New Windows 11 Bug Breaks Samsung PCs, Blocking Access To C: Drive (pcworld.com) 85
Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Users of Samsung PCs are reporting the inability to access the C: drive after the Windows 11 February update. The bug seems to be in connection with the Samsung Galaxy Connect app, which allows Samsung phones and tablets to connect to Windows machines. [A previous stable version of the app has been re-released to prevent this problem from spreading.] This parody explains the situation with humor. The issue stems from update KB5077181 and is impacting Samsung PCs running Windows 11 25H2 or 24H2. Microsoft and Samsung have confirmed the issue and published a workaround, but as PCWorld notes, it will take some time. The workaround "requires removing the Samsung application, then asking Windows to repair the drive permissions and assigning a new owner, then restoring the Windows default permissions, including patching in some custom code that Microsoft wrote."
Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Even windows has decided it too shit to be allowed to interact with so has stated killing itself.
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Another piece of evidence: a link in the summary goes to https://support.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] which is currently tits up. Apparently they're hosting that site on Windows and/or staffing it with their employees.
pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Who needs a C: drive? Everything's in the cloud!
Re:pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Can't have "Cloud" without "C" *taps head*
Re:pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Meh, I keep mine on a floppies, and swap between aloud and bloud.
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What, you're not booting from OneDrive?
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"The cloud" just means "Somebody elses C: drive"
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> "The cloud" just means "Somebody elses C: drive"
Nah. Nobody is dumb enough to run a cloud service on Windows.
Slop through and through (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears Microsoft really was telling the truth when they said 30% of Windows code is now written by "AI". I can't believe Microsoft is throwing their future away on this slop. This past year has seen some of the most bone-headed missteps happening at regular intervals. When the mighty fall they fall hard it seems. Microsoft, meet Boeing, you two have a lot in common. Now I hear Windows 12 is going to be cloud subscription based. Do they really think people want to pay for this ... over .. and .. over .. again?
Re:Slop through and through (Score:5, Interesting)
It appears Microsoft really was telling the truth when they said 30% of Windows code is now written by "AI". I can't believe Microsoft is throwing their future away on this slop.
My guess is (and has been for a few years) that MS has entered the "deep organizational dysfunction" phase of its existence. In that phase they are living 100% off old glory and anything new they try just fails or makes things worse, because they are too disconnected and too much without insight to get things to work. *See, for example, their cloud having gotten hacked really badly a number of times by now...)
The next phase is "collapse" and it comes after they have piled up enough technological debt and broken enough old things that still worked somewhat that organizations will have to move off MS stuff in an emergency fashion just to survive. I predict that will happen no later than 20 years from now, but "AI" may have significantly shortened that timeline.
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"but "AI" may have significantly shortened that timeline." - I believe you are correct.
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I think so too, but it will definitively be interesting to watch.
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Yep. Apparently MS thinks they have technology all nicely figured out, when that is not the case at all and they are getting worse and worse.
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I don't disagree, but I'm still stuck using teams for work even after Skype for Business / Lync / Office Communicator / Windows Messenger. Dysfunction doesn't seem to impact them as much as one may expect. Web based apps might usher in a big change though - all those office PC's and VM's that no longer need any locally installed apps are awful attractive to someone looking to cut licensing fees and push out some simple Linux desktops.
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I am currently trialing Lecture Streaming via BigBlueButton. So far it works well. If it continues to, I plan to make my teaching set-up Linux only. The only use for MS products left will be Teams for some conferences, but I hope the in-browser version will be good enough.
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The only use for MS products left will be Teams for some conferences, but I hope the in-browser version will be good enough.
FWIW, that's the only way I use teams, and I've been using it in a professional environment that way for years. The occasional issues are no more prevalent on the web based one than the desktop one. I happen to use it from both Linux (Devuan) and a Chromebook (if someone needs to see my face).
In fact, if you install Microsoft Teams on Windows using the app, it's still just a web app. It used to use the Electron framework (Chromium browser wrapped in an app), and now uses what is essentially Microsoft's vers
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Interesting. Thanks for the info!
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>"In that phase they are living 100% off old glory"
Has there ever really been any glory? I have been very much into computers since something like 1981 and haven't seen any. Popularity, yes. But "glory"??
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It is a figure of speech. Obviously, if MS ever had any real "glory", it was only with those without insight. Their products have always sucked. I remember wayyy back getting DR DOS on my first x86 computer and finding it a good product. Then I had do use MS DOS in some other context and found it laughably inferior on all counts.
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Gates had his programmers cripple MS products running under DRDOS to make it appear that DRDOS was inferior. I really, really, really dislike him. He's an asshole. Always has been, always will be.
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Little did I know that when I fired up my TRS-80 Color Computer back in 1981 and saw "UNDER LICENSE FROM MICROSOFT" that Microsoft would be the company that would continue to screw the computing world for years to come ... and still does. No glory in that at all. Just a psychopath at the helm ready to rape the world (amongst other things, yikes!).
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>"Little did I know that when I fired up my TRS-80 Color Computer back in 1981 and saw "UNDER LICENSE FROM MICROSOFT" that Microsoft would be the company that would continue to screw the computing world for years to come ... and still does."
Yeah, that was ironic on my CoCo 1 and CoCo1. But the CoCo 3 was all about OS-9... ain't no Microsoft in that goodness.
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Or, maybe, just MAYBE you can pull your head out of your ass.
This shit has been known about for days / weeks. It's Samsungs own god damn bloatware suite that is doing this shit, not "Windows".
Maybe you should go to reddit. You'd fit right in with the chuds there that can't read anything past the misleading headlines to find out the god damn article even says this explicitly.
Re: Slop through and through (Score:2)
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Another example of how professionals can't use it. (Score:5, Interesting)
People joke about Linux being unstable, and having usability issues, when was the last time a major Linux distribution completely bleeped home directory access? I've never seen it, and I've been using Linux since 1999, maybe 1998. Let's be clear, you could do through incompetence, but that's of your own destruction, and if you did, you could easily get it back.
With Windows, not only do things break, the solutions are nonsense, or in the best cases, idiotic. I have a recurring issue where virtualization will just stop working on Windows, and it's not a UEFI issue. There is a long-standing issue where Windows can suspend, but then can't wake up. To get Windows to "wake-up", you need an installer so you can enter recovery mode, and tell the boot manager, TO BOOT.
Windows doesn't know how to BOOT, which tracks across most Microsoft products, they can't do the most basic functions of their use case. How can a professional, honestly, seriously, non-fraudulently, use Windows? If you can afford the massive amounts of downtime, you're not a professional! If you can afford the constantly "roll-the-dice" methodology on updates, you're not a professional! If you can honestly tell me that an OS which can't boot, is a suitable product for a workplace, don't, you're lying. Windows is not for professionals, it's not even for hobbies at this point.
I have it running in VM, on top of Fedora because in the best case that's the only safe place to have it, it's not ready for bare metal. Windows is for testing, and nothing else, and that's all I'll ever use it for because it's not an operating system, it's AdWare, bloated with ShareWare, and CrapWare, that only seeks to violate and harm it user base, when it works, which isn't often.
Re:Another example of how professionals can't use (Score:5, Insightful)
With Windows, not only do things break, the solutions are nonsense, or in the best cases, idiotic.
For me, that is the main complaint. With a good architecture and design, things may still break, but they break in places where you can reasonably expect them to and hence you can prepare. With Windows it is all over the place because they lack that good architecture and design and never understood thinks like KISS, resilience, the Principle of Least Surprise and basically all the things that are required to make engineering good.
Essentially, Windows is a souped-up toy at this time and used for things way outside of what it can do reliably. And the requirements are growing and the gap between what Windows would need to be and what it is is getting larger and larger.
I do agree that many Windows users and basically everybody that decided for Windows (or Microsoft) for a professional application scenario are not professionals by common standards. Of course they do not want to hear that, because nobody wants to hear they are not qualified for their job, especially when that is the only skill they bring to the table. My guess is that the increasing regulation and reliability (at this time spear-headed by the EU) will essentially kill off Windows and other Microsoft products, because they really cannot compete once real quality requirements come into the picture. This may still take 10-20 years to become blatantly obvious, although the LLM mess may accelerate things.
Re:Another example of how professionals can't use (Score:4, Insightful)
Professionals put up with Windows because, despite its problems, it’s a reasonably stable desktop environment where you have a decent guarantee that your really expensive program - built for Windows 2000/Seven - will still work, whereas the Linux desktop is a total mess when it comes to backward compatibility.
But as you’ve probably noticed, that’s changing... And Windows is now becoming another shitshow, so we’ll end up with two shitshows to choose from unless Linux desktop vendors get their act together and stop fighting among themselves.
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I will never "chill out" when faced with abject incompetence in the engineering space.
Incidentally, I have been a Linux desktop user for about 30 years now and the "total mess" you see is simply not there.
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I have been a Linux desktop user for about 30 years now and the "total mess" you see is simply not there.
Yeah, sure. Keep thinking that.
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Windows and Linux desktops are both total messes. The difference is, with Linux you have your choice of several sub-messes.
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Backwards compatibility with stuff that old is hardly a given anymore. Windows 11 broke all but the latest SAP installations where I work. It broke all kinds of other scripts and tools people used, VBScript being disabled for example. That's fairly easy to reinstall in W11, but the SAP incompatibility required the company to deploy a newer version of SAP after W10 was retired.
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whereas the Linux desktop is a total mess when it comes to backward compatibility.
Right... and Somalis are eating cats and dogs. WTF are you talking about?
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For your average computer user, it is a reasonable oversimplification. Or at least, it was. You're still not going to find everything, but containerized program options are helping for that crowd.
How is, "... the Linux desktop is a total mess when it comes to backward compatibility," a reasonable anything? What things aren't backward compatible on the Linux desktop?
If anything, forward compatibility might be a thing (Ex: running my 20yr old Linux install and expecting Chrome to easily install), but even Windows 10 is EOL and was only 10 years old at that point.
I've got my own complaints about Wayland and most desktops from the last decade, but none of that relates to your average user, and I'm certa
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whereas the Linux desktop is a total mess when it comes to backward compatibility.
What are you talking about? I've been running e.g. civctp for Linux, unmodified, for at least 25 years, over a number of different distros. No issues there.
I've been running Linux on the desktop since 1995.
If I see any issues, it's bullshit like snap or systemd-resolved that ruins my desktop experience because snap wants updates when it inconveniences me, or because systemd-resolved just craps out and I have to restart the service. And that's on me because I didn't switch away from my current Kubuntu just y
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What stops things like civ:ctp running out of the box is generally missing userland libraries rather than any inherent incompatibility.
Windows comes with lots of ancient userland libraries for compatibility purposes, whereas linux distros generally don't because 99.9% of users will never use them. Therefore on Linux you generally have to provide those backwards compatibility libs yourself. Once you provide the expected libraries however linux tends to have much better backwards compatibility than windows.
Th
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It's the complexity getting out of hand...
You have 30 years of backwards compatibility cruft, layers upon layers of stuff while trying to provide support an almost infinite combination of hardware configurations, applications that try to hook into the system in various intrusive ways, and a huge variety of use cases. It's no wonder things break.
Apple have a different approach - cutting off backwards compatibility, limited hardware configurations, limiting how deeply things can hook into the system etc.
Re:Another example of how professionals can't use (Score:4, Insightful)
how can you risk using Windows, when these are the issues you run in to?
The answer is simple, risk is a function of consequence and likelihood. Given that most of these catastrophic bugs affect a tiny minority of people usually in specific isolated cases or only cover specific use cases. As such the risk is actually incredibly low.
Take this for example, what professional capacity are Samsung Books used? Can't say I've ever seen one. HP, Dell, Lenovo make the world go round.
You have a virtualisation problem? That sucks but 99.99% of people don't use that either.
Windows not waking from suspend? Did you misspell Linux? Both OSes have horrendous recurring problems with sleep / suspend, and overall that's simply not an issue, reboot and keep going with your work. You do hit the save button right?
Windows doesn't know how to BOOT, which tracks across most Microsoft products
Don't understand what you're saying. I'm posting this from Windows, I don't think I'd be able to do that if it didn't know how to boot. More importantly is what you're saying even relevant to this story? A story where the fix for it is changing a non-windows app?
How can a professional, honestly, seriously, non-fraudulently, use Windows?
The same way a non-professional does. Turn the computer on and get on with your life.
If you can afford the constantly "roll-the-dice" methodology on updates
Wait what? You roll the dice on updates? Maybe it's time to fire your IT department if that's the case. Personally I only get tested updates pushed out to my machine.
If you can afford the massive amounts of downtime, you're not a professional!
Quite the opposite. A true professional is able to keep functioning despite downtime. Unprofessional is being dependent on tools that can cripple your profession.
If you can honestly tell me that an OS which can't boot
But the OS can boot. Are you having a stroke? Do we need to call someone to help you?
Windows is not for professionals, it's not even for hobbies at this point.
You should tell that to all the professionals who use it without issue. They'll probably ask you if you're having a stroke too. No seriously are you having a stroke right now? Check the list to be sure https://www.stroke.org/en/abou... [stroke.org]
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Windows not waking from suspend? Did you misspell Linux? Both OSes have horrendous recurring problems with sleep / suspend, and overall that's simply not an issue, reboot and keep going with your work. You do hit the save button right?
I have two Linux systems. One of them can suspend and resume flawlessly. The other one fucks it up almost every time even though I've been working on it for a while. That's partly a me problem, but as it turns out it's also an Nvidia problem. My AMD MiniPC is perfect about power management, no notes. Both are Zen3. Both are running Devuan 5.
A true professional is able to keep functioning despite downtime. Unprofessional is being dependent on tools that can cripple your profession.
Everyone doing anything complicated is dependent on tools without which they cannot perform their job functions.
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There is a share of blame for Microsoft here. They were the ones who originally had a big hand in the ACPI standards and it turned into such a clusterfuck that not only was it inconsistent and hard to implement in Linux, it was also in Windows.
Everyone doing anything complicated is dependent on tools without which they cannot perform their job functions.
Everyone "professional" doing anything complicated that is dependent on tools will have a business continuity plan. Give me a hammer right now and smash it through my work laptop and I will pick up another and keep going. Also there's virtually no jobs which don't inv
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There is a share of blame for Microsoft here. They were the ones who originally had a big hand in the ACPI standards and it turned into such a clusterfuck that not only was it inconsistent and hard to implement in Linux, it was also in Windows.
There was, but I don't think it holds today. Microsoft made the tools that all the vendors used to do ACPI tables, and it made deliberately inferior tables for non-Windows OSes, so things improved a lot when Linux just started using the Windows ACPI tables. But I'm pretty sure my current problem is 100% Nvidia's fault. They just give absolutely zero fucks about Linux graphics output now, only CUDA matters to their bottom line.
Re:Another example of how professionals can't use (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never, not once, on any computer, seen Linux suspend, and become unbootable. In the last 3+ years, I have seen dozens of cases where Windows will suspend itself, and you need to use the Installer to wake Windows back up because the drive will drop from the UEFI.
Windows is such a low-grade OS, that you need to install a Linux VM on it, to do your work. The WSL is literally a workaround for Windows not being a proper OS. Think about that! You have to install Linux on Windows, to use Windows, and Microsoft doesn't hide this fact, they sell it. Since that's the case, why not just cut out the tumour?
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I don't have a defense. I have an attack at you, somehow thinking that the OS is not suitable for professional use despite the fact that it's used by professionals the world over. See I'm not saying Windows is great. I'm saying you're incompetent and have no idea how to work professionally.
I have never, not once, on any computer, seen Linux suspend, and become unbootable.
Oh you must be a school kid using your dad's account. Welcome to Slashdot. We have a history lesson for you. Just search ACPI here to find countless stories which have been covered on Slashdot over the years of systematic
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I have never, not once, on any computer, seen Linux suspend, and become unbootable. In the last 3+ years, I have seen dozens of cases where Windows will suspend itself, and you need to use the Installer to wake Windows back up because the drive will drop from the UEFI.
How many times has a Linux install dropped out the UEFI? If the suspend is temperamental, but it can still wake up, that's fine, Windows can't. I would argue don't use suspend, since it's absolutely useless, no one is too busy or time sensitive, that they can't wait for a boot sequence.
a) Over the last 15 years, I've probably had north of 500 Windows clients to maintain, another 150+ Linux servers, and Linux clients.
b) The only reason I boot Windows, which is rare, i
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How are you handling the Windows activation in the VM? I'm interested in moving my install from bare metal to a VM, but I'm assuming they won't let me use my existing license.
I downloaded a W11 ISO from the Microsoft web site a couple months ago, and they made it *incredibly* difficult to install once they realized I was running it in a VM. I was given the most fucked-up captchas I've ever seen - like nothing I've seen before - pattern matching and rotating symbols and squiggles, that walk across a line and
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Re:Another example of how professionals can't use (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies wouldn't have been affected. At least not ones with any type of sane policies.
The issue isn't a Microsoft issue, it's a Samsung shitty preinstalled "management app" issue. Samsungs own shovelware is what's causing the issues. If your company allows that kind of crap to run unrestricted on their PCs that are connected to their networks they deserve every last headache they get from it.
It should be the most telling that it only happens to Samsung computers. Samsung is doing weird shit, and it's their fault for doing weird shit when the base changes and everything goes sideways.
If this is what happens when the base Windows changes to fix bugs and exploits, what other weird undocumented shit are they also doing? Why aren't they doing it within the proper protocols for the OS? Why are they basically using the equivalent of unpatched exploits to do whatever they are doing?
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Off the top of my head, a RHEL/CentOS 7 update package for GRUB rendered a lot of systems unbootable. SuSE used to use ReiserFS by default, which ha
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I'd go so far as to say its malware, in and of itself.. Its always been a malware magnet, now its malware by itself.. Good job, Microsoft..
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SLOP (Score:2, Funny)
the Windows 11 February update (Score:5, Interesting)
the thing is an atrocity. disappearing sys drives is just one of many issues with it, and Redmond sure seems to be dragging their ass getting around to fixing it.
it completely breaks username/password authentication on my simple LAN, so I uninstalled it. Let's see how March's update does...
from the fine issue notification department (Score:2)
"Microsoft and Samsung investigated these reports and concluded that the symptoms were caused by an issue in the Samsung Galaxy Connect app."
So Microsoft is only involved in this mega fail insofar as they created a shitty OS that applications need to hook into deeply in order to function. That ain't nothin' but it's still Samsung's software that exploded all over Windows and not the other way around.
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While Linux is often considered to be bit clunky, KDE Connect is an example of a much smoother experience than anything of MS.
Clickbait title (Score:5, Insightful)
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So there was a bug in Windows previously that prevented a Samsung app bug from triggering? The reality is it only affects Samsung devices with the specific Samsung app installed. Regardless of whether a Windows update triggered it, it's a bug in the Samsung App.
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So there was a bug in Windows previously that prevented a Samsung app bug from triggering.
How did you come up with that conclusion? It seems more likely be there is a bug now in Windows that the Samsung app triggers.
Regardless of whether a Windows update triggered it, it's a bug in the Samsung App.
The Samsung app worked before Windows February update. Now it does not. Your modus operandi is to blame everything on Samsung. Considering the numerous things that broke on non-Samsung PCs due to the February update, I would surmise it is probably more on Microsoft.
Re: Clickbait title (Score:5)
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Their forced install of competing products, wastes data and device resources. Their only saving grace is their products are dumbed-down, not enshittified but so dumb they are not suitable for daily use.
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I seem to remember early experiments by windows to distribute boot binaries across any logical drive. And even a less known experiment involving samsung that was supposed to allow you to boot from an entirely different(mobile)device? It was actually a long time ago but you have to wonder.
weren't there some red button variants that exported a new system drive letter?
Who needs C:// anyway? (Score:2)
Who needs C:// anyway?
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LMAO. Touché!
ISO Install (Score:2)
Tiny11 (Score:2)
Better yet, there is a stripped down form of Windows called Tiny11. It removes everything that one finds on a normal Windows Home install - CoPilot, Feedback Bar, Family, OneDrive, ClipChamp, Edge, Xbox,.... so that one has a bare install of 12GB of storage, and uses 2-4GB of RAM. It also disables TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements
So best thing to do - start w/ that, and only add the applications/apps that are absolutely necessary for day to day use of this computer. Note that this is not recommended
Samsung still makes PCs? (Score:2)
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More Samsung's Fault Than Microsoft? (Score:2)
The bug seems to be in connection with the Samsung Galaxy Connect app
Windows can be made to run much better by removing all the bloatware that system builders preinstall.
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I assume you probably have tried Linux, which so far as I know has never had bloatware*, but could you let me know why you reject Linux?
* Does Linux Mint including Libreoffice count as bloatware? It doesn't run by default and uses no system resources unless you start it and is pretty darn useful.