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Warning: Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 Security Update After Reports of Serious Bugs (forbes.com) 103

Posted by EditorDavid from the stop-menu dept.
Slashdot reader golden_donkey quotes Forbes: Are you booting up your Windows 10 machine and discovering you can't log in to your profile? It appears you're not alone. Reports are increasing across Twitter and Microsoft forums that following the most recent Patch Tuesday update (KB4532693), users are complaining that their profiles and desktop files are missing, and that custom icons and wallpaper have all been reset to their default state...

The KB4532693 update is allegedly causing much more serious headaches for some users. A newer report by Windows Latest cites multiple users in their comments section complaining that the data is nowhere to be found and allegedly not recoverable.
Microsoft has now "yanked KB4524244 from its update servers..." reports ZDNet, "after acknowledging reports of 'an issue affecting a sub-set of devices.'" Microsoft says customers who have successfully installed the update don't need to take any further steps. Those who have configured PCs to defer installation of updates by at least four days should also be unaffected.

For those who are experiencing issues related to this update, Microsoft recommends uninstalling the update.
Forbes also shared a video "on a related note." Its title? "How To Choose A Linux Distro That's Right For You..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Warning: Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 Security Update After Reports of Serious Bugs More

Warning: Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 Security Update After Reports of Serious Bugs

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  • I guess the important takeaway from the article is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @05:54PM (#59731782)

    "Those who have configured PCs to defer installation of updates by at least four days should also be unaffected."

    I'd think about a 2 week deferral would be much better.

    • But, if everyone did this, it would be weeks before the millions of Win10 alpha testers saw the errors!

    • I have a security DVR box that runs Win 10, and I update it about once a month. I hate doing it precisely because of this kind of shit.

      No updates are installed unless I approve them manually, period. No automatic updates, no exceptions, zero, zip, nada. And I usually skip anything that's less than a week old.

      Frankly, I'm not sure I ever really need to update it since all it does is run the security camera software (Blue Iris), but with Microsoft's craptastic record of vulnerabilities I feel like I should do

  • I installed this update yesterday, but If I have known this in advance I would have waited.

    AIH it did seem to go smoothly, but took a blood age to install on my i7/SSD laptop, well over an hour in total with three restarts.

  • ---- Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. ----

    That pretty much sums up Microsoft's development across the decades.

  • why I continue to use version 7. The only response is to force updates. This is worse than the earlier versions of your so-called vaporware in that "you" prefer to push poorly written software than nothing at all. What draconian hidden features are you putting into the software that necessitates installation over quality? Could it be, "Show us your updated vaccination before continuing"?

  • sometimes a bit of qa wouldnt hurt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hraponssi ( 1939850 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @06:59PM (#59731874)

    It has been a trend for long now to drop much of the QA department in the big IT companies, and just release all the time. Test in production. Some people at Microsoft have given it the name "Minimum Viable Quality". I suppose for some products and services it wouldn't hurt to have a bit more of QA.

    This bug does not seem too bad, the customer testers likely wont care that much. Just more stories to complain about. But when you hit a real issue and for millions of re-installs, which seems bound to happen...

  • With all the issues M/S have had with windows, I guess this reorg (zdnet) [zdnet.com] did not work out too well

    now off to make more popcorn

  • When will Microsoft admit defeat and shut the fuck down?
    • When they stop making gobs and gobs of money.

    • Re:Time to go MS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Grand Facade ( 35180 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @08:21PM (#59732010)

      I think they will wrap Linux up in a MS UI and sell that as new and improved.

      • Re:Time to go MS (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mikeebbbd ( 3690969 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @10:50PM (#59732162)

        Mint with Fusion can work with, though not boot from, a NTFS partion. If MS makes Linux able to boot from and fully work with NTFS (compatible permission structure, disk management tools, etc.), then there's no reason at all to keep using Windows other than for the few bits of software (I have 2) that require it. I figure that since MS has moved most Office use to O365 (mostly cloudy/online via browser), that should work as well in Linux (with Firefox) as in Windows. That removes the old *hurrr can't use Linux because I need MS Office* complaint.

      • they will wrap Linux up in a MS UI

        The MS UI by itself would be a bug nest. They better build their own distrib, ms-Linux or something.

  • All of my Windows 10 PC's have been updated without issue.

    So it goes.

    • My 3 all updated too, though not without considerable delay in the process for one of them (a tiny tablet). AFAIK, non are using Secure Boot - one is way too old to have it (conventional BIOS), one has UEFI but has always run in BIOS mode, and the tiny tablet supposedly uses UEFI and Secure Boot but I don't understand how - it's 32-bit Windows 10 running in an older (Bay Trail) Atom. At any rate, the oldest 2 updated in about 1/2 hour total (including the background downloading and prep), and the tablet too

    • Same here. No problems.

      Any system supporting a wide variety of hardware and giving users a lot of room to change things will always encounter some percentage of problems.

      I switched back to Win10 after using Ubuntu for a few years because of continuous issues with updates. Several times a year, I'd end up having to boot into the console and hand edit configuration files after updates in order to get the GUI running again. The issue is that I have an Acer laptop with both Intel and NVidia HW in a configuratio

  • Even Microsoft in the 1980s made more reliable software than this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ELCouz ( 1338259 )
      Not in the 90s though...

    • Even Microsoft in the 1980s made more reliable software than this.

      Bullshit.

      Remember the 3.0 rollout? File mangler refreshed its whole tree when changing directories. It was useless as tits on a boar. There was so much hell-raising by the IT departments that we simply refused to implement.

      Microsoft published an update to Windows 3.1 and the only goddam fix was to tell file manager to refresh just whatever the hell the user was looking out.

      That set the pattern whereby Microsoft beta tested its products by releasing unpolished shit to the public and then fixing all the sque

  • I wants me some Windows 10, I gots to get rid of this antique "no longer supported" Win 7 stuff!

    • I wants me some Windows 10, I gots to get rid of this antique "no longer supported" Win 7 stuff!

      The irony of no longer supported Windows versions becoming the reliable Windows versions.

  • Use the Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) Edition (Score:5, Informative)

    by PastTense ( 150947 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @08:35PM (#59732022)

    Use the Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)

    "The Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), also formerly known as the Long-Term Service Branch (LTSB), refers to a specialized Windows 10 edition specifically designed for scenarios and devices that require feature consistency, such as Point-of-Sale terminals, medical equipment (CAT/MRI scanners), industrial process controllers, ATMs and air traffic control devices."
    https://blog.juriba.com/window... [juriba.com]

    It gets security updates but not feature updates--and the feature updates have the bugs. While you can buy it on the internet, those of us of low moral character use file sharing.

    • A shiver went down my back that there's medical equipment, industrial process controllers, and air traffic control devices that could be running Windows (10).

      • The circulating snake on the ATM screen of one of my banks sure looks like embedded Win10.

        Given that Win10 does get at least some support (of questionable effectiveness at times), I'd rather that those devices be on Win10 than on 7 or XP or (horrors) 98 or older. As is actually true of some of them. A better approach might be to have them running on a genuine RTOS, or if real-time isn't necessary some form of embedded Linux/BSD/QNix/Minix/etc.

      • As long as those devices are on a closed network they usually don't need updates and you can cherry pick the updates needed through manual means.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Fire alarm panels that control all the safety critical fire suppression and smoke extract systems too.

      • There could be some, but I have not seen anything newer than Windows 7, and that's a minority. I can't speak for air traffic control devices, but Windows XP absolutely dominates here.

    • It gets security updates...

      So despite your long post you've offered absolutely nothing to prevent this from occurring, and the LTSC branch was just as likely to suffer from it.

      Even normal joe-blow edition of Windows 10 allows deferring of feature updates for 365 days at which point the breaking bugs are well and truly ironed out. But the thing about "features" is that the LTSC branch only makes sense if you consider Windows 10 "feature complete". It's not. It's half baked and partially unfinished. Remember things such as taping the v

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Problem is you can't buy the LTSC edition. It's only available on subscription, just like all the Enterprise versions. It's $84/year but you need to have a Volume Licencing account set up, which means having a server to administer the licence, a business account with Microsoft etc.

      There is the new Workstation edition which I think allows you to defer updates for longer but it's $340.

    • I think LTSC is overkill. In my experience, it's been enough to configure sane deferral windows. Granted, there's a bug preventing them from showing up after being initially configured affecting Win10 that was only recently fixed, but that only affects you after you've initially configured them.

      My deferral windows are 180 days for feature upgrades and 7 days for security upgrades (2 days on systems exposed externally). The only issue I have with Windows updates at this point is the fact that you can only

  • Man, this keeps happening over and over. It's not the first time an update has wiped out an entire system.

    I don't use Win10 myself, but I've helped family with their computers. Frequently, updates will create an entirely new profile for the owner, and move the old profile into a folder called "username.old". The data is still there, but when I try to open up the folder, Windows insists that I don't have security permissions to access the files. I have to do the typical runaround and reset security descr

  • Thank God I'm still on XP. (Score:3)

    by Grog6 ( 85859 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @10:09PM (#59732120)

    I'll just wait until they get the bugs out of Win10 before I upgrade.

  • One wonders what these 1 in a million lusers are doing that they are having a problem?

    These people probably looked in the bathroom and in the fridge, under the couch and in the refuse bin for their data but couldn't find it anywhere. Probably the same lusers as answer the question "where did you save it" with "in my computer".

    One has to take such reports with a large mountain sized grain of salt ...

  • I wonder if it is the case that MS's Windows code has reached the critical mass threshold beyond which the whole thing has become essentially unmaintainable? For, every time they apply a patch they seem to break something. The only question now is how seriously they will be breaking things with every new patch?

    • I wonder if it is the case that MS's Windows code has reached the critical mass threshold beyond which the whole thing has become essentially unmaintainable? For, every time they apply a patch they seem to break something. The only question now is how seriously they will be breaking things with every new patch?

      Yeah, I wonder, too.

      I think MS is tired of Windows. That's why they stopped the train at station 10. Office is a cash cow and it's up on the web.

      Windows has to be a money sink for them.

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