Businesses Will Soon Be Able to Configure Whether Windows 11 Setup Installs Cumulative Updates

Microsoft made a major change to the Windows Setup out-of-box experience (OOBE) in Windows 11 version 24H2 that adds a new phase in which it can install a monthly cumulative update before proceeding. Because of the nature of these updates, this step can be time-consuming, and can take an additional 20 minutes or more. For this reason, Microsoft’s commercial customers asked it to make this step optional, and the software giant has complied.

“Soon, you’ll be able to [configure the installation of] quality updates for your organization during the out-of-box experience (OOBE) of new Windows 11 [PCs],” Microsoft’s Victoria Wang writes in a new post to the Tech Community blog. “Thanks to your feedback, in mid-2025, we’ll be releasing a new policy to manage whether devices in your organization receive quality updates during OOBE.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.

By “you,” Microsoft means its commercial customers–businesses–not individuals. You as an individual will not get this choice.

By quality updates, Ms. Wang means cumulative updates. These are the monthly OS updates that Microsoft delivers each Patch Tuesday. Cumulative updates include new features and security and bug fixes. And once a year, Microsoft delivers a full OS upgrade–a feature update–as a monthly cumulative update.

Until Windows 11 version 24H2, customers who bought a new PC could check Windows Update for updates after getting to the desktop and there would invariably be a cumulative update to install (plus a similar cumulative update for .NET and probably driver and other updates).

But with Windows 11 version 24H2, Windows Setup now checks for updates several times. And the new phase I’m describing–which also discussed in the “Windows Update in progress” step in Step-By-Step: Windows 11 Setup Out-of-Box Experience (24H2)–is notably different looking from the rest of the OOBE. I first ran into this change with the initial round of Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PCs that shipped in mid-2024, and this phase was even more time-consuming at the time because Microsoft delivered what was essentially a full feature update (a version upgrade stripped of Recall) as a non-optional cumulative update that you had to sit through before you could use the PC.

Since then, I’ve seen this change come to non-Arm-based PCs running or upgrading to Windows 11 version 24H2 as well. The idea is that you get a new PC, step through Setup, and as part of the OOBE, Setup will install the latest feature update, ensuring that the PC is as up-to-date as possible before you reach the desktop. The tradeoff is that Setup takes longer. Depending on when you do this, it could be much longer. Or, as Wang explains, “it can take an average of 20 minutes though the download and installation time will depend on the size of the update, the user’s network conditions, and the hardware capabilities of the device.”

Businesses and other commercial customers who wish to disable this cumulative update installation during the OOBE–left unsaid, this requires a reboot, as well–will get a policy in mid-2025 that they can deploy via Windows Autopilot/Intune. This policy will allow them to sync existing quality update settings to managed PCs, including Windows quality update deferrals and pause policies. This policy will be available as a mobile device management (MDM) policy and a Group Policy, Microsoft says.

This policy won’t help individuals, as noted, though power users could create custom Windows 11 installation media that bypasses the cumulative update installation, of course. I don’t recommend that: You’re going to install this thing one way or the other, regardless. It doesn’t matter if it happens before you get to the desktop for the first time or later.