Promise Delivered – Ability to Skip Cumulative Updates during OOBE

Looks like Microsoft may have already delivered on one of their promises. I was setting up a new machine today, and during OOBE – got the option to skip the long cumulative update install the moment the process started (this option used to appear if it was taking a long time, like 45 minutes or more). So, I spun up a VM and started a 24H2 install and confirmed it, the “Update Later” option appears from the start.

So glad for this. Going to save me a lot of time for future setups, especially given that I’m fine dealing with a slightly old version of Windows and just letting it update through Windows Update. I understood the reasoning (in case new updates had new features or major changes), but the component/DISM scanning/patching process is just so slow (even on speedy machines) to force you to linger 20+ minutes during setup.