Windows 10 Version 1909 Available

Glenn Berry — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:11:34 +0000

Microsoft has started making Windows 10, version 1909 generally available through Windows Update as an optional update, as you can see in Figure 1. This just started happening on November 12. I have already seen it on multiple systems with both AMD and Intel processors. This is notable, because there was a substantial delay for AMD systems when Windows 10, version 1903 became available earlier this year.

Figure 1: Windows Update Offering Windows 10, version 1909

Unlike previous Windows 10 semi-annual feature updates, the installation of Version 1909 goes pretty quickly. Having a fast NVMe SSD or Intel Optane NVMe storage and a modern, fast processor still matters as far as installation speed goes, but it is much faster than it was in 1903 or earlier versions.

I also noticed that it does not need as much disk space, and does not generate as much extra file usage that needs to be cleaned up with the Windows Disk Cleanup utility. You will only see this faster, more streamlined update process if you are coming from Windows 10, version 1903, as explained here.

Figure 2 shows what you will see in WinVer after upgrading to 1909.

Figure 2: WinVer Output Showing Version 1909

Here is some initial information about the improvements in 1909:

What’s new in Windows 10, version 1909

These are the two most interesting improvements from that document:

We have made general battery life and power efficiency improvements for PCs with certain processors.

A CPU may have multiple “favored” cores (logical processors of the highest available scheduling class). To provide better performance and reliability, we have implemented a rotation policy that distributes work more fairly among these favored cores.

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Windows Disk Cleanup

Glenn Berry — Thu, 03 May 2018 22:39:48 +0000

One very useful tool for freeing up disk space is the built-in Disk Cleanup application in Windows. You can start this application by simply typing Disk Cleanup at your Windows Start menu. Once it starts, you will need to pick which drive you want to scan and clean up. In most cases, you will want to choose your boot drive, which will be C: for most people.

Figure 1: Disk Cleanup: Drive Selection Screen

Figure 2: Initial Disk Cleanup Screen

You should always click on the “Clean up system files” button to get a complete picture (and find the larger files that you may be able to delete). After clicking on the button, you’ll have to wait for the scan to complete. If you have a magnetic drive, this might take a while, while if you have an Intel Optane 900P drive, it will be extremely quick!

Figure 3: Disk Cleanup after clicking on Cleanup system files

In many cases, you will find an entry for “Previous Windows installation(s)” that may be 25-50GB in size, which is pretty significant when you have a smaller boot drive and are running low on disk space. In Windows 10, you will get those when you install the semi-annual updates such as the recent “Windows 10 April 2018” update.

You just need to be aware that if you let Disk Cleanup delete the previous Windows installations, you won’t be able to go back to a previous version by uninstalling the latest version. The tool will display a special confirmation dialog to make sure you know this.

If you choose to delete everything that the tool offers up, it is not uncommon to get 50-75GB of space back. Again, the disk cleanup process will take quite a while with a magnetic drive.

You can start Disk Cleanup from a command line, as Microsoft explains here.

You can also use the Windows Storage Sense feature to automatically do some of the disk cleanup for on all of your drives.

Figure 4: Storage Sense Display

Figure 5: Storage Sense Configuration

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Windows 10 Archives - Glenn Berry

Windows 10 Version 1909 Available

Windows Disk Cleanup