My expieriences when upgrading from Windows 10 1709 to 1803 with ATIH 2018

Hi everyone,

it's only a few days to go before MS will open the gates on their servers and push out the first waves of a new Windows 10 iteration called "Spring Creators Update". I must admit that the so-called "friendlyname" gets a bit old but as a quite active Windows Insider can tell, inside Windows 10 has made big steps forward, and there is lesser old and more new and polished. Also, under the hood.

The reason for this story is Acronis True Image 2018 and Active Protection.

For now I would like to advice to disable Active Protection when you decide to do a "loss free" in place upgrade using an ISO file that you can create using the media creation tool from MS website.

I have upgraded 5 systems so far, 2 of them reported false positives in AP[1]. Because the files of the new Windows have new hashes and also the setup will quickly write and delete files this summon AP to act.

This is not entirely new for me, as also other installers often cause false positives.

If you do not disable AP during in place upgrade, it happened to me that AP notification will come up in the background of the Windows Setup screen and halt the early installation process that starts right after you have clicked through the setup wizard.

So why doing an ISO based in place upgrade instead of waiting for Windows Update to come?

The last 4 Windows 10 upgrades gave me the experience that in place upgrades using an ISO are way faster than the 2 other possibilities (Windows Upgrade Assistant or Windows Update). The DL size is not that much more for the ISO and you save a lot time for expanding / checksum checks etc.

Also having the ISO file comes handy in case you really want to do a very legacy re- or brand-new installation of Windows 10, instead using the inbuild "refresh" capabilities. If you need this ISO on an USB key (stick), I can pretty much recommend "Rufus" for this job.

tl:dr

- if you want upgrade from your Windows 10 to the latest 1803 release consider the ISO file in place upgrade instead of Windows Upgrade Assistant or Windows Update

- if so, double click on the ISO to mount it in Explorer (you need no tool for this anymore)

- run setup.exe from the virtual disc drive and run through the wizard (keep your files / setting etc, as you prefer)

- disable Active Protection to make sure there is no hidden interruption because false alerts[1]

- after the upgrade - this takes up to 20 mins or 2 hours depending your HDD fragmentation or SSD etc. everything ran fine for me on all 5 different computers.

- after the upgrade a new and finally non-optional privacy wizard will come up. I personally wished Microsoft would have brought this version back in July 2016.

caveat:

2 small glitches are known. if you choose in privacy wizard that apps should not be able to access your microphone, Windows will take this by word for all apps, incl. Skype, Teamspeak, Discord etc. you have to setup your mic permissions, likely to Android, per app or disable this setting altogether.

Unluckly the all new designed sound options (Windows Key + I > System > Sound) are missing a reference to the privacy settings. So user are lost how to get the microphones working or better said apps permitted to use it.

You find this in Windows Key + I > Privacy > Microphone. Makes sense, but then a backlink in Sound would have been helpful.

Many reported "non-working mics" after upgrade, and that's the reason. Computers do things that you tell them... sometimes. The reference "app" in the privacy setting might lead user to think about Store based apps, but also win32 desktop apps are included.

another glitch is that tiles in the start menu will have no icon, but text, so at least you can identify what’s behind the coloured tile. I assume this will be fixed soon, based on numerous reports existing.
 

Good news:
I have seen no issues with ATIH 2018 backup or restore, nor Active Protection past the upgrade.

So now. Either you wait for you to be in the distribution wave or get excited sooner using the official ISO from MS Media Creation tool. You decide.

Happy upgrading!

[1] later upgrades showed no issues, so it seems Active Protection meanwhile does not flag the Windows files during an inplace upgrade anymore. Potentially AAP is has learned the hashes of the new files.