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Some Windows 10 Users Complain Newest Update Is Deleting Their Files (forbes.com) 233

Posted by EditorDavid from the recycled-bin dept.
Some Windows users are reporting serious problems after downloading Microsoft's latest update for Windows 10, according to Forbes: The problems those users are reporting to the Microsoft support forums and on social media have included the installation failing and looping back to restart again, the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) following a "successful" update and computers that simply refuse to boot again afterward. Among the more common issues, in terms of complaints after a Windows 10 update, were Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity related ones. But there were have also been users complaining that after a restart, all files from the C drive had been deleted.

Microsoft has stated that it has "not seen these issues reflected in telemetry, support data, or customer feedback channels," but is aware of social media reports that mention Bluetooth, a stop error with a blue screen, and other related issues. "We continuously investigate all customer feedback and are closely monitoring this situation," Microsoft said in the known issues section of the update notes.
"On social platforms like Twitter and Reddit, PC users are reporting photos, documents and apps are disappearing without a trace..." reports Komando.com.

"Some things never change... Microsoft can't deliver a stable update to save its life!"
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Some Windows 10 Users Complain Newest Update Is Deleting Their Files More

Some Windows 10 Users Complain Newest Update Is Deleting Their Files

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  • My post is trite. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Saturday April 25, 2020 @11:11PM (#59991464) Homepage Journal

    I just can't resist. Windows 7 was the last version of windows that I used for my main PC. It's Fedora Linux now and I have never once had problems updating. It has been solid as a rock. And Steam games run great. Even Blizzard games run great thanks to Lutris.

    Ah well there IS an issue that I introduced when I decided to use Nvidia's proprietary graphics drivers. Every few updates I have to manually fetch the latest of those and re-install them. I guess that is too much for the average windows user to handle, though, which is why they stick with windows and put up with updates that wipe out their files now and then.

    Anyway, Linux FTW.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 )

      Sure. Unless gaming is a major part of your entertainment and why you got into programming in the first place.

      I use Linux everywhere. EXCEPT on the machine I do my gaming on. No games old enough to work reliably with WINE aren't good enough. "Steam games run great" Sure. Steam games that support Linux. That's not even a significant fraction of the games people actually WANT to play.

      Lutris doesn't support latest DX, or anything else required if you want to play actual good games on high end hardware.

      And as t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        I think you may not be up to date. I hear with Project Photon was it? Steam runs like 80% of the gamesbetter than on windows to acceptably flawed.

        • I hear with Project Photon was it?

          Photon is surprisingly good. I have had a very high success rate using it (probably somewhere in the ninety percentile) to buy Windows Steam games to play on Linux.

      • Well, I can't speak for you obviously, but so far, most games I play work decently on Linux. Funny enough, some only work on Linux because they don't play nice with Windows or the odd bug gets thrown into them every now and then. And I'm not even talking about old games, the most recent addition to the bug fold was Battletech which refused to start missions on Windows but works flawlessly in Linux.

        Steam did a pretty decent job with the seamless integration of Windows games into Linux. If you want to know wh

    • Why is this modded Troll? It's a perfectly reasonable technical comment about operating systems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      no one gives a fuck

    • I really feel sorry for those who still use Windows, for WHATever reason.. It positively astounds me how much abuse users of Windows put up with... I spent a 20 year career as a sysadmin, doing Windows "janitorial services" from Windows 3.11 up to an XP to Win7 migration, at which time I retired in 2010. At that time, even though Win7 was a pretty good OS, I decided I was done with anything Microsoft. After seeing what a steaming pile of excrement Windows 10 is, I couldn't be happier that I moved all of my

  • and not the first time. Well where i have to support windows 10, the desktop is on onedrive and the my documents is on the fileserver. So basically no unique data on the machine.

    I wouldn't trust any unique data to be in only one place on any computer. Windows 10, doubly so.

  • MS has done horrible things but this article, really? an exerpt:

    Typically, a crash caused by this update will give you the following error codes. If you see any of these after your computer crashes or restarts, it’s probably related to the buggy update:

    PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
    CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED
    ACPI_BIOS_ERROR
    INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE
    MEMORY_MANAGEMENT

  • If I didn't mostly use this high-end PC for gaming and could relistically carry two of them, I'd have the high end PC running Windows, and then Linux for anything important. The closest I've come is to set up VMWare machines running Linux on external HDDs which I can regularly backup. At least if Windows goes nuts I can restore the important stuff from backup, and the really important stuff like keys is mirrored on an off-site networked machine (running Linux) anyway. And yes, the external stuff is encrypte

  • Harder to Name the Problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday April 25, 2020 @11:19PM (#59991484)
    Remember when Mozilla tried to remove FF's version number from the About Box [slashdot.org] as a prelude the wacky wapid release schedule?

    Well, Microsoft was just as sick and tired of customers resisting their latest shiny upgrade, especially when they did so successfully, as with Vista and 8. Keeping the actual version a secret (i.e. "it's all Windows 10") causes enough confusion to blunt dissent (and damn the negative side effects) as they implement sweeping changes as "routine updates."

  • Microsoft has frighteningly bad management. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday April 25, 2020 @11:32PM (#59991504) Homepage
    Microsoft is amazingly poorly managed. There have been problems like this for years!!!

    August 4, 2015: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

    October 5, 2019: Multiple Problems Reported With New Windows 10 Updates [forbes.com],

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xwin ( 848234 )
      I would disagree with you as would most of the people outside of slashdot. Price of Microsoft stock is more than quadrupled from 2015 to today. This is extremely well managed company. Slashdot's darling Apple which can do no wrong only around doubled its stock price since 2015. Windows is rather complex OS that runs on a variety of hardware and uses a lot of third party drivers. I personally have not seen Windows crash for a long time but that is anecdotal evidence of course. I also have not seen Linux cra

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by xonen ( 774419 )

        There's a huge difference between having issues, like driver issues, and deleting files or leaving the filesystem unbootable. Going by the article, my guess would be they screwed up installing a new boot loader.

        And if they have that much money, as you say yourself, a 0.5% failure rate would be a totally unacceptable number. Try squeezing in a few more zero's. It just goes to show that they don't use that money for quality control and adequate testing, else they likely would have found issues like those. Pro

        • There's a huge difference between having issues, like driver issues, and deleting files or leaving the filesystem unbootable.

          Not really.
          First off, people declared that. I am yet to see some evidence backing their statements.
          Second, there's quite a few software implementations which may go tits up following an update patch. Badly written antivirus, firewall and encryption software are the three main culprits.

          FWIW here's the KB patch article: https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]
          You can also download a CSV with a list of files that are being updated: https://download.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]
          And the patch itself has already been replaced by thi

      • and how much of that was from stock buybacks?
        That applies to the entire corporate America by the way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Friendly reminder that windows has been shrinking as portion of microsoft revenue for a very long time now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      When you have a 90% monopoly, with 0 competition in corporate space, and endless gov't contracts, it doesn't matter how bad your management is; ask Boeing.

    • No one cares about your first link, that much is clear from Windows's adoption rate. But at least your second one is on topic. This also isn't the first time a Windows update has clobbered user files.

      As for Microsoft being "amazingly poorly managed", their year on year profits couldn't disagree with you more. In fact since the Windows 10 release Microsoft has gone from a company that was hiding in Apple's shadow, to constantly leapfrogging with it for value. As for right now, Microsoft is the only US tech c

      • > As for right now, Microsoft is the only US tech company that has a market cap of more than $1tn.

        Wrong, Amazon's market cap is currently $1.2T, and first exceeded $1T around the beginning of Feb 2020.

        https://ycharts.com/companies/... [ycharts.com]

        As far as I know, Microsoft's recent growth is based more on their businesses that aren't directly tied to Windows on the desktop, namely hosting mailboxes and offering online file storage (sometimes sold as "Office 365") and hosting Linux VMs (Azure). This is borne out in t

        • Right I was reading a news story from 4 weeks ago.

          Also right on where their growth came from. Not sure why you think that's relevant though, the GP was postulating that Microsoft was mismanaged, but clearly throwing Windows to the dogs and betting the house on the cloud was an excellent managerial decision and continues to support my point.

  • "Deleted files don't show in telemetry" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Saturday April 25, 2020 @11:33PM (#59991506)
    Hey Microsoft, maybe that's because a PC whose files have been deleted can't boot far enough for your telemetry spyware to phone home to the mothership.
  • .... but I'm compelled to ask what the point of that would be, as the data will have already been deleted, won't it?

  • Why Windows is malware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Saturday April 25, 2020 @11:46PM (#59991536)
    1. Installs and enables RAT (Remote Access Trojan) by default with full access to your data and enabling privacy agreement authorising extraction of user content without notification or asking first.
    2. Installs unwanted applications not part of the operating system without permission.
    3. Deletes your shit (NEW!) (aka the October 2018 and April 2020 updates)
    4. Cyber stalking that can’t be disabled and what little of it can be disabled is only temporary thanks to conveniently forgetful privacy settings.
    5. Injection of advertisements into operating system’s UI shell and system apps.
    6. Perpetual beta quality software updates.
    7. Installs updates and reboots whether you want to or not without explicit consent.
    8. Issues scary warnings during third party software installation for self-serving anti-competitive reasons.
    9. Tricks users into creating accounts they don’t need and steals credentials via typography and WiFi.
    10. Transformation of minesweeper and solitaire classics into adware unless you are willing to pay a monthly fee.

    • But APK hosts file fixes all that so you're all good. Sorted?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      It's easier than you think to disable the telemetry, although maybe not for your average domestic user.

      Find the telemetry jobs in Task Scheduler. Disable them.

      Schedule a job in Task Scheduler - batch script or powershell, your choice - to disable those jobs every 15 seconds. Updates have been known to enable those jobs.

      It's not perfect, but it stops MS getting hold of your data.

      For the more advanced, purchase an RPi, set up and run pi-hole, and blacklist the MS telemetry domains. That will also stop your #5

    • Yeah but it comes for free with my PC and I can't computer without it.

      Sincerely
      Users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      You could've just said "they became like android". And honestly, you'd be right.

      The only thing to do is to rip most of those things along with roots. There are a few guides on that on internet. Some parts of Win10 will get a bit weird after that, and it won't get updates. Which means that you'll need to lock it down similar to win7 for security.

      But it will work. And it won't randomly delete your files, or be able to send telemetry or get ads.

      And once you did it, you can ask yourself "why didn't I just stay

  • 1) Windows is crap, was crap and will be crap. Everybody using it despite it being crap does not really give MS any incentives to do better.
    2) If you have no backups of important data, then you are asking for it. Also see 1).

    My current work set-up is Win10 (because I need to use Office) in a VM on Linux. That at least gives me a decent snapshot capability and a base-system that works reliably and securely. It also allows me to block the illegal (as per GDPR) snooping by MS. It is completely pathetic that su

  • Deleting files is new? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @12:02AM (#59991568)

    On more than one occasion, someone has brought me a Win10 system, complaining that an update wiped all their files. Upon investigation, I've found that Win10 updates will regularly create new user profiles and rename the original profile to "username.old". It's possible all the user files are still on the machine, but they've been moved, security locked, and rendered invisible. In these cases, you need to login as admin and claim ownership of the profile, and even then, Windows will still bitch that you don't have permission to access the profile. It's a pain. Using Linux makes cleaning up the mess easier.

    My first experience with Win10 was on a test system, just to give it a test drive. After the compatibility appraiser told me my system was compatible, I ran the update from Win7 to Win10. Everything was fine, until the install was finished, and Win10 informed me that due to incompatibility, 11 applications were removed. Not disabled, mind you, but outright deleted, with no way to get the files back. I wasn't even notified that it would happen, let alone the system asking for permission. Naturally, rolling back to Win7 returned an error and didn't work.

    I re-imaged the system back to Win7 and haven't touched Win10 since.

    • Re:Deleting files is new? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @12:28AM (#59991628)
      Somebody mod up. I have seen viruses, malware, and browser hijackers corrupting the registry a lot, as well as legit approved software sticking in non-removable junk to enforce 'licenses'. And to silently hide profiles - is another crime/no-no. Compounding this are pre-INTEL speculation bug drivers that have not been remediated. Mostly seen on >7 year old hard drives on notebooks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It does this when your profile has some problem with it, usually due to malware or some old crappy app that screwed it up. It tries to fix the problem by creating a new profile to work from, but it often doesn't work properly.

      The locking down is enforced partly by Windows Defender or whatever it's called these days, in an attempt to prevent the machine getting re-infected.

      It's a shame Microsoft can't simply communicate all this clearly but then again so much malware tries the old "your computer is infected!

  • Win 7 SP2 with updates turned off still runs great.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      SP2 you say?

  • Thatâ(TM)s known for years (Score:4, Funny)

    by jovius ( 974690 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @12:20AM (#59991604)

    640 000 files should be enough for anyone

  • I used to work in the tech support field for company employees. "Files disappearing" has been an on-going issue since Windows 98.

  • I have 4 computers running Windows 10. One is a company laptop that's managed by their IT group so it doesn't count. The other 3 got the latest monthly "Patch Tuesday" update (all are on 1909) at various times over the last week. All accepted it without apparent issues. One is an ancient Core2 desktop with W10 Pro 64-bit, and was the last one to get the update. One is an old Gen1 i5 laptop that dual-boots W10 Home 64-bit with Linux Mint 19 (usually used with Mint). One is a 10"-screen Atom-based 2-in-1 abou

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mathew7 ( 863867 )

      So, what you are saying is that Hitler's actions of killing 3 million people is insignificant because it's less than 1% of world population estimated at 2 billion.

      Or that MS can't mess up because users are using the wrong HW. Just like Apple is not responsible for Mac keyboards that users do not air-blow every month.

      What if your small community hospital records are erased during this pandemic because of MS bullshit policy? You may say "but it's not critical to life-saving". But it's critical to triage and o

  • People are never happy (Score:5, Funny)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @01:15AM (#59991698)
    Before, users complained about Windows updates creating too many files. MS fixed the problem by having updates remove files. Yet, users still complain. People are never happy.

  • With millions of different hardware configurations it's impossible to test every combination. We could be like Apple and force people in to hardware configurations they want but then it wouldn't be a PC would it?

    • Absolutely!

      It's always been MS's biggest headache. They sell an O/S that runs a PC, and back in the day when they had DOS v3 there weren't that many combinations of hardware and certainly nowhere near the driver problems. Fast forward and you just pull a listing of the number of background services and processes running on Windows10, it's horrendous. Then do a search for video cards on Amazon alone, now multiply that by USB device drivers, motherboard drivers, sound drivers, drivers to this and that. Next p

      • Eh, MS is a multi-billion Dollar company and they cannot afford testing on all hardware - How does Linux and BSD manage that feat with next to no funding?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          They don't. That's why linux and BSD hardware support on desktop side is notoriously awful. Even slightly "unusual" hardware will usually lack linux drivers entirely, and if you luck out and your hardware does work as it should, you're looking at random weird behaviour because hardware manufacturer likely half-assed "that driver that only expert users who can troubleshoot well will use anyway".

    • Incompatible hardware should never result in files being deleted.

  • Another Windows 10 update deleting user files [slashdot.org]?

    Time to pull the update [slashdot.org].

  • Slashdot has declined... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @02:06AM (#59991796)

    ... as if the last 23+ years it wasn't obvious the average member of the computer using public wasn't fucking special education level stupid regarding technology.

    From the late 90's we had the public:

    - Buy client-server locked RPG's (aka mmo's were a tax on the computer illiterate and irrational to undermine PC game ownership, the end game was to make all games client-server which acts as drm naturally by selling you an incomplete game where they hold the code hostage on a remote server).

    - Steam DRM hits in 2004 when valve and the entire industry saw the public was totally fucking clueless as to how PC's work, in their war to claim gamers files as their own to slowly chance games into "services" because the average gamer on PC's are so dumb.

    - 2009, fully server locked PC games like smite, dota 2, league of legends, Team fortress with microtransactions come into being (aka totally locked down games, you no longer own your software because companies can use internet infrastructure to client-server (aka steal) every piece of software and dispossess you of ownership by keeping part of the program on their servers).

    - Since 2012 smartphones became viable for software and are fully locked down devices, and devs started making completely locked down software, apps for google phone like android are fully locked down and you never see the files for even single player apps like Final fantasy brave exvious).

    -Denuvo comes online around 2014 and game companies get smart and start encrypting game executables because they know from the last 15 years the public has no idea how tech works and is getting fucked six ways to sunday.

    -Games like SMITE and PALADINS, where they encourage kids to buy "character packs" for a game they never own nor ever get the files to and it makes them millions of dollars. Literally defrauding the computer illiterate of their cash.

    So of course microsoft would see the walled gardens, creating things like UWP, encrypted VM's and windows 10 with DRM in it where now even the OS is made "client server" where small parts of the OS are living on some remote server. The whole thing was to split the files of all programs, both applications and OS so that you lose control of your PC.

    Watching modern "slashdotters" talk about STEAM and MMO's in a glowing light means slashdot is no longer the home of the nerds. Everyone in the late 90's and early 2000's were worried about Software and hardware DRM, all it took was a new generation of nerds and the irrational pseudo-intellectual pseudo-nerd half of the slashdot population to usher us into this "incomplete software as a service" dystopia.

    As if it wasn't obvious the average person on our planet wasn't a moron by 2004 after ultima online, everquest, Guild wars 1 and world of warcraft were released, which taught silicion valley tech companies the average member of our species is an irrational computer illiterate moron, and to take that model and eventually do that to EVERY PIECE OF SOFTWARE ON THE PLANET. Which is what mobile is all about - a totally locked down device where you own nothing.

    Jesus, client-server software anything that you don't own or control, is literally FRAUD, literally selling you an incomplete game, OS, or application. The fact this is lost on most people is fucking disturbing.

    The industry has been celebrating the stupidity of the entirety of our species in conferences, so to say "micrososft" is suffering from bad management means you have no fucking clue they've won the battle already! The fact that games like world of warcraft, most mobile games and client-server locked apps exist means YOU dear MMO, STEAM, ORIGIN, UPLAY, Rockstar social club, bethesda.net account loving person, are clueless!

    So here's the entire tech industry having a party and cheering because of the stupid and pseudo-itnellectual drm (aka incomplete software) loving half of the species:

    https://tif [tifca.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by irving47 ( 73147 )

      NOW DO ADOBE

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      It's worse now. I work K-12. iPads and Chromebooks are very rapidly becoming the only "computers" any kid will know about other than their phone.

      The concept of open would be entirely foreign to them if ever even introduced.

      How much irony is there in that most of these closed systems are based on FOSS?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        How much irony is there in that most of these closed systems are based on FOSS?

        iPads are based on FOSS? I guess iOS is based on OS X, which is based on NEXT, which was, I guess based on what, BSD?

        The easy test for "based on FOSS" is the inclusion of something like the GNU Public LIcense.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      ... as if the last 23+ years it wasn't obvious the average member of the computer using public wasn't fucking special education level stupid regarding technology.

      I'm sorry you feel that everyone needs to be an expert in your field before they are allowed to play with technology.

      • ... as if the last 23+ years it wasn't obvious the average member of the computer using public wasn't fucking special education level stupid regarding technology.

        I'm sorry you feel that everyone needs to be an expert in your field before they are allowed to play with technology.

        You don't seem to understand the dire political implications of mass computer illiteracy, that means because the public has no idea how computers work, the software industry has been committing mass software theft and fraud for the last 20 years straight because the public can't perceive they are being robbed, so I had to watch PC game industry steal PC rpg's and other game software via drm (which is just another name for client-server back ending game files to claim your local game files as theirs). Any a

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Randj Herdle ( 6067832 )
          Sorry to sound pessimistic, but the situation is hopeless. Remember, people buy MAGA hats and pet rocks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Wish I had mod points instead of replying.

      You forgot secure boot :) But I think the 'war' is lost, soon everything will be locked down and I would not be surprised one will need to be bonded to be a developer or admin in the future.

  • reminds me of a very very early Mac OS X bug. If you downloaded files while holding down the option key to override the dialog box prompting for a save to: directory, it would wipe out the default directory it had set like Desktop or Documents. Apple had to scramble to get updates out fast, and had to pay for a utility app like Norton or something else that would undelete files.

  • I am not a big fan of Microsoft, and it might something like this. The user bases varies from severely locked down, professional IT managed corporate machines, all the way to grandma-who-clicks-every-url machines severely out of date with updates. So their testing would never be enough and such thing can happen.

    On the other hand the linked article picks on update KB4549951, recommends disabling it. Wondering if there is a malware vendor who's exploit depends on this update being disabled and is using socia

  • I am trying to run executables I've downloaded from random sites, I'm looking for a ping tool today.

    Upon running said EXE's I'm getting an error box coming up saying.
    "The App you're trying to install isn't a Microsoft verified app"

    Now I can choose 'install anyway" (idiotic, these a portable exes in most cases) and it'll run but it's not the point really. This entices users to the closed garden official MS app store, as intended.

    Not a good sign

  • I normally run Debian Linux on my Xeon desktop, but recently rebooted into Windows to keep it up to date. I did the "security update" everyone is talking about on here, and it eventually wiped most of the C drive (I actually watched it deleting everything, and it literally wiped out probably close to 100gb of data) plus it even damaged the operating system, so upon reboot, the OS wouldn't boot anymore due to missing DLL's. Luckily I had a backup (from ntfsclone) and restored from Linux, but I don't really

  • Why Enterprise Edition can disable this (Score:3)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Sunday April 26, 2020 @11:41AM (#59992892)

    I'm pretty sure Microsoft allows the Enterprise Edition of Windows to disable these updates for one reason:

    So they don't get sued into oblivion when one of their mis-managed updates wrecks everything.

    The average user doesn't have the funding to go up against the Lawyer Army Microsoft has, but big Business sure as hell does.

    I'm surprised some lawyer out there hasn't started a Class Action against MS for their incompetence.

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