Windows 10 now tells you if May 2019 Update is blocked for your PC

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By Darren Allan
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More transparency for the update process

Windows 10
Image credit: Shutterstock (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Windows 10 May 2019 Update is seemingly rolling out pretty slowly in its initial stages – with Microsoft being understandably cautious and keen not to repeat any October 2018 Update-style nightmare – and perhaps as a result of this, Microsoft has decided to notify users when their PC isn’t ready for the update.

Normally, if your PC isn’t ripe for a feature update yet, and it has been blocked due to compatibility issues with your hardware components or the software you’re running, you simply won’t hear anything about the upgrade.

And perhaps Microsoft has realized that this could lead to some people scratching their heads, wondering what on earth might be going on with an update, particularly in the case of a slow-paced rollout, as the May 2019 Update appears to be.

So now, at least on some machines (as reported by Windows Latest), when you look in the Windows Update menu, you get a message telling you that your device isn’t quite ready for the latest feature update yet. There’s also a link to Microsoft’s support site for more info, should you require it.

You also get a similar message via the Update Assistant tool in Windows 10, as well.

This is a useful additional touch to keep people informed about where their machine stands in relation to the latest upgrade, and it also helps notch up the level of transparency, something that Microsoft is working to do on a broader level when it comes to these major updates (with moves like an update health dashboard).

While Microsoft has been going slow with deploying the May 2019 Update, things may be speeding up now, as the company looks to force the upgrade to any PCs still running the April 2018 Update. And that’s quite a number of machines, because the problematic October 2018 Update wasn’t offered to the majority of users, and many folks are now simply skipping straight over it (as previously predicted).

Virtual names

Another relatively minor but interesting tweak for Windows 10 was highlighted by Bleeping Computer, although in this case, it’s a potential change in the preview version of the OS.

It seems that users will get the option to rename virtual desktops in the future, based on the fact that Albacore – a Twitter user who often uncovers interesting Windows titbits, like big changes coming to Cortana – spotted a hidden feature in the latest preview build for Windows 10 20H1 (the update scheduled to land in the first half of 2020).

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So instead of virtual desktops simply being called Desktop 1, Desktop 2, and so on, you will be able to rename them to something more meaningful, which is definitely a useful touch.

As we mentioned, though, this is a hidden change in the background with the preview build, and the feature is still in development: it won’t yet save the names of your rechristened virtual desktops, for example.

This means it could simply be Microsoft playing around and testing the feature, which it may later abandon, so there are no guarantees here. Still, it seems like a relatively easy change to implement, and we see no reason why it would be ditched. Keep your fingers crossed if you’re a regular virtual desktop user who would appreciate this capability.

Darren Allan

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).