Operating System Updates on Windows Agents

Support for operating system changes on systems running the agent depends upon the Windows release you are upgrading from and to:

• Pre-Windows 10 versions, service packs – Service pack upgrades for pre-Windows 10 releases are supported with the agent installed, and do not cause health check failures.
• Pre-Windows 10 versions, major or minor version changes – Changing the major or minor version of Windows on systems with an agent installed is not supported for upgrades to any pre-Windows-10 version. For example, upgrading from Windows 8.0 to Windows 8.1 without uninstalling and reinstalling the agent after the upgrade is not supported, and doing so will produce health check failures, and in some cases failure of the Windows upgrade.
• Windows 10 versions prior to the Anniversary Edition– Upgrading from another major or minor version (such as Windows 8 or 8.1) to a version of Windows 10 prior to the Anniversary Update is not supported with an agent installed.
• Windows 10, Anniversary Update and later releases – Upgrading to Windows 10 Anniversary Update (August 2016) and later Windows 10 releases can be done with an agent installed, if you meet certain requirements.

Please note these important requirements, recommendations, and open issues for operating system updates with an agent in place:

• You must enable Trusted Directory approval of WIM files for in-place agent upgrades to succeed, as described in the next section.
• If you do not have another anti-virus product installed, Windows Defender is enabled by default when you install Windows 10. Consider enabling the Windows Defender updater on the Carbon Black App Control Console ( Rules > Software Rules > Updaters) to make sure update files for this application are not blocked.
• Updating the operating system to a version with a different major, minor or build number (for example, if any of the numbers in 10.0.35 change) with the agent in place requires that a cache consistency check be run. This happens automatically after the update. Until this cache consistency check is finished, the file inventory on the agent system will be incomplete.
• Before updating the OS, see Supported Carbon Black sensors and agents on the respective Windows OER located on the App Control Documentation site to check current OS support information for your agent version.

If you meet the requirements described in this section, you may leave the v8.0.0 agent installed and upgrade to Windows 10 Anniversary Update (August 2016) or later Windows 10 releases, from the following versions (and their server equivalents):

• Windows 7, 8 and 8.1
• Windows 10 (previous versions)