Microsoft Rereleases Windows 10 October 2018 Update, Fixes Data Deletion Bug (theverge.com) 79
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is re-releasing its Windows 10 October 2018 Update today, following the company pulling it offline due to data deletion issues over the weekend. The software giant says there were only a few reports of data loss, at a rate of one one-hundredth of one percent. "We have fully investigated all reports of data loss, identified and fixed all known issues in the update, and conducted internal validation," says Microsoft's John Cable, director of program management for Windows Servicing and Delivery. Microsoft is now re-releasing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to Windows Insiders, before rolling it out more broadly to consumers. "We will carefully study the results, feedback, and diagnostic data from our Insiders before taking additional steps towards re-releasing more broadly," explains Cable.
It appears the bug that caused file deletion was related to Windows 10 users who had enabled Known Folder Redirection to redirect folders like desktop, documents, pictures, and screenshots from the default location. Microsoft introduced code in its latest update to delete the empty and duplicate known folders, but it appears they weren't always empty. Microsoft has developed fixes to address a variety of problems related to these folder moves, and these fixes are now being tested with Windows Insiders.
It appears the bug that caused file deletion was related to Windows 10 users who had enabled Known Folder Redirection to redirect folders like desktop, documents, pictures, and screenshots from the default location. Microsoft introduced code in its latest update to delete the empty and duplicate known folders, but it appears they weren't always empty. Microsoft has developed fixes to address a variety of problems related to these folder moves, and these fixes are now being tested with Windows Insiders.
0.01% (Score:5, Insightful)
We recently had an article that Windows 10 passed the 700 million install mark.
700,000,000 installations. 0.01% of that is 'only' 70,000 installs that lost data.
Doesn't fill me with confidence, especially after seeing the reason. It's not like hard drive space is costly these days, Windows should NOT take the initiative to do some spring cleaning without clear and explicit permission.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh sure, if every single Windows 10 install installed the update. Redo your math with 699,999,999 installs, because my machine didn't update yet. (Your post features what I would call a rush to bad faith math.)
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My bad, I somehow managed to leave out 'potentially'.
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It didn't fail the install - it just hadn't been installed yet (and still isn't, even tho I leave my PC on and connected 24/7.) Not all installs are handed the update at the same time, ignoring for the moment that many installed PCs are not on or connected to the internet all the time (or even at all for some people.) So out of the 7 million installs of Windows 10, only a small minority had received the update before Microsoft halted the roll-out.
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A very large portion of power users machines, and machines managed by power users, i.e. "family and friends" likely have auto updates nuked at this point. You just go there once a month or two to run updates after they have been tested by the hapless general public.
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"rush to bad faith" accurately describes everything about Windows 10
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I installed 1809 on the 4th and didn't have much data in any user folders since I had reinstalled to a new SSD 5 days prior. I backed up what I did have since reports said it seemed to happen if you'd "done stuff" to your user directories...like move them. I put mine on an external so I wouldn't fill the SSD with garbage. I suffered no data loss.
Then again...I also don
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again...I also don't log-in or use OneDrive.
Here is my Win10 wish list.
1. Have an easy setup option that lets me turn off onedrive, cortana, junk applications, advertisements, and any telemetry. It can be multiple options as long as i can just change them quickly. By turn off I mean not loaded at all.
2. Auto save those choices against my install key, with an easy reinstall from a usb image downloaded from microsoft. In fact, let the download link be for that system with everything ready to go, including adding to the list any common applications t
Re: (Score:2)
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Yes, I agree. What multi-billion $ company (Billy - I'ma looking at you) would
release an update to the public without having a way to back said update out.
Amiright? Every position I've held in the last 20 years always had a backout
requirement. My guess is that MS may want to charge you for your stupidity in
selecting their product, but yes, the data hasn't "really" been deleted.
Nobody could be that stupid as to send an update out to the public without a
recovery plan - well, Indians are. Are there any wor
Re:0.01% (Score:5, Funny)
Apart from testing, apparently
.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Change management 101:
In any change where a step involves data deletion, ensure a backup exists, or do not proceed.
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They did not lose data. A secret feature of Windows anal probe 10, accidentally revealed itself in, 'delete all the users data mode', it's not a bug, it's a feature, it's just a broad test run, to confirm efficacy. The ability to delete all user data upon remote command from whom ever has access to windows anal probe 10 updates, which are never anonymous and each and every single individual update is uniquely identifiable and customisable, so some get normal mundane updates, some get firmware rewrites for m
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Considering that the average hard drive failure failure rate in a given month is around 0.4% that does make 0.01% pretty low. And if you actually lost data you should take this as a wakeup call that you only possibly lost the data and could undelete it as opposed to a hard drive failure which is 40x more likely and almost certainly will be impossible to recover the data from.
It's not like hard drive space is costly these days
Considering how many people are on SSDs, especially over priced Laptop SSDs, these days hard drive space is probably more expensive
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Maybe I should feel lucky that neither of my Windows 10 machines can update past the Fall 2017 release?
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Problem is that there is no real penalty for deleting people's data. At most we might see a class action one day, resulting in a $5 discount on Microsoft products for affected users, most of which will never be taken up.
The EU has regulators for privacy issues who proactively look for problems and investigate. We need something similar for severe product flaws.
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Proactively looking for flaws in software is illegal, unfortunately.
Re: 0.01% (Score:2)
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700,000,000 installations. 0.01% of that is 'only' 70,000 installs that lost data.
Negative. The vast majority of those installations are NOT on the Targetted Branch, and only a subset of the Targetted Branch had Windows Updates rolled out. There's no way 70,000 people lost data to this, though that does not excuse the bug in the slightest.
I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, until they hit another big bug and stop again (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a process, follow the process.
The process was supposed to be to hunt for bugs (the data munching bug was reported by insiders).
Even if they missed those reports, as well as the intel audio bug,they would have had a second opportunity to catch it, because the process was to release to "Windows Insider Release Preview" ring before general availability.
But they decided to NOT follow procedure and just skip that... ... and here we are.
If you have a process follow it. If you feel the need to change the process, announce the change, change it, and then follow the changed process. Do not just arbitrarily d things in a diufferent way "just because"...
Is ISO-9000 101 for dummies Satya...
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Yes, of course I am aware that they fired most of the QA department.
What I wanted to emphasize was that:
If on top of firing most (if not all) of the QA department, they do not follow their own procedures and jump over their own defined user testing rings (internal own dog food ring, ultra fast insider user ring, normal insider user ring, slow insider user ring, general release, pro with defered updates, enterprise), then things like this are bound to keep happening....
I don't care if it was 700 or 70,000 or 70,000,000 (Score:3, Informative)
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My favorite trick is recursively calling rd for all folders. Only the empty ones get deleted, because "directory not empty".
They literally wrote the code to do it safely, but duplicated it elsewhere incorrectly.
Microsoft, where reusing code is harder than one might think.
Re:I don't care if it was 700 or 70,000 or 70,000, (Score:5, Insightful)
And people scold me because I have Auto-update turned off. Mistakes like what Microsoft did this past weekend are precisely why. I'll update when I know it's safe.
- This bug also reminds me of the "Save with Replace" bug on my ancient Commodore 64 (and its 1541 floppy drive). It would overwrite the previous file with a new file, except the new file was sometimes unreadable garbage. It was even documented in the manual saying "Save your file first. Then erase the old one. Do not use the save-with-replace option as it generates corrupted files."
That was back in the days when nobody had time to fix hardware errors, so they just shipped the computer as is. (And fixed the error in the user documentation.)
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And people scold me because I have Auto-update turned off.
And they should continue to scold you. There is a specific branch that you should have auto-update enabled for which has not experienced any of the issues that have been reported or been discussed in the media or here. That way you have stability as well as security.
Mind you if you are on the Targetted Branch (as these cases were) then you also deserve a scolding since it's probably worse than disabling Windows Update altoghter. All said an done, there's only a subset of possible ways you will avoid a good
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Why so my computer could get fucked by MS latest update? Bullshit. (Also living in fear of malware is as ridiculous as living in fear some mass murdere will drop by & kill you. The probability of both tragedies are very low.)
Not trusting it with a mile long pole (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem was with deleting folders that they were assuming would be empty. The fix is, to either not delete the folders or not to delete them if there is content. I don't think that is something that requires a lot of time to implement.
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You can't just release a fix to such a disastrous update with just three days testing.
That is horseshit. If there was one specific problem with one specific sub part which is fixed with one easy change then there definitely is no reason to go back to a drawingboard.
This also affected the LTSC and Server versions of Windows
No it did not. Neither of these versions (LTSB) or the Server versions of Windows received or will receive this update.
Microsoft: Insufficient management, poor managers (Score:2)
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More like too many managers, not enough management.
That, too. (Score:2)
I'm reading the inappropriately named book, Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! [amazon.com]. (Half the book is about other poor management, before Marissa Mayer worked there.)
As you said about Microsoft, many, many managers at Yahoo, not much clear thinking.
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For the record, Bill Gates was repeatedly infuriated by Windows as CEO. Updates requiring restart was a big one. I'm sure he has strong opinions on Windows 10, and not in a good way.
The shareholders know what's going on. They only care about whether this makes someone jump ship. Which it won't.
reported fix (Score:2)
if (oldUserFolderEmpty==true )
deleteFolder()
Seems they forgot the first line.
What baffles me the most is that a user supposedly requested Microsoft to delete the old folder on install. Wonder if he got bit with the bug. I would love the irony.
Uh, QA? (Score:2)
One hundredth of a percent, with some 256 million PC's shipped in 2018, 50% of which probably come with windows 10 (128 million windows 10 PCs), that's probably some 12800 people who bought a new computer in 2018 that lost their files! And there's more win10 users from years before 2018...
Is is really that evil done on large enough scale becomes just statistics?
Fun fact: You are as likely to lose your files in windows 10 upgrade as to die in a skydiving accident!
Microsoft, you know, QA, the thing you though
When to update? (Score:1)
The best thing to do before committing to an new update is to either test on another Windows 10 machine "if available", or wait for reviews with how the new update works with other user upgrades/tests. This allows a user to review before commit.
They did it again. (Score:1)
Store anything in that "Documents" folder, during your stay?
Boom--it's gone.
I mean, they do warn you that files "might" get blown away, but it's still bad
practice to treat space you've explicitly set aside for the user in the same way
you do system files.