19 ms·

Windows 10 20H2: ChkDsk damages filesystem on SSDs with KB4592438 installed

426 points by xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y ago

tripham 6y ago
Nice
markn951 6y ago
Nice
causality0 6y ago
I feel like Windows Update didn't used to be such a shitshow. Was I just not paying close enough attention a decade ago?
- stqism 6y ago
  This is entirely rosy retrospection, Windows update has always been a nightmare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  Apparently, Microsoft disbanded the Windows Test team and switched from testing on real hardware to virtualised hardware a few years ago.[1] 1. https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/23/former-microsoft-employee-explains-why-bugs-in-windows-updates-increased/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/23/former-microsoft-employee-...
  - yuhong 6y ago
    I reported a bug in late 2017 where the Jet 4.0 binaries shipped in Windows 7 updates was incorrectly compiled with /arch:SSE2 enabled.
- contingencies 6y ago
  I had auto-CHKDSK-on-restart trash an NTFS drive circa early noughties, FWIW. Never stored anything valuable on NTFS after that.
- kabdib 6y ago
  I help run a service that uses hundreds of Windows boxes, and at any one time two or three of them always seem to have a borked windows update state. Recovery is utter fucking voodoo, and it's usually better to flatten a machine than attempt to repair things. A while back I installed a couple racks of shiny, new, absolutely identical servers (except for MAC addresses) with factory-imaged operating systems, and had two of them fail initial windows updates. Out of the box. How do you even do that?
  - gruez 6y ago
    >How do you even do that? flaky hardware?
    - craftinator 6y ago
      Lolz yeah right. It's the hardware's fault that windows install is non deterministic.
      - edoceo 6y ago
        Well, flakey RAM causes loads of intermittent issues.
        ikiris 6y ago
        So does improper handling of write barriers.
    - aceperry 6y ago
      I hear a variation of this type of thing from windows fans constantly. "It's your hardware's fault." But never Window's fault. My experience is this; most of my computers are dual boot with windows and linux. When I have a problem with windows, I'll boot into linux and the problem goes away. Same hardware.
    - kabdib 6y ago
      It's definitely not flaky hardware.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Windows 7 was peak desktop Windows. Server 2012 R2 was the peak on the server side. Everything after has been downhill.
  - MrStonedOne 6y ago
    Still on Windows 7! Gonna keep using it until it gets rooted, then format and install linux.
    - bserge 6y ago
      I gave up and installed it on some machines. Feels like a damn upgrade! Unified, customizable UI, better performance, better Search, local accounts, smaller footprint :D
    - Multicomp 6y ago
      Hopefully you have extended security updates or use zeropatch. Admittedly I have a test rig running windows posready 2009, aka w7 with esu cooked in from the beginning for contractual reasons. It is a bit like running windows xp embedded b on a normal desktop but seems good enough that I could use it as a daily driver if I wanted to.
  - sfgweilr4f 6y ago
    Why'd they add "R2" to the end?
    - userbinator 6y ago
      It's equivalent to Windows 8.1. I guess they didn't want to call it Server 2013 instead.
- sq_ 6y ago
  Just in the last few weeks, I’ve had two instances where I let Windows update and a whole bunch of system stuff (including Windows Update itself, once) proceeded to break, even through a few reboots. Anecdote, of course, and theoretically I could have hardware issues, but things to seem to be worse than a few years ago.
- worble 6y ago
  The difference was a decade ago you could simply defer updates when someone reported online it borked their system. Now you're forced into it, like it or not.
- DanBC 6y ago
  It was reasonably common advice, (around 2000-2004) in the MS Small Business Server groups to tell people to wait for a few days before installing updates, to see if other people had problems. (I'd try to find a few posts but Google searches of Usenet newsgroups is suboptimal). EDIT here's one thread talking about installing some, but not all, patches and updates: https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.backoffice.smallbiz/c/J3uFh6YUvt8/m/1DuVdpr4MS4J https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.backoffice.smal...
- Razengan 6y ago
  > I feel like Windows Update didn't used to be such a shitshow. Did you cross over from a parallel universe, because Windows Update always was, to use the term of endearment, a shitshow: https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+deleted+documents https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+deleted+docum...
usr1106 6y ago
And I thought destroying file systems was reserved to early versions of btrfs. Well, luckily I have not had a need to touch Windows for 10+ years...
- Krisjohn 6y ago
  Early versions?
Moeg 6y ago
Nice
game_the0ry 6y ago
This article immediately reminded me of a video I saw a while ago.[1] The long and short - MS basically laid off the staff that tested Windows, and much of it is automated nowadays (I bet the MBA educated executive at MS who was responsible for that got PHAT bonus, at the expense of Windows customers and laid off testing staff, of course). Seems like it happened in 2015, which is why it seems that windows updates have been more unstable in the last couple of years.[2] I really want to like windows, but Apple's M1 and Linux's community make it hard to ever love windows again. Oh well, I guess I will be using Macbooks for the rest of my life. Which, actually, isn't so bad I guess. FWIW - I would say this is unacceptable on microsoft's part. Windows is the default operating system of corporate america, department of defense, etc. Imagine if an update would brick Wells Fargo or the US Army. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kn8_oztsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kn8_oztsA [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/former-microsoft-employee-talks-about-getting-fired-2014-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/former-microsoft-employee-ta...
- dixie_land 6y ago
  I believe Enterprise and LTS editions are on a different cadence. Probably came from the same MBA: let consumers be lab rats to for big enterprise customers
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    That's exactly what it is and it's becoming more common. Java went that way. Windows went that way. CentOS is going that way. Office 365 is even worse because the low paying users get more frequent updates than high paying users. I know because I tracked down a long file name issue for someone and was shocked they were paying for it and still getting to be a beta tester for the "real" customers (huge businesses).
    - gruez 6y ago
      > Office 365 is even worse because the low paying users get more frequent updates than high paying users. AFAIK all office subscribers can change their update channel from monthly (default) to SAC (the one that "high paying users" use). The only difference is that the low paying user has to do it via group policy or registry, whereas the high paying users probably have some sort of enterprise admin tool that allows it to be set at the organization level.
timvisee 6y ago
So, this only occurs when manually invoking ChkDsk with repair, or when Windows decides to do so on bad shutdown? I don't understand how such core things break in Windows.
- k_sze 6y ago
  I suppose it's because they now "test" using virtualized hardware. So even if chkdsk runs during their tests, it's running on a virtualized disk, not a real SSD. Honestly, I'd pay money so they bring back the testing team and not use all of us non-enterprise users as beta users.
  - tck42 6y ago
    Hah - you DO pay money, if you're using Windows. That's the problem.
mrjin 6y ago
Why am I not surprised at all? Heard that M$ has completely removed the testing team by adapting to DevOPs, which makes end users in production environment the white mouse.
bzb6 6y ago
Not delaying updates is like opting in to be a beta tester. I don’t want to sound smug, that was just a word of warning. It’s just a switch to flip and it will save you from many headaches.
k_sze 6y ago
Has Microsoft acknowledged the problem yet? It's still not listed as a known issue on the update page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4592438/windows-10-update-kb4592438 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4592438/windows-10-...
- taviso 6y ago
  That doesn't mean anything, I ran into a bug after 2004 that meant DPAPI protected secrets would be randomly corrupted. It was an incredibly frustrating bug that cost me a bunch of data. After a few months without progress, I ended up debugging the problem myself and mailing them an analysis. It's still not fixed, and not on that known issues page. I wrote a twitter thread about it here: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1310619801606184960 https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1310619801606184960 There is an office kb article about it, because it turned out it also broke Outlook. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/outlook-and-other-apps-won-t-remember-password-after-windows-updates-1e5a8a80-7112-440a-a18c-be2e50047a75 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/outlook-and-other...
  - Roritharr 6y ago
    I really enjoy reading abour your findings, thanks for sharing! I would love to see a how-to for the way you debug these things with IDA, as otherwise I consider myself good at debugging, but have never even tried to peak under the hood of Windows.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    Impressive sleuthing.
- k_sze 6y ago
  Follow up: Microsoft has now acknowledged the problem and the resolution is documented on the update page.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
known 6y ago
I learned from https://yts.mx/movies/zero-days-2016 https://yts.mx/movies/zero-days-2016 that software that generates big heat can destroy hardware/nuclear plant
ChicagoDave 6y ago
I paused updates until next year. Hopefully this gets resolved.
- qayxc 6y ago
  Why bother? Do you manually run chkdsk /f for no apparent reason? FWIW, the error doesn't even occur if you use the recommended (and much faster) chkdsk /scan followed by chkdsk /spotfix combo.
sumoboy 6y ago
I ran into what I believe was this issue last week, BSOD stating Stop error NTFS File System. Couldn't boot, startup repair did nothing, and then the worst thing occurred was no restore points were available. Even if system restore is ON it will periodically remove/clean them up which I never knew. Since reading about this issue I was trying to recall my steps of recovery frustration, but I think ended from the startup repair opening up the command prompt and issuing a chkdsk and rebooting a few times initiating automatic repair and finally came back to life.
ycui1986 6y ago
Windows's quality has been downhill quite a lot. For the past more than a year, I struggle with intermittent touchpad scroll failure on multiple laptops (including surface pro, thinkpad, etc). Of course, the only support you can get from searching the web is to update the driver. In this case, I don't think driver is the problem, the windows multi-touch and precision touchpad component has internal bug, the cause scrolling, either touchpad or touchscreen, to loss response every a few minuets for 15s-ish period. Super annoying when you browse web without a mouse. I don't see any solution in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, I cannot just dump all my windows PC and switch to either mac or linux, because I stuck with a few CAD software that only runs on windows.
Razengan 6y ago
If this was macOS this post would be at least a 10x the upvotes in 0.1 the time, full of testimonials from people about to lay their last Mac in a grave. But we’re too desensitized to news about shit like this happening in Windows. Why? I just walked past an ATM with a blue screen of death. Business as usual.
userbinator 6y ago
I'd be very curious to see a deep root-cause-analysis of this, especially because it seems to be SSD-specific and in the "detect if the drive is an SSD and do something slightly different" way, which IMHO is not good behaviour in general as it is leaking the abstraction. I wonder if a VM simulating a virtual SSD hosted on a machine with a regular HDD would be able to reproduce this bug, but then again, recent Windows versions seem to be doing some detection of whether they are running in a VM (and likely altering behaviour due to this too)... what a mess.
- withinboredom 6y ago
  > I wonder if a VM simulating a virtual SSD hosted on a machine with a regular HDD would be able to reproduce this bug, but then again, recent Windows versions seem to be doing some detection of whether they are running in a VM (and likely altering behaviour due to this too)... what a mess. In that case, running Hyper-v might be a good thing. (Hyper-v is a type 1 hypervisor, meaning your logged in session is running in a vm with dedicated input/video)
- diegoperini 6y ago
  > "detect if the drive is an SSD and do something slightly different" way, which IMHO is not good behaviour in general as it is leaking the abstraction. I'd argue the opposite. Thin or leaking abstractions are how operating systems and video games harness the full potential of the hardware. Trade-offs are ugly nonetheless.
magoon 6y ago
Looking beyond the obvious problem here, just curious why the admin ran chkdsk /f for no reason, then did it on 6 more systems after observing it caused ntfs failure.
- astronautjones 6y ago
  "i, also, like to live dangerously"
- andreareina 6y ago
  https://m.xkcd.com/242/ https://m.xkcd.com/242/ maybe. One hopes the reporter had backups (or was testing on disposable systems) before trying to reproduce a data-loss condition.
  - mormegil 6y ago
    XKCD has a mobile version?! You learn something new every day!
    - FriendlyNormie 6y ago
      Who cares? Go suck Randall’s dick you dumb faggot.
  - emayljames 6y ago
    I'd say admin has had issues with users hard resetting the PC's and corrupting data, albeit slowly, and so runs chkdsk before it gets real bad.
- diegoperini 6y ago
  I'd do the same and for me, the reason would probably be trust.
- tzs 6y ago
  He didn’t. It’s a very slow command. He started it in parallel on several. He only found that there was a problem when the ones started earlier finished and rebooted. By then it was too late for 7 machines but he was able to stop it on the rest.
refracture 6y ago
It's sad to say but I've had more hassle with Windows 10 than any previous (NT based anyway) release. 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 all served me well. 10 has done everything from deleted my files (thanks, October 2018 Update) to DESTROYING my Linux boot loader that was placed on a separate hard drive.. it has no business touching that! I always looked at Linux as not being worth the hassle.. now it's not worth the hassle to use anything else.
- bogdan 6y ago
  I've had pretty much the same experience as you. Honestly, linux runs faster uses less resources and is infinitely customizable. If anyone's work allows them to make the switch (eg. No hard dependencies on windows) then consider doing it, it is absolutely worth it.
  - djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    Lately I've had great experiences with running any windows programs on linux in wine. It seems to have really matured a lot. There are some issues with my tiling wm but other than that zero problems.
    - refracture 6y ago
      Fortunately I've been able to find native alternatives for almost everything. If it wasn't for games and Winamp I'd probably not bother installing wine. (Winamp is the only player I've found that I can get midi files to play to my Roland UM-ONE).
  - beowulfey 6y ago
    Particularly with the online versions of Microsoft Office which, while not feature rich, work decently enough to act in lieu of the windows versions.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  >Windows 10 [...] DESTROYING my Linux boot loader that was placed on a separate hard drive. Would it be fair to say that Windows extinguished your Linux install? :D
fakedang 6y ago
Yep, this happened to me. Destroyed my entire data on my SSD, and forced me to Linux. Now I've literally ditched Windows, save for MS Office, and am currently using Linux for code, and even recently games, since they seem to run faster in Ubuntu.
- trinix912 6y ago
  Linux gaming has really come a long way in the recent few years. I only wish macOS would be getting the same support.
sfgweilr4f 6y ago
Overwhelming desire to run this wusa /uninstall /KB:4592438 should I?
- qayxc 6y ago
  No need. This is just as overblown a reaction. First of all there's no reason to ever run chkdsk/f in the first place if there are no problems with your SSD. Secondly, just never use chkdsk /f - chkdsk /scan is faster, requires no restart and no further action is needed if no problems were found. Problems can be fixed using chkdsk /spotfix otherwise, which doesn't cause any problems.
  - emayljames 6y ago
    You wonder why this is not the default behaviour and/or what /f should do.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      Yeah - IMO MS should've deprecated the /f-option years ago and emulate it like that. But that's what you get from disbanding most of your QA-team I guess...
  - whoopdedo 6y ago
    But if you ask "how to fix problems in Windows" you're likely to end up reading a guide[1] [2] [3] [4] that suggests "run chkdsk /f". Why? Because the diagnostic tools available to most users are so poor that shotgun debugging is the only option. And /spotfix is too new to have made a dent in 30 years of being told that's the way you do it. (This is the first time I've heard of that option.) The internet is very bad at forgetting. [1] https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-drive-repair.html https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-drive-re... [2] https://fossbytes.com/repair-corrupted-hard-drive-fix-disk/ https://fossbytes.com/repair-corrupted-hard-drive-fix-disk/ [3] https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/20/windows-10-how-to-run-chkdsk-to-find-and-repair-hard-drive-errors-xcxwbt/ https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/20/windows-10-how-to-run-chkds... [4] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update-winpc/how-to-repair-a-hard-drive-connected-to-windows-10/604d1060-4447-48c9-bb76-e4725e859a6c https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
Roritharr 6y ago
I have a very strange SSD related bug at the moment on that Windows version too: I've downloaded my Google Takeout Backup, so 74 4GB sized zips. After I was done extracting them and storing them on Dropbox, I tried to delete the zip files, but my machine froze without so much of a bluescreen. After a hard reboot, I could reproduce the behavior. I can still change the focus of apps, but everything that requires the ssd to do anything is waiting for i/o until the system freezes completely. Unplugging the notebook seems to help, sometimes, but I can't make this work coherently at the moment. Until this post I thought my SSD (Samsung Evo 970 Plus) was faulty, despite working perfectly for everything else.
- noja 6y ago
  Sounds like an anti-virus problem. What happens if you delete it from the command prompt or powershell?
  - Roritharr 6y ago
    powershell and commandprompt sadly create the same result, but thanks for the suggestion.
- tryauuum 6y ago
  If it happens only on deletion of files, maybe it's something TRIM-related.
- stinos 6y ago
  Dropbox Might that be your problem, or part of it? Not 100% sure, but whenever I access machines with Dropbox all kinds of weird things happen like there's a ghost in the machines. E.g. deleting a directory managed by Dropbox through explorer consistently results in all its subdirectories and files deleted, but the directory itself remaining there, requiring deleting it again.
  - pedro2 6y ago
    That directories reappear empty thingie was an sync engine issue, I believe. It was fixed in latest sync engine update (though this issue was never mentioned, it stopped happening). Regarding the parent poster, on Windows Smart Sync is enabled and, while extremely useful (and better that Onedrive’s equivalent IMO), it did cause issues in the past. Since it seems to work as a file filter, it can cause some issues. That being said, I haven’t seen those in a while.
rkagerer 6y ago
This kind of nonsense is why I'm waiting for Windows 11 before I upgrade.
dis-sys 6y ago
MS didn't change, it is still that MS specialized in producing low quality closed source software.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anoncow 6y ago
How do I reject a specific update. My system shows KB4592438 as "Pending Install" and the system will restart outside of active hours.
- emayljames 6y ago
  reboot, uninstall/rollback the update in programs in the settings.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Solution: Bring back windows 7, 2021 edition
- keyle 6y ago
  That's funny but imagine the success this would have.
animal531 6y ago
People always seriously frown at me when I say I disable Windows updates. I've never had any problem stem from it, and I've bypassed all the homegrown issues.
- Koffiepoeder 6y ago
  Finding out how to do that is a quest on its own unfortunately.
pbowyer 6y ago
I had chkdsk stop my Windows 10 system from booting 2 weeks ago - so I guess that was a different issue. After an evening of trying to fix it, I restored from a backup. Thank $deity for Macrium Reflect and nightly disk imaging.
roody15 6y ago
Seriously disappointing. I have had to downgrade this on two machines last week as they both caused intermittent BSOD. Machines back to running perfectly after downgrade. Feel like these builds are just Beta builds and they are using a staggered release for consumers to be the testers
Jemm 6y ago
Wish I had read this a week ago before ChkDsk toasted my laptop. Data was all still there but it rendered the drive unbootable. Very annoying.
BuildTheRobots 6y ago
I wonder if it's just a case of running chkdsk or if there's something more endemic on the filesystem. My friend woke up two days ago to find out that 500gb of source video and 24 hours of edits from Adobe Premier were mysteriously missing from her computer having only recently copied them there.
bitL 6y ago
This must be an older bug because after an upgrade ~2 months ago an automatic chkdsk run when fastboot was enabled took down all partitions on a SSD where I had Windows 7 installed. Intel system.
dr-detroit 6y ago
Surely you mean chkdsk /r. Oh wait I forgot IT got hijacked by fashion and everyone uses meme tier apple.
pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
What are you people complaining about? The command does exactly what it advertised, it chucks disks.

tripham 6y ago

Nice

markn951 6y ago

Nice

causality0 6y ago

I feel like Windows Update didn't used to be such a shitshow. Was I just not paying close enough attention a decade ago?

stqism 6y ago
This is entirely rosy retrospection, Windows update has always been a nightmare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
joshuaissac 6y ago
Apparently, Microsoft disbanded the Windows Test team and switched from testing on real hardware to virtualised hardware a few years ago.[1] 1. https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/23/former-microsoft-employee-explains-why-bugs-in-windows-updates-increased/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/23/former-microsoft-employee-...
- yuhong 6y ago
  I reported a bug in late 2017 where the Jet 4.0 binaries shipped in Windows 7 updates was incorrectly compiled with /arch:SSE2 enabled.
contingencies 6y ago
I had auto-CHKDSK-on-restart trash an NTFS drive circa early noughties, FWIW. Never stored anything valuable on NTFS after that.
kabdib 6y ago
I help run a service that uses hundreds of Windows boxes, and at any one time two or three of them always seem to have a borked windows update state. Recovery is utter fucking voodoo, and it's usually better to flatten a machine than attempt to repair things. A while back I installed a couple racks of shiny, new, absolutely identical servers (except for MAC addresses) with factory-imaged operating systems, and had two of them fail initial windows updates. Out of the box. How do you even do that?
- gruez 6y ago
  >How do you even do that? flaky hardware?
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Lolz yeah right. It's the hardware's fault that windows install is non deterministic.
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Well, flakey RAM causes loads of intermittent issues.
      - ikiris 6y ago
        So does improper handling of write barriers.
  - aceperry 6y ago
    I hear a variation of this type of thing from windows fans constantly. "It's your hardware's fault." But never Window's fault. My experience is this; most of my computers are dual boot with windows and linux. When I have a problem with windows, I'll boot into linux and the problem goes away. Same hardware.
  - kabdib 6y ago
    It's definitely not flaky hardware.
EvanAnderson 6y ago
Windows 7 was peak desktop Windows. Server 2012 R2 was the peak on the server side. Everything after has been downhill.
- MrStonedOne 6y ago
  Still on Windows 7! Gonna keep using it until it gets rooted, then format and install linux.
  - bserge 6y ago
    I gave up and installed it on some machines. Feels like a damn upgrade! Unified, customizable UI, better performance, better Search, local accounts, smaller footprint :D
  - Multicomp 6y ago
    Hopefully you have extended security updates or use zeropatch. Admittedly I have a test rig running windows posready 2009, aka w7 with esu cooked in from the beginning for contractual reasons. It is a bit like running windows xp embedded b on a normal desktop but seems good enough that I could use it as a daily driver if I wanted to.
- sfgweilr4f 6y ago
  Why'd they add "R2" to the end?
  - userbinator 6y ago
    It's equivalent to Windows 8.1. I guess they didn't want to call it Server 2013 instead.
sq_ 6y ago
Just in the last few weeks, I’ve had two instances where I let Windows update and a whole bunch of system stuff (including Windows Update itself, once) proceeded to break, even through a few reboots. Anecdote, of course, and theoretically I could have hardware issues, but things to seem to be worse than a few years ago.
worble 6y ago
The difference was a decade ago you could simply defer updates when someone reported online it borked their system. Now you're forced into it, like it or not.
DanBC 6y ago
It was reasonably common advice, (around 2000-2004) in the MS Small Business Server groups to tell people to wait for a few days before installing updates, to see if other people had problems. (I'd try to find a few posts but Google searches of Usenet newsgroups is suboptimal). EDIT here's one thread talking about installing some, but not all, patches and updates: https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.backoffice.smallbiz/c/J3uFh6YUvt8/m/1DuVdpr4MS4J https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.backoffice.smal...
Razengan 6y ago
> I feel like Windows Update didn't used to be such a shitshow. Did you cross over from a parallel universe, because Windows Update always was, to use the term of endearment, a shitshow: https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+deleted+documents https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+deleted+docum...

usr1106 6y ago

And I thought destroying file systems was reserved to early versions of btrfs. Well, luckily I have not had a need to touch Windows for 10+ years...

Krisjohn 6y ago
Early versions?

Moeg 6y ago

Nice

game_the0ry 6y ago

This article immediately reminded me of a video I saw a while ago.[1] The long and short - MS basically laid off the staff that tested Windows, and much of it is automated nowadays (I bet the MBA educated executive at MS who was responsible for that got PHAT bonus, at the expense of Windows customers and laid off testing staff, of course). Seems like it happened in 2015, which is why it seems that windows updates have been more unstable in the last couple of years.[2] I really want to like windows, but Apple's M1 and Linux's community make it hard to ever love windows again. Oh well, I guess I will be using Macbooks for the rest of my life. Which, actually, isn't so bad I guess. FWIW - I would say this is unacceptable on microsoft's part. Windows is the default operating system of corporate america, department of defense, etc. Imagine if an update would brick Wells Fargo or the US Army. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kn8_oztsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kn8_oztsA [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/former-microsoft-employee-talks-about-getting-fired-2014-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/former-microsoft-employee-ta...

dixie_land 6y ago
I believe Enterprise and LTS editions are on a different cadence. Probably came from the same MBA: let consumers be lab rats to for big enterprise customers
- donmcronald 6y ago
  That's exactly what it is and it's becoming more common. Java went that way. Windows went that way. CentOS is going that way. Office 365 is even worse because the low paying users get more frequent updates than high paying users. I know because I tracked down a long file name issue for someone and was shocked they were paying for it and still getting to be a beta tester for the "real" customers (huge businesses).
  - gruez 6y ago
    > Office 365 is even worse because the low paying users get more frequent updates than high paying users. AFAIK all office subscribers can change their update channel from monthly (default) to SAC (the one that "high paying users" use). The only difference is that the low paying user has to do it via group policy or registry, whereas the high paying users probably have some sort of enterprise admin tool that allows it to be set at the organization level.

timvisee 6y ago

So, this only occurs when manually invoking ChkDsk with repair, or when Windows decides to do so on bad shutdown? I don't understand how such core things break in Windows.

k_sze 6y ago
I suppose it's because they now "test" using virtualized hardware. So even if chkdsk runs during their tests, it's running on a virtualized disk, not a real SSD. Honestly, I'd pay money so they bring back the testing team and not use all of us non-enterprise users as beta users.
- tck42 6y ago
  Hah - you DO pay money, if you're using Windows. That's the problem.

mrjin 6y ago

Why am I not surprised at all? Heard that M$ has completely removed the testing team by adapting to DevOPs, which makes end users in production environment the white mouse.

bzb6 6y ago

Not delaying updates is like opting in to be a beta tester. I don’t want to sound smug, that was just a word of warning. It’s just a switch to flip and it will save you from many headaches.

k_sze 6y ago

Has Microsoft acknowledged the problem yet? It's still not listed as a known issue on the update page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4592438/windows-10-update-kb4592438 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4592438/windows-10-...

taviso 6y ago
That doesn't mean anything, I ran into a bug after 2004 that meant DPAPI protected secrets would be randomly corrupted. It was an incredibly frustrating bug that cost me a bunch of data. After a few months without progress, I ended up debugging the problem myself and mailing them an analysis. It's still not fixed, and not on that known issues page. I wrote a twitter thread about it here: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1310619801606184960 https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1310619801606184960 There is an office kb article about it, because it turned out it also broke Outlook. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/outlook-and-other-apps-won-t-remember-password-after-windows-updates-1e5a8a80-7112-440a-a18c-be2e50047a75 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/outlook-and-other...
- Roritharr 6y ago
  I really enjoy reading abour your findings, thanks for sharing! I would love to see a how-to for the way you debug these things with IDA, as otherwise I consider myself good at debugging, but have never even tried to peak under the hood of Windows.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  Impressive sleuthing.
k_sze 6y ago
Follow up: Microsoft has now acknowledged the problem and the resolution is documented on the update page.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

known 6y ago

I learned from https://yts.mx/movies/zero-days-2016 https://yts.mx/movies/zero-days-2016 that software that generates big heat can destroy hardware/nuclear plant

ChicagoDave 6y ago

I paused updates until next year. Hopefully this gets resolved.

qayxc 6y ago
Why bother? Do you manually run chkdsk /f for no apparent reason? FWIW, the error doesn't even occur if you use the recommended (and much faster) chkdsk /scan followed by chkdsk /spotfix combo.

sumoboy 6y ago

I ran into what I believe was this issue last week, BSOD stating Stop error NTFS File System. Couldn't boot, startup repair did nothing, and then the worst thing occurred was no restore points were available. Even if system restore is ON it will periodically remove/clean them up which I never knew. Since reading about this issue I was trying to recall my steps of recovery frustration, but I think ended from the startup repair opening up the command prompt and issuing a chkdsk and rebooting a few times initiating automatic repair and finally came back to life.

ycui1986 6y ago

Windows's quality has been downhill quite a lot. For the past more than a year, I struggle with intermittent touchpad scroll failure on multiple laptops (including surface pro, thinkpad, etc). Of course, the only support you can get from searching the web is to update the driver. In this case, I don't think driver is the problem, the windows multi-touch and precision touchpad component has internal bug, the cause scrolling, either touchpad or touchscreen, to loss response every a few minuets for 15s-ish period. Super annoying when you browse web without a mouse. I don't see any solution in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, I cannot just dump all my windows PC and switch to either mac or linux, because I stuck with a few CAD software that only runs on windows.

Razengan 6y ago

If this was macOS this post would be at least a 10x the upvotes in 0.1 the time, full of testimonials from people about to lay their last Mac in a grave. But we’re too desensitized to news about shit like this happening in Windows. Why? I just walked past an ATM with a blue screen of death. Business as usual.

userbinator 6y ago

I'd be very curious to see a deep root-cause-analysis of this, especially because it seems to be SSD-specific and in the "detect if the drive is an SSD and do something slightly different" way, which IMHO is not good behaviour in general as it is leaking the abstraction. I wonder if a VM simulating a virtual SSD hosted on a machine with a regular HDD would be able to reproduce this bug, but then again, recent Windows versions seem to be doing some detection of whether they are running in a VM (and likely altering behaviour due to this too)... what a mess.

withinboredom 6y ago
> I wonder if a VM simulating a virtual SSD hosted on a machine with a regular HDD would be able to reproduce this bug, but then again, recent Windows versions seem to be doing some detection of whether they are running in a VM (and likely altering behaviour due to this too)... what a mess. In that case, running Hyper-v might be a good thing. (Hyper-v is a type 1 hypervisor, meaning your logged in session is running in a vm with dedicated input/video)
diegoperini 6y ago
> "detect if the drive is an SSD and do something slightly different" way, which IMHO is not good behaviour in general as it is leaking the abstraction. I'd argue the opposite. Thin or leaking abstractions are how operating systems and video games harness the full potential of the hardware. Trade-offs are ugly nonetheless.

magoon 6y ago

Looking beyond the obvious problem here, just curious why the admin ran chkdsk /f for no reason, then did it on 6 more systems after observing it caused ntfs failure.

astronautjones 6y ago
"i, also, like to live dangerously"
andreareina 6y ago
https://m.xkcd.com/242/ https://m.xkcd.com/242/ maybe. One hopes the reporter had backups (or was testing on disposable systems) before trying to reproduce a data-loss condition.
- mormegil 6y ago
  XKCD has a mobile version?! You learn something new every day!
  - FriendlyNormie 6y ago
    Who cares? Go suck Randall’s dick you dumb faggot.
- emayljames 6y ago
  I'd say admin has had issues with users hard resetting the PC's and corrupting data, albeit slowly, and so runs chkdsk before it gets real bad.
diegoperini 6y ago
I'd do the same and for me, the reason would probably be trust.
tzs 6y ago
He didn’t. It’s a very slow command. He started it in parallel on several. He only found that there was a problem when the ones started earlier finished and rebooted. By then it was too late for 7 machines but he was able to stop it on the rest.

refracture 6y ago

It's sad to say but I've had more hassle with Windows 10 than any previous (NT based anyway) release. 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 all served me well. 10 has done everything from deleted my files (thanks, October 2018 Update) to DESTROYING my Linux boot loader that was placed on a separate hard drive.. it has no business touching that! I always looked at Linux as not being worth the hassle.. now it's not worth the hassle to use anything else.

bogdan 6y ago
I've had pretty much the same experience as you. Honestly, linux runs faster uses less resources and is infinitely customizable. If anyone's work allows them to make the switch (eg. No hard dependencies on windows) then consider doing it, it is absolutely worth it.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  Lately I've had great experiences with running any windows programs on linux in wine. It seems to have really matured a lot. There are some issues with my tiling wm but other than that zero problems.
  - refracture 6y ago
    Fortunately I've been able to find native alternatives for almost everything. If it wasn't for games and Winamp I'd probably not bother installing wine. (Winamp is the only player I've found that I can get midi files to play to my Roland UM-ONE).
- beowulfey 6y ago
  Particularly with the online versions of Microsoft Office which, while not feature rich, work decently enough to act in lieu of the windows versions.
NullPrefix 6y ago
>Windows 10 [...] DESTROYING my Linux boot loader that was placed on a separate hard drive. Would it be fair to say that Windows extinguished your Linux install? :D

fakedang 6y ago

Yep, this happened to me. Destroyed my entire data on my SSD, and forced me to Linux. Now I've literally ditched Windows, save for MS Office, and am currently using Linux for code, and even recently games, since they seem to run faster in Ubuntu.

trinix912 6y ago
Linux gaming has really come a long way in the recent few years. I only wish macOS would be getting the same support.

sfgweilr4f 6y ago

Overwhelming desire to run this wusa /uninstall /KB:4592438 should I?

qayxc 6y ago
No need. This is just as overblown a reaction. First of all there's no reason to ever run chkdsk/f in the first place if there are no problems with your SSD. Secondly, just never use chkdsk /f - chkdsk /scan is faster, requires no restart and no further action is needed if no problems were found. Problems can be fixed using chkdsk /spotfix otherwise, which doesn't cause any problems.
- emayljames 6y ago
  You wonder why this is not the default behaviour and/or what /f should do.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    Yeah - IMO MS should've deprecated the /f-option years ago and emulate it like that. But that's what you get from disbanding most of your QA-team I guess...
- whoopdedo 6y ago
  But if you ask "how to fix problems in Windows" you're likely to end up reading a guide[1] [2] [3] [4] that suggests "run chkdsk /f". Why? Because the diagnostic tools available to most users are so poor that shotgun debugging is the only option. And /spotfix is too new to have made a dent in 30 years of being told that's the way you do it. (This is the first time I've heard of that option.) The internet is very bad at forgetting. [1] https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-drive-repair.html https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/hard-drive-re... [2] https://fossbytes.com/repair-corrupted-hard-drive-fix-disk/ https://fossbytes.com/repair-corrupted-hard-drive-fix-disk/ [3] https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/20/windows-10-how-to-run-chkdsk-to-find-and-repair-hard-drive-errors-xcxwbt/ https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/20/windows-10-how-to-run-chkds... [4] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update-winpc/how-to-repair-a-hard-drive-connected-to-windows-10/604d1060-4447-48c9-bb76-e4725e859a6c https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

Roritharr 6y ago

I have a very strange SSD related bug at the moment on that Windows version too: I've downloaded my Google Takeout Backup, so 74 4GB sized zips. After I was done extracting them and storing them on Dropbox, I tried to delete the zip files, but my machine froze without so much of a bluescreen. After a hard reboot, I could reproduce the behavior. I can still change the focus of apps, but everything that requires the ssd to do anything is waiting for i/o until the system freezes completely. Unplugging the notebook seems to help, sometimes, but I can't make this work coherently at the moment. Until this post I thought my SSD (Samsung Evo 970 Plus) was faulty, despite working perfectly for everything else.

noja 6y ago
Sounds like an anti-virus problem. What happens if you delete it from the command prompt or powershell?
- Roritharr 6y ago
  powershell and commandprompt sadly create the same result, but thanks for the suggestion.
tryauuum 6y ago
If it happens only on deletion of files, maybe it's something TRIM-related.
stinos 6y ago
Dropbox Might that be your problem, or part of it? Not 100% sure, but whenever I access machines with Dropbox all kinds of weird things happen like there's a ghost in the machines. E.g. deleting a directory managed by Dropbox through explorer consistently results in all its subdirectories and files deleted, but the directory itself remaining there, requiring deleting it again.
- pedro2 6y ago
  That directories reappear empty thingie was an sync engine issue, I believe. It was fixed in latest sync engine update (though this issue was never mentioned, it stopped happening). Regarding the parent poster, on Windows Smart Sync is enabled and, while extremely useful (and better that Onedrive’s equivalent IMO), it did cause issues in the past. Since it seems to work as a file filter, it can cause some issues. That being said, I haven’t seen those in a while.

rkagerer 6y ago

This kind of nonsense is why I'm waiting for Windows 11 before I upgrade.

dis-sys 6y ago

MS didn't change, it is still that MS specialized in producing low quality closed source software.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

anoncow 6y ago

How do I reject a specific update. My system shows KB4592438 as "Pending Install" and the system will restart outside of active hours.

emayljames 6y ago
reboot, uninstall/rollback the update in programs in the settings.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Solution: Bring back windows 7, 2021 edition

keyle 6y ago
That's funny but imagine the success this would have.

animal531 6y ago

People always seriously frown at me when I say I disable Windows updates. I've never had any problem stem from it, and I've bypassed all the homegrown issues.

Koffiepoeder 6y ago
Finding out how to do that is a quest on its own unfortunately.

pbowyer 6y ago

I had chkdsk stop my Windows 10 system from booting 2 weeks ago - so I guess that was a different issue. After an evening of trying to fix it, I restored from a backup. Thank $deity for Macrium Reflect and nightly disk imaging.

roody15 6y ago

Seriously disappointing. I have had to downgrade this on two machines last week as they both caused intermittent BSOD. Machines back to running perfectly after downgrade. Feel like these builds are just Beta builds and they are using a staggered release for consumers to be the testers

Jemm 6y ago

Wish I had read this a week ago before ChkDsk toasted my laptop. Data was all still there but it rendered the drive unbootable. Very annoying.

BuildTheRobots 6y ago

I wonder if it's just a case of running chkdsk or if there's something more endemic on the filesystem. My friend woke up two days ago to find out that 500gb of source video and 24 hours of edits from Adobe Premier were mysteriously missing from her computer having only recently copied them there.

bitL 6y ago

This must be an older bug because after an upgrade ~2 months ago an automatic chkdsk run when fastboot was enabled took down all partitions on a SSD where I had Windows 7 installed. Intel system.

dr-detroit 6y ago

Surely you mean chkdsk /r. Oh wait I forgot IT got hijacked by fashion and everyone uses meme tier apple.

pwdisswordfish4 6y ago

What are you people complaining about? The command does exactly what it advertised, it chucks disks.