We've been struggling with the cumulative update from November failing to install, and we're wondering if the upcoming cumulative update for December could potentially resolve this issue. For the devices that had installation failures, we managed to fix it by clearing the contents of the softdist folder. It's clear that something went wrong, so we're curious if anyone has had success in the past with a newer update correcting installation failures from previous ones.
5 Answers
We're definitely seeing the same issue; many of our devices failed the November updates. Fingers crossed that the December updates will resolve them. It’s odd, though, as we have over 200 devices with the same setup—about 50 to 60 had issues while the rest worked fine. Still scratching my head over what went wrong.
Why not just file a ticket with Microsoft to get some answers? If there's a genuine reason for the installation failures, they need feedback to address it.
I’ve dealt with the desktop side before, and I can tell you the November cumulative updates were a nightmare! They caused widespread failures and consumed a ton of space while installing. Out of over 4,500 servers, 19 in-place upgrades broke. November was just a disaster, but I'm really hoping for better luck with December updates!
I’d love to read a detailed article on how Microsoft tests these updates before releasing them.
It’s a known problem I've noticed since September. My initial hope was that the next cumulative update would resolve it, but it didn’t for me. On one machine, resetting Windows Update helped, but on others, I had to do a complete re-image. Even then, the issue popped up again, so it was a real hassle.
Yeah, I've had a similar experience! The October update was causing problems for a lot of our laptops, but the November one came through without a hitch. Honestly, Windows patching has been pretty hit or miss lately, so we usually stall for about a week unless it's urgent, and that helps us manage expectations.

That’s really strange! Having so many devices on the same image, it should have been consistent.