21 ms·

Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

384 points by doppp 8y ago

okket 8y ago
Previous discussion from 10 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154165 (34 comments)
captainmuon 8y ago
Bizarre. I've seen something like this already in spring. A colleague lost all their documents, and calmly claimed it was probably "Windows Update". Apparently it is common knowledge in the office that Windows Update sometimes does that. I could never verify nor reproduce it, and chalked it up to "users say the darndest things". Files were simply restored from backup. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there was more to it. That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...
- coeroble 8y ago
  They released a new version of LTSB (well, they call it LTSC now) just a few days ago, based on this last version. I made a clean installation today. en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958.iso No Store, no Cortana, no Edge, Windows 7 calculator, no Candy Crush, no bullshit. Don't miss out. ;-)
  - DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
    Slight downside: apparently Office 365 won't support LTSC soon: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/Changes-to-Office-and-Windows-servicing-and-support/ba-p/151509 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/C...
    - coeroble 8y ago
      That only seems to affect Office 365 ProPlus, starting in 2020.
    - Tsubasachan 8y ago
      The people who use LTSB also know how to get a volume license copy of Office 2019, which will be supported.
      - DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
        But how long will perpetual Office licenses be sold by Microsoft? Problem is... 75% of Microsoft’s customers will be satisfied with Office 365 - the other 25% are utterly allergic to the notion of losing sovereignty over their data, but knowing Microsoft they’ll optimise for that 75% and eventually stop servicing the remaining 25% who desire perpetual licenses and on-prem storage, presumably they’ll be happy with OpenOffice thus giving MS’ Office org an excuse to ditch that market segment entirely. ...and that would trigger Microsoft’s aping of Apple’s similar departure from their customer base, which means they lose their halo effect.
  - gruez 8y ago
    and most important of all: supported for 10 years (from release), so you can conceivably use this for a decade without any issues.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    How can i use this?
    - coeroble 8y ago
      I wanted to avoid giving details, but who cares? Get the ISO from here (it's a magnet link, load it using a BitTorrent client): magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6faec726c7bbb9248b3a3ed8d77bd1a7c4598f05&dn=en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969 Install it (burn it to a USB drive using Rufus, for example, or to a DVD). Then use a KMS key and one of the many public KMS servers that let you activate Windows without having a key. Cmd as admin: slmgr /ipk M7XTQ-FN8P6-TTKYV-9D4CC-J462D slmgr /skms kms.digiboy.ir slmgr /ato Then reboot.
      - fermienrico 8y ago
        I purchased a full Windows 10 Pro license key and yet I am going to pirate the shit out of Windows. I don't want Microsoft siphoning off data from my PC. I don't want Cortana. I don't want ANY FUCKING THING except for a system that is minimal and it works. Why doesn't Microsoft make a developer friendly version NOT targeted for consumers (aka without all the bloat)!? Edit from the other post: Don’t forget the registry system, poor DPI scaling, UI piece patch going back to Windows XP (mouse pointer speed dialog box), BSOD if a third party hardware segfaults, fuck you Windows Explorer, everything freezes until network access time out has expired, control panel nightmare, Metro UI with giant lists(ever tried changing default program for say .chm file extension!?), why can’t I force quit without having to go to Task Manager?, etc. Windows is a poorly made piece of software rotten from the core. If you look deeper, you discover the horror of how things work and fragments from Steve Ballmer days. You can try to make an argument that it’s not rotten to the core, but no way in hell anyone would say “Windows is beautiful” in the way one says Unix is beautiful.
        capdeck 8y ago
        Why are you fighting the wind(ows)mills? Linux desktop is in it best shape since its inception. Mint (doesn't siphon), Ubuntu (siphons responsibly) or Manjaro (if you miss rolling updates, but for humans)... Why suffer needlessly?
  - quickben 8y ago
    Apparently the rebrand of Windows as a Service started. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...
    - juststeve 8y ago
      unsubscribe
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- airstrike 8y ago
  > That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm on the same boat yet somehow 8.1 still felt better...
- mistermann 8y ago
  I booted back into Windows 7 once and the scheduled windows backup ran, deciding to overwrite an absolute ton of files, even though it had been configured to write to a specific directory that still existed and with plenty of room. I can't even imagine how these things happen, do they have dumb interns writing this stuff?
dpkonofa 8y ago
How the mighty have fallen... :(
- dpkonofa 8y ago
  Hmm... I'm confused why I'm being voted down for this. Oh well.
  - ryanianian 8y ago
    Your comment doesn't add to the conversation. If your point is to call out just how disgraced MS has become (and how disgusted you are with it), you could give examples that show this kind of behavior is new and wouldn't have happened "when MS was mighty", or you could give further examples to show just how far they've fallen and use this story as further evidence of your point. All you've done is pipe in a trope without justification. Also it's generally bad etiquette to meta-comment about being down-voted: it only exacerbates the "not contributing to the real conversation at hand" thing. Hope this helps.
    - dpkonofa 8y ago
      It does, actually. Thanks for being so polite with the response and being informative. I've seen comments almost exactly like mine on here get voted up quite a bit so I didn't think anything of it. I do see your point, though. I'll try to avoid it in the future. Thanks again!
Krasnol 8y ago
I personally never used those folder for my documents/music/etc. It wasn't a problem until programs started putting their stuff in there. This is part of the "must-put-on-C:\" behavior you see in much win software that I loathe. A constant pain and reason that C:\ seems never to be big enough.
- dzek69 8y ago
  Funny thing.. What I heard - this problem (removing files from folders like Documents, Downloads) happens only when you actually move storage of these. Yes, you can move Documents folder into D: and things will work just fine. But this is where this bug will hit you. I moved my Downloads folder, nothing much to loose here, but I'll surely do a backup of everything before updating.
  - Moru 8y ago
    We just dont use the documents folder. Create a folder on D ans save everything there. Just dont tell windows where your data is and you are fine :)
user3359 8y ago
They're absolutely garbage at this. When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere. So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop. A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder. I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery. I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98. I hope Microsoft dies andisgraceful death.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.
  - Spearchucker 8y ago
    And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      Windows feature updates are pushed down the same pipeline, and installed automatically.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      That excuse almost made sense until they turned Windows Update into a marketing channel.
    - josteink 8y ago
      And it’s easier to do better Q/A when you don’t have to support 200 earlier versions and patch-revisions.
newnewpdro 8y ago
It has never ceased to amaze me the abuse MS customers continue to tolerate. Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.
- coeroble 8y ago
  I don't understand how having a data loss bug means Microsoft is "exploiting their users"
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    The data loss bug is just another example of the abuse MS users endure. The majority of the abuse both Apple and MS subject their customers to result from lock-in of various forms however. My clarification was intended to deter Apple fanboys from upvoting my statement as if it were intended to imply Apple > MS. They're both awful, use and support free/libre software.
  - teddyh 8y ago
    Anyone can make a mistake in making a new software update. But Microsoft, like any proprietary software vendor, is denying their users the right and ability to discover and fix problems for themselves, or to hire anyone to do it for them; Microsoft reserves this right exclusively to themselves, and thereby do their users a tremendous disservice.
  - quickben 8y ago
    It is simple. They are unpaid QA department now.
ttul 8y ago
Is this incompetence the result of Microsoft being unable to retain decent engineers? I mean, who actually would want to work on the next Windows release? You’d have to be a masochist.
- abledon 8y ago
  Well apple had that empty password bug on one release, everyone makes a mistake once in a while
  - josefx 8y ago
    Microsoft already had its own empty password bug for the Xbox login. A badly placed trim call let you input a password consisting only of whitespace and it would pass as long as it had the correct length.
    - cududa 8y ago
      That’s nowhere near as bad as the sfrinentioned macOS big.
- 013a 8y ago
  Hearsay: I've heard that at least Azure is having problems retaining and hiring talent. Apparently the platform was created in such a rush to compete against AWS that many of its core components are jumbled, unreliable messes, many people internally know this, and when Azure tries to recruit internally no one bites.
  - cataflam 8y ago
    Interesting. They do have Mark Russinovich of colossal SysInternals fame as Azure CTO though.
- seiferteric 8y ago
  It's amazing to me. With the resources MS has, they could rebuild a new OS from the ground up and finally get rid of all the cruft and legacy issues in windows once and for all and still support legacy software via emulation, virtualization or even a compatibility layer a la WINE or WSL. Why don't they do it? Google is building fuchsia, Apple/NeXT was able to take BSD and build MacOS X, certainly MS can do it right?
kolderman 8y ago
I'm still on the April update. Skipped July update after all the issues there - thinking I'll just wait for the October issue where they will surely not make another mess of it. Oh well, there's always 2019...
tonetheman 8y ago
Testing something like Windows/Windows updates at scale is hard. So bugs will happen. But deleting docs is gross. I can imagine there was tense meeting somewhere in MS where the choice was made to stop the update. I would have liked to have been there...
- whatshisface 8y ago
  If you're a company the size of Microsoft, "hard" just means "expensive." There is certianly no question that Microsoft is able to produce Windows updates that do not have these problems. Apple has been doing automatic updates for years - but we don't hear similar stories coming from that camp, because they put in the necessary QA effort.
  - lifeisgood99 8y ago
    The ios and Macos debacles say otherwise
  - etaoins 8y ago
    Apple had a very similar bug in the initial release of Snow Leopard: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-snow-leopard-data-loss-issue/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-snow-leopard-da...
supernovae 8y ago
I hope they get it fixed quickly and I hope they listen to user feedback more... I just hope we don't go back into old ways of years between service packs. I for one enjoy the frequent fixes - much better than those "Service pack" years of having to deal with crap for so long.
winrid 8y ago
The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerprints without confirmation. That's just one UI. It feels like some shitty enterprise software. Pathetic.
- makecheck 8y ago
  Something is very weird about window displays in general. Take the list of wi-fi networks; sometimes the entire thing will just stop appearing, doing nothing when you click the icon! I eventually figured out that if I use Windows Search to pull up the WiFi Settings panel, and manually click the list of networks there, then the list is fixed (it does not appear in the Settings window though; it just pops up where it was supposed to be, near the taskbar icon). I just don’t understand; I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.
  - lurker456 8y ago
    The QA team got folded into the main org a while ago. I'd be surprised if the person today in charge of the full test coverage has anywhere near the resources or weight to make an impact.
    - arountheworld 8y ago
      Do they even practice TDD or they just run tests on the clients?
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required. It does seem that complicated from my observations. Notice that it's not a regular window, but part of the overriding/overlayed renderer (DWM? something else?) that draws stuff on top with grayscale smoothing (Direct2D? DirectWrite? something else?)... which probably involves lots of communication between several processes. It feels like an incredibly heavyweight UI component, just judging from the lag between when the icon is clicked and when the list of networks pops up.
sebazzz 8y ago
I did upgrade to Windows 10 1809 and fortunately didn't run into any issues. However, I suspect there is a memory leak somewhere. After running Visual Studio for a while, almost my entire system memory was eaten but the total sum of memory for the running programs don't add up to the amount of "In use" memory.
- dzek69 8y ago
  This is a common thing. I'm not such tech person to go deep into the details, but it's usually ok if you get back that memory when you close everything. I had thison Windows 7 with Opera (can't remember if it was 12 or newer one already).
- deleted 8y ago
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QuinnyPig 8y ago
Every time I get irked with MacOS, or get annoyed with the iPad, I weigh moving back to Windows. Then I see threads like this…
- conradfr 8y ago
  Maybe the real problem is that the two major desktop OS are currently bad.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    Hint: there is 3rd one
    - demxzy 8y ago
      And the third one has gotten much better in recent years
      - cududa 8y ago
        No
    - satya71 8y ago
      There is, but it's worse. Especially since GNOME 3. I know you can use MATE or Cinnamon, but it's not the default on any of the major platforms.
      - didibus 8y ago
        KDE is really good right now. I'd highly recommend it. Something like KDE Neon or OpenSuse are both really solid OS experiences right now.
        norova 8y ago
        I made the switch from Windows 10 to Manjaro w/KDE about 2 months ago. Took about a week of ironing out some things and forcing myself to stick it out, but now I love it. I will also vouch for KDE being really good right now.
ezoe 8y ago
I keep Windows just for gaming so I am immune to this issue. Hell, I even wish Windows installation completely break so I can try Wine. What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?
- lostlogin 8y ago
  There is a teacher in the house and their relatively new laptop is a complete POS for many reasons, but the windows side of things is an abomination. It has to be opened for a few a while each week to let it download, restart and generally make a fool of itself. If you don’t the software update debt compounds rapidly and it completely breaks.
makecheck 8y ago
Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does. The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again. I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.
- g051051 8y ago
  You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working. Things to check: Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades. Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
  - Macha 8y ago
    > Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong". Worth pointing out you don't have to be sharing the drive with another OS to get this situation. I had a system which I upgraded from 7 -> 8.1 -> 10. My linux install and bootloader are on a totally separate drive. This left the drive with: * 100mb system reserved partition (unused, created by win 7 installer) * 250gb C: partition * 400mb system reserved partition (created by 8.1 or 10 update, actually used) Then I used the Samsung tool to copy to my new ssd and ended up with a 100mb system reserved partition and a 1tb c: drive. But the 1709 update tried to unpack the >100mb update into the too small system reserved partition and failed in a loop
le-mark 8y ago
Do businesses even use windows 10? Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago. How many companies are there, and how many companies have you been at?
- micv 8y ago
  Windows 7 is pretty close to EOL now. Companies might not have migrated off it yet, but they're going to have basically no choice in short order. I doubt Microsoft are going to suddenly change how they handle updating the OS in the next year or so -- at the end of the day, there's no real competition for the business desktop -- so I expect we all have some fun and games to look forward to.
  - Reelin 8y ago
    For what it's worth, I'm a home user still on Windows 7 plus a bit of Ubuntu. When Windows 7 finally hits EOL, that's it for Windows for me. After having had the displeasure of using family members' MacOS or newer Windows devices a few times, I'm out.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  We switched to Windows 10 LTSB. Even the Enterprise version of Windows 10 is mostly consumer-level garbage.
  - jangosister 8y ago
    LTSB is literally the best operating system I've used, it's got none of the Windows app junk that the normal version is and it's super reliable because the only updates it gets are security ones. It's a shame they don't just release that as the main branch.
- mr_toad 8y ago
besfort 8y ago
I wish i read this just 30mins before :(
chrisper 8y ago
The sad thing is that this bug has been reported during the insider betas. But people didn't upvote it so Microsoft never saw them. https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917363713 https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  That really is sad. They should of had a team review all the reports and look for ones that seem bad enough. What are the odds a dozen users losing files is their own faults... Sheesh.
  - cududa 8y ago
    That’s how it use to be. Now literally the entire team that use to do that are at Amazon working on Fire and Alexa.
arountheworld 8y ago
It seems like they forget people pay for this crap. I wonder if there is a class action possible against them.
JepZ 8y ago
If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore... By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.
- romanovcode 8y ago
  Never in my life I had 4h updates, not even 1h. Max I had like 10 minutes? Not even a Windows advocate, just stop telling this BS please.
  - JepZ 8y ago
    I am sorry, but that is no BS, just pure facts. Granted the PC is not very powerful (CPU: AMD E-350), but the story is true. When the update started, I thought 'Shit that thing didn't just reboot itself. Okay here we are, that will take one hour max.'. But in fact, it took about 4 hours.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      I have a Thinkpad x140e. It's unusable with Windows 10, but reasonably good enough with Ubuntu MATE. I don't doubt you at all. This laptop took up took so long to boot with Windows that I'd take the time to make coffee.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Good luck installing these build upgrades in 10 minutes! For normal people they take between 30 minutes and 2 hours.
z3t4 8y ago
I've never had a issue with Windows Update, but it can sometimes take hours and I like to imagine wth it's doing. My theory is that Microsoft has acres of test computers, so that when I run an upgrade they spin up a computer that match mine, install all the apps and drivers I have, runs the update, and runs some automated tests ...
JepZ 8y ago
They probably just want to push their cloud services, so that you 'Never lose a file due to some broken update!' :-D
- anticensor 8y ago
  Windows 10 Licensing terms § 6 says "The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice."
Havoc 8y ago
Well I've been getting bluescreens on reboots since the last round. So yeah it's not been peachy lately
kens 8y ago
I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you. My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.
- warent 8y ago
  I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition) Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
  - ledriveby 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure this is how ChromeOS' update system works.
    - pizzazzaro 8y ago
      Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Programs running in memory just stay running, even if you update the files that are those programs. This is how Linux works. Restart them when you need the new version. Its clean. Its easy. I kept watching netflix as firefox compiled (~30 mins), and got to close the browser after the next episode was done, and open the latest Firefox to monkey with the new settings.
alan_n 8y ago
So glad now I turned off Window's updates (because no matter what I did they kept installing when they shouldn't have). I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now. I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.
- diminoten 8y ago
  A real Sophie's choice: have your data stolen by hackers because you're vulnerable, or have your data deleted by the patches that secure your system!
  - userbinator 8y ago
    The former is blown out of proportion because the vast majority of vulnerabilities are only locally exploitable, and the rest is mostly "visit shady site in IE with default settings" with a tiny bit of "hackers can own your system if you connect it directly to the Internet and don't do anything other than leave it on." My thoughts on the above are, respectively, "meh", "why would you use IE with default settings" , and "yes I definitely need this fixed." Unfortunately Win10 doesn't give you that choice.
    - diminoten 8y ago
      So you pick "have my data and identity stolen" over "my computer occasionally restarts itself while I'm asleep". Alright, good luck!
      - exodust 8y ago
        You missed the very true point they made about overstated vulnerabilities. The odds of actually having your data compromised due to not updating for a few weeks or even months, is low. Particularly if your browsing and computer usage doesn't involve downloading dodgy software and browsing to shady unfamiliar websites, and you're at least half aware of sensible computer use, password and login use.
rkagerer 8y ago
Why I refuse to have "upgrades" shoved down my throat on someone else's schedule.
cmurf 8y ago
If you aren't backing up your data, the data isn't that important.
- slantyyz 8y ago
  I wonder if Windows File History (provided it was enabled before the update) could have helped with this problem. These days, it's one of the first things I install on Windows machines. I had been very dependent on Time Machine before I switched back to Windows a few years ago, and I'm kinda surprised that MS doesn't push File History the same way Apple did with Time Machine. I don't see it mentioned very often when it comes to backing up data on Windows.
amluto 8y ago
I have a little Windows VM with a very small disk. It’s so small that Windows Update can’t run :)
shkkmo 8y ago
I have a dual boot machine with windows 10 on a slow platter drive and ubuntu on a very fast SSD. I only ever launch windows to play games... and I hate it. I don't launch windows very often and as soon as I do it starts hammering the disk downloading and processing updates. Even before it tries to actually complete the update, it makes the computer almost unusable for an unpredictable period of time.
ben_jones 8y ago
The only reason I use windows 10 is for gaming. The millisecond linux gaming is supported by all the games I love I will be paying whatever price necessary to drop windows for ever. I use OS X for work and find it a near perfect developer experience for my rather pedestrian use cases.
- mikelward 8y ago
  See if your games are supported by Steam Play (a.k.a. Proton). https://spcr.netlify.com https://spcr.netlify.com
art0rz 8y ago
I have been running Windows since 3.11 and have never had any of the issues with Windows Update described in this thread since the XP days. Don't think these issues are common, just the vocal minority.
- JoshuaAshton 8y ago
  You're obviously blind then.
chu121su12 8y ago
I am using Asus A442uq, and the latest update made secure boot inactive. I had the laptop erased.
spacehome 8y ago
Is it possible to use a firewall (pfsense or similar) to block all access to the Windows update and telemetry servers? Or will Windows just stop working after thinking it’s offline long enough?
bobbob1921 8y ago
it seems Windows 10 was where the tide turned on mandatory / forced automatic, while also making it pretty difficult to disable (and when you do disable updates other issues can arise that have nothing to do w the windows update service ,although pretty rarely ) I think the reason Microsoft decided to force these auto updates with windows 10 is due to the bad rap they got over the years for security and vulns ( in their defense part of that was just simply due to the insane marketshare windows enjoyed for so long, and still does for the most part , although to a lesser degree than before).
mkup 8y ago
That's why we developed a product which main feature is to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs: https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features_v3/install-windows7-to-new-laptop-or-new-pc/ https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features_v3/install-w... There's a growing community of users and developers who restrict themselves to Windows 7. Forever. Win7 EOL soon, so no updates from Microsoft? Fine. It's a feature. Updates from Microsoft are no good anyway.
paul-sebastianm 8y ago
Just yesterday I was commenting about how Windows developers are still adjusting to the corporate's latest business idea, rolling releases and hopefully TDD. Now I'm sorry to have been so kind. This kind of shit shouldn't escape testing. Touching files that shouldn't be touched? Really? Is that how much Microsoft cares about the safety of their user's data?

384 points by doppp 8y ago

Previous discussion from 10 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154165 (34 comments)

captainmuon 8y ago

Bizarre. I've seen something like this already in spring. A colleague lost all their documents, and calmly claimed it was probably "Windows Update". Apparently it is common knowledge in the office that Windows Update sometimes does that. I could never verify nor reproduce it, and chalked it up to "users say the darndest things". Files were simply restored from backup. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there was more to it. That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...

coeroble 8y ago
They released a new version of LTSB (well, they call it LTSC now) just a few days ago, based on this last version. I made a clean installation today. en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958.iso No Store, no Cortana, no Edge, Windows 7 calculator, no Candy Crush, no bullshit. Don't miss out. ;-)
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
  Slight downside: apparently Office 365 won't support LTSC soon: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/Changes-to-Office-and-Windows-servicing-and-support/ba-p/151509 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/C...
  - coeroble 8y ago
    That only seems to affect Office 365 ProPlus, starting in 2020.
  - Tsubasachan 8y ago
    The people who use LTSB also know how to get a volume license copy of Office 2019, which will be supported.
    - DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
      But how long will perpetual Office licenses be sold by Microsoft? Problem is... 75% of Microsoft’s customers will be satisfied with Office 365 - the other 25% are utterly allergic to the notion of losing sovereignty over their data, but knowing Microsoft they’ll optimise for that 75% and eventually stop servicing the remaining 25% who desire perpetual licenses and on-prem storage, presumably they’ll be happy with OpenOffice thus giving MS’ Office org an excuse to ditch that market segment entirely. ...and that would trigger Microsoft’s aping of Apple’s similar departure from their customer base, which means they lose their halo effect.
- gruez 8y ago
  and most important of all: supported for 10 years (from release), so you can conceivably use this for a decade without any issues.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  How can i use this?
  - coeroble 8y ago
    I wanted to avoid giving details, but who cares? Get the ISO from here (it's a magnet link, load it using a BitTorrent client): magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6faec726c7bbb9248b3a3ed8d77bd1a7c4598f05&dn=en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958.iso&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969 Install it (burn it to a USB drive using Rufus, for example, or to a DVD). Then use a KMS key and one of the many public KMS servers that let you activate Windows without having a key. Cmd as admin: slmgr /ipk M7XTQ-FN8P6-TTKYV-9D4CC-J462D slmgr /skms kms.digiboy.ir slmgr /ato Then reboot.
    - fermienrico 8y ago
      I purchased a full Windows 10 Pro license key and yet I am going to pirate the shit out of Windows. I don't want Microsoft siphoning off data from my PC. I don't want Cortana. I don't want ANY FUCKING THING except for a system that is minimal and it works. Why doesn't Microsoft make a developer friendly version NOT targeted for consumers (aka without all the bloat)!? Edit from the other post: Don’t forget the registry system, poor DPI scaling, UI piece patch going back to Windows XP (mouse pointer speed dialog box), BSOD if a third party hardware segfaults, fuck you Windows Explorer, everything freezes until network access time out has expired, control panel nightmare, Metro UI with giant lists(ever tried changing default program for say .chm file extension!?), why can’t I force quit without having to go to Task Manager?, etc. Windows is a poorly made piece of software rotten from the core. If you look deeper, you discover the horror of how things work and fragments from Steve Ballmer days. You can try to make an argument that it’s not rotten to the core, but no way in hell anyone would say “Windows is beautiful” in the way one says Unix is beautiful.
      - capdeck 8y ago
        Why are you fighting the wind(ows)mills? Linux desktop is in it best shape since its inception. Mint (doesn't siphon), Ubuntu (siphons responsibly) or Manjaro (if you miss rolling updates, but for humans)... Why suffer needlessly?
- quickben 8y ago
  Apparently the rebrand of Windows as a Service started. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...
  - juststeve 8y ago
    unsubscribe
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
airstrike 8y ago
> That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm on the same boat yet somehow 8.1 still felt better...
mistermann 8y ago
I booted back into Windows 7 once and the scheduled windows backup ran, deciding to overwrite an absolute ton of files, even though it had been configured to write to a specific directory that still existed and with plenty of room. I can't even imagine how these things happen, do they have dumb interns writing this stuff?

dpkonofa 8y ago

How the mighty have fallen... :(

dpkonofa 8y ago
Hmm... I'm confused why I'm being voted down for this. Oh well.
- ryanianian 8y ago
  Your comment doesn't add to the conversation. If your point is to call out just how disgraced MS has become (and how disgusted you are with it), you could give examples that show this kind of behavior is new and wouldn't have happened "when MS was mighty", or you could give further examples to show just how far they've fallen and use this story as further evidence of your point. All you've done is pipe in a trope without justification. Also it's generally bad etiquette to meta-comment about being down-voted: it only exacerbates the "not contributing to the real conversation at hand" thing. Hope this helps.
  - dpkonofa 8y ago
    It does, actually. Thanks for being so polite with the response and being informative. I've seen comments almost exactly like mine on here get voted up quite a bit so I didn't think anything of it. I do see your point, though. I'll try to avoid it in the future. Thanks again!

Krasnol 8y ago

I personally never used those folder for my documents/music/etc. It wasn't a problem until programs started putting their stuff in there. This is part of the "must-put-on-C:\" behavior you see in much win software that I loathe. A constant pain and reason that C:\ seems never to be big enough.

dzek69 8y ago
Funny thing.. What I heard - this problem (removing files from folders like Documents, Downloads) happens only when you actually move storage of these. Yes, you can move Documents folder into D: and things will work just fine. But this is where this bug will hit you. I moved my Downloads folder, nothing much to loose here, but I'll surely do a backup of everything before updating.
- Moru 8y ago
  We just dont use the documents folder. Create a folder on D ans save everything there. Just dont tell windows where your data is and you are fine :)

user3359 8y ago

They're absolutely garbage at this. When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere. So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop. A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder. I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery. I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98. I hope Microsoft dies andisgraceful death.

mehrdadn 8y ago
I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.
- Spearchucker 8y ago
  And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Windows feature updates are pushed down the same pipeline, and installed automatically.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    That excuse almost made sense until they turned Windows Update into a marketing channel.
  - josteink 8y ago
    And it’s easier to do better Q/A when you don’t have to support 200 earlier versions and patch-revisions.

newnewpdro 8y ago

It has never ceased to amaze me the abuse MS customers continue to tolerate. Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.

coeroble 8y ago
I don't understand how having a data loss bug means Microsoft is "exploiting their users"
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  The data loss bug is just another example of the abuse MS users endure. The majority of the abuse both Apple and MS subject their customers to result from lock-in of various forms however. My clarification was intended to deter Apple fanboys from upvoting my statement as if it were intended to imply Apple > MS. They're both awful, use and support free/libre software.
- teddyh 8y ago
  Anyone can make a mistake in making a new software update. But Microsoft, like any proprietary software vendor, is denying their users the right and ability to discover and fix problems for themselves, or to hire anyone to do it for them; Microsoft reserves this right exclusively to themselves, and thereby do their users a tremendous disservice.
- quickben 8y ago
  It is simple. They are unpaid QA department now.

ttul 8y ago

Is this incompetence the result of Microsoft being unable to retain decent engineers? I mean, who actually would want to work on the next Windows release? You’d have to be a masochist.

abledon 8y ago
Well apple had that empty password bug on one release, everyone makes a mistake once in a while
- josefx 8y ago
  Microsoft already had its own empty password bug for the Xbox login. A badly placed trim call let you input a password consisting only of whitespace and it would pass as long as it had the correct length.
  - cududa 8y ago
    That’s nowhere near as bad as the sfrinentioned macOS big.
013a 8y ago
Hearsay: I've heard that at least Azure is having problems retaining and hiring talent. Apparently the platform was created in such a rush to compete against AWS that many of its core components are jumbled, unreliable messes, many people internally know this, and when Azure tries to recruit internally no one bites.
- cataflam 8y ago
  Interesting. They do have Mark Russinovich of colossal SysInternals fame as Azure CTO though.
seiferteric 8y ago
It's amazing to me. With the resources MS has, they could rebuild a new OS from the ground up and finally get rid of all the cruft and legacy issues in windows once and for all and still support legacy software via emulation, virtualization or even a compatibility layer a la WINE or WSL. Why don't they do it? Google is building fuchsia, Apple/NeXT was able to take BSD and build MacOS X, certainly MS can do it right?

kolderman 8y ago

I'm still on the April update. Skipped July update after all the issues there - thinking I'll just wait for the October issue where they will surely not make another mess of it. Oh well, there's always 2019...

tonetheman 8y ago

Testing something like Windows/Windows updates at scale is hard. So bugs will happen. But deleting docs is gross. I can imagine there was tense meeting somewhere in MS where the choice was made to stop the update. I would have liked to have been there...

whatshisface 8y ago
If you're a company the size of Microsoft, "hard" just means "expensive." There is certianly no question that Microsoft is able to produce Windows updates that do not have these problems. Apple has been doing automatic updates for years - but we don't hear similar stories coming from that camp, because they put in the necessary QA effort.
- lifeisgood99 8y ago
  The ios and Macos debacles say otherwise
- etaoins 8y ago
  Apple had a very similar bug in the initial release of Snow Leopard: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-snow-leopard-data-loss-issue/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-snow-leopard-da...

supernovae 8y ago

I hope they get it fixed quickly and I hope they listen to user feedback more... I just hope we don't go back into old ways of years between service packs. I for one enjoy the frequent fixes - much better than those "Service pack" years of having to deal with crap for so long.

winrid 8y ago

The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerprints without confirmation. That's just one UI. It feels like some shitty enterprise software. Pathetic.

makecheck 8y ago
Something is very weird about window displays in general. Take the list of wi-fi networks; sometimes the entire thing will just stop appearing, doing nothing when you click the icon! I eventually figured out that if I use Windows Search to pull up the WiFi Settings panel, and manually click the list of networks there, then the list is fixed (it does not appear in the Settings window though; it just pops up where it was supposed to be, near the taskbar icon). I just don’t understand; I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.
- lurker456 8y ago
  The QA team got folded into the main org a while ago. I'd be surprised if the person today in charge of the full test coverage has anywhere near the resources or weight to make an impact.
  - arountheworld 8y ago
    Do they even practice TDD or they just run tests on the clients?
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required. It does seem that complicated from my observations. Notice that it's not a regular window, but part of the overriding/overlayed renderer (DWM? something else?) that draws stuff on top with grayscale smoothing (Direct2D? DirectWrite? something else?)... which probably involves lots of communication between several processes. It feels like an incredibly heavyweight UI component, just judging from the lag between when the icon is clicked and when the list of networks pops up.

sebazzz 8y ago

I did upgrade to Windows 10 1809 and fortunately didn't run into any issues. However, I suspect there is a memory leak somewhere. After running Visual Studio for a while, almost my entire system memory was eaten but the total sum of memory for the running programs don't add up to the amount of "In use" memory.

dzek69 8y ago
This is a common thing. I'm not such tech person to go deep into the details, but it's usually ok if you get back that memory when you close everything. I had thison Windows 7 with Opera (can't remember if it was 12 or newer one already).
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QuinnyPig 8y ago

Every time I get irked with MacOS, or get annoyed with the iPad, I weigh moving back to Windows. Then I see threads like this…

conradfr 8y ago
Maybe the real problem is that the two major desktop OS are currently bad.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Hint: there is 3rd one
  - demxzy 8y ago
    And the third one has gotten much better in recent years
    - cududa 8y ago
      No
  - satya71 8y ago
    There is, but it's worse. Especially since GNOME 3. I know you can use MATE or Cinnamon, but it's not the default on any of the major platforms.
    - didibus 8y ago
      KDE is really good right now. I'd highly recommend it. Something like KDE Neon or OpenSuse are both really solid OS experiences right now.
      - norova 8y ago
        I made the switch from Windows 10 to Manjaro w/KDE about 2 months ago. Took about a week of ironing out some things and forcing myself to stick it out, but now I love it. I will also vouch for KDE being really good right now.

ezoe 8y ago

I keep Windows just for gaming so I am immune to this issue. Hell, I even wish Windows installation completely break so I can try Wine. What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?

lostlogin 8y ago
There is a teacher in the house and their relatively new laptop is a complete POS for many reasons, but the windows side of things is an abomination. It has to be opened for a few a while each week to let it download, restart and generally make a fool of itself. If you don’t the software update debt compounds rapidly and it completely breaks.

makecheck 8y ago

Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does. The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again. I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.

g051051 8y ago
You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working. Things to check: Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades. Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
- Macha 8y ago
  > Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong". Worth pointing out you don't have to be sharing the drive with another OS to get this situation. I had a system which I upgraded from 7 -> 8.1 -> 10. My linux install and bootloader are on a totally separate drive. This left the drive with: * 100mb system reserved partition (unused, created by win 7 installer) * 250gb C: partition * 400mb system reserved partition (created by 8.1 or 10 update, actually used) Then I used the Samsung tool to copy to my new ssd and ended up with a 100mb system reserved partition and a 1tb c: drive. But the 1709 update tried to unpack the >100mb update into the too small system reserved partition and failed in a loop

le-mark 8y ago

Do businesses even use windows 10? Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago.

krapp 8y ago
>Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago. How many companies are there, and how many companies have you been at?
micv 8y ago
Windows 7 is pretty close to EOL now. Companies might not have migrated off it yet, but they're going to have basically no choice in short order. I doubt Microsoft are going to suddenly change how they handle updating the OS in the next year or so -- at the end of the day, there's no real competition for the business desktop -- so I expect we all have some fun and games to look forward to.
- Reelin 8y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm a home user still on Windows 7 plus a bit of Ubuntu. When Windows 7 finally hits EOL, that's it for Windows for me. After having had the displeasure of using family members' MacOS or newer Windows devices a few times, I'm out.
m-p-3 8y ago
We switched to Windows 10 LTSB. Even the Enterprise version of Windows 10 is mostly consumer-level garbage.
- jangosister 8y ago
  LTSB is literally the best operating system I've used, it's got none of the Windows app junk that the normal version is and it's super reliable because the only updates it gets are security ones. It's a shame they don't just release that as the main branch.
mr_toad 8y ago

besfort 8y ago

I wish i read this just 30mins before :(

chrisper 8y ago

The sad thing is that this bug has been reported during the insider betas. But people didn't upvote it so Microsoft never saw them. https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917363713 https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...

giancarlostoro 8y ago
That really is sad. They should of had a team review all the reports and look for ones that seem bad enough. What are the odds a dozen users losing files is their own faults... Sheesh.
- cududa 8y ago
  That’s how it use to be. Now literally the entire team that use to do that are at Amazon working on Fire and Alexa.

arountheworld 8y ago

It seems like they forget people pay for this crap. I wonder if there is a class action possible against them.

JepZ 8y ago

If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore... By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.

romanovcode 8y ago
Never in my life I had 4h updates, not even 1h. Max I had like 10 minutes? Not even a Windows advocate, just stop telling this BS please.
- JepZ 8y ago
  I am sorry, but that is no BS, just pure facts. Granted the PC is not very powerful (CPU: AMD E-350), but the story is true. When the update started, I thought 'Shit that thing didn't just reboot itself. Okay here we are, that will take one hour max.'. But in fact, it took about 4 hours.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    I have a Thinkpad x140e. It's unusable with Windows 10, but reasonably good enough with Ubuntu MATE. I don't doubt you at all. This laptop took up took so long to boot with Windows that I'd take the time to make coffee.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Good luck installing these build upgrades in 10 minutes! For normal people they take between 30 minutes and 2 hours.

z3t4 8y ago

I've never had a issue with Windows Update, but it can sometimes take hours and I like to imagine wth it's doing. My theory is that Microsoft has acres of test computers, so that when I run an upgrade they spin up a computer that match mine, install all the apps and drivers I have, runs the update, and runs some automated tests ...

JepZ 8y ago

They probably just want to push their cloud services, so that you 'Never lose a file due to some broken update!' :-D

anticensor 8y ago
Windows 10 Licensing terms § 6 says "The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice."

Havoc 8y ago

Well I've been getting bluescreens on reboots since the last round. So yeah it's not been peachy lately

kens 8y ago

I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you. My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.

warent 8y ago
I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition) Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
- ledriveby 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is how ChromeOS' update system works.
  - pizzazzaro 8y ago
    Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Programs running in memory just stay running, even if you update the files that are those programs. This is how Linux works. Restart them when you need the new version. Its clean. Its easy. I kept watching netflix as firefox compiled (~30 mins), and got to close the browser after the next episode was done, and open the latest Firefox to monkey with the new settings.

alan_n 8y ago

So glad now I turned off Window's updates (because no matter what I did they kept installing when they shouldn't have). I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now. I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.

diminoten 8y ago
A real Sophie's choice: have your data stolen by hackers because you're vulnerable, or have your data deleted by the patches that secure your system!
- userbinator 8y ago
  The former is blown out of proportion because the vast majority of vulnerabilities are only locally exploitable, and the rest is mostly "visit shady site in IE with default settings" with a tiny bit of "hackers can own your system if you connect it directly to the Internet and don't do anything other than leave it on." My thoughts on the above are, respectively, "meh", "why would you use IE with default settings" , and "yes I definitely need this fixed." Unfortunately Win10 doesn't give you that choice.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    So you pick "have my data and identity stolen" over "my computer occasionally restarts itself while I'm asleep". Alright, good luck!
    - exodust 8y ago
      You missed the very true point they made about overstated vulnerabilities. The odds of actually having your data compromised due to not updating for a few weeks or even months, is low. Particularly if your browsing and computer usage doesn't involve downloading dodgy software and browsing to shady unfamiliar websites, and you're at least half aware of sensible computer use, password and login use.

rkagerer 8y ago

Why I refuse to have "upgrades" shoved down my throat on someone else's schedule.

cmurf 8y ago

If you aren't backing up your data, the data isn't that important.

slantyyz 8y ago
I wonder if Windows File History (provided it was enabled before the update) could have helped with this problem. These days, it's one of the first things I install on Windows machines. I had been very dependent on Time Machine before I switched back to Windows a few years ago, and I'm kinda surprised that MS doesn't push File History the same way Apple did with Time Machine. I don't see it mentioned very often when it comes to backing up data on Windows.

amluto 8y ago

I have a little Windows VM with a very small disk. It’s so small that Windows Update can’t run :)

shkkmo 8y ago

I have a dual boot machine with windows 10 on a slow platter drive and ubuntu on a very fast SSD. I only ever launch windows to play games... and I hate it. I don't launch windows very often and as soon as I do it starts hammering the disk downloading and processing updates. Even before it tries to actually complete the update, it makes the computer almost unusable for an unpredictable period of time.

ben_jones 8y ago

The only reason I use windows 10 is for gaming. The millisecond linux gaming is supported by all the games I love I will be paying whatever price necessary to drop windows for ever. I use OS X for work and find it a near perfect developer experience for my rather pedestrian use cases.

mikelward 8y ago
See if your games are supported by Steam Play (a.k.a. Proton). https://spcr.netlify.com https://spcr.netlify.com

art0rz 8y ago

I have been running Windows since 3.11 and have never had any of the issues with Windows Update described in this thread since the XP days. Don't think these issues are common, just the vocal minority.

JoshuaAshton 8y ago
You're obviously blind then.

chu121su12 8y ago

I am using Asus A442uq, and the latest update made secure boot inactive. I had the laptop erased.

spacehome 8y ago

Is it possible to use a firewall (pfsense or similar) to block all access to the Windows update and telemetry servers? Or will Windows just stop working after thinking it’s offline long enough?

bobbob1921 8y ago

it seems Windows 10 was where the tide turned on mandatory / forced automatic, while also making it pretty difficult to disable (and when you do disable updates other issues can arise that have nothing to do w the windows update service ,although pretty rarely ) I think the reason Microsoft decided to force these auto updates with windows 10 is due to the bad rap they got over the years for security and vulns ( in their defense part of that was just simply due to the insane marketshare windows enjoyed for so long, and still does for the most part , although to a lesser degree than before).

mkup 8y ago

That's why we developed a product which main feature is to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs: https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features_v3/install-windows7-to-new-laptop-or-new-pc/ https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features_v3/install-w... There's a growing community of users and developers who restrict themselves to Windows 7. Forever. Win7 EOL soon, so no updates from Microsoft? Fine. It's a feature. Updates from Microsoft are no good anyway.

paul-sebastianm 8y ago

Just yesterday I was commenting about how Windows developers are still adjusting to the corporate's latest business idea, rolling releases and hopefully TDD. Now I'm sorry to have been so kind. This kind of shit shouldn't escape testing. Touching files that shouldn't be touched? Really? Is that how much Microsoft cares about the safety of their user's data?