14 ms·

Windows 10’s latest update is deleting some users’ documents

85 points by RobertSmith 8y ago

kgwxd 8y ago
I hope it has something to do with DRM enforcement.
- castis 8y ago
  If DRM ever gets to the point where it starts arbitrarily deleting data from my hard drive that will be the last time I ever touch software written by anyone involved.
  - kgwxd 8y ago
    Why wait until it happens? In fact, it's already happened on Kindle.
- anticensor 8y ago
  What do you mean? Deleting pirate user's data? That is definitely computer abuse.
sebazzz 8y ago
It appears this has something to do with folder redirection and doing folder redirection to OneDrive. One of the workarounds might be to install the new OneDrive manually before updating.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Do you mean that microsoft is forcing onedrive on its users as part of the update?
  - bhhaskin 8y ago
    sadly onedrive has always been forced on users with windows 10.
    - maxnoe 8y ago
      How so? I have access several windows 10 machines and don't even use a Microsoft account on them.
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        I don't use a Windows account but it's still sitting there in the notification area.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
This is particularly scary when combined with Windows' propensity to commandeer everything you plug into it. My only W10 machine is an HTPC in my living room, into which I've plugged a 4TB external hard-drive. That box has no other purpose than to run Kodi and serve up my media, so the primary drive inside the PC itself is mostly free and has plenty of hard-drive space. Nonetheless, I periodically open the external itself in the file explorer to sync its contents with my backup drives, and discover that Windows decided to use my external drive to store logs, update files, and other garbage. It seems to have no concept of the idea that an external drive is for my storage, not Microsoft's storage. That lack of separation between the OS update process and userland worries me that the same bug which wipes out user directories could extend to the external, as well. I'd just as soon unplug it before letting Windows 10 update, but then there's that nasty habit of updating automatically without warning me...
- Tajnymag 8y ago
  If so, have you considered for example the LibreElec distribution? If you don't need anything other than Kodi and an occasional file management, you'd be good.
  - AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
    I should have mentioned that it's also occasionally a casual gaming machine. The emulators are all through RetroArch these days, so that migration would be seamless. It's the Steam games that would be the sticking point. I know I could probably get most of them running under WINE, but it's the guaranteed compatibility of a 20-year gaming library that makes it difficult to fully close the door on Windows.
    - Zhyl 8y ago
      Have you tried the new Steam Play (Proton)? In short, steam will now automatically wrap all windows games up with Wine and DXVK. Many many games are now working out of the box without any faff.
paulpauper 8y ago
windows 7..the last good Windows OS.
- tyfon 8y ago
  s/last/only Although I have a sweet spot for the windows xp x64 edition, it worked pretty good in the end too. After trying to deal with windows 10 I went 100% linux and started gaming on PS4 instead of my PC.
  - juststeve 8y ago
    same, consoles for games, linux for everything else
- ashleyn 8y ago
  Compared to Linux the amount of bloat shipping with Windows 10 is simply unreal. Open up Task Manager on a fresh install and the only two questions I can ask are "What the fuck do half of these services actually do?" and "Why is Windows Defender ALWAYS running up the CPU?" The start menu is loaded with trash like Candy Crush, which I can only guess is a revenue stream at the expense of user experience. You can't rid yourself of OneDrive, Cortana, or the mountain of other trash professionals and power users don't care for. If you try to, you'll rudely find that the GPOs to do so were removed, even from Professional. The only way out of all the bloat and social media noise is to buy Enterprise, and I don't even think those are for sale to consumers or available in units of one. I'll stick with being forced to use it for games only.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    The thing is, Windows 10 is starting to look more and more like a Linux distribution. Half-assed and inconsistent UI, broken updates, etc. I'm fine with this in Linux, because it's built by people who donate their time for free, and might not be experts in UX, etc. But seeing the same in a commercial OS that Microsoft wants you to pay for is unacceptable.
    - 8y ago
Too 8y ago
Microsoft has really gone too far with OTA and automatically reverting settings to more grandma friendly options. I have a windows pc which every month will have some setting reverted without me touching it. It can be anything and it usually takes some time to discover it because it only presents itself when you perform some rare task. My network sharing settings and external monitor scaling settings has been lost multiple times after OTA. I used to prefer windows but now it's simply not reliable as a OS anymore. They treat it as the front page of Facebook. Every time you boot up its a surprise what you are going to get. Backwards compatability which used to be Microsoft hallmark has now sunk so low that even the user facing options and data are unstable. I understand the need and desire for OTA and shipping new and modified features but whatever you do don't break user settings unless the feature is so much modified the old setting doesn't make sense anymore.
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  >They treat it as the front page of Facebook. yes, well said. I find this especially annoying. They also nag me to install or try something, and the only thing that the nag messages are achieving is making me start to hate windows....
  - mrfredward 8y ago
    Yep. It's the built in "try office" notifications that keep turning themselves back on that make me crazy. Windows is a paid product, and has ads built in. Linux is free, no ads. Why do I put up with it... Visual studio and games. Windows as an OS just pisses me off, but every time I try to make Linux my primary OS, I realize how attached I am to things on the windows platform.
    - mixedCase 8y ago
      >Visual studio and games Unless you're maintaining old .NET Framework apps, VS Code and/or CLion should cover all your needs when it comes to graphical IDEs. As far as games go, between native, Steam Proton and Lutris I've found no end to the amount of great games to play. Yesterday I started playing Overcooked 2 (native) with my wife, right after we finished the first one (regular Wine). I also play Overwatch (with Lutris) at least a couple of times a week which plays pretty great nowadays if I tone down the settings a bit, and been playing Doom 2016 (Steam Proton) which runs every bit as well as it does on Windows.
bitL 8y ago
Even the very first Windows 10 version was deleting files on hard drive, if they were false positives of Windows Defender. I remember fighting it for a few hours once when I needed to run some (safe) utility (I compiled), but which was disappearing within seconds after Windows Defender ran scan on it. IIRC it was very difficult to find settings where you could completely disable Windows Defender.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
As a vocal critic of the Linux Desktop, even I feel that soon Microsoft will have succeeded in making Windows so horrifically awful and user-hostile that the Linux Desktop will start to look good by comparison. I mean, if I'm going to put up with rapid update cycles that break things for no reason, decade old bugs going unfixed while features are added that no one asked for, inconsistent and redundant interfaces, developers who ignore user feedback and fetishize complexity, and fragile systems designed by Rube Goldberg, I may as well be using a Linux Desktop. About the only things holding me back any more are my unmitigated hatred for package managers as an application distribution model and crappy graphics drivers, otherwise Windows has achieved rough parity on bad system design. For now, I'm staying sane on Win 10 by completely disabling all update functionality. I suspect that something will eventually make that untenable though. I've suspected for some time that it has been Microsoft's goal to kill off desktop computing, and they seem to be succeeding handily.
- supernovae 8y ago
  Software is software, even Linux updates break things. Nothing is perfect. Let's be honest though, as an avid windows user i'm thrilled with all these quarterly updates, fixes, new features and functionality add. It sucked when service packs were years apart and nothing changed and you needed new OS's to use new functionality. Now with a free update we have the linux subsystem, have docker support, Hyper-V updates, improved notification center, dark mode, improved store with books, edge PDF/epub reading is absolutely amazing (and it works with remote syn /page read updates on ios & android!), PowerShell improvements, timeline support across devices and if you use android you get SMS integration, image backup/sync and shortly remote android display on your desktop and many fixes/improvements/refinements It's never been a better experience to be a windows user.. Everyone updates their iPhone and Android - and deals with the inevitable quirks of that upgrade and they move on. But with windows... I believe most of the people experiencing missing docs enabled storage sense integration where if you're low on disk space it moves your docs to onedrive - it prompts you to enable this... others are people with non standard configs that probably break in every update anyway and you're told not to do.
  - 8y ago
supernovae 8y ago
I use windows on many systems and have no such problems. What was introduced into the latest update is what is added into storage sense - if you enable storage sense integration into OneDrive then when you are low on disk space, documents are MOVED to one drive (offline). You DO have to opt into this. Other people who have this problem with missing docs apparently have done registry hacks and sub mounted volumes to fake onedrive access to USB devices or to move things around in ways that were never supported - OneDrive has always attempted to block/disable such hacks but people are creative... i have 0 sympathies for those users - but again - their docs are probably still on the umounted volume they could re-mount (assign a drive letter) or they're fully migrated to OneDrive.
severino 8y ago
I always find myself unable to delete any file on my computer, no matter I never needed it for years, nor I won't need it again in the forseeable future. New features like this one from Microsoft can definitely help.
herf 8y ago
Look here to disable the setting with gpedit.msc (mine was off): https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9lkera/how_to_fix_windows_10_1809_profile_deletion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9lkera/how_to_fix...
StreamBright 8y ago
I still does not understand why can't we separate out operating system from user content. It would be pretty simply just have OS snapshots that you can boot up and switch between them while having /home unchanged.
- sjellis 8y ago
  > I still does not understand why can't we separate out operating system from user content. It would be pretty simply just have OS snapshots that you can boot up and switch between them while having /home unchanged. You can: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ Some of the Silverblue developers at Red Hat have been using it as their working environment for a while, but there's still quite a few rough edges left. Once the key applications work 100% on Flatpak, it will probably be viable for a wider audience.
eltoozero 8y ago
Windows update used to have a screen that said: “All of your files are exactly where you left them.” I never trusted it. https://photos.app.goo.gl/WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9
uxcolumbo 8y ago
I use both OSX and Windows. Never experienced problems with W10 updates. Yes, eventual forced restarts are annoying - but I can see both sides, i.e. making sure users have latest security updates installed. > They treat it as the front page of Facebook. I never use the Windows start menu. I use: - Total Commander - WIN+Q - WIN+X And I also don't use a Microsoft account - when you install it just use a local account instead, just like you did when you installed older versions of Windows.

85 points by RobertSmith 8y ago

kgwxd 8y ago

I hope it has something to do with DRM enforcement.

castis 8y ago
If DRM ever gets to the point where it starts arbitrarily deleting data from my hard drive that will be the last time I ever touch software written by anyone involved.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  Why wait until it happens? In fact, it's already happened on Kindle.
anticensor 8y ago
What do you mean? Deleting pirate user's data? That is definitely computer abuse.

sebazzz 8y ago

It appears this has something to do with folder redirection and doing folder redirection to OneDrive. One of the workarounds might be to install the new OneDrive manually before updating.

cm2187 8y ago
Do you mean that microsoft is forcing onedrive on its users as part of the update?
- bhhaskin 8y ago
  sadly onedrive has always been forced on users with windows 10.
  - maxnoe 8y ago
    How so? I have access several windows 10 machines and don't even use a Microsoft account on them.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      I don't use a Windows account but it's still sitting there in the notification area.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

This is particularly scary when combined with Windows' propensity to commandeer everything you plug into it. My only W10 machine is an HTPC in my living room, into which I've plugged a 4TB external hard-drive. That box has no other purpose than to run Kodi and serve up my media, so the primary drive inside the PC itself is mostly free and has plenty of hard-drive space. Nonetheless, I periodically open the external itself in the file explorer to sync its contents with my backup drives, and discover that Windows decided to use my external drive to store logs, update files, and other garbage. It seems to have no concept of the idea that an external drive is for my storage, not Microsoft's storage. That lack of separation between the OS update process and userland worries me that the same bug which wipes out user directories could extend to the external, as well. I'd just as soon unplug it before letting Windows 10 update, but then there's that nasty habit of updating automatically without warning me...

Tajnymag 8y ago
If so, have you considered for example the LibreElec distribution? If you don't need anything other than Kodi and an occasional file management, you'd be good.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  I should have mentioned that it's also occasionally a casual gaming machine. The emulators are all through RetroArch these days, so that migration would be seamless. It's the Steam games that would be the sticking point. I know I could probably get most of them running under WINE, but it's the guaranteed compatibility of a 20-year gaming library that makes it difficult to fully close the door on Windows.
  - Zhyl 8y ago
    Have you tried the new Steam Play (Proton)? In short, steam will now automatically wrap all windows games up with Wine and DXVK. Many many games are now working out of the box without any faff.

paulpauper 8y ago

windows 7..the last good Windows OS.

tyfon 8y ago
s/last/only Although I have a sweet spot for the windows xp x64 edition, it worked pretty good in the end too. After trying to deal with windows 10 I went 100% linux and started gaming on PS4 instead of my PC.
- juststeve 8y ago
  same, consoles for games, linux for everything else
ashleyn 8y ago
Compared to Linux the amount of bloat shipping with Windows 10 is simply unreal. Open up Task Manager on a fresh install and the only two questions I can ask are "What the fuck do half of these services actually do?" and "Why is Windows Defender ALWAYS running up the CPU?" The start menu is loaded with trash like Candy Crush, which I can only guess is a revenue stream at the expense of user experience. You can't rid yourself of OneDrive, Cortana, or the mountain of other trash professionals and power users don't care for. If you try to, you'll rudely find that the GPOs to do so were removed, even from Professional. The only way out of all the bloat and social media noise is to buy Enterprise, and I don't even think those are for sale to consumers or available in units of one. I'll stick with being forced to use it for games only.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  The thing is, Windows 10 is starting to look more and more like a Linux distribution. Half-assed and inconsistent UI, broken updates, etc. I'm fine with this in Linux, because it's built by people who donate their time for free, and might not be experts in UX, etc. But seeing the same in a commercial OS that Microsoft wants you to pay for is unacceptable.
  - 8y ago

Too 8y ago

Microsoft has really gone too far with OTA and automatically reverting settings to more grandma friendly options. I have a windows pc which every month will have some setting reverted without me touching it. It can be anything and it usually takes some time to discover it because it only presents itself when you perform some rare task. My network sharing settings and external monitor scaling settings has been lost multiple times after OTA. I used to prefer windows but now it's simply not reliable as a OS anymore. They treat it as the front page of Facebook. Every time you boot up its a surprise what you are going to get. Backwards compatability which used to be Microsoft hallmark has now sunk so low that even the user facing options and data are unstable. I understand the need and desire for OTA and shipping new and modified features but whatever you do don't break user settings unless the feature is so much modified the old setting doesn't make sense anymore.

Someguywhatever 8y ago
>They treat it as the front page of Facebook. yes, well said. I find this especially annoying. They also nag me to install or try something, and the only thing that the nag messages are achieving is making me start to hate windows....
- mrfredward 8y ago
  Yep. It's the built in "try office" notifications that keep turning themselves back on that make me crazy. Windows is a paid product, and has ads built in. Linux is free, no ads. Why do I put up with it... Visual studio and games. Windows as an OS just pisses me off, but every time I try to make Linux my primary OS, I realize how attached I am to things on the windows platform.
  - mixedCase 8y ago
    >Visual studio and games Unless you're maintaining old .NET Framework apps, VS Code and/or CLion should cover all your needs when it comes to graphical IDEs. As far as games go, between native, Steam Proton and Lutris I've found no end to the amount of great games to play. Yesterday I started playing Overcooked 2 (native) with my wife, right after we finished the first one (regular Wine). I also play Overwatch (with Lutris) at least a couple of times a week which plays pretty great nowadays if I tone down the settings a bit, and been playing Doom 2016 (Steam Proton) which runs every bit as well as it does on Windows.

bitL 8y ago

Even the very first Windows 10 version was deleting files on hard drive, if they were false positives of Windows Defender. I remember fighting it for a few hours once when I needed to run some (safe) utility (I compiled), but which was disappearing within seconds after Windows Defender ran scan on it. IIRC it was very difficult to find settings where you could completely disable Windows Defender.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

As a vocal critic of the Linux Desktop, even I feel that soon Microsoft will have succeeded in making Windows so horrifically awful and user-hostile that the Linux Desktop will start to look good by comparison. I mean, if I'm going to put up with rapid update cycles that break things for no reason, decade old bugs going unfixed while features are added that no one asked for, inconsistent and redundant interfaces, developers who ignore user feedback and fetishize complexity, and fragile systems designed by Rube Goldberg, I may as well be using a Linux Desktop. About the only things holding me back any more are my unmitigated hatred for package managers as an application distribution model and crappy graphics drivers, otherwise Windows has achieved rough parity on bad system design. For now, I'm staying sane on Win 10 by completely disabling all update functionality. I suspect that something will eventually make that untenable though. I've suspected for some time that it has been Microsoft's goal to kill off desktop computing, and they seem to be succeeding handily.

supernovae 8y ago
Software is software, even Linux updates break things. Nothing is perfect. Let's be honest though, as an avid windows user i'm thrilled with all these quarterly updates, fixes, new features and functionality add. It sucked when service packs were years apart and nothing changed and you needed new OS's to use new functionality. Now with a free update we have the linux subsystem, have docker support, Hyper-V updates, improved notification center, dark mode, improved store with books, edge PDF/epub reading is absolutely amazing (and it works with remote syn /page read updates on ios & android!), PowerShell improvements, timeline support across devices and if you use android you get SMS integration, image backup/sync and shortly remote android display on your desktop and many fixes/improvements/refinements It's never been a better experience to be a windows user.. Everyone updates their iPhone and Android - and deals with the inevitable quirks of that upgrade and they move on. But with windows... I believe most of the people experiencing missing docs enabled storage sense integration where if you're low on disk space it moves your docs to onedrive - it prompts you to enable this... others are people with non standard configs that probably break in every update anyway and you're told not to do.
- 8y ago

supernovae 8y ago

I use windows on many systems and have no such problems. What was introduced into the latest update is what is added into storage sense - if you enable storage sense integration into OneDrive then when you are low on disk space, documents are MOVED to one drive (offline). You DO have to opt into this. Other people who have this problem with missing docs apparently have done registry hacks and sub mounted volumes to fake onedrive access to USB devices or to move things around in ways that were never supported - OneDrive has always attempted to block/disable such hacks but people are creative... i have 0 sympathies for those users - but again - their docs are probably still on the umounted volume they could re-mount (assign a drive letter) or they're fully migrated to OneDrive.

severino 8y ago

I always find myself unable to delete any file on my computer, no matter I never needed it for years, nor I won't need it again in the forseeable future. New features like this one from Microsoft can definitely help.

herf 8y ago

Look here to disable the setting with gpedit.msc (mine was off): https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9lkera/how_to_fix_windows_10_1809_profile_deletion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9lkera/how_to_fix...

StreamBright 8y ago

I still does not understand why can't we separate out operating system from user content. It would be pretty simply just have OS snapshots that you can boot up and switch between them while having /home unchanged.

sjellis 8y ago
> I still does not understand why can't we separate out operating system from user content. It would be pretty simply just have OS snapshots that you can boot up and switch between them while having /home unchanged. You can: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ Some of the Silverblue developers at Red Hat have been using it as their working environment for a while, but there's still quite a few rough edges left. Once the key applications work 100% on Flatpak, it will probably be viable for a wider audience.

eltoozero 8y ago

Windows update used to have a screen that said: “All of your files are exactly where you left them.” I never trusted it. https://photos.app.goo.gl/WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9

uxcolumbo 8y ago

I use both OSX and Windows. Never experienced problems with W10 updates. Yes, eventual forced restarts are annoying - but I can see both sides, i.e. making sure users have latest security updates installed. > They treat it as the front page of Facebook. I never use the Windows start menu. I use: - Total Commander - WIN+Q - WIN+X And I also don't use a Microsoft account - when you install it just use a local account instead, just like you did when you installed older versions of Windows.