Two More Questions About Windows 10 S (Premium)

Windows 10 S has consistently disappointed. But I keep trying, and in evaluating the latest version, I have some new questions.

As I wrote most recently in the rhetorically-titled Windows 10 S at 6 (Months): Is it Ready Yet? (Premium), Windows 10 S is still not ready for prime time. No one—literally, no one—could use this system without making a lot of compromises and without experiencing a lot of pain. This is irrefutable, and I’ve made this case many times, so there’s no reason to rehash it all here.

And yet. Windows 10 S represents the future of Windows, too, so it is inherently interesting. (Terry Myerson called it “the soul of Windows.”) It’s not the dumpster fire that Windows RT was, for sure, if only because any customer can painlessly and semi-instantly upgrade the system to the far more capable Windows 10 Pro.

But I keep trying.

Most recently, I blew away the Windows 10 Pro install on my review Surface Laptop with the aim of re-installing Windows 10 S and then moving that to the Windows Insider Preview so I could see how version 1803 is shaping up. As you may know, I am using the current version of Windows 10 S—version 1709, or the Fall Creators Update or Redstone 4—on my Intel NUC, and I use that system for updates to the book Windows 10 Field Guide. So I needed to use a different PC for Redstone 4. And since Surface Laptop comes with Windows 10 S, it seemed like an ideal choice.

The process of getting Surface Laptop back to Windows 10 S version 1709 was surprisingly harrowing. Thankfully, it also raised an interesting new issue with Windows 10 S that is worth discussing.

Any Surface user can visit the Surface support website, enter their PC’s serial number, and then download a restore image that will bring that PC back to its stock factory install. In the case of Surface Laptop, that means Windows 10 S version 1703.

As any Windows user could tell you, upgrading that to the latest version of Windows 10, version 1709 plus the January 2018 cumulative update and whatever other Surface Laptop firmware updates are available should be simple: Just check for updates in Windows Update and let nature take its course.

This didn’t work, however. Surface Laptop would install a few cumulative updates for version 1703. But the most recent cumulative update kept failing and refused to install. Worse, the device was never offered 1709 at all. Since I intended to install Redstone 4 anyway, I just decided to enroll the PC in the Fast ring of the Windows Insider Program and move along. Simple, right?

Well, that didn’t work either. And for the same reason: Error 0x80070659. If you research that error, you’ll discover that Microsoft recommends using the system’s built-in troubleshooters, which didn’t work. Or downloading a Windows Update Troubleshooter tool. Which is a CAB file that … get this … actually did run on Windows 10 S. Hm. Also, it found no problems.

OK, that’s fine. I resolved to simply install the latest version of Windows 10—e.g. version 1709—and then upgrade to the Insider Preview. So I visited the Windows 10 Download site, where there are a few different ways to acquire this version. None of which work on Windows 10 S, of course.

Users of other Windows 10 versions can download the handy Update Assistant and update to the latest version of Windows 10. But that is blocked by Windows 10 S.

These users can also use the terrific Media Creation tool to create USB- or DVD-based install media, or to download an ISO version of the latest Windows 10 version. This tool, too, is blocked by Windows 10 S.

Hilarious, right? So I figured, what the hell, I’ll download the Windows 10 ISO from another PC, copy it over to the Surface Laptop, and see what happens. And this is where things get interesting. Where my first question arrives.

This worked.

When you double-click on an ISO file in Windows 10, it mounts as a disk in File Explorer. You can open, navigate, and use this virtual disk just like a real disk. So I double-clicked Setup.exe, which, by the way, is a Win32 desktop application. And it ran. It worked. It upgraded my PC to Windows 10 S version 1709. (And I even got Sets, bonus.)

Why did that work?

Some will figure that the Windows 10 Setup executable is a verified app, that Microsoft has verified this as safe. I buy that explanation, actually. But I wonder why the Update Assistant and Media Creation Tool are not verified too. Why one but not the others? Weird.

This calls into question what exactly a verified app is. Most people, when asked, would likely say that verified apps are that subset of Microsoft Store apps that Microsoft has determined are safe to run on Windows 10 S. Most of these apps, like most apps in the Store, are “pure’ Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. But some are Desktop Bridge apps, which are desktop applications that have been packaged in an UWP-style AppX container and can optionally take advantage of some UWP features. Most of these apps, perhaps all of them, work fine in Windows 10 S.

With the exception of those desktop apps that come with Windows 10 S—Paint, WordPad, Notepad, and so on—I’m not aware of any “pure” desktop applications that you can introduce to the system externally and run successfully. Except, of course, that now I am aware of one: Windows 10 Setup runs just fine. It must be verified.

Or, two, I guess: That Windows Update Troubleshooter also worked. That is a CAB file, not an EXE. But it is absolutely a desktop application. It, too, must be verified.

On a related note, I recently reinstalled the Spotify Store app—which is a Desktop Bridge app, not a “pure” UWP app—on my main PC to research a reader question. In doing so, I noticed that this Store app configured two items to startup automatically when the PC booted: The main Spotify app itself and a “Spotify Web Helper.” Why anyone would want to have Spotify run at boot time is unclear. But more unclear is why Microsoft would allow this. No Store app should be able to run one process at boot time, let alone two. And yet there it is.

But that is on Windows 10 Pro.

As you may recall, one of the selling points of Windows 10 S is that the system boots more quickly than mainstream Windows 10 versions, and that this performance advantage remains consistent over time. If you go back and watch Terry Myerson’s initial demo of Windows 10 S, however, you will detect a curious caveat to this behavior. That is, the Windows 10 S advantage is artificial: The reason that it boots more quickly than, say, Windows 10 Pro is that apps cannot add processes to bootup. Every time you install a desktop application on other Windows 10 versions, you risk them adding items to Startup.

Curious, I then installed Spotify on the Surface Laptop. And sure enough, those two processes were added to Startup, as before. But they were disabled, meaning they would not run automatically. Interesting.

Put simply, Store apps can, in fact, place items in Startup, which I don’t think should be allowed. But on Windows 10 S, this behavior is suppressed so that they cannot start automatically. The distinction is artificial, however, and startup performance is gained only because you cannot install desktop applications. Which may place items in Startup arbitrarily.

Curious.

As it turns out, I’m going to blow away this install yet again, but for a different reason: I should have been able to install full Office through the Microsoft Store, but I didn’t think to do so until after I had the Windows Insider Preview on there. And now they will not activate for some reason. (The error code, hilariously, is 772.) So I’ll head down that rabbit hole today.

There’s always something new to figure out.