Back in June 2024, Microsoft announced that it was deprecating driver synchronisation via the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). The company planned to turn the kill switch on April 18, 2025. This came three months before Microsoft announced that it would stop adding new features to the WSUS.
In January, the company issued a 90-day reminder for the same.
However, today, in a blog post, the tech giant has informed that it will not stop supporting driver update sync and the decision is based on feedback. It writes:
Based on your valuable feedback, we'll continue supporting driver update synchronization to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) servers. This decision postpones previous plans to end this support in April 2025.
Microsoft further adds to this later on in the blog post stating:
Seeing how many of you are already moving to the available cloud-based driver services, we initially proposed the removal of WSUS driver synchronization. Thanks to your feedback, especially on disconnected device scenarios, we've now revised this plan.
Effective immediately, we are postponing the plan to remove WSUS driver synchronization. WSUS will continue to synchronize driver updates from the Windows Update service and import them from the Microsoft Update Catalog.
Stay tuned as we work on a revised timeline to streamline our services for you.
Thus, it looks like Microsoft sort of underestimated the number of cases where WSUS is still actively used by organizations and also the ability of such offices to move on to something else. Back in June, when the initial announcement was made, the company had pointed out that only 8% of the participants in the impact survey, which it had conducted, expressed concern over the feature removal.
Finally, Microsoft also highlighted other more modern driver deployment and distribution tools like those via Intune, among others. You can find the announcement blog post here on Microsoft's official Tech Community website.
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