After removing the Windows 10 November Update, apparently the ISOs and the Media Creation Tool are back. Here’s the explanation:

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. Once these customers installed the November update, a few of their settings preferences may have inadvertently not been retained. For these customers, we will restore their settings over the coming days and we apologize for the inconvenience. We worked to resolve the issue as quickly as possible – it will not impact future installs of the November update, which is available today.

I’m perfectly fine with that. My problem is, why does this contradict the previous statement? Namely, that from now on we can only update our installs via Windows Update. Why these sudden changes all the time? These can do nothing but harm, they erode trust and confuse all your users. After all these changes of heart, why would we ever take any future claim of yours granted?

In case you’re wondering if the current ISOs are bit-identical to the previous ones, the answer is no. Take the German Win10 Pro iso as an example:

Old 10586 ISO hash:

d13b18c7d140b6ef18e059a69fcf0561139336da1f4450caa2f0a79001a053ea

New 10586 ISO hash:

2ec55a07ab576c7ca665861c9223499a522ff98f45729897e1c55fb3a29d8fc7

So I recommend re-downloading, in any case. I assume they applied the fixes mentioned above, or maybe it’s something else. If you find out, let us know in the comment section below, thanks!