Windows 10 1809: iCloud incompatibility corrected, but there are still other blockers

While the deployment of Windows 10 version 1809 (updated October 2018) is problematic, Microsoft Is avoid sending the update to configurations that it knows will not work properly.

One of those situations involved PCs with Apple's iCloud client. The system crashed when trying to sync or update shared albums when it was running on Windows 1809 and, as a result, Microsoft was blocking the installation of the update on the systems on which iCloud was installed. Similarly, the iCloud client could be installed on Windows 1809 because Apple had a damaged version check that did not recognize that version 1809 was the current version of Windows.

Both problems seem to be corrected now. Apple has released version 7.8.1 of iCloud for Windows, which fixes both the crash and the verification of the wrong version. After upgrading to this version, the Windows 10 update will no longer be blocked and will install normally.

Several other upgrade blocks remain in place. Apparently, Intel inadvertently sent display drivers to OEMs that used or enabled some unspecified, unsupported features of Windows; these block the installation of the update. The presence of the F5 VPN client also hangs because some VPN configurations cause a loss of network connectivity. Some Trend Micro software is known to be incompatible and is awaiting a Trend Micro fix.

Finally, there is a blocking problem that may not be solved. Older Radeon video cards using the HD2000 and HD4000 GPUs are no longer supported by AMD. The use of the latest AMD drivers with these cards results in occasional crashes of the blue screen system as well as other more benign collisions. As a result, Microsoft does not send the update to anyone with an HD2000 or HD4000 card.

If this lock remains in place, systems with these cards will no longer receive security updates. On the market in 2007 and 2008, these cards are certainly a long way ahead, but they are probably sufficiently usable for regular use of Windows on a desktop computer.

This is not the first time that a GPU driver problem is a stumbling block. Windows 10 version 1703 has been blocked for systems using Intel's Clover Trail processor due to an incompatibility issue with the graphics processor driver. As such, they were stuck on version 1607. In this case, however, Microsoft had already committed to supporting long-term security for version 1607; thus, although the systems could not get the latest version of Windows, they will not be open. up to a particular security risk.

However, this is not the case this time, because the 1803 version will not receive long-term support. It is not clear how this particular problem will be solved.