So, the other day I helped a client setup a new Windows 10 desktop PC. She’d replaced an old Windows Vista PC. I’m confident that she’ll enjoy the Windows 10 experience (despite the increased hype of services) and find the interface somewhat similar to Vista. But here’s the gotcha — her new PC came with Windows 10 version 1511, not the latest Windows 10 version 1607, aka Windows Anniversary Update. The Anniversay version is even closer to the interface for Vista and Windows 7.
Since the Windows Anniversary Update is delivered by Microsoft as a regular Windows Update, the typical way that someone will see the Anniversary Update (version 1607) is when they shutdown their PC and see the normal “do not turn your PC off … Windows is updating” alert. The other way is that you might be manually checking Update Status (in Settings) and find the “1607” update listed as ready for installation. The actual name of this Update, however, is “Feature update to Windows 10, version 1607.”
Be prepared to be patient and not able to use your PC for a few hours, either when you manually say to install the Update or when automatically doing so at shutdown. There’s an on-screen note that your PC will restart several times. On one of my PCs, after the first restart, the “Working on updates” (percentage) progress was agonizingly slow. And there’s still a “getting things ready” stage near the end of the Update.
Also note that with this Windows Anniversary Update, Microsoft changed the time during which you can rollback to the previous version — only 10 days (rather than 30 days).
The Windows Anniversary Update is better than the prior version. Just set aside a few hours, including time to check and retune some settings.