Microsoft Is Blocking Windows 10 November 2019 Update On These Systems
It is always and adventure when Microsoft rolls out a major feature update to Windows 10. Fortunately, the November 2019 Update is less ambitious than most previous ones (it's more akin to a Service Pack from yesteryear), and in my experience, it installs fairly quick and easy. Nevertheless, Microsoft has identified an issue and is blocking the update on potentially affected PCs.
What this boils down to is a lingering compatibility issue between recent builds of Windows 10, including the November 2019 Update (version 1909) and a now-outdated version of Realtek Bluetooth driver. If you are running a driver version earlier than 1.5.1012, you will not be able to update Windows 10 to the latest version.
"To safeguard your update experience, we have applied a compatibility hold on devices with affected driver versions for Realtek Bluetooth radios from installing Windows 10, version 1909 or Windows 10, version 1903 until the driver has been updated," Microsoft explains.
The easiest course of action is to run Windows Update and see if a newer Realtek Bluetooth driver is offered. If so, install it and be on your merry way. In instances where a newer driver is not offered, however, you will need to manually update it.
This method is a little more involved—Microsoft outlines 21 steps, starting with downloading two specific driver packages. Here they are...
- Download both of the Realtek Bluetooth radio drivers to your preferred folder: Driver 1, Driver 2. Note We recommend downloading them to your Documents folder.
- Open File Explorer. If there is no file explorer icon in the task bar, select the search box and enter file explorer and select it.
- Within File Explorer, go the the Documents folder or the folder you downloaded the drivers to.
- Find and double click or double tap on the file named 068de0d6-6ac2-473a -8cbd-bd449cd5c97c 942eec5828662eecc6b98 cc2706658bf2433717c.cab
- Select CTRL+a on the keyboard. This should select all of the files
- Right click or long press on any of the files and select Extract.
- Select the New folder button and rename it Realtek Bluetooth.
- Select the Extract button.
- In File Explorer, select the back button to go to the location you downloaded the drivers into.
- Find and double click or double tap on the file named f2748416-7753-49c6 -9185-56f4986f490b e98e0d664b7e874011b8 e3752046ca61f3475295.cab
- Select CTRL+a on the keyboard. This should select all of the files
- Right click or long press on any of the files and select Extract.
- If you are in the folder named Realtek Bluetooth, then select the New folder button and type Realtek Bluetooth 2.
- Select the Extract button.
- In the search box on the taskbar, enter device manager, then select Device Manager.
- Find Bluetooth and expand it.
- Find the Realtek device and right-click or long press on it.
- Select Update Driver from the context menu.
- Select the Browse my computer for driver software button.
- It should default to your Documents folder, if this is where you saved the drivers then just select the Next button. If you did not save the drivers to your Documents folder, select the Browse button and find the folder you downloaded the drivers to and select OK.
- It should now find the updated drivers and install them. Wait for this to complete and select Close.
Once you have completed the above steps, the November 2019 Update should be unblocked.
