Solved Why would a standalone update for Win 11 24H2 need Internet access?

Like so many people, I have a machine that has been having the networking issues over WiFi. It will just suddenly lose all network access and even a reboot won't fix it. I have to power cycle to get WiFi working again.

On that machine, I started an update from an earlier build of 24H2 to build 26100.2152. Note that I am not doing this over the Internet. I have a copy of KB5044384 sitting on my local desktop. Note that this KB is just the most recent incremental update. Sure enough, in the middle of the installation I lost my network connection. The update sat there for quite a long time (maybe 20 minutes+ if I were to guess) and then finally complained that the network was down. Apologies for not having exact message.

So, here is the question: Why on earth does the standalone update need Internet access?

I should add that I did some additional testing. I power cycled and got Internet access back but I purposely manually disabled WiFi and started the update again. This time since there was no Internet access right from the start it came back very quickly complaining about the lack of networking.

With the WiFi enabled and working the update installs just fine.

If anyone has thoughts on this, I'd love to hear because this makes no sense to me.

My nice assumption is... telemetry, calling home with your data.
My evil assumption is... RECALL running invisibly in the background somehow, and calling home with your data.



My rose-colored glasses assumption is... in order to keep the updates smaller, they don't "install" one-size-fits-all updates anymore. They "send" one-size-fits-all, but your comp only "installs" what it specifically needs.

Like the difference between a multi edition Windows OS and a specific Windows OS edition.
To make that work... they "sort" the update parts, during the install of the update?
GOTO... sentence one, above.



Sort of like a vintage coin sorting machine. Each comp only gets the parts of the update they need.
The update itself would have to call back and forth to the server, to be able to sort like this...

Just pretend that instead of four different coin types... it's four different computers...

hsehestedt said:

I started an update from an earlier build of 24H2 to build 26100.2152. Note that I am not doing this over the Internet. I have a copy of KB5044384 sitting on my local desktop. Note that this KB is just the most recent incremental update. Sure enough, in the middle of the installation I lost my network connection. The update sat there for quite a long time (maybe 20 minutes+ if I were to guess) and then finally complained that the network was down.

Click to expand...

Checkpoint updates?

hsehestedt said:

I have a copy of KB5044384 sitting on my local desktop. Note that this KB is just the most recent incremental update.

Click to expand...

So you can download the new cumulative updates?

Never mind, I just didn’t recognise the KB because I’ve blocked updates.

I've wondered something similar when reading from some folks upgrading from 23h2 to 24h2 and their update fails (with various errors). They're not upgrading through WU either but using the iso. Once they disconnet their internet, the upgrade works. In theory, wouldn't there be a connection somewhere in all this? Just thinking out loud.

From @Bree 's link above...


The last paragraph, specifically...

With Windows 11, version 24H2, we’re introducing a new concept of checkpoint cumulative updates. This will allow you to get features and security enhancements via the latest cumulative update through smaller, incremental differentials containing only the changes since the previous checkpoint cumulative update. This means that you can save time, bandwidth, and hard drive space.


Going forward, Microsoft might periodically release cumulative updates as checkpoints. The subsequent updates will then consist of:

• The update package files associated with the checkpoints
• New update package files that contain incremental binary differentials against the version of binaries in the last checkpoint

This process may be repeated multiple times, thereby generating multiple checkpoints during the lifecycle of a given Windows release. The Windows 11, version 24H2 servicing stack can merge all the checkpoints and only download and install content that’s missing on the device.

Click to expand...

Technically it doesn't merge all the checkpoints. Checkpoints are true cumulative updates, so DISM cleanup should in practice remove all checkpoints but the last one.

Otherwise the WinSxS folder would be forever bloated with multiple checkpoints if you installed 24H2 today and kept updating every month for the next 2-3 years. That would be silly.

To clarify a couple things:

First, yes, the idea of having checkpoint /incremental updates is so that the updates are smaller, and indeed this incremental is much smaller than the previous checkpoint update that it replaces but there should be no need to go to the Internet. Bear in mind that we are not dealing with a download of the update. I have the KB sitting on my desktop, so I have the whole thing locally. There should be no need to go to the Internet for any pieces. This can be proved like this:

I was able to add the incremental update to an existing ISO image that already has the checkpoint image, and the resulting ISO image is 100% good. It didn't have to go to the Internet to add that incremental image to the ISO so it should not need to do so to patch a live OS.

For clarification:

KB5043080 - This is a checkpoint update that takes the build to 26100.1742
KB5044384 - This is the most recent incremental update taking us to 26100.2152

I'm going to do a bit more experimentation on this.

glasskuter said:

Once they disconnet their internet, the upgrade works.

Click to expand...

Weird, opposite of what I am getting.

Testing done: Looks like it was some anomaly with the system that I was updating. I just did this:

Installed 1742 clean to a VM. Note that 1742 = the most recent checkpoint.
Dropped KB5044384 onto the desktop.
Disabled networking.
Started the update by double-click the incremental update on my desktop.
Result: Installed flawlessly.

So, it simply must have been some oddity with the system where I had the problem.

hsehestedt said:

So, it simply must have been some oddity with the system where I had the problem.

Click to expand...

Or MS read this topic and realized they were busted.
So they replaced the spy update with a normal one.

Ok, the whole issue turned out to be a problem with that one machine. I found that I was having other problems with Windows Update on that system. I tried a lot of things but in the end, I had to resort to using "Reset this PC". That seems to have resolved issues. I also was able to apply the same update to a couple of other machines with networking disabled, so that also points to a problem unique to that one PC.