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I had about three GB free on my root partition. Windows 10 was automatically installed. Well, partially. You can probably guess what happened; if this had happ

I had about three GB free on my root partition. Windows 10 was automatically installed. Well, partially. You can probably guess what happened; if this had happened to anyone else in the family, their computer would have been effectively bricked. I used to spend most of my time in Linux anyway, but now I'm justifiably scared of booting Windows.

Someone1234 10y ago
Windows 10 won't attempt to install unless it has enough space to complete, and they look for 16 GB. So what I suspect actually occurred is that your hypervisor was set up to misreport how much space as available to Windows, so Windows 10 tried to install on the space it thought it had, only to hit the wall on the "real" filesystem below. It is unlikely this ever would have occurred to anyone else in your family, unless they're running Windows in a hypervisor that misreports space.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jboles 10y ago
  Sounds like the case. I'm guessing it was on an expanding virtual machine disk image, in which case the problem is user error rather than Windows.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  What about if that 16GB gets used up while the install is in progress?
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    I think one of the 70,000 Microsoft employees just might have thought of that possibility before pushing the update.
    - mickronome 10y ago
      One would think so, but then one would also think that nobody would ever design a boot recovery procedure such that it has an error case where it deletes all (several hundreds) executable files on the disk, completely hosing the system. But Microsoft still managed to do the latter. It's likely not that nobody thought about it, but maybe not the right person, and in big companies that can matter a lot.
    - cortesoft 10y ago
      They didn't seem to think of the possibility that I might have a long running, important process on a machine that I am not physically at. Restarting a machine just because I am not there to say no is bad.
- Filligree 10y ago
  This was not under a hypervisor, but it did happen as the same time as I was installing some large pieces of software; I'd just recently reinstalled, and was looking forward to playing X-COM 2. The 3GB number is how much space was free after I excised the broken shards of the Windows 10 installer. So, sure, the space probably got taken up after the installer checked if there was enough, but it's not like I ever told it to start running.

Someone1234 10y ago

Windows 10 won't attempt to install unless it has enough space to complete, and they look for 16 GB. So what I suspect actually occurred is that your hypervisor was set up to misreport how much space as available to Windows, so Windows 10 tried to install on the space it thought it had, only to hit the wall on the "real" filesystem below. It is unlikely this ever would have occurred to anyone else in your family, unless they're running Windows in a hypervisor that misreports space.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jboles 10y ago
Sounds like the case. I'm guessing it was on an expanding virtual machine disk image, in which case the problem is user error rather than Windows.
cortesoft 10y ago
What about if that 16GB gets used up while the install is in progress?
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  I think one of the 70,000 Microsoft employees just might have thought of that possibility before pushing the update.
  - mickronome 10y ago
    One would think so, but then one would also think that nobody would ever design a boot recovery procedure such that it has an error case where it deletes all (several hundreds) executable files on the disk, completely hosing the system. But Microsoft still managed to do the latter. It's likely not that nobody thought about it, but maybe not the right person, and in big companies that can matter a lot.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    They didn't seem to think of the possibility that I might have a long running, important process on a machine that I am not physically at. Restarting a machine just because I am not there to say no is bad.
Filligree 10y ago
This was not under a hypervisor, but it did happen as the same time as I was installing some large pieces of software; I'd just recently reinstalled, and was looking forward to playing X-COM 2. The 3GB number is how much space was free after I excised the broken shards of the Windows 10 installer. So, sure, the space probably got taken up after the installer checked if there was enough, but it's not like I ever told it to start running.