Windows Laptops stuck on 23H2

[ITnoob]

Good evening everyone,

Our organisation has noted that our laptops are still on 23H2 and 24H2 / 25H2 have not downloaded.

 

This is strange as our machine still keeps the cumulative updates / monthly defender updated. Seeing what I can do to resolve this (install 25h2 as I hear 24h2 is not a 'fun' experience). On sccm in Windows Update I do see 25H2 there.

 

Is there any setting / gpo that would be blocking downloading the cumulative update?

 

Thank you for any help as always

[thimon]

Have you blocked feature updates via GPO? Going from 23H2 to 25H2 is not a simple CU, it can take several hours to update, as I am finding out. Going from 24H2 to 25H2 is much simpler, as it’s just an enablement package that needs installing. 

[jthompson]

If you're using WUfB, the Group Policy option "Computer Configuration → Policies → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Update → Windows Update for Business → Select the target Feature Update version" can be used to hold computers to a particular feature update, such they they won't automatically upgrade to newer ones once they become available.

 

Also, if you have Windows 11 installed on hardware that isn't officially supported, you'll find that even if it's merrily installing the CUs each month, it won't be presented with any feature updates, regardless ofwhatever Group Policy settings etc you might have in place.

 

If you have unsupported hardware running 23H2 and it's keeping up to date with 23H2 CUs, you'd need to perform a fresh 24H2 or 25H2 deployment to them if you want it to run that.

[psydii]

We had huge problems getting machines to go Windows 10 22h2 to 11 24h2.  Eventually they all just started to go late August/September 2025.

 

We abandoned SCC/WSUS in May, and moved to Intune/WUFB. We needed to make sure that in these policies auto update between feature releases was configured.

 

For us, once we had got them into intune/wufb, we then found that sometimes legacy policies from SCCM/GP were not clearing.  Missing updates and updates that had applied in the wrong order was another problem and  Driver blocks were the final one. Somehow though, every remaining problem cleared just in time for the October EoL of Windows 10, even for machines we hadn't applied manual fixes!

 

I suspect Microsoft has a whole bag of tricks to get machines unstuck, but they are cautious and it can take months or years before they let them autodeploy widely.  Assuming you've got things configured to not block, their preferred way for you to get stuck machines  to the version you want is a wipe and re-load.