6 ms·

Citation: "When KFR is being used, the October 2018 Update will delete the original, default Known Folder locations. Microsoft imagined that this would simply r

Citation: "When KFR is being used, the October 2018 Update will delete the original, default Known Folder locations. Microsoft imagined that this would simply remove some empty, redundant directories from your user profile. No need to have a Documents directory in your profile if you're using a redirected location, after all." Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. I have redirected Documents. And there are A LOT of programs that directly try to use C:\Users\user\Documents instead of redirected.

userbinator 8y ago
Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. That's not "harsh", harsh is what happened to the unlucky users who lost data because no one on the development team bothered to call it out. It should be an implicitly understood rule that you NEVER remove a file you did not create, unless the user explicitly asked to, but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too.
- cesarb 8y ago
  > but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too. This. Once you get in the mindset that you know better than the user, it's not a big jump to "I know these directories should be empty, any content is leftover garbage, let's remove them".
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Microsoft doesn’t consider the OS to be the “user’s system”. They clearly see it as something they rent to the user a little bit each day. If the user wants to keep the system for a little longer, he/she has to make a special request to Microsoft that they hold off for a bit before retaking control of the OS.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    "Windows is a service and updates are part of that service. So if you could just go ahead and reboot now, that would be terrific."
    - drbawb 8y ago
      I ditched Windows as soon as I saw that "Windows is a service . . ." notification show up in the bottom right after an update, boy did that make me livid. (You can ask my roommates, I actually shouted at my computer; it had just spent over an hour, on a best in class NVMe drive, doing that update.) I was pretty sure I paid $200 for an operating system, not an operating service. Admittedly that was just the straw that broke the camel's back, but this is just getting insane. What I paid for is a HAL, some drivers, a filesystem, a handful of media codec licenses, and some basic applications to manage all that. What I got was a bunch of "apps" like "Photos" that routinely try to use up all my available system RAM, a start menu that connects to the internet, displays ads, and routinely lags on a high-end workstation, a file index service that was broken for 3 major update cycles, and an ever increasing number of "privacy toggles" in the completely dysfunctional control panel^W^W settings app. Microsoft clearly doesn't care about "developers, developers, developers" anymore, because I have never lost this much productivity to an operating system in my life. (I say this as someone who has used Linux long enough to remember how bad WiFi was in the era of ndiswrapper; as well as someone who has used Windows Me and Vista for significant stretches of time.)
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Oh yes. Excuse my harsh language, but fuck SaaS, and fuck Windows if it tries to be a SaaS. And I say that as someone growing up on Windows, still using it for work sometimes, and planning to buy a Surface device in the near future (I guess maybe I should reconsider). Actually, I should probably use the term SaaSS, because that describes the kind of software I hate with passion more precisely. I recently stumbled upon this[0] essay by RMS, and like usual, it turns out he had this thing figured out years before I've even noticed we had a problem. If Windows wants to become a service substitute for an OS, I'll save myself future trouble and migrate away completely. -- [0] - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > you NEVER remove a file you did not create Absolutely this, with a followup of "and if you're 'helpfully' deleting an unused folder, check that it's unused first!" Given that this was (stupid) desired behavior, making sure Documents didn't have stuff in it should have been a screamingly obvious step. It would still have been utterly unacceptable, it could still have created weird downstream bugs when users installed things that target the now-missing default Documents location, but at least it wouldn't have set a bunch of data on fire without any warning. But then, I guess relying on common sense after the first terrible decision is made is never going to work. There's a reason "never break user space" is rule 1 for Linux updates...
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Recently was reading the blog of the team upgrading conhost. On it they joke several times that the developers doing the work were not even born yet. Well, this is the kind of thing that happens when your whole team is interns and the "senior" is 28. Reading the associated bugs on github I also learned that there were lots of complaints about the new console, not on features, but breaking compatibility that is. Guess no one thought to start a new project, rather than changing a 30 year-old one that hadn't been touched in 20. TL;DR: At least one codger is needed on teams doing this kind of work to give perspective.
  - 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
    More precisely: at least one Raymond Chen is needed on every team in Microsoft.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      Not really, anyone with a decent amount of experience.
      - 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
        Hm. If I don't include emoji and smileys in text, nobody understands jokes these days...
        mixmastamyk 8y ago
        “More precisely:” is not how to start a joke, typically they are the opposite of precise.
  - llampx 8y ago
    > Guess no one thought to start a new project, rather than changing a 30 year-old one that hadn't been touched in 20. To be fair, that's what led to Powershell and Command Prompt co-existing. I guess Microsoft wanted to reduce the number of console backends.
- cheeseomlit 8y ago
  >NEVER remove a file you did not create Seems like common sense, but Microsoft has been doing this for a while. In Windows 7 (not sure about later releases) the OS runs a 'Desktop Cleanup' periodically that deletes shortcuts to network locations it can no longer connect to. God forbid your network drives don't map one day and Windows decides to nuke all your desktop shortcuts... this actually happened to a user I was doing support for and they were understandably livid
- Tsubasachan 8y ago
  Disable windows 10 automatic maintenance. Windows is going into the Apple direction I guess.
gnud 8y ago
How about 'delete the folder if empty'? Why on earth didn't they think to do that?
- JohannesH 8y ago
  Even that could potentially be a breaking change, like if the folder was expected to be there by some application.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    That can be solved by updating the broken applications. Deleted data is never going to come back unless you have a backup.
    - mrec 8y ago
      Not all applications get updates.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        "Save/Read X to/from the user documents folder" should be an OS-level function (on Windows, where you expect a desktop user to have a documents folder). Every time a program calls a deprecated API, the developer who signed the code should get an e-mail.
        cesarb 8y ago
        The API wasn't deprecated when the code was written.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Yes, seriously. I would still think it's totally unjustifiable as a 'helpful' change, but at least it'd be causing problems like "hey, this install failed, how do I fix it?" rather than "where's all my stuff?" That, and I'm just a bit shocked that "the folder should be empty, so delete it" didn't just naturally make people think "obviously I should check if that's true first". Even if it's not a total fix, the failure to add that is it's own layer of screwup.
chmod775 8y ago
How does that even work? Does Windows not have proper hard/soft links? Don't you maybe have to do some weird things to get around them?
- detaro 8y ago
  Windows/NTFS has links, but they aren't used for this (and software support for them is ... iffy, which can be an issue with backup tools etc, for which they aren't just transparent). These "known folders" are roughly implemented as environmental variables containing paths to the configured folder.
  - shawnz 8y ago
    They are used for the old "My Documents" folders though, right? So why not use them here too, just as a fallback?
    - detaro 8y ago
      I think that works through the same principle, not through links.
      - MikusR 8y ago
        My Documents, Application data and few others are links.
        detaro 8y ago
        TIL, thanks!
  - withinrafael 8y ago
    Soft and hard links are only supported on NTFS formatted disks.
    - vel0city 8y ago
yAnonymous 8y ago
This seems like a common sense thing that every intern would consider. Why the Microsoft development team didn't really raises some questions not only about their QA, but about their whole development process.
Ballantara 8y ago
This. How much lost time, panic, and rage did carelessly deleting these folders cause? It was a dire mistake.
rbanffy 8y ago
> This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. I'd love to read what Linus Torvalds would say about it. There are programs that have bugs before the first line of code is written. This is one such case.

userbinator 8y ago

Sorry for harsh language, but this is not a bug. This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. That's not "harsh", harsh is what happened to the unlucky users who lost data because no one on the development team bothered to call it out. It should be an implicitly understood rule that you NEVER remove a file you did not create, unless the user explicitly asked to, but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too.

cesarb 8y ago
> but I guess MS considers it acceptable to do anything to a user's system after they convinced everyone to take forced updates as being acceptable too. This. Once you get in the mindset that you know better than the user, it's not a big jump to "I know these directories should be empty, any content is leftover garbage, let's remove them".
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Microsoft doesn’t consider the OS to be the “user’s system”. They clearly see it as something they rent to the user a little bit each day. If the user wants to keep the system for a little longer, he/she has to make a special request to Microsoft that they hold off for a bit before retaking control of the OS.
- bitwize 8y ago
  "Windows is a service and updates are part of that service. So if you could just go ahead and reboot now, that would be terrific."
  - drbawb 8y ago
    I ditched Windows as soon as I saw that "Windows is a service . . ." notification show up in the bottom right after an update, boy did that make me livid. (You can ask my roommates, I actually shouted at my computer; it had just spent over an hour, on a best in class NVMe drive, doing that update.) I was pretty sure I paid $200 for an operating system, not an operating service. Admittedly that was just the straw that broke the camel's back, but this is just getting insane. What I paid for is a HAL, some drivers, a filesystem, a handful of media codec licenses, and some basic applications to manage all that. What I got was a bunch of "apps" like "Photos" that routinely try to use up all my available system RAM, a start menu that connects to the internet, displays ads, and routinely lags on a high-end workstation, a file index service that was broken for 3 major update cycles, and an ever increasing number of "privacy toggles" in the completely dysfunctional control panel^W^W settings app. Microsoft clearly doesn't care about "developers, developers, developers" anymore, because I have never lost this much productivity to an operating system in my life. (I say this as someone who has used Linux long enough to remember how bad WiFi was in the era of ndiswrapper; as well as someone who has used Windows Me and Vista for significant stretches of time.)
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Oh yes. Excuse my harsh language, but fuck SaaS, and fuck Windows if it tries to be a SaaS. And I say that as someone growing up on Windows, still using it for work sometimes, and planning to buy a Surface device in the near future (I guess maybe I should reconsider). Actually, I should probably use the term SaaSS, because that describes the kind of software I hate with passion more precisely. I recently stumbled upon this[0] essay by RMS, and like usual, it turns out he had this thing figured out years before I've even noticed we had a problem. If Windows wants to become a service substitute for an OS, I'll save myself future trouble and migrate away completely. -- [0] - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
Bartweiss 8y ago
> you NEVER remove a file you did not create Absolutely this, with a followup of "and if you're 'helpfully' deleting an unused folder, check that it's unused first!" Given that this was (stupid) desired behavior, making sure Documents didn't have stuff in it should have been a screamingly obvious step. It would still have been utterly unacceptable, it could still have created weird downstream bugs when users installed things that target the now-missing default Documents location, but at least it wouldn't have set a bunch of data on fire without any warning. But then, I guess relying on common sense after the first terrible decision is made is never going to work. There's a reason "never break user space" is rule 1 for Linux updates...
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Recently was reading the blog of the team upgrading conhost. On it they joke several times that the developers doing the work were not even born yet. Well, this is the kind of thing that happens when your whole team is interns and the "senior" is 28. Reading the associated bugs on github I also learned that there were lots of complaints about the new console, not on features, but breaking compatibility that is. Guess no one thought to start a new project, rather than changing a 30 year-old one that hadn't been touched in 20. TL;DR: At least one codger is needed on teams doing this kind of work to give perspective.
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
  More precisely: at least one Raymond Chen is needed on every team in Microsoft.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Not really, anyone with a decent amount of experience.
    - 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y ago
      Hm. If I don't include emoji and smileys in text, nobody understands jokes these days...
      - mixmastamyk 8y ago
        “More precisely:” is not how to start a joke, typically they are the opposite of precise.
- llampx 8y ago
  > Guess no one thought to start a new project, rather than changing a 30 year-old one that hadn't been touched in 20. To be fair, that's what led to Powershell and Command Prompt co-existing. I guess Microsoft wanted to reduce the number of console backends.
cheeseomlit 8y ago
>NEVER remove a file you did not create Seems like common sense, but Microsoft has been doing this for a while. In Windows 7 (not sure about later releases) the OS runs a 'Desktop Cleanup' periodically that deletes shortcuts to network locations it can no longer connect to. God forbid your network drives don't map one day and Windows decides to nuke all your desktop shortcuts... this actually happened to a user I was doing support for and they were understandably livid
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Disable windows 10 automatic maintenance. Windows is going into the Apple direction I guess.

gnud 8y ago

How about 'delete the folder if empty'? Why on earth didn't they think to do that?

JohannesH 8y ago
Even that could potentially be a breaking change, like if the folder was expected to be there by some application.
- imtringued 8y ago
  That can be solved by updating the broken applications. Deleted data is never going to come back unless you have a backup.
  - mrec 8y ago
    Not all applications get updates.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      "Save/Read X to/from the user documents folder" should be an OS-level function (on Windows, where you expect a desktop user to have a documents folder). Every time a program calls a deprecated API, the developer who signed the code should get an e-mail.
      - cesarb 8y ago
        The API wasn't deprecated when the code was written.
Bartweiss 8y ago
Yes, seriously. I would still think it's totally unjustifiable as a 'helpful' change, but at least it'd be causing problems like "hey, this install failed, how do I fix it?" rather than "where's all my stuff?" That, and I'm just a bit shocked that "the folder should be empty, so delete it" didn't just naturally make people think "obviously I should check if that's true first". Even if it's not a total fix, the failure to add that is it's own layer of screwup.

chmod775 8y ago

How does that even work? Does Windows not have proper hard/soft links? Don't you maybe have to do some weird things to get around them?

detaro 8y ago
Windows/NTFS has links, but they aren't used for this (and software support for them is ... iffy, which can be an issue with backup tools etc, for which they aren't just transparent). These "known folders" are roughly implemented as environmental variables containing paths to the configured folder.
- shawnz 8y ago
  They are used for the old "My Documents" folders though, right? So why not use them here too, just as a fallback?
  - detaro 8y ago
    I think that works through the same principle, not through links.
    - MikusR 8y ago
      My Documents, Application data and few others are links.
      - detaro 8y ago
        TIL, thanks!
- withinrafael 8y ago
  Soft and hard links are only supported on NTFS formatted disks.
  - vel0city 8y ago

yAnonymous 8y ago

This seems like a common sense thing that every intern would consider. Why the Microsoft development team didn't really raises some questions not only about their QA, but about their whole development process.

Ballantara 8y ago

This. How much lost time, panic, and rage did carelessly deleting these folders cause? It was a dire mistake.

rbanffy 8y ago

> This is a complete brain damage of those who decide to implement such behaviour. I'd love to read what Linus Torvalds would say about it. There are programs that have bugs before the first line of code is written. This is one such case.