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The Verge reports Microsoft pulls Windows 10 October 2018 Update after reports of documents being deleted:
Microsoft has stopped distributing its latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update. The software giant started rolling out the update during the company's Surface event earlier this week, but some Windows 10 immediately noticed their documents were being deleted. "We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating," says Microsoft on its support site for Windows Update.
Microsoft is now recommending that affected users contact the company directly, and if you've manually downloaded the October update then "please don't install it and wait until new media is available." Other Windows 10 users have been complaining that the Microsoft Edge browser and other store apps have been unable to connect to the internet after the October 2018 Update, and the update was even blocked on certain PCs due to Intel driver incompatibilities.
My Recuva trick for restoring deleted data doesn't work all the time. Recuva itself doesn't work all the time, even in the best circumstances (particularly on solid state drives). This isn't one of those best circumstances.
Note the strategic timing of the announcement. Microsoft has known about this bug since October 2. I reported on it[*], along with a workaround that works most of the time, on October 4. They waited until early Saturday morning, October 6, to acknowledge the problem and pull the plug.
[*] It may not happen to all users, but the bug is especially nasty; here's the full title and subtitle of the above-linked story:
Did you upgrade to Win10 1809 and lose all of your documents and pictures? There's a fix for that. — If, in spite of my warnings, you upgraded to the latest version of Win10, and you lost all of your \Documents, \Pictures, \Music, \Videos or other folders, DON'T DO ANYTHING until you've tried this fix.
takyon: A user in our IRC channel says that the update deleted the contents of the user's Documents folder.
Also at ZDNet.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:51PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4vbMv9gbmM [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:53PM (3 children)
I guess that helps explain their embrace of Android. Windows is a complete fucking mess.
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @04:15PM (2 children)
I can't tell if that statement is Informative or Redundant.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:18PM
False dichotomy.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:58PM
I say both; some things are worth repeating!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @04:21PM (3 children)
I guess when you are embracing Android [soylentnews.org] you have to let go of something ... and quality control appears to be what they dropped.
On the plus side, an empty Documents folder is so much easier to manage and backup.
(Score: 4, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:00PM (1 child)
> On the plus side, an empty Documents folder is so much easier to manage and backup.
And, there's more free space! http://bofh.bjash.com/bofh/bofh1.html [bjash.com]
Microsoft, Bastard Operator From Hell.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:09PM
Unix people have known this for years: "Save tapes by directing your backups to /dev/null"
Microsoft have taken 30 years to catch up to that sysadmin joke.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:19AM
And actually following up on insider's bug reports. According to a story on Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]:
That story references this Tweet [twitter.com] which shows what appears to be a screen grab of several bug reports on Feedback Hub. Direct link to images are image #1 [twimg.com] and image #2 [twimg.com].
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @04:35PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOPBP9vuZA [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:10PM
are belong to us!
This certainly isn't the first time Microsoft has screwed the pooch. Look out the Windows at all the puppies!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:35PM (12 children)
This is why I let pretty much everyone else beta test new OS releases for at quite a while before (if) I install them.
QC at both Microsoft and Apple has been shit for quite some time.
OTOH, just logged into one of my linux servers, uptime reports:
11:23:20 up 844 days, 1:13, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.05
This machine is running quite a few processes for my home, including a local webserver I use every day with my documentation generation system (so serving of web pages / database ops / running extensive Python CGI), as well as serving as a backup node for other machines and a source of backups of itself to those machines.
I have yet to see an Apple or Microsoft OS come even close to that level of reliability; I run various machines with all three OS's here. I've been trained (by Windows) to reboot Windows every day, and I don't let my desktop OS X run for longer than it takes to chew up 16 GB of the 64GB it has... otherwise it gets reliably unreliable.
But I know I can look forward to New! Shiny! versions of both operating systems, while experiencing the joy of the current versions being left behind with many bugs unresolved, some serious, and the promise of both OS and application bitrot awaits me if I bite the bullet and upgrade.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday October 06 2018, @06:10PM (5 children)
This is why I take backups seriously. Especially with how easy turn-key cloud backups are, there really isn't an excuse anymore.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:31PM
Cloud? There is no Cloud. There is only someone else's computer.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:38PM (3 children)
A cloud service is just hope with a subscription fee.
Actually, no - not a hope, as you *know*, one day, it won't be there.
NAS [makeuseof.com] or even just external drives [telegraph.co.uk], so your data remains "yours"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:57PM
Ah, if I could only get me some of those eternal drives.
(from the "Should've gone to SpecSavers" or "Never post before copy" notes-to-myself cycle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday October 08 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)
>as you *know*, one day, it won't be there.
Well, one day I won't be here, you won't be here, and this planet won't be here. If your approach to risk management is, "it won't last forever with 100% certainty, so it's unacceptable", then you should re-evaluate your life, the house you live in, and the country you live in.
A cloud storage service makes sense for a lot of people. They are far more likely to accidentally delete their data or break their computer than having Dropbox etc lose their data completely. Believe it or not, the major storage providers have a lot of backups and failsafes to protect the data, and if/when they go down in your lifetime, you will almost certainly be able to download your data or send it to another cloud provider.
There's always a risk, you have to be able to accurately assess your risks and decide how much risk you can live with.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday October 08 2018, @10:24AM
yes.. the heat death of the universe does provide a finite end to the need for data storage.
Arbitrary changes to TOS or someone in a data centre pulling the pin on the rack with your data is far more likely to be a problem.
By all means, use a cloud service; also have an off-line back up that you control; maybe a hard drive you keep at a friend's place, or in a safe deposit box. "cloud only" means "subject to whim of owner of the device".
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Saturday October 06 2018, @06:48PM
I love high uptime too. The only thing that worries me are security vulnerabilities in the kernel. All other vulnerabilities can be fixed by restarting services.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:46PM
The problem is that win10 is in perpetual beta testing phase and there is seemingly no end to the scope creep of windows update and the OS itself. My win2000 system has been up for 154 days. When the humidity started going up the keyboard wasn't working well, and when I plugged in another one it reset the repeat rate (ps/2 keyboard) so I rebooted.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:45AM
Be careful reporting stuff like that. When I did that for the web servers of a large scale production website I ran (900+ days, load average 1%), users started using an application which had an imagick bug causing the system to totally melt down. Because the application had been installed a year prior and apparently not used, it took us days to troubleshoot it.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:24AM
Expect more and more of that to appear on Linux as well, as systemd spreads its tentacles ever wider.
The core of it is that so many programmers these days start out as webdevs, and thus have internalized the "devops" way of doing changes.
This in contrast to the retiring generation that cut their teeth on maintaining mainframes and server closets that couldn't just be rolled back in a fan propelled feces moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:47PM (1 child)
I did have an entire 2tb odd month backup drive getting erased under Linux, when SystemD was unintentionally getting pulled in during an update. The drive was mounted under tmp, and that shit software probably felt it was righteous to clear tmp, but failed to check for device boundaries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:57AM
/tmp is often cleared at reboot. Best to mount your drive somewhere on /var, perhaps /var/tmp or /var/backup.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:51PM (5 children)
I wonder what exactly is causing these file deletions? I'm guessing that as usual they stuffed some fancy half-baked new feature in there that backfired. This is why OS updates should be fairly minimal - security fixes and critical bug fixes. Not that those don't backfire sometimes, but thanks to this always-changing-rearranging Windows 10, who knows what to expect?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:12PM (1 child)
Looks like someone "mistakenly" coded COPY all files to Redmond as MOVE all files to Redmond.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:04AM
OK, I laughed. But it's not really funny.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:14AM (1 child)
From its earliest days Windows liked to reset program defaults during updates, even affecting non-MS programs. Only a small step from that to going after the files created with any given program. Perhaps they are just getting "back to basics"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:35AM
Would not surprise me if it is related to the "storage sensor" they added in April, that is supposed to clear out temporary files (ok), recycle bin (ok), and the downloads folder (WTF?!?!), when certain criteria is met (low free space is clearly one of them, but who knows if there are others).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:32AM
Would not surprise me if it is related to the "storage sensor" that they added back in April.
Its job is to clear out certain areas of the FS under criteria that are not disclosed.
Likely the update, being the typically large kind that they are, triggered said sensor, and it in turn had a flaw that made it delete more than it was supposed to.
Sadly this is not surprising, as Steam did something similar with a rm -rf some years back. And i have personally seen a MMORPG launcher do the same thing when installed outside of the default path.
In essence, file management is hard. And when working outside of cloud services, not easily recovered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @06:24PM
leave it to m$ to mess up a really good idea: delete windows 10 from your computer ....
maybe the november update will wipe the slate clean, finally and totally irevocably :>
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:15PM
1 - An update deleting user files should NEVER be allowed out of testing ( see #2 )
2 - Using all your customers as guinea pigs for beta testing, should never have been allowed either. ( and the first person that chants 'dev ops' should be shot. as the inventor of that concept should be too )
Class action suits yet? Shut these bastards down, once and for all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:43PM (3 children)
Since sometime last week my wife's Windows 10 Laptop suddenly refuses to log into our local cable providers' public hotspots at work. The Shaw Go Wifi unit in our workplace refuses to connect to an up to date HP Envy Windows 10 laptop. Other devices (Linux and Android) work fine.
When you try to connect to the hotspot it tries to launch the login page, but is immediately redirected to www.msftconnecttest.com/redirect, then to an error page. At one point I also got an error page saying that the cert for wifilogon.shaw.ca did not match the one provided by www.msftconnecttest.com/redirect.
Can I track down the issue and fix it? Eventually. Should I have to? Obviously not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:02PM (2 children)
Will you?
Or rather: if you are still married, I know the answer - you'll continue to put up with MS crap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Tuesday October 09 2018, @05:27AM (1 child)
Finally reset the network settings to the defaults and re-installed the various router logins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 09 2018, @05:42AM
Congrats, one battle won
But the "war" is still raging strong with no end in sight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:14PM (6 children)
Annoying programs like to automatically put stuff in there, usually in hidden directories locals~1 and applic~1. If you find yourself wondering where all your disk space went that is a good place to check. One time someone asked me to look at their XP computer because it was saying the disk was full and they thought they had tons of space. I found some hidden itunes crap using 20GB. They didn't know what it was.
Part of the registry is stored in there too (NTUSER.DAT). One time I restored a backup of English XP over top of a Japanese install and forgot to copy that part. Ended up with a sprinkling of Japanese strings in menus and whatnot.
I find it much easier to access/manage/backup my files when they are in a nice, simple path like d:\porn (of course, you'd need further subdirectories beyond that because it's generally not good to have more than a few thousand files in one dir)
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:23PM (3 children)
I'm frankly quite curious what problems that would cause. I have some ideas but don't want to taint your reply with them.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:34AM (2 children)
When there are thousands of files, certain operations can become slow. Trying to bring up a listing in a web browser would be one. Doubly so if it's a network share. Image/photoalbum programs that want to load a thumbnail of every image will be busy for a while and eat lots of memory. There's also the matter of the human having to face a larger haystack when searching for a particular needle with only a vague memory of the needle's attributes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:28PM (1 child)
Agreed on all points mentioned.
I was thinking more along the lines of system errors or problems that might result.
Here's an example using Windows 7 Pro x64 in a command window (cmd.exe):
How many files will be listed?
999?
When I pasted the above into a command window, I got... 945 files.
Even though there are only two files whose long name starts with "fl1", Windows creates an 8.3 (short name) for each of the original fluffy* names, and some of those created names started with "fl1". The delete command gets all of those in addition to the two files I wanted to delete.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @08:06AM
Amazing... :-(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:38AM
Ah yes, NTUSER. another gotcha with that, is that the registry has its own internal ACL that is independent of the underlying files. Got burned by that when trying to transfer a user between Windows installs via a simple copy job...
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:56PM
You use Steam?
Go ahead and try to change the save game folder. Or easily stop their cloud sync process that you disabled but runs anyway. Just check out that cloud.log file in the steam application folder...
I wish it would let us pick a folder for our saves--I'd aim it at some of the redundant storage that I back up automatically without having to think about, but no, it doesn't let us.
(Score: 1) by zzarko on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:39PM
... are paying for this? Niiiceee...
C64 BASIC: 1 a=rnd(-52028):fori=1to8:a=rnd(1):next:fori=1to5:?chr$(rnd(1)*26+65);:next
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:06AM
being abused by microsoft in the past was accepted as collateral damage required to enjoy state of the art GPUs for games like Battle Field 3. Shame on them. But continuing to use after Windows 7 & 8 embrace and extinguishment and the obamanation of windows 10 spyware.. sorry, shame on you.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:33AM
They ran out of hard disk space to store all their telemetry data.