12 ms·

Even After Fix, Windows 10 Update Is Botching File Operations

170 points by sharjeelsayed 8y ago

thrower123 8y ago
Yikes. This sounds, however, like a completely different bug, if it is only triggered by unzipping archives. I'm sure that the situation is more complicated than it looks - because it looks like there is just a shocking lack of QA testing being done, if basic edge cases like this are resulting in undefined behavior.
- Teckla 8y ago
  I'm astonished Microsoft doesn't have automated tests for something as mundane as testing their built-in zip archive extraction functionality.
  - ygjb 8y ago
    I expect there are automated tests, but it's been my experience that automated tests are usually not very deeply implemented. They often test the expected code paths, and new code, with new tests that fail to review the existing tests can often result in regressions that are not caught.
  - SyneRyder 8y ago
    Peter Bright at Ars Technica had an interesting article on the Windows development process, with a tidbit of information I thought was interesting. Apparently it's permitted to integrate code into Windows that doesn't have tests: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-isnt-shipping-windows-updates-its-developing-them/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-i...
- flashmob 8y ago
  Perhaps it the type of bug that only happens 497 days[1]? a few of these class of bugs slip through now and then (intiger overflow). 1. https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/497-days-of-uptime-kills-windows https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/49...
- rincebrain 8y ago
  I'm going to quote my comment on the original bug [1] here: > Well, you see, when you fire a whole lot of your OS group's QA department... [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154679
  - yborg 8y ago
    It's fine, because "automation" automatically finds all the bugs, and developers are evaluated primarily on code quality and test coverage, not on ability to crank out feature code as rapidly as possible.
gruez 8y ago
while technically true, the title is misleading because it makes it sound like every file operation (copy, move, etc.) is botched, when in reality it's only messing up when extracting from zip files and they already exist.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I see what you’re saying, but Microsoft is forcing the industry on a treadmill to upgrade as quickly as possible as they aggressively break stuff on their quest the twiddle Windows twice a year. They need to embrace quality control. Handling zip files is a basic file system function in 2018. If they are fucking up basic operations like this, imagine how bad other parts of Windows are now.
  - jsgo 8y ago
    I agree with a lot of this, but I think if we are talking updates as upgrades, the industry and consumers forced their hands with fast update cycles with meaningful feature adds. Not excusing what is happening here, they allowed it to be released, but I do think they were forced into the current position rather than took it on their own.
    - lstodd 8y ago
      >the industry and consumers forced their hands with fast update cycles with meaningful feature adds. Yeah, sure. To hell with reliability, let's have features instead. Reminds of chinese android forks.
      - Damark 8y ago
        LOL! I deal with two sets of users. Some are users like you who get emotionally upset about bugs. Then I know others, like me, who simply acknowledge a coding error, or a future fix. It makes dealing with QA difficult sometimes. What should be a scientific CS debugging meeting turns into an emotional tear-filled bug crying session. Why get so upset? Seems "out of scope".
chriscareycode 8y ago
I ran the October update and lost my Desktop folder. After install, a dialog box appears: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop is unavailable ..."
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Out of curiosity... why was your desktop folder there? That is a really weird place for it.
  - Zuider 8y ago
    Systemprofile just hosts configuration files including one which links to the Desktop folder. The OS is either not finding the data or is unable to read it. The actual Desktop folder is probably still present in its usual location.
  - rincebrain 8y ago
    I _think_ that may be a magic symlink/bind mount equivalent that gets remapped to the running user's location.
  - JonathonW 8y ago
    "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\" is the profile folder (%USERPROFILE%) for the LocalSystem account; it doesn't normally have a desktop folder. If Windows is trying to find your desktop folder there when you log on interactively, something's gone horribly wrong (but, frankly, that doesn't surprise me with the 1809 update).
Steko 8y ago
Microsoft has turned Windows Update into a cancer that is the single reason I am going to abandon their platform in future machine purchases. Can't believe I'm longing for the days of Vista (well post-SP1).
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  What are you switching to in the future for desktop/laptop?
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    Personal goal: gather ~$13,500 and buy the maxed out iMac Pro 2017 -- 4TB SSD, 128GB RAM, Xeon W (18 cores, 2.3Ghz, turbo boost to 4.3GHz, 42.75MB cache), 10Gb ethernet link, 4 USB Type-C ports, 4 Thunderbolt 3 slots, amazing display. I view it as an at least 7 years of investment, if not 11-12 even. (Especially now that macOS has a dark theme as well.) I have a very keen interest in Linux and the people who make it happen... but reality is they are not dedicated teams of people working with high wages on Linux alone so problems with desktop always arise -- also competing standards, but the real problem is that a lot of end-user or specialized work software just can't run on Linux (3D modelling, architecture planning, professional design programs etc.). Truthfully, Linux on PCs is just fine but laptops are a whole different story. I love Linux but for all its amazing engineering it remains a mostly programmer/sysadmin system and environment and nothing much else beyond that. I need a lot of stuff done outside of that and I have hobbies I wanna work on in the future and Linux just isn't cutting it. I don't want to hand-craft clever command-line configurations until I die. Windows 10 is... I don't know, feels like it's going downhill overall. Important UX issues aren't being addressed for ages -- like the two sets of configuration UIs (almost everybody I asked says they were confused by that). WSL is good and useful, the cloud offerings look alright but something is just missing. Maybe the fact that after the April 2018 update the Mail program never managed to work with my mail again. Read about a "workaround" which involved resetting your user profile and... yeah, gave up. Who wants to restore their settings for a full workday just so a half-arsed mail program can work again? These things pile up and now I can't even tell you all my complaints nowadays because I never wrote them down -- only my accumulated impression, which is disappointment. Windows is, in my opinion, descending.
ux-app 8y ago
This is ridiculous, but to save yourself, run backups. I've been doing a full system disk backup every 24 hours for the past 2 years. So far it has saved my bacon once. Fwiw, i use Acronis for bups. The restore process for a 128gb ssd took about 10mins.
- starky 8y ago
  I started using Acronis to backup everything I don't want to lose about a year ago. A couple months ago, one of my hard drives failed (which I've never had happen before). Instead of trying to limp my files from the half-working hard drive, I just restored to the new disks and remapped the hard drive to the old letter, took maybe an hour and it was like nothing had happened.
userbinator 8y ago
It's not clear from the article whether this was just an old long-standing bug that has now gotten attention, or if they really broke a basic piece of functionality that has been around since at least XP if not earlier. I'm not surprised either way, but unfortunately I'm leaning toward the latter. I don't think I'm the only one when I say I want Microsoft to quit messing around with Windows --- just fix the severe security bugs as they're found, and stop rewriting things needlessly. Then again, they're probably doing the latter as an excuse to insert telemetry and ads...
- lreeves 8y ago
  I'm on the previous version, 1803, and the functionality in question certainly works.
- majewsky 8y ago
  So WSL is just "an excuse to insert telemetry and ads"? That's a very original POV.
  - vlunkr 8y ago
    You’re really putting words in their mouth. WSL is not a core part of windows that has been rewritten.
    - jessedhillon 8y ago
      WSL is one of the features which has seen major improvement from the updates in the past 12 months.
marricks 8y ago
Didn’t Microsoft reorganize a bit ago and let go huge swaths of their QA team? Seems to line up with their public beta version to try and get some free QA. Like, it’s understandable that supporting so many chipsets is hard but it really seems like they were doing a better job 10 years ago.
xaduha 8y ago
If you're really tired of this shit, then get LTSB.
- piinbinary 8y ago
  What's LTSB?
  - xaduha 8y ago
    https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/ https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruf...
- gruez 8y ago
  I'm not sure how LTSB could have prevented this at all. Ironically, 1809 was a LTSB release, so if you were upgrading from 1607 LTSB (to get WSL working, for example), you would also be exposed to this bug.
  - killaken2000 8y ago
    I just installed WSL on LTSC and it worked great. The MS docs explained it easily enough and provided the proper power shell commands.
  - xaduha 8y ago
    Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it? So there you go, proof enough. In any case it's not just that, there are lots of other annoying stuff that I don't need in my life.
    - gruez 8y ago
      >Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it? And you know that based on what? The lack of bug reports? The LTSB population is obviously going to be smaller than the general population, so the lack of reports of it happening on LTSB doesn’t really indicate anything. Besides, the task manager bugs introduced in 1809 is in ltsb 1809 AND server 2019, which makes me inclined to believe that all the windows editions come from the same branch anyways.
doodliego 8y ago
An OS used by billions of people including government agencies, hospitals, and nonprofits is not some videogame that needs new content. It's mission critical software, and these utter delinquents are treating it like a Steam early release. If MS won't get its act together, they should be regulated, broken up, or have their OS seized by eminent domain for the public good.
- Fellshard 8y ago
  First half, yes. Second half, no. That's pretty disturbing territory being leapt into, and sets a very bad precedent.
  - DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
    Isn't there already precedent for the state to step-in to ensure the continued survival of privately-owned and operated corporations and infrastructure that society has taken a strong dependency on? ("too big to fail", etc)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - PopeDotNinja 8y ago
      Pure speculation time... Even if there was precedent, I cannot imagine a single government taking over an globally distributed operating system AND making it better. The US Government could maybe do something like force Microsoft to sell Windows to another large company at firesale prices, like Google or IBM, in the same way that Merrill Lynch was forced to sell at bargain basement prices to Bank Of America, at which point BofA became too big-ger to fail.
- gpm 8y ago
  Seized, absolutely not. Of course since the government already has the source there is nothing that needs to be seized. The government can just declare the temporary monopoly that they granted on copying it to be over (to be clear, this would take an act of congress...). I'd almost be sympathetic to them doing that - but I also think the outcome would be absolutely terrible. Necessary maintenance (fixing security bugs, updating to new hardware, etc) takes a lot of work and I'm not clear that anyone else would step up to do a good job of it. See how the various android OEMs act...
Pneumaticat 8y ago
Sounds like Linux-class bugs (e.g. KDE copy/paste not working correctly sometimes[0]). I guess Windows has lost its advantage of perceived quality. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_never_use_the_gui_when_copying_a_large/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_ne...
- gsich 8y ago
  It still is kilometres ahead.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Yeah, it's getting really bad. It seems like now that MS is embracing open source and Linux, they are also embracing some of their worst practices. Treating users like children, not listening to users, rolling releases without regard to stability or consistency, adding features nobody asked for instead of fixing bugs, inconsistent UIs...
  - mcsofake 8y ago
    > Treating users like children, not listening to users, rolling releases without regard to stability or consistency, adding features nobody asked for instead of fixing bugs, inconsistent UIs... None of these are unique to open source. IMHO, commercial software tends to be equally bad, if not worse.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  :D As a Linux-lover, Windows 10 has been an absolute gold mine. I get to roll out all the old lines... "I need a system that just works", "I can't afford to waste time fixing it after every update", "it's just a toy OS"[1], etc. [1] Go on, tell me why Candy Crush is installed by default in the Enterprise edition...
  - kurtisc 8y ago
    I like seeing how removing the latest unwanted feature requires 'just' a few settings changes. Poetic.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
booleandilemma 8y ago
Is Microsoft starting to hire bootcamp grads or what?
xpaulbettsx 8y ago
This article is super deceptive, these two bugs are completely unrelated, and the one still standing is pretty obscure: 1. You're extracting a Zip file and intend to overwrite your own data 2. The data isn't overwritten, but it doesn't tell you about it 3. You delete the Zip file, thinking that it's extracted. I'm not discounting that this is a Bug, but I can't think of a time I would've ever lost data because of this, and relating it to the upgrade bugs seem downright deceptive
- SilasX 8y ago
  You’ve never edited a file and rezipped it? I did that a lot in the nand2tetris course, where you upload zips. This would be a nasty surprise when the other party carries on as if you send the old while you think you sent the new. Probably would have been testing my hear out on the course. And I don’t get your attitude. The data is still gone. The fact that it’s unrelated to the original bug isn’t any kind of comfort.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Aha, this explains it: >Developer tools at Facebook
- dx87 8y ago
  I know it was an error on my part, but I lost an updated password database file because of unexpected behavior with the Windows file explorer. I had mainly been working out of a single folder, so I didn't realize the next time that I opened the file explorer that it was showing me "quick access" since the file list was populated with the contents of the one folder I was using. I dragged the updated database file to the explorer window, and didn't get any notification. I'd thought it had overwritten the old file without warning, so I deleted the updated file I had dragged over. When I went to load the database, I saw it was missing recently added passwords, so I opened the explorer window and realized that it defaulted to quick access and silently ignores any drag and drop file copying.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
pletnes 8y ago
Note that the windows implementation of zip/unzip does not always return the original file contents after a round trip. Yes, I’ve seen it myself. That’s an even more serious bug, but it’s been there since win7 at least. I don’t trust the builtin zip at all.
- lfam 8y ago
  Do you have any links to bug reports or other documentation about this?
  - pletnes 8y ago
    Unfortunately no. I experienced it when running software signed/hashed and it just would not run. The dev told me that this was well known and that I should not use the builtin zip. Sure enough, unzipping the file with 7zip worked like a charm. I’ve found the same when downloading a proprietary lib that would not link with a C/Fortran application. The devs there tracked it down to the windows zip being used to pack the file, which they did not normally do. So, just hearsay, but I’ve never even dreamed of bothering to file a bug report with microsoft. Is that even doable?
drewmol 8y ago
>The good news is, if you use a third-party app for archives, such as WinZip, WinRAR or 7-Zip, you won't encounter the bug. I'm not excusing the bug, but 7-zip had been one of the first tools I install on any windows installation since XP, setting it as default application to handle all archive formats it supports, .zip included. I'm surprised to see so many comments about potentially running into this bug, doesn't everyone just use 7-zip?
- grumblez 8y ago
  Unregistered WinRAR for life
  - Slartie 8y ago
    I actually bought a license a lot of years ago because I had been using it for many more years already, always clicking that nag screen away, and some day I realized that I would be totally hosed on Windows if there was no WinRAR because it really is the only compression tool that packs good format support with a bearable user interface. 7-zip is okay on the format side since they added some of the newer high-efficiency compression algos, but the UI still sucks compared to WinRAR.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      ...there's a 7-Zip UI? I take it you're doing more than is offered in the right-click menu?
      - Slartie 8y ago
        Sure. Replacing single files deep down in some directory hierarchy in an archive. Compressing bigger amounts of files as efficient and fast as possible, so I want to customize a lot of parameters of the algorithm. Extracting many archives into separate or a common directory. Verifying archive integrity because something seems to be damaged. Encrypting stuff when compressing. I like to use a good UI for that stuff when I'm on a graphical system like Windows anyway, and WinRAR is consistently better at that than 7-Zip. I even seriously miss WinRAR when working on MacOS. Does anybody have any good suggestions for archive managers (may also be expensive ones, I don't care much if they are really good) with similar UI and functionality as WinRAR on MacOS?
keypress 8y ago
Why in 2018 do we still have lousy file managers?
- ygra 8y ago
  Because for most people file management and document management are kinda the same, so we end up with tools that are barely capable document managers that end up exposing all kinds of details about the underlying storage mechanism and both are kinda iffy. You cannot reliably do document management atop of files while keeping file managers happy and the subset of document management tasks that can be done at the file level is kinda limited as well. So we get some weird hybrid that's horrible to use and still incapable of many interesting tasks.
OpenBSD-reich 8y ago
This is why when I run Windows in virtuo, it's Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition with the help of vlmcsd.
misterman0 8y ago
What's a really good alternative to Windows Explorer?
- setquk 8y ago
  WSL + bash
- mariusmg 8y ago
  Total Commander
- lakkal 8y ago
  I use this for file viewing and managing: https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html (the web page describes it as 'an all-purpose File Manager for Windows with a powerful inbuilt text file viewer')

170 points by sharjeelsayed 8y ago

Yikes. This sounds, however, like a completely different bug, if it is only triggered by unzipping archives. I'm sure that the situation is more complicated than it looks - because it looks like there is just a shocking lack of QA testing being done, if basic edge cases like this are resulting in undefined behavior.

Teckla 8y ago
I'm astonished Microsoft doesn't have automated tests for something as mundane as testing their built-in zip archive extraction functionality.
- ygjb 8y ago
  I expect there are automated tests, but it's been my experience that automated tests are usually not very deeply implemented. They often test the expected code paths, and new code, with new tests that fail to review the existing tests can often result in regressions that are not caught.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  Peter Bright at Ars Technica had an interesting article on the Windows development process, with a tidbit of information I thought was interesting. Apparently it's permitted to integrate code into Windows that doesn't have tests: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-isnt-shipping-windows-updates-its-developing-them/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-i...
flashmob 8y ago
Perhaps it the type of bug that only happens 497 days[1]? a few of these class of bugs slip through now and then (intiger overflow). 1. https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/497-days-of-uptime-kills-windows https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/49...
rincebrain 8y ago
I'm going to quote my comment on the original bug [1] here: > Well, you see, when you fire a whole lot of your OS group's QA department... [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154679
- yborg 8y ago
  It's fine, because "automation" automatically finds all the bugs, and developers are evaluated primarily on code quality and test coverage, not on ability to crank out feature code as rapidly as possible.

gruez 8y ago

while technically true, the title is misleading because it makes it sound like every file operation (copy, move, etc.) is botched, when in reality it's only messing up when extracting from zip files and they already exist.

Spooky23 8y ago
I see what you’re saying, but Microsoft is forcing the industry on a treadmill to upgrade as quickly as possible as they aggressively break stuff on their quest the twiddle Windows twice a year. They need to embrace quality control. Handling zip files is a basic file system function in 2018. If they are fucking up basic operations like this, imagine how bad other parts of Windows are now.
- jsgo 8y ago
  I agree with a lot of this, but I think if we are talking updates as upgrades, the industry and consumers forced their hands with fast update cycles with meaningful feature adds. Not excusing what is happening here, they allowed it to be released, but I do think they were forced into the current position rather than took it on their own.
  - lstodd 8y ago
    >the industry and consumers forced their hands with fast update cycles with meaningful feature adds. Yeah, sure. To hell with reliability, let's have features instead. Reminds of chinese android forks.
    - Damark 8y ago
      LOL! I deal with two sets of users. Some are users like you who get emotionally upset about bugs. Then I know others, like me, who simply acknowledge a coding error, or a future fix. It makes dealing with QA difficult sometimes. What should be a scientific CS debugging meeting turns into an emotional tear-filled bug crying session. Why get so upset? Seems "out of scope".

chriscareycode 8y ago

I ran the October update and lost my Desktop folder. After install, a dialog box appears: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop is unavailable ..."

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Out of curiosity... why was your desktop folder there? That is a really weird place for it.
- Zuider 8y ago
  Systemprofile just hosts configuration files including one which links to the Desktop folder. The OS is either not finding the data or is unable to read it. The actual Desktop folder is probably still present in its usual location.
- rincebrain 8y ago
  I _think_ that may be a magic symlink/bind mount equivalent that gets remapped to the running user's location.
- JonathonW 8y ago
  "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\" is the profile folder (%USERPROFILE%) for the LocalSystem account; it doesn't normally have a desktop folder. If Windows is trying to find your desktop folder there when you log on interactively, something's gone horribly wrong (but, frankly, that doesn't surprise me with the 1809 update).

Steko 8y ago

Microsoft has turned Windows Update into a cancer that is the single reason I am going to abandon their platform in future machine purchases. Can't believe I'm longing for the days of Vista (well post-SP1).

stevenwoo 8y ago
What are you switching to in the future for desktop/laptop?
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Personal goal: gather ~$13,500 and buy the maxed out iMac Pro 2017 -- 4TB SSD, 128GB RAM, Xeon W (18 cores, 2.3Ghz, turbo boost to 4.3GHz, 42.75MB cache), 10Gb ethernet link, 4 USB Type-C ports, 4 Thunderbolt 3 slots, amazing display. I view it as an at least 7 years of investment, if not 11-12 even. (Especially now that macOS has a dark theme as well.) I have a very keen interest in Linux and the people who make it happen... but reality is they are not dedicated teams of people working with high wages on Linux alone so problems with desktop always arise -- also competing standards, but the real problem is that a lot of end-user or specialized work software just can't run on Linux (3D modelling, architecture planning, professional design programs etc.). Truthfully, Linux on PCs is just fine but laptops are a whole different story. I love Linux but for all its amazing engineering it remains a mostly programmer/sysadmin system and environment and nothing much else beyond that. I need a lot of stuff done outside of that and I have hobbies I wanna work on in the future and Linux just isn't cutting it. I don't want to hand-craft clever command-line configurations until I die. Windows 10 is... I don't know, feels like it's going downhill overall. Important UX issues aren't being addressed for ages -- like the two sets of configuration UIs (almost everybody I asked says they were confused by that). WSL is good and useful, the cloud offerings look alright but something is just missing. Maybe the fact that after the April 2018 update the Mail program never managed to work with my mail again. Read about a "workaround" which involved resetting your user profile and... yeah, gave up. Who wants to restore their settings for a full workday just so a half-arsed mail program can work again? These things pile up and now I can't even tell you all my complaints nowadays because I never wrote them down -- only my accumulated impression, which is disappointment. Windows is, in my opinion, descending.

ux-app 8y ago

This is ridiculous, but to save yourself, run backups. I've been doing a full system disk backup every 24 hours for the past 2 years. So far it has saved my bacon once. Fwiw, i use Acronis for bups. The restore process for a 128gb ssd took about 10mins.

starky 8y ago
I started using Acronis to backup everything I don't want to lose about a year ago. A couple months ago, one of my hard drives failed (which I've never had happen before). Instead of trying to limp my files from the half-working hard drive, I just restored to the new disks and remapped the hard drive to the old letter, took maybe an hour and it was like nothing had happened.

userbinator 8y ago

It's not clear from the article whether this was just an old long-standing bug that has now gotten attention, or if they really broke a basic piece of functionality that has been around since at least XP if not earlier. I'm not surprised either way, but unfortunately I'm leaning toward the latter. I don't think I'm the only one when I say I want Microsoft to quit messing around with Windows --- just fix the severe security bugs as they're found, and stop rewriting things needlessly. Then again, they're probably doing the latter as an excuse to insert telemetry and ads...

lreeves 8y ago
I'm on the previous version, 1803, and the functionality in question certainly works.
majewsky 8y ago
So WSL is just "an excuse to insert telemetry and ads"? That's a very original POV.
- vlunkr 8y ago
  You’re really putting words in their mouth. WSL is not a core part of windows that has been rewritten.
  - jessedhillon 8y ago
    WSL is one of the features which has seen major improvement from the updates in the past 12 months.

marricks 8y ago

Didn’t Microsoft reorganize a bit ago and let go huge swaths of their QA team? Seems to line up with their public beta version to try and get some free QA. Like, it’s understandable that supporting so many chipsets is hard but it really seems like they were doing a better job 10 years ago.

xaduha 8y ago

If you're really tired of this shit, then get LTSB.

piinbinary 8y ago
What's LTSB?
- xaduha 8y ago
  https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/ https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruf...
gruez 8y ago
I'm not sure how LTSB could have prevented this at all. Ironically, 1809 was a LTSB release, so if you were upgrading from 1607 LTSB (to get WSL working, for example), you would also be exposed to this bug.
- killaken2000 8y ago
  I just installed WSL on LTSC and it worked great. The MS docs explained it easily enough and provided the proper power shell commands.
- xaduha 8y ago
  Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it? So there you go, proof enough. In any case it's not just that, there are lots of other annoying stuff that I don't need in my life.
  - gruez 8y ago
    >Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it? And you know that based on what? The lack of bug reports? The LTSB population is obviously going to be smaller than the general population, so the lack of reports of it happening on LTSB doesn’t really indicate anything. Besides, the task manager bugs introduced in 1809 is in ltsb 1809 AND server 2019, which makes me inclined to believe that all the windows editions come from the same branch anyways.

doodliego 8y ago

An OS used by billions of people including government agencies, hospitals, and nonprofits is not some videogame that needs new content. It's mission critical software, and these utter delinquents are treating it like a Steam early release. If MS won't get its act together, they should be regulated, broken up, or have their OS seized by eminent domain for the public good.

Fellshard 8y ago
First half, yes. Second half, no. That's pretty disturbing territory being leapt into, and sets a very bad precedent.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
  Isn't there already precedent for the state to step-in to ensure the continued survival of privately-owned and operated corporations and infrastructure that society has taken a strong dependency on? ("too big to fail", etc)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - PopeDotNinja 8y ago
    Pure speculation time... Even if there was precedent, I cannot imagine a single government taking over an globally distributed operating system AND making it better. The US Government could maybe do something like force Microsoft to sell Windows to another large company at firesale prices, like Google or IBM, in the same way that Merrill Lynch was forced to sell at bargain basement prices to Bank Of America, at which point BofA became too big-ger to fail.
gpm 8y ago
Seized, absolutely not. Of course since the government already has the source there is nothing that needs to be seized. The government can just declare the temporary monopoly that they granted on copying it to be over (to be clear, this would take an act of congress...). I'd almost be sympathetic to them doing that - but I also think the outcome would be absolutely terrible. Necessary maintenance (fixing security bugs, updating to new hardware, etc) takes a lot of work and I'm not clear that anyone else would step up to do a good job of it. See how the various android OEMs act...

Pneumaticat 8y ago

Sounds like Linux-class bugs (e.g. KDE copy/paste not working correctly sometimes[0]). I guess Windows has lost its advantage of perceived quality. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_never_use_the_gui_when_copying_a_large/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_ne...

gsich 8y ago
It still is kilometres ahead.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Yeah, it's getting really bad. It seems like now that MS is embracing open source and Linux, they are also embracing some of their worst practices. Treating users like children, not listening to users, rolling releases without regard to stability or consistency, adding features nobody asked for instead of fixing bugs, inconsistent UIs...
- mcsofake 8y ago
  > Treating users like children, not listening to users, rolling releases without regard to stability or consistency, adding features nobody asked for instead of fixing bugs, inconsistent UIs... None of these are unique to open source. IMHO, commercial software tends to be equally bad, if not worse.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
:D As a Linux-lover, Windows 10 has been an absolute gold mine. I get to roll out all the old lines... "I need a system that just works", "I can't afford to waste time fixing it after every update", "it's just a toy OS"[1], etc. [1] Go on, tell me why Candy Crush is installed by default in the Enterprise edition...
- kurtisc 8y ago
  I like seeing how removing the latest unwanted feature requires 'just' a few settings changes. Poetic.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

booleandilemma 8y ago

Is Microsoft starting to hire bootcamp grads or what?

xpaulbettsx 8y ago

This article is super deceptive, these two bugs are completely unrelated, and the one still standing is pretty obscure: 1. You're extracting a Zip file and intend to overwrite your own data 2. The data isn't overwritten, but it doesn't tell you about it 3. You delete the Zip file, thinking that it's extracted. I'm not discounting that this is a Bug, but I can't think of a time I would've ever lost data because of this, and relating it to the upgrade bugs seem downright deceptive

SilasX 8y ago
You’ve never edited a file and rezipped it? I did that a lot in the nand2tetris course, where you upload zips. This would be a nasty surprise when the other party carries on as if you send the old while you think you sent the new. Probably would have been testing my hear out on the course. And I don’t get your attitude. The data is still gone. The fact that it’s unrelated to the original bug isn’t any kind of comfort.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Aha, this explains it: >Developer tools at Facebook
dx87 8y ago
I know it was an error on my part, but I lost an updated password database file because of unexpected behavior with the Windows file explorer. I had mainly been working out of a single folder, so I didn't realize the next time that I opened the file explorer that it was showing me "quick access" since the file list was populated with the contents of the one folder I was using. I dragged the updated database file to the explorer window, and didn't get any notification. I'd thought it had overwritten the old file without warning, so I deleted the updated file I had dragged over. When I went to load the database, I saw it was missing recently added passwords, so I opened the explorer window and realized that it defaulted to quick access and silently ignores any drag and drop file copying.
- gmueckl 8y ago

pletnes 8y ago

Note that the windows implementation of zip/unzip does not always return the original file contents after a round trip. Yes, I’ve seen it myself. That’s an even more serious bug, but it’s been there since win7 at least. I don’t trust the builtin zip at all.

lfam 8y ago
Do you have any links to bug reports or other documentation about this?
- pletnes 8y ago
  Unfortunately no. I experienced it when running software signed/hashed and it just would not run. The dev told me that this was well known and that I should not use the builtin zip. Sure enough, unzipping the file with 7zip worked like a charm. I’ve found the same when downloading a proprietary lib that would not link with a C/Fortran application. The devs there tracked it down to the windows zip being used to pack the file, which they did not normally do. So, just hearsay, but I’ve never even dreamed of bothering to file a bug report with microsoft. Is that even doable?

drewmol 8y ago

>The good news is, if you use a third-party app for archives, such as WinZip, WinRAR or 7-Zip, you won't encounter the bug. I'm not excusing the bug, but 7-zip had been one of the first tools I install on any windows installation since XP, setting it as default application to handle all archive formats it supports, .zip included. I'm surprised to see so many comments about potentially running into this bug, doesn't everyone just use 7-zip?

grumblez 8y ago
Unregistered WinRAR for life
- Slartie 8y ago
  I actually bought a license a lot of years ago because I had been using it for many more years already, always clicking that nag screen away, and some day I realized that I would be totally hosed on Windows if there was no WinRAR because it really is the only compression tool that packs good format support with a bearable user interface. 7-zip is okay on the format side since they added some of the newer high-efficiency compression algos, but the UI still sucks compared to WinRAR.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    ...there's a 7-Zip UI? I take it you're doing more than is offered in the right-click menu?
    - Slartie 8y ago
      Sure. Replacing single files deep down in some directory hierarchy in an archive. Compressing bigger amounts of files as efficient and fast as possible, so I want to customize a lot of parameters of the algorithm. Extracting many archives into separate or a common directory. Verifying archive integrity because something seems to be damaged. Encrypting stuff when compressing. I like to use a good UI for that stuff when I'm on a graphical system like Windows anyway, and WinRAR is consistently better at that than 7-Zip. I even seriously miss WinRAR when working on MacOS. Does anybody have any good suggestions for archive managers (may also be expensive ones, I don't care much if they are really good) with similar UI and functionality as WinRAR on MacOS?

keypress 8y ago

Why in 2018 do we still have lousy file managers?

ygra 8y ago
Because for most people file management and document management are kinda the same, so we end up with tools that are barely capable document managers that end up exposing all kinds of details about the underlying storage mechanism and both are kinda iffy. You cannot reliably do document management atop of files while keeping file managers happy and the subset of document management tasks that can be done at the file level is kinda limited as well. So we get some weird hybrid that's horrible to use and still incapable of many interesting tasks.

OpenBSD-reich 8y ago

This is why when I run Windows in virtuo, it's Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition with the help of vlmcsd.

misterman0 8y ago

What's a really good alternative to Windows Explorer?

setquk 8y ago
WSL + bash
mariusmg 8y ago
Total Commander
lakkal 8y ago
I use this for file viewing and managing: https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html (the web page describes it as 'an all-purpose File Manager for Windows with a powerful inbuilt text file viewer')