Slashdot Mirror
Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Windows 10 Anniversary Update may affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk, OMGUbuntu is reporting, citing several complaints by users. "Broken boot loaders on an update are one thing but losing data, even entire partitions?" asks the author. Microsoft-centric news blog WindowsReport is corroborating on the report, adding that in some cases, the new OS was not able to detect some partitions. It says (edited): Many users are reporting that some of their partitions disappeared after installing the Anniversary Update. Usually, it's the smallest partition that disappears, although we couldn't say for sure whether the partition is deleted or if Windows simply doesn't detect it. Some users are saying that the partition is not allocated, while others can detect it once they install third-party partition management applications.We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when we hear back from them.
Is that like a spork?
... is for loosers (MS)
lost my primary Linux partition which was my main OS. could not recover partition intact, only 120,000 files recovered with photorec. will use VMs in future if I need windows for anything
I cannot imagine a worse combination.
As in, installing Windows after installing Linux will mess with the boot loader.
Everyone running a dual boot system should already be aware of this since the recommendation is always to install Linux second.
New major updates to Windows 10 are basically entirely new operating systems. They just make the process more transparent these days.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
While I imagine I'll have to bite the bullet on my sole Win 10 machine eventually and download the anniversary edition, I intentionally set it to "Metered Connection" for exactly this reason. I like to let major updates hit and assess the impact for a few days before taking the plunge, and currently telling Windows you're on a metered connection is the only way to get it to not automatically download updates. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit longer than I thought - would not appreciate my Linux partition going up in smoke.
smallest partition as in efi / dell utils type ones?
Will f* an apple system in boot camp?
-Microsoft.
This precisely the behavior a predatory monopolist is expected to have.
It's ok, The EULA will protect Microsoft for deleting malware (to its bottom line) like other operating systems.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Nice to see that MS still work the way they always have. Why change a working concept?
I missed the free Windows 10 update and all the fun Windows 10 users are having.
Dang it!
Windows 10 sucks, this whole community agrees. Stop posting stories on windows 10. Stop.
It's not a "bug", or a "glitch", or even a "oops". For all its newfound x-plat openness, Microsoft still doesn't give a shit. You don't even have to scratch the surface a little bit to see this.
Dual boot a machine that YOU OWN?? We don't support that. Are we multi-platform? Yes, we support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. Those are your multiple platforms.
BTW this isn't the first Windows update in history to bork up disc partitions.
MS can pull an t-mobile and have isp make update cap and roaming free?
This was my problem with Windows 10 when I installed it a few months ago. It failed to do some update, so wanted to repair itself, but every time it tried it was trying to restore itself on the EFI partition, not the actual windows partition. Thankfully at that point I still had grub installed with the boot sector of one of my disks intact, so was able to boot into Linux via legacy option, but after many failed attempts to boot windows 10 and having it trash my EFI partition while trying to restore, I gave up and haven't booted windows since. No loss though, I only ever booted it up to do updates in case one day I ever actually needed to do another cross platform build.
being anal helps.
"We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when we hear back from them."
In other words, "We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when they tell us to fuck off and stop complaining."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Windows isn't done until Lotus doesn't run.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I suggest using TOR for everything except games. If it weren't for games I would just uninstall Windows, but it was included on my new pc.
What we need are all games on Linux and just erase Windows totally. It is a piece of shit and everybody says it spies on everything including keystrokes. Microsoft is for sure american government.
I wonder how long until some automatic Windows 10 update will disable altering any BIOS settings via some rootkit for "security" reasons. I mean, if they're not going to get hit with antitrust violations or charges of abusing their customers for all of the things they've done already (force Windows 10 updates on Win7/8. 1 users, telemetry that deceptively appears to be able to be turned off but really can't, no unsigned drivers allowed, uploading BitLocker keys to their servers, remove features during routine updates, uninstall programs during routine updates, ever-growing built-in advertisements, etc.), then they can pretty much just do anything they like, including preventing other operating systems from booting (which, I add, is now the case both on Windows RT tablets and Windows 10 phones).
Well, now we are seeing where Microsoft's QA does not focus their attention. Why wouldn't Microsoft's QA test for this scenario? Possibly because Microsoft does not care, and does not want, other OS's on its hard disk in a dual-boot scenario?
Lost your data because of this? Do not have a backup? Serves you right! Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
Lesson: Don't use Windows, use GNU/Linux instead.
is your friend.
I hope this isn't like the last major update (1511?) where it treats it as a reinstall of everything.
1) Ran update - it downloaded 3GB of stuff, ran for a while and stalled at 0% complete ... back into (un-updated) original Windows.
2) Restarted PC and update - ran for a long time (unattended) and rebooted
3) Repeat above (update downloaded 3GB AGAIN) - but watched. After 2nd reboot showed (briefly) blue screen complaining about driver issue (using stock Dell drivers) and then automatically rolled back to original Windows 10, & rebooted
4) Updated ALL Dell drivers from Dell site.
5) Ran update again and yes again it downloaded 3GB of stuff and again failed with same blue screen.
I think I'll wait a few weeks (months?) till MS (hopefully) FIXES their update.
[Insert pithy quote here]
If they would only develop games so they supported Linux too, I could totally get rid of Microsoft's malware off my PC forever.
If you are surprised by this, then you have not been watching the direction MS has been going with Windows 10. You violated Microsofts trust when you installed some other OS on the computer they have been allowing you to use. It is your own fault if you lost data in the process. Moral of this story, don't try to use another OS on one of Microsofts computers.
Makes me glad that I absolutely refuse to run Windows 10. As a matter of fact, the only Windows install I still have is Windows 7 in a virtual machine for the little Windows Development work I still do. Even my wife runs Linux on her laptop and loves it.
I actually had the issue of Windows 10 deleting its OWN partitions. computer started running funny, then it BSODed and then would only boot to a flashing cursor. Booted into repair only to find that my system drive was reporting as 100% available. not even the Windows 10 system partitions were present. nothing could read any semblance of a partition table from the drive to recover any of my data.
jumpers can get around that
Also - It installs Cortana and fully enables it, no surprise there, but if you go into all of the privacy settings it has changed the settings for items like writing monitor to "help Microsoft track how you type". Yeah they need to know that all right... as well as several other items I found had been reverted back to the non private settings. One, the diagnostic phone home, is again on and takes a registry hack to turn it back off again.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
When you insert an USB drive with a partition not recognized by Windows 7, for example a Linux live USB drive, or a driver for LAN-boot, Windows immediately tells you the drive needs to be formatted, with just an [ok] button before your data is gone. In most cases the format to FAT32 fails as well, since Windows doesn't know how to use partition tables and just cobbles something together that doesn’t even work with the Windows OS that formatted the drive.
Win 10 has had so much bad press that I never got round to even trying it on a sacrificial machine.
I use Win 7 on a desktop for stuff that needs Windows, and Slackware otherwise.
My wife has Win 8-and-a-bit on her notebook/tablet thingummy and sees no reason to change UI again.
In all seriousness, is there actually any real reason to use Win 10? Is it actually so much better than Win 7 or (for those who like it) Win 8.1?
No point reaching out - you're going to have to contact them. Perhaps you can phone them or email them?
I bought a 2tb Utania drive, and though recognized by the laptop, other OS's was not recognized as supported by Windows 10. This is prior to the Anniversary edition.
I don't know of any way to do manual partitioning either. I suspect they went nuts on owning the MBR or such and have just cast everyone else on any given hardware over the side.
run bar --> services.msc
disable windows update
No more virus!
More games than I can handle, really. All full Linux ports. I do have Windows, but haven't booted it to play games in at least a couple months now.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There have been at least two Windows 7 updates I've had to temporarily disable Grub for, otherwise they fail.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Now you have to sacrifice a penguin.
What better way to celebrate the anniversary edition than with another variation of the year-long "screw you, customer" theme?
Back in the late 1990's I was dual booting Windows and Linux. A PC magazine had included a CD with an early version Red Hat Linux and ran a series of articles on the strange OS. Linux had no problems dealing with the Windows partitions.
Move forward a bit to Windows XP and more dual booting.Commercial and free partition managers support Linux partitions. Windows would still screw with Linux partition, particularly when installing Windows, so having keeping each OS on a separate physical HDD became critical. That way you could unplug the Linux drive to protect it from MS incompetence. Amusingly, Linux could mount Windows partitions to transfer files over and I was able to install a driver on Windows that allowed Windows to mount Linux partitions, however, Windows XP had no native support for non-windows partitions. Linux proves to be more capable in key area than Windows but I'm still using WInXP as my main OS.
Jump forward to Windows 7 and Linux dual booting. The situation has improved a bit because you could technically let Win7 manage booting mulitple OS but it still screws with Linux partitions and has no native support for Linux partition types. Linux still does a better job and I can go months without booting into Windows anyway. More commercial software supports Linux, including games, and the open source applications available have greatly improved to the point of being better than MS products. I really hated the ribbon interface nonsense in MS Office because it reduced my productivity, it was nearly a stupid as having some animated paperclip jumping around on your screen while you're trying to work...
Windows 8 appears and I decided than if I'm ever forced to replace Win7 I'll just give up on dual booting and just stick with Linux full time. Windows 10 brings spyware and adware built into the OS, setting a new low for MS and having some very surprising side effects; friends, family and people barely know are wanting to know about Linux and how they can get away from Windows 10. There has never been a version of Windows that happily coexists with another OS, why would anyone be surprised that Win10 is breaking Linux dual boots? It is either intentionally evil or supreme incompetence; MS has a history of both.
Accidentally deleting PARTITIONS?!! IN 20 FUCKING 16?
This is some windows 3 level fuckery...
It also broke a friend's ability to read his external hard drive.
Single, basic bitches NTFS partition. Perfectly fine in Windows 7. Perfectly fine in Windows 10 before the rapeiversary update. Now inaccessible, showing as raw in disk management, and Windows is begging to format it.
Worse than the "lol that's a perfectly fine external drive you've plugged in and it works fine, but u wanna scan and fix anyway?" shit because the data is actually inaccessible on Windows 10.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Fix all your shit.
This is Microsoft's revenge for seeing another operating system on the side during your anniversary!
Win 10 ain't done 'til Linux won't run!"
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"Microsoft is fucking over anyone who puts another OS on their computer.
Well, it IS Microsoft's computer, isn't it?
I gave up on windows 7 years ago and have never looked back.
Any word on Boot Camp installations of Windows 10 and this update?
I tried to upgrade yesterday, my machine has Windows 10 Enterprise and Ubuntu 16.04 on two separate disks. The machine rebooted while updating but would get stuck trying to install (once at 19%, the next time at 0%). To recover I had to power off via the power button and when booting into Windows again it would recover to a previous restore point automatically. Ubuntu stayed intact. After checking for the update again Microsoft have removed the option so it no longer appears as an available update, presumably until they either fix it or else as part of a staggered update mechanism.
stuff like this is why i never install two different OS types on one disk. one physical disk per OS family.
Are we sure this isn't related to the widespread FOSSHUB infection by an MBR virus (Classic Shell, Audacity)? That seemed to happen at the exact same time as the Anniversary update and people who first posted about the update borking their drives first claimed it was Win10 before realizing it was the infected executable. From the article it wasn't absolutely clear that this only affected Linux partitions.
Any word on how it works on a Mac with bootcamp? I did the update earlier and am concerned about the OSX side. I don't really have resources to fix something like this while deployed. I'm primarily using the Windows boot anyway for Steam (I am Setsuna!), but don't want to lose my Mac interface completely for the next 5+ months.
My recent attempt to try Ubuntu failed because of dual-booting problems. I'm seriously considering getting a pure Linux box, maybe from System 76 or some other Linux place, and keeping it and Windows completely separate, so MS can't fsck with the good stuff.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I haven't looked, but I'm pretty sure the EULA has nothing to say forbidding dispute resolution via the means of application of a RPG to the Redmond campus.
If you have an XP install CD and care to waste the time, here's a simple thing:
Install XP on a clean drive, have it make a new partition about 1/4 the drive size and install into that. Then after the install is done and XP is runnin, have it create create 3 more partitions each about 1/3 the remaining size so the entire drive is used with 4 partitions and the OS is on the 1st. Verify that all is well. Then boot a linux disk and kill the 1st partition (just re-code it to be a linux or BSD partition) and then try a fresh XP install onto that known-good drive that has 1 Linux or BSD partition and 3 NTFS partitions. Tell win XP to delete the 1st partition (the Linux or BSD one) and create a new parrtition in that vacant space and install into it. XP will screw this up. It will create multiple primary partitions in the empty space and re-map the NFFS parts to be non-primary, or it will create a small partition in the empty space and leave some of the space unusable, or some other junk. It will NOT just create a new partition perfectly into the space that previously held exactly such an XP partition. The behaviour seemed to vary by SP and/or system hardware(?) but was never rational and always bad.
These sorts of partition issues, which obviously can affect multi-boot situations, are not just bugs; it would be easiest to simply do the right thing, and the hardware and software are clearly capable of doing the right thing as evidenced by the proper behaviour when a clean system w/o preexisting partitions is installed (in the example I cited, all that would be needed is to read the boot sector,patch the code#, re-write the boot sector, and then fromat the partition as usual). I have long suspected that all the Windows partition games are related to some other functionality in the codebase.
I put in the update and windows could not find the windows partition on reboot. Had to do a fresh install, Many pots of coffee and 13 hours later here I am wishing I had installed Fedora.
What ISP would even consider doing that these days? They look at the multiple GB being downloaded and the data caps being blown and rub their corporate hands together and PROFIT!
You don't have to install Windows Binary Edition (Windows 10) to find out the hard way.
Go celebrate some other anniversary. Do something useful. No, not the Let's shutdown Rotten Tomaters petition; what are you, blonde??
Microsoft has a utility to repair core OS files.
Just look up "Using System File Checker (SFC) To Fix Issues"
A common problem with Windows 10 is the start menu will stop opening. This is caused by Windows 10 corrupting its core OS files. (Please note: it is Windows 10 corrupting the core files, not any other program) The exact case(s) for when this happens is not known. It is suspected that Windows Update is one of the main causes of this problem.
I personally ran into this on my Surface Pro 3. The easy way of fixing this is to use SFC with Windows Update to download the needed files. The only problem is that most people that run into this problem also have their Windows Update files corrupted. SFC can be used without Windows Update, but by that point it was easier for me to do a Windows Refresh and just re-install all my Win32 applications and fix up my settings. A refresh on my main machine would be almost unthinkable because of how much time it would take to rebuild.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
What about on Apple computers? Nuking OSX would be extra bad form.
Last Friday, after one too many "Microsoft disabled X" and "Microsoft changed Y", I have moved my two Windows 10 Pro licenses from the hardware to virtual machines. They can bork themselves all they want, the worst it would happen I have to scp the backup back and untar it. This is getting too far...
Unless you absolutely have to, do _not_ install Linux and Windows on the same physical hard drive. For many purposes (e.g. basic coding and web stuff) a lightweight Linux distro will run just fine off a USB memory stick (I use Ultra Fit's in either the 32GB or 64GB size). Then, if you are buying a laptop and you're a techie, get something where it is trivially easy to swap out either the hard drive (i.e. not Asus crap where you have to remove the keyboard to get at the hard drive), or the optical drive. For example, boot Windows of one hard drive, and stick another in the optical drive bay. If you have a desktop, you have room for more than one physical drive. This also means that, during critical stuff like OS installs, you can physically disconnect your Linux drive so that Windows cannot get at it. My favourite example of Redmond silliness involved Windows 2000 appearing to enumerate partitions one way in the partitioning part of setup, and another way for the formatting part. Basically, on my dual boot drive, Windows 2000 setup ended up formatting the wrong partition. I say it had cocked up when I noticed the size of the partition it was formatting: my shared data drive. By the time I had stopped the process, of course, the FATs were already overwritten.
John_Chalisque
I blithely updated my windows 10 / Mint 17.3 dual boot system and it's running fine. It did have a couple of attempts at downloading the Windows files and rebooted several times back into linux because that is the default OS. I just rebooted manually into Windows each time and it kept on trucking until successful completion.
I assume I am being rewarded for clean living.
run it in a virtual machine if you need it
if you dont, dont run it at all
run it on a different hd (until the decide to format the other hdds they see on the system when updating, which considering its microshit, might happen)
Got a new laptop with 10 a few months ago and weighed keeping it on a separate partition instead of killing it off entirely before installing Mint as my main OS.
Thank fuck I nuked that shit for good while I had the chance.
Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice
In this case - I think I'll assume both. This had to be caught by internal test, reported, and intentionally ignored.
EDIT: Captcha - flunked. How appropriate.
brutal rape follows.
It was bad enough in the 4.x days when they would even tell you they were messing with the boot and told you to edit it manually but after more than 10 years their developers still can't do filesystem management during install? And why does anyone still trust them for any of their software needs?
Windows deleted its own partition so I couldn't boot at morning. Windows boot loader just informed something that "device cannot be found, use recovery media". Of course recovery media didn't work either. I first thought some easy file corruption but then checked my disk statuses and my ssd where windows was, was lost all partitions. windows boot loader was also on another disk where it started on boot up.
even if M$ didn't do it for strictly profit/lockin related purposes, the majority of governments (US, 5 eye allies and many EU states included) get wood or wet thinging of the children, gun control, 'the right kind of censorship', or just nosing into their friends and family's business thanks to their privileged position in the government, and newly mandated digital oversight access.
The only way this shit will be stopped is if enough people pony up the cash for truly open platforms (hardware, firmware, and software), audited for backdoors, and spread cheapy and broadly enough to be impossible to stamp out, or outrun in performance (this last bit is extremely important, as post 775/AM3 systems, GPUs, and peripheral hardware show.) This goes double for cell phones, which have become an even greater liability due to the current architectures and lack of seperatation between network access, device initialization, and protection of memory for the device owner.) If the current situation lasts much longer, outside of wealthy criminals the average nerd will have no way to escape and the average citizen will be obliviously living a life that would make some current and former generations of slaves shudder in disgust and revulsion at.
This is the first Windows update that does something really useful.
I dual boot Windows XP and Linux, and everything is fine.
It sounds like there may be a war on proprietary recovery partitions used by some of the OEM setups and taking out dual boot capability as collateral damage.
Should we be chanting "One OS to rule them all. One OS to bring them all. And in the darkness bind them."
I've been very miffed since I found out the activation for Windows 7 has been broken. If you try to re-load an OEM copy of Windows 7 after changing a hard drive; you get a failed activation. When you wade through the phone activation attempt; you are told to buy a new COA as you obviously have a pirate COA as it was installed previously. You then get transferred to the Microsoft Store to buy a new COA by somone with a musical accent from somewhere in the Indian sub continent. You then spend a half hour to an hour and a half of listening to a recording telling you to go buy Windows 10 from the Microsoft Website before you are disconnected. I'm persistent, I went through the dance three times with the exact same results before I concluded that Microsoft intentionally has broken the ability to re-install Windows 7 on legacy hardware. (A ten year old data collection unit that needs proprietary software that WILL NOT work on Windows 10)
NRRPT/RCT
While I am no stranger to Windows "accidentally" trashing Linux installs, this may be something different. Given the partition affected is usually the smallest on the drive, it may be targeting Vendor "Recovery" partitions. That way people with Win10 upgrade remorse cannot restore their prior Win7 or Win8 OS.
I had a Corsair SSD give up the ghost in a spectacular way once.
It BSOD'ed Windows 7 and when I tried to look at the partitions on an Ubuntu boot disc it was empty and all zeroes.
Turned out it was the drive's fault. Returned it and they sent me a new one (probably with a firmware update to fix the bug).
I think it's long past time we call Mafia$oft's Windows 10 release what it is: Criminal Vandalism (on a massive scale). From vandalizing peoples personal computer environments with forced Windows 10 installations, to this latest intentional vandalism scam of deleting partitions, the criminal intent of Mafia$oft is clear.
I had the same issue after updating windows 10. dual boot (grub) is being skipped.
but I was able to load my Linux (Ubuntu) doing these steps .. make sure you choose the first one. if broke try the second.
from windows 10
go start menu > settings > update & security > Recovery > Advanced start up > restart now
this will restart your computer into windows boot manager will load
a blue screen will come up saying " choose an option:
click choose a device
then it will load a selection of bootable devices and/or partitions and there I saw Ubuntu
after that Grub started and I started Ubuntu and I was able to see my stuff still there!
Hope this works for you folks...
Still I may also consider reinstall ubuntu/linux after this update since it seems like a fresh windows install.
also consider entering the recovery mode when restarting and see if these options come up..that would save some time rather entering windows to get to recovery..
Cheers!!!
Abraham
I just wen across the issue by updating windows 10 on a dual boot win/linux (ubuntu 16.04) dell laptop.
The problem is that during the update windows creates a 500Mb backup partition that breaks grub installation.
To restore the configuration it is sufficient to re-install grub (on Ubuntu with boot-repair).
regards,
MrClick