Microsoft restores access to Windows 10 November upgrade

Microsoft has restored access to the Windows 10 November upgrade from its download centre, saying that it pulled the upgrade due to a bug.

"Recently we learned of an issue that could have impacted an extremely small number of people who had already installed Windows 10 and applied the November update," a Microsoft spokesman said in a Tuesday statement. "It will not impact future installs of the November update, which is available today."

After pulling the upgrades from its site, the software giant stopped serving it to Windows 10 users via Windows Update -- last week. According to Microsoft, the upgrade had reverted four preferences within the operating system to the original "on" default settings.

"We will restore their settings over the coming days and we apologize for the inconvenience," the spokesman added.

Among the changed settings were two in Windows 10's privacy section - one that allowed the user's advertiser ID to be tracked across multiple apps, another that enabled an anti-phishing filter for apps that displayed web content as also a second pair that synchronised devices and allowed various first-party apps to run in the background to, for instance, provide notifications.

Thanks to the fix Microsoft released on Tuesday, people who install the update now would not be affected by the bug. The company further said in an emailed statement that those people who had their settings changed would have the correct configuration restored over the coming days. However, Microsoft would not say how it planned to do that yet.

According to the company's statement, the problem affected "an extremely small number of people who had already installed Windows 10 and applied the November update."

What exactly had trigged the bug, was not clear though.

Though Microsoft had fixed the problem after it became apparent, the update the company released in the process, had changed settings users relied on, for maintaining their privacy.