Windows 10 preview builds stop ahead of RTM announcement

Windows 10 preview builds are officially off the menu after Microsoft suspended delivery in advance of the main course being ready.

Suspension isn’t likely to be long and the company explained that members of the Insider program will instead be given the next builds through the production channels and advised insiders to use Windows Update.

“Starting tomorrow, we will also not be delivering any additional ISOs at this point as we really need Insiders to be using, stressing, and validating our distribution and upgrade processes. We’ll make ISOs available again in the future, but for now we ask you to upgrade your current build via Windows Update once the next build is released,” confirmed Gabe Aul, engineering general manager for Microsoft’s OS group in a blog post.

RTM very close

Getting down to the specifics, it means that builds 10162 and 10166 are no longer being offered through Windows Update and the ISOs for build 10162 will be completely taken down from the Insider portal with pre-release keys no longer able to activate the builds.

By getting rid of the build and ISOs for a while, Microsoft would seem to be very close to the release to manufacturing (RTM) date that will be the last huge milestone before the new OS is ready to go.