility
issue and security vulnerabilities in the Routing and Remote Access
Service (RRAS) management tool.

I wanted to mention this because GRC’s InControl freeware can also be
used to give users control over this process. It configures Windows to
appear as if it’s under management, thus it is not “unmanged” and Microsoft will officially leave it alone. If you have used InControl to
lock down your current Windows version and may wish to make the move to
Win11 25H2, control can just as easily be released.

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