Microsoft makes a mess of another Windows 10 update by giving it to the wrong users

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has put its foot in it (yet) again with a Windows 10 update, although this time the update wasn’t bugged – rather it was delivered to the wrong machines.

The update in question is KB4523786 which was pushed out alongside an optional cumulative update for Windows 10 May 2019 Update, and implements “quality improvements to Windows Autopilot configured devices”.

Now, Windows Autopilot is used to set up devices in a business environment, and as Microsoft observes in the patch notes: “Windows Autopilot update is not installed on Windows 10 Pro or a later version when the device is not registered or configured for Windows Autopilot deployment. Windows Autopilot update is never offered to Windows 10 Home.”

Except in this case, the KB4523786 update was pushed to Windows 10 Home PCs, and indeed Windows 10 Pro machines which aren’t registered for Autopilot deployment.

So as Windows Latest observes, if you do happen to see the ‘Cumulative update for Autopilot in Windows 10 version 1903: October 22, 2019’ displayed under Windows Update on your Windows 10 Home or Pro machine, don’t install it.

However, Microsoft has now pulled the update, so you shouldn’t see it any longer anyway.

No harm done

A member of Microsoft’s InTune support team posted on Twitter to clarify the situation as follows:

So even if you had previously installed this update, the good news is that it won’t actually do anything bad to your PC (except take up a little bit of drive space, and add a little extra clutter to the system, of course).

A good number of folks have uninstalled it, though, going by reports across the net, and haven’t encountered any issues in doing so. That said, we haven’t tried this, and you’re obviously removing it at your own risk!

It’s quite possible that Microsoft will push out a further update to tidy up and remove the mistakenly issued KB4523786 itself, in the near future, for those who may not have even realized they’ve installed an unnecessary update.

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).

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