This whole chain of events is important because it is suspiciously familiar to what I faced with Windows 7 Ultimate years ago. When the LTSB and LTSC media leaked online years ago, many users flocked to them and started installing the streamlined OS on their devices as an alternative to the conventional Windows 10 Pro or Home.

The process is simple, and even allows you to keep all apps and settings.įrankly, I’ve never seen a single PC in the wild running either LTSB or LTSC, but if you look online, you will see they have a special reputation around online forums and PC enthusiast sites. We get a lot of questions about migrating from Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC to Windows 10 Enterprise.Īside from being the most slimmed-down versions of Windows 10 (no bloatware, no updated Microsoft store, no Xbox apps, and minimal accessory apps) these enterprise versions of Windows 10 NEVER receive feature or build updates automatically, but are supposed to receive monthly security updates for ten years! The only way to upgrade from one build to the next is to manually mount the install media and perform an in-place upgrade this can be done to upgrade LTSB users to LTSC so long as you have the installation media and your licensing is good. LTSB/LTSC both have their own licensing, available only through the Volume Licensing Center, unless pre-installed and pre-activated on an OEM device. LTSB, released in 2016, runs on the 1607 build of Windows 10 and was followed by LTSC, released in 2018 and running on build 1809.

I’m always surprised when I talk to other system administrators who have never heard of the elusive Long-Term Servicing Branch (LTSB)/Channel (LTSC) versions of Windows 10, but I can’t blame them for not knowing! These versions of Windows 10 were initially designed for only Point-of-Sale, Medical, or otherwise critical devices that cannot risk any downtime.

Windows 10 enterprise ltsb