Is there a service pack for Windows 10?

Question

I was wondering, is there any service pack available for Windows 10? I had to format my disk recently, and it took several hours to download and install all the updates. I don't want to go through that process again. I wasn't able to find a single file that collects all Windows 10 updates.

I found on several places on Internet that Microsoft has announced that no service packs will be available. It is really annoying having to download over 1 GB of updates every time I install Windows 10 on a machine.

Solution 1

Windows 10 has moved away from a "Service Pack" model to a "yearly major feature update" model.

In practice, not a whole lot has changed, though! You'll be pleased to know that Microsoft makes ISO files available for download for the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition Update, which is a "Service Pack" in all but the name (its actual functionality is effectively identical to what they used to call a "Service Pack").

If you install Windows from an Anniversary Edition ISO (i.e., "Build 1607"), you'll have to do significantly less patching post-install than if you install from the "Windows 10 RTM" (Release To Manufacturing - the original Windows 10 build) ISO.

That said, there is currently no easy way that I know of to install to an end-user machine from a Windows ISO (with a graphical installer, etc.) that will leave you fully updated on first boot. This is possible using something called Slipstreaming where you basically build your own custom ISO that consists of the latest Windows Build (i.e. 1607) plus the latest Updates (which are so-called "slipstreamed into" the ISO file upon build). This is for advanced users as it's not especially easy or user-friendly to do it, and it's only worth your time to do so if you intend to reinstall very frequently or install Windows on many, many machines (5 or more).

The slipstreaming process, briefly, involves:

1. Download and run WHDownloader
2. Grab all the updates
3. Grab an official ISO file of Windows 10 from Microsoft; e.g. you can find some links here (the direct links to Microsoft or its Content Delivery Network are legal ways to download Windows media; Microsoft no longer places tight control on the download of Windows installation media.)
4. Use a slipstreaming tool, such as NTLite, to first open your Windows 10 ISO (the original, which you downloaded from Microsoft), and then slipstream all your updates into it.

The Winbuzzer article I linked to above contains some detailed instructions with screenshots, but I captured the general flow of it here for posterity's sake (I didn't want to take their images due to copyright).

Solution 2

There is no Service Pack for Windows 10. The purpose of Service Packs is to bundle all available updates into 1 pack to avoid a long scan/install for new Updates like in Windows 7. The Updates for your current Windows 10 Build are cumulative, so they include all older updates. When you install the current Windows 10 (Version 1607, Build 14393), you only need to install the latest Cumulative Update. As today (2017-01-21), you only need to install KB3213986 which updates the Version 1607 to 14393.693.

And 1 or 2 times per year, you get a newer Feature Upgrade Build, which is technically a new OS version but still called Windows 10 which includes new features and UI changes. The next Update will be the Creators Update from April 2017 and after you made the upgrade to this Version the new Updates are again cumulative and you only need to install the latest one to be up 2 date after you have to reinstall Windows.

So, since Windows 10 service packs are not needed.

Comments

[Ramhound]

Microsoft is releasing more feature updates then just one per year. RS2 was originally suppose to be released in 2016 but it was delayed to March. Of course RS1 was also delayed and Threshold 2 was also delayed.

[Marko Gulin]

I can live with the fact that I'll have to download and install an update or two after installing Windows 10. But >1 GB of updates is way too much! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

[Thalys]

I wonder if wsus offline update still works. Also, dosen't MS periodically do update rollups?

[Michael Hampton]

@JourneymanGeek They're all cumulative now

[Marko Gulin]

So this is basically a service pack, only that Microsoft decided not to call it like that anymore.

[Tonny]

@JourneymanGeek WSUS offline update still works and was recently updated to deal with the latest W10 changes. We use it at least once a week to install/update dev-machines and PCs in the factory, without internet access. I run it after every patch-Tuesday or other high-prio patch to update/refresh the local cache-copy end build the current patch-set for W7, W8 and W10. This is then copied to several USB sticks for internal distribution and also shared on the LAN for those developers that make their own USB stick or ISO (ISO is more convenient to load in a VM).

[Thalys]

I personally prefer that to the tool @allquixotic does, but I've not had to do a bunch of updates that way lately. If I need a rollup, I just hit the feature upgrade builds

[Tonny]

@JourneymanGeek continued... Updating from the WSUSOffline installer is much faster because of local media and it skips the updates superseded by later updates. Besides on W7 you don't have the hours-long initial scan for updates.

[magicandre1981]

each cumulative update is now a "service pack" because it includes all older updates.

[Hong Ooi]

Getting a 404 on the winbuzzer link

[allquixotic]

Can one of you commenters edit my answer and include steps for WSUSOffline, both for "online" patching and to build a slipstreamed ISO from it? Thanks!

[user]

@HongOoi Works for me. Can you check again?

[user]

"The purpose of Service Packs is to bundle all available updates into 1 pack to avoid a long scan/install for new Updates like in Windows 7." And all this time I thought it was so that you wouldn't have to manually download a gazillion files and run them one by one. That's how it was done back in NT 3.x and 4.0, at least unless you had a big corporate setup doing the heavy lifting for you. Service packs were a blessing for new installs because Windows Update didn't even exist! (Besides, back then, consensus was basically "wait until service pack 3 before adopting a new version of NT".)

[Hong Ooi]

@MichaelKjörling Still 404's on me. The page has the same format as a regular page though (only with an error message instead of content). Are you sure it worked?

[Ángel]

@MichaelKjörling it also fails for me. Note that it't not the Slipstreaming one but the winbuzzer.com/2015/07/29/… link.

[magicandre1981]

@MichaelKjörling at that time nobody had fast internet, only 56k/64k, so downloading updates was slow as hell. here MS provided Sps faster and also on CDs, so that everyone was able to get the lastest updates.

[Ravindra Bawane]

Service packs don't typically contain large volumes of new features. Some small new ones, yes, but wholesale changes to the UI and new goodies? No. In this way MS is going more the way of MacOS. I'd also argue that the Update Rollups have more in common with Server Packs of old.