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Microsoft "extremely careless"
I have a dual-boot machine with Win10 on one partition. This morning, Windows installed a large update with the comment "your machine will restart several times". Sure enough, the update took forever, and afterwards...there's only Windows 10 left.
I haven't yet gone spelunking with a LiveCD, but Win10 updates have been known to nuke entire partitions, not just the bootloader. Time will tell...
For what it's worth, the Windows update history shows: KB 3176937, 3176935, and 3193494. This would appear to be a group of updates that lead to "Windows 10 version 1607".
Microsoft Delivers Another Broken Windows 10 Update
This week, Microsoft pushed out another cumulative update and reports of installation problems are widespread. While I don't know how many users are impacted, based on comments sent to me, it's certainly widespread enough that this is well beyond an isolated issue.
The update that is causing the problem, KB3194496, is not installing correctly for users. The update, when it does fail, is causing some machines to restart, often multiple times, as Windows 10 attempts to remove the failed update. Worse, after a restart, the file will attempt to install again resulting in the loop of failed install, reboot, re-install and failure again.
Some users have reported that the cumulative update did install correctly on the second or third attempt while others have said that it fails every time.
[...] Microsoft is pushing the idea that you should always patch your machine on the day the update is released as they often release security patches that fix vulnerabilities. But, until the company can get a handle on their quality control issues, such as the Anniversary update breaking millions of webcams, it feels like every time you run Windows update you are rolling the dice.
Some have found a solution to their problem here.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Monday October 03 2016, @04:22AM
The former, I would advise that if he is going to run in a dual boot configuration to at least use distinct physical disks. As far as I can think back, Microsoft has never displayed any interest in supporting nor respecting other OS's running on the same PC, and that precedes linux (I used to triple boot NT, OS2 and DOS using the OS2 boot manager).
Unless you have special drivers installed, you also have to be careful while running the Windows disk manager. Should you click on a UFS partition for instance, it will ask you if you want to reformat it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Monday October 03 2016, @04:53AM
The former, I would advise that if he is going to run in a dual boot configuration to at least use distinct physical disks.
That used to be safe, but not so much since the Anniversary Update. Since the AU, there have been reports of Windows demolishing non-Windows partitions on the same disk, on other disks, and even its own Windows partitions. The last one seems to indicate that the problem is one of incompetence, not malice. Maybe they shouldn't have fired their QA people...
Part of the problem is that the AU, and possibly other updates, act more like installing a new version than patching. Windows has always carried some risk of ham-fisted data obliteration during installs, so it's always been a good idea to use separate disks and pull the non-Windows one(s) out of the machine during the installation. The problem now is that a big "update" could act like an an installation "upgrade" without you expecting it, so you can get blindsided by it. That's probably what got bradley13.
I, unfortunately, have Windows 10 installed on a spare drive. It used to be Win7 but a series of Windows fuck-ups made it impossible to continue using 7. (Long story, too off-topic to go into detail here.) I eventually exhausted my options for fixing it, so I gave the W10 upgrader a shot at attempting a 7→10 upgrade. That went about as well as expected given the problems I'd been having, and the various reports of W10 not being able to update for many people: it ended up trashing the Windows install completely. Probably would have taken out my important partitions as well if I hadn't disconnected those disks, but I knew better than to trust a Windows installer.
I'm just glad I don't use Windows for day-to-day use, because with all the update problems and data loss for dual-booters, it's too risky to even continue patching it. I set my connection to metered via a registry edit so it (theoretically; MS tends to ignore its own rules) won't do any automatic updates. Every so often I'll disconnect the other drives and run an update, but considering I sometimes go months between boots that means it's going to end up woefully out of date. More so than I've ever allowed a system to get before.
So, good job Microsoft, you've actually made your update system so precarious that it's safer to take our chances with an unpatched system.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday October 03 2016, @07:57PM
They had QA people?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Tuesday October 04 2016, @08:04AM
Yeah, emphasis on had. These massive W10 cock-ups are likely because they fixed that in mid 2014 [zdnet.com], putting the onus of testing on the developers and home users [computerworld.com].
They got exactly as much testing as they paid for, too.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday October 03 2016, @05:33AM
Yeah I got burnt by Win 7 somehow nuking my Linux OS partition (thankfully home my partition survived). Sure as hell aren't trusting Win 10 not to.
These days the important disks are in an external USB3 cradle, powered off whenever I use Windows. I'm just waiting for the day when even that isn't enough...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 03 2016, @05:54AM
Indeed. And physically remove the other disk when booting Windows.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Monday October 03 2016, @06:43PM
I do disconnect the other OS drives when installing Windows though, and turn off automatic updates ASAP.