Windows 22H2’s are here

While Windows 11 22H2 gets most of the attention, there is also a new Windows 10 22H2 release. So which one will you deploy, and how will you deploy it? The quick summary: You’ll have to do a full feature update (in-place upgrade) to get to Windows 11 22H2, while Windows 10 22H2 requires just an enablement package. Let’s look at the options for all the supported older releases:

• Windows 10 20H2: You’ve got until 2023-05-09 to take one of these actions:
  • Deploy Windows 11 22H2 via a full feature update. (While you could go to Windows 11 21H2 via a full feature update, there’s little point to do this since you would then need to do another feature update to Windows 11 22H2.)
  • Deploy Windows 10 22H2 via an enablement package. This is super-simple, as the bits are already installed by the cumulative updates so this just flips a switch to enable any new features (good luck noticing any).
  • Deploy Windows 10 21H2 via an enablement package. There’s really little point to deploying the 21H2 enablement package since the 22H2 enablement package (which is equally low-risk) is just as easy.
• Windows 10 21H1: Exactly the same options as above, except you’ve only got until 2022-12-13 to choose one of those actions.
• Windows 10 21H2: You’ve got until 2024-06-11 to take one of these actions:
  • Deploy Windows 11 22H2 via a full feature update. (While you could go to Windows 11 21H2 via a full feature update, there’s little point to do this since you would then need to do another feature update to Windows 11 22H2.)
  • Deploy Windows 10 22H2 via an enablement package. This is super-simple, as the bits are already installed by the cumulative updates so this just flips a switch to enable any new features (good luck noticing any).
• Windows 11 21H2: You’ve got until 2024-10-08 to:
  • Deploy Windows 11 22H2 via a full feature update.

For those visually-inclined, here’s a simplified image:

What’s new in Windows 11 22H2?

You can read through the official documentation for IT pros for a list, although the Windows IT Pro blog post is much more thorough. Overall, it feels like a minor update (even though it will require a full feature update/in-place upgrade even from Windows 11 21H2). The biggest change goes back to the original Windows 11 security and hardware requirement premise: Windows 11 22H2 will turn on some existing security features by default (at least for machines that have an 8th generation CPU, e.g. machines that meet the official Windows 11 requirements). So, if you have concerns about VBS, HVCI, or Credential Guard, you might want to pay attention to those. You can still turn these off via policy if you need.

There’s also a new ADK version for Windows 11 22H2, but it looks like that breaks MDT, so you might want to watch out for that.

What about Windows 10 22H2?

We know it’s coming, but Microsoft hasn’t yet confirmed what’s in it. But it’s likely not going to include anything of any significance — that all goes into Windows 11. So the most important piece of this will be the extension of the end-of-service date for existing Windows 10 releases. And since this is expected to have an enablement package (as described above) it will be trivial to deploy to any existing supported Windows 10 release.

The most interesting piece of this is with the support timeframe. We know that Windows 10 will continue to be supported until October 2025. This release gets us to April 2024 (for Home/Pro) or April 2025 (for Enterprise/Education). Either way, that’s not enough to get us through October 2025. But if there’s another release, e.g. Windows 10 23H2, that actually would stretch things too far. So what will happen? Will Microsoft extend Windows 10 22H2 to take it through October 2025? Or will we see one more release (with an enablement package) that has a shorter timeframe? An extension probably makes more sense, but we’ll have to wait and see.

What about those rumors of “major releases every three years”?

From Zac Bowden’s Windows Central article, Microsoft was looking at changing Windows as a Service again, this time only doing “major releases” of Windows every three years. This was interpreted as “feature updates every three years” but there’s been no confirmation of this. So for now, plan for a Windows 11 23H2.

More importantly, the idea of new features being delivered more often, potentially multiple times per year through “moments,” has been confirmed with the first features delivered on top of Windows 11 22H2 coming in November. For subsequent “moments” Microsoft has stated that IT pros will be able to control these, e.g. to keep them turned off until they are ready to turn them on (similar in concept to an enablement package, but the mechanism may be different), at least after that first one.