Latest Windows 10 Update Has Yet Another File-Managing Issue (gizmodo.com.au)

An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo: When it was discovered earlier this month that the 1809 build of Windows 10 was deleting user files just because, Microsoft halted the update until the problem was fixed. Shame, then, that another not-as-bad-but-still-bad file overwriting bug has now reared its head. in 1809, overwriting files by extracting from an archive using File Explorer doesn't result in an overwrite prompt dialogue and also doesn't replace any files at all; it just fails silently. There are also some reports that it did overwrite items, but did so silently without asking.
Ars Technica speculates that there's a larger program with Microsoft's testing process: [M]any of the preview builds had a bug wherein deleting a directory that was synced to OneDrive crashed the machine. Not only was this bug integrated into the Windows code, it was allowed to ship to end users. This tells us some fundamental things about how Windows is being developed. Either tests do not exist at all for this code (and I've been told that yes, it's permitted to integrate code without tests, though I would hope this isn't the norm), or test failures are being regarded as acceptable, non-blocking issues, and developers are being allowed to integrate code that they know doesn't work properly...

Microsoft's new development process has, proportionately, a greater amount of time spent writing new features, and a reduced amount of time stabilizing and fixing those features. That would be fine if the quality of the features were higher to start with, with the testing infrastructure to support it and higher standards before new code was integrated. But the experience with Windows 10 thus far is that Microsoft hasn't developed the processes and systems needed to sustain this new approach.

Comments

Worst insult for a software developer

[iTrawl]

Wow, that's Microsoft quality!

Re:Worst insult for a software developer

[lgw]

Wow, that's Microsoft quality!

It's almost as if they fired their entire QA department in 2014. How that ever got to be a fad, I don't know.

Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[blahplusplus]

... computing. To turn PC's into locked down devices like phones. The masses are too stupid to understand what is happening and keep feeding all these companies money. Watching PC software freedom and games being literally stolen and turned into "services" because the average person on our planet is fucking chimp level intelligence is pretty fucking disgusting.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[Anonymous Coward]

... computing. To turn PC's into locked down devices like phones. The masses are too stupid to understand what is happening and keep feeding all these companies money.

Wrong. The stupid masses now understand how stupid they really are, and buy tablets and smartphones instead of computers, which is why they're willing to now spend over $1000 on these "cheaper" devices. They already operate locked down devices, just like they drive locked down cars. Here's a little hint as to why; They don't want to maintain this shit, because they don't know how and don't want to learn. YOU pay good money to go visit a dentist at least once a year for the same damn reason; you don't have the expertise or the tools to maintain your teeth or do maintenance on them.

What you're quick to call the "stupid" masses ends up being the 90% of society who is NOT inclined to take up IT as a part-time hobby to maintain complex systems. The masses want shit that "just works" when they turn it on, even if that means they have less control and less functionality.

Watching PC software freedom and games being literally stolen and turned into "services" because the average person on our planet is fucking chimp level intelligence is pretty fucking disgusting.

And the reason software is turning into services is because it creates perpetual revenue streams. Greed N. Corruption is the CEO of US Capitalism, Inc. so don't be so stupidly surprised when greed is prioritized over cutting the customer a break.

But hey, if you really hate this shit, then go roll your own. There's always FOSS. Go for it instead of sitting on your ass bitching about it. You're asking the average idiot to buy a fully functional computer and learn to maintain it properly, so me asking you to go create your own OS is certainly fair.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's always FOSS. Go for it instead of sitting on your ass bitching about it."

That's a highly questionable claim. You can still do that, but the day Microsoft feels they can get away with it, "secure boot" will, with 100% certainty become mandatory at least on consumer class gear, no keys will be handed out, and then FOSS is absolutely fucked.

They are so close, all they have to do is to tell the OEM vendors that they will not be certified as Windows compatible if they allow you to disable it, and *poof*, there's FOSS gone. It's already started on some laptops.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[Sique]

And the reason software is turning into services is because it creates perpetual revenue streams.

Actually, you got it backwards. Patches and updates have been included in the price of software from the very beginning. What we had until recently was the requirement to pay our subscription fee for the software all upfront. But from a fiscal point of view, Software was always a subscription, as long as you got your patches and updates. You just never got the bill split up into the initial payment for the software and the subsequent payment for the software assurance subscription, as you had to pay for it all at once.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you got it backwards. Patches and updates have been included in the price of software from the very beginning. What we had until recently was the requirement to pay our subscription fee for the software all upfront. But from a fiscal point of view, Software was always a subscription, as long as you got your patches and updates. You just never got the bill split up into the initial payment for the software and the subsequent payment for the software assurance subscription, as you had to pay for it all at once.

Disagree.

The old model - physical media purchases pre-widespread-availability-of-broadband - meant that things had to work because distributing a patch on CD-ROM or a box of floppies was expensive. That meant that showstoppers/dealbreaking/dataloss bugs were expensive. That meant that software required QA.

It also meant that things, once you got them to work, tended to keep working. It meant that tools like Photoshop (up to CS6, I guess, which was when they broke from purchase to Services as a Substitute for Software) had to offer upgrades that actually justified their prices. If Photoshop 7 from 2002 fills your needs (perhaps you're just doing some light retouching and don't need all the features added since then), the $600 piece of software that you purchased still works.

Let's try it your way - $10/month, $120/y - 16 years later I'm up to $2000 and still paying. I could have repurchased a new version three times over for that time period (say, CS6) and still come out ahead.

And let's look at the updates -- if we were having this discussion about Microsoft Word, maybe I'd get off the Office Upgrade Train when The Ribbon came out, and if we were having this discussion about Windows, maybe I'd get off the Windows Upgrade Train when Win8-for-Touch-Devices-Only or Win10-for-Beta-Testers-Only came out.

Some upgrades are actually downgrades. If you're paying for a Service as a Substitute for Software, you're stuck with the downgrades or it all stops working. If you have locally-hosted software on your machine, you have the option to say "no" when quality declines below what you consider acceptable.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[fuzznutz]

Technically, anything you buy which wears out is a subscription (rent).

The very first line of your entire premise is completely wrong. You cannot resale anything you rent. You can discontinue a rental at any time and you will have nothing left to show for your investment. You cannot pass of amortization as some sort of bogus rental strategy. They aren't even close.

If you buy a washing machine for $500, which dies after 5 years (on average) and needs to be replaced with a new $500 washing machine, you are paying $100/year for the washing machine.

I don't know where you've been buying washing machines, but I'd be furious if I spent $500 on a washer only to have to throw it away (no residual value) after five years. I have never in my life seen any washer fail catastrophically in five years - or less since you assert this is an average. A washer is considered a durable good.

I got my current washer used - it came with the house - eight years ago. I spent a grand total of $3.00 on maintenance to replace a set of plastic ratcheting dogs in that eight years My previous washer I bought new and left it at the old house when I sold after six years of service.

If you buy a car (new or used) for $20k, use it for 5 years, and sell it for $10k, your car ownership is basically the same as renting for $2k/year.

No it is not. The cost may be the same but the concept is drastically different. If you rent a car, or lease, YOU DO NOT OWN THE CAR. If you scratch the paint, tear the upholstery, or just decide to replace the horn with one that plays La Cucaracha, you had better have your name on the title. If you rent or lease, you are using someone else's property and are expected to return it in the same condition you took it. You are looking at this as a simple dollars and sense proposition and ignoring all the other rights that come with ownership. THIS IS WHAT THE GP WAS SAYING!

Software is the exception however. Software doesn't wear out.

Software is not an exception. The same rules apply. Just because tangible goods depreciate does not mean software does not either. TurboTax 2009 will not suffice for tax year 2018 but works just as well as it did when new. The only difference is that software does not (generally) become unsuitable for purpose during that time frame you own it due to wear and tear. Photoshop 1.0 does not suddenly stop working just because it's outdated.

Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription prices are actually pretty reasonable [adobe.com].

For some values of "reasonable". If it is your intention to run on the upgrade treadmill, then yes, it's reasonable. If you expect to keep a software purchase and use it for a long time because it works for your purpose and you do not need to arbitrarily upgrade, then no, it is unreasonable. The problem is that it is no longer an option. Businesses like it because they can expense rentals. They do not like to track assets and depreciate them. Home users are not so fond of adding yet another monthly bill to the already long list.

Except now that I do much less photography, the existing one-time-purchase copies of Photoshop and Lightroom I've still got are more than pulling their weight since I can still run them without needing to pay a subscription fee

And right here you undermine the credibility of your entire post by admitting that unless you have a desire for the latest new shiny, a purchase is a better deal.

I don't consider a subscription model valid for an OS though. The OS should work as long as the hardware works, because the two are useless without each other.

That little problem is already covered. Microsoft drops support for old hardware continuously. Now your hardware AND software are useless.

Re:Windows 10 is a big step towards locked down...

[fuzznutz]

One of the killer features of software rental is that everyone has the same version. This makes the software actually worth more IMO.

Not sure if you're trolling or just stupid... A killer feature for who?

What about people who refused to upgrade Office because they hated the ribbon? Should they have just sucked it up and kept paying for something they didn't want and didn't like? How is it a killer feature when the "current" version drops the functionality you depend upon?

May have happened with the previous update

[ytene]

During the April update this year, I had 3 W10 installations to get through the process. None of them worked, although one in particular went spectacularly wrong and wiped out files on the system's hidden boot partition, basically resulting in the system attempting to reboot and crashing out. There was no choice left but to perform a clean installation, then let that fresh image update.

The broken process left all sorts of log and event files scattered across my SSD and I provided them to MS, who were unable to determine the cause.

The really interesting thing for me is that the image that ate itself happens to run on the same hardware as another W10 image. I have 2 licensed copies of Windows and I use a "drive bay" to swap different bootable drives in to the same hardware. So when I upgraded the "other" image on the same platform, I was surprised to see the upgrade generate a completely different set of errors.

The biggest configuration difference between these two builds is that I use one for gaming and one for office work. Although both had the latest nVidia drivers on board, the gaming build used nVidia desktop "Surround" to create a single workspace of 5760x1200, whilst the office build just treated the display space as 3 connected monitors.

The most frustrating thing is that the feedback I was getting from the triage team who helped me (they were all volunteers and they were all excellent) was that MS had been shipping code they knew to have multiple bugs and issues in it. The problem they were having in triage was that there were *so many* bugs, it was proving next to impossible to narrow down to a specific fault.

Nadella might have turned around Microsoft's economic slide into oblivion, but his governance of the technical robustness of his company's products is, sadly, non-existent. Worse for me, both of these W10 licenses were for new-build hardware; I had no older licenses that I could grandfather in, so I'm out of pocket over £400 and have 2 systems [one box] that I simply don't trust to work reliably when MS push updates. If it were a case of "free but buggy or purchased but robust", I'd take "purchased but robust" every time. What I've actually got is "purchased but buggy". The most offensive thing is: Microsoft's actions - their continued pushing of buggy code, when there are NO COMMERCIAL DRIVERS FOR DOING SO is just plain offensive.

I wish they would just stop. Produce zero new features until ALL the bugs are squashed.

There's a reason I'm writing this post whilst running Mint Linux - and it's because I'm not trusting Windows at the moment. If I don't need to go back to Windows, I won't. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the triage volunteers over there, but Microsoft the company really don't care. That stinks.

Re:May have happened with the previous update

[uffe_nordholm]

I think you are wrong about the "Microsoft the company really don't care" bit: Microsoft do care. In fact, I think they care very much. The thing is that they don't care about you, the end user, they only care about themselves and their profits. To Microsoft you are just a source of money, and once you have payed your money and they can't get you to pay more, they have no interest in you what so ever; they will spend the time and energy they could have spent on helping you on finding another customer to loot for money, or another way to make customers pay more money.

Re:May have happened with the previous update

[Tough Love]

During the April update this year, I had 3 W10 installations to get through the process. None of them worked, although one in particular went spectacularly wrong and wiped out files on the system's hidden boot partition, basically resulting in the system attempting to reboot and crashing out. There was no choice left but to perform a clean installation, then let that fresh image update.

In all my years of using Linux, 20 now, I have never once been forced to do a reinstall. I actually have one system that was continuously upgraded from Debian potato in 2003 through to Stretch today and is still running, having worked its way through three or four hard disks, one of which was a head crash salvaged by ddrescue. Some of the version upgrades were a little exciting in the old days in the sense that manual intervention was sometimes required even to the point of hand editing apt db files. It pretty much just automagically worked for the last dozen years or so, e.g., edit sources.list from Stretch to Buster, apt update then apt dist-upgrade.

I guess Windows users have a hard time imagining anything so reliable. BTW, the longest uptime for that server was about three years at one point. And it was 32 bit all that time, still is. Finally migrated all the services to a NUC running 64 bit Debian, but that old system, a Pentium M, is still running as a storage backup server. It runs KDE by the way, for the rare occasions I hook a monitor to it. Works perfectly well, that's something for the Gnome trolls to meditate on. Today, that machine is probably less powerful than my thermostat.

Just use LTSB

[leathered]

If you have to use Windows 10, use the LTSB version. No Windows Store, no Edge, no Cortana, no platform updates, security updates only with minimal telemetry.

Microsoft don't want you to know about LTSB and do their best to hide its existence, but it's really what Windows 10 Pro should have been.

Re:Just use LTSB

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also not capable of running Visual Studio 2017 while even Windows 7 can. No deal.

The ads are the product with a free OS

[AHuxley]

The end users are the people paying to place ads.

A larger systemic issue, already in Win 10 beta

[Anonymous Coward]

These problems have existed for well over 2 years now. Back in the beginning it was that files would appear again after having been deleted, or the trashcan not emptying.

Just a few months ago, one day after reinstalling Windows 10, all apps and programs installed in the last day disappeared, with no notice or any kind of error being reported.

These things shouldn't happen by themselves, so I suspect there's a lot more control under the hood for Microsoft, to literally remove, add, or edit your files or documents, and now a larger systemic issue makes this functionality fail and people see their files go missing.

If you are doing any kind of crucial or sensitive work, you would do well in consider switching away from Windows. Not just because files could go missing, but because of how seemingly Microsoft has access to your sensitive files.

Re:Windows is no longer a real operating system

[sheramil]

Who cares that your local data gets turned into mulch. It will all just be appy app apps in the cloud soon.

From the original post:

"... a bug wherein deleting a directory that was synced to OneDrive crashed the machine.

The Cloud was the problem here. One of the reasons I never use it.

Guess I'm sticking with Win8.1 and classic shell

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I've been running Win 8.1 with classic shell and I haven't had any of these problems, probably because they haven't produced a major update since I originally installed it. Guess I'll stick with it a bit longer. (Classic shell makes 8.1 a decent OS.)

Re:Guess I'm sticking with Win8.1 and classic shel

[Ol Olsoc]

I'd be concerned that nainstream status for Windows 8 ended on January 1, 2018. While you can get extended support for years longer, I'd not expect mainstream software releases to be thoroughly tested or necessarily compatible with it.

Not getting updates from Windows is a security plus.

Seriously, I have had more problems with machines being rendered malfunctioning, files deleted, drivers renamed on Windows 10 than I have had in my entire life.

Windows 10 updates are a worse virus than any blackhat virus.

Sorry, you're stuck in the past

[Kjella]

Worst insult for a software developer: Wow, that's Microsoft quality!

Is it the 90s again? I used win2k/xp in the naughties, win7 for most of this decade, at work they're all Microsoft with Windows/Outlook/Office + SQL Server and honestly the code is quite okay. The big issues are usually design choices like UAC, the ribbon, UWP, telemetry, ads etc. though of course they can have a bad bug. So can Linux and open source. In fact most project except the kernel seem chronically understaffed and whenever there is a bad bug it turns out there's just a handful of volunteers making due or sometimes even just a one man band.

"new development process"?

[acroyear]

reads to me like nothing has changed in their processes for more than 30 years.

Unfettered piece of manure

[Ol Olsoc]

My good laptop that I use for several audio applications stopped functioning after this update.

For reasons unknown, Windows in it's infinite wisdom, went through all of the audio drivers, and renamed them the with one of the driver's name, with a number appended to them. Then after deleting and reinstalling the drivers, continued to rename them incorrectly

The problem is so whacked that the company I bought the equipment and software from did a Teamviewer session with me to show how to fix the problem. Explaining would have taken all day.

Which I suspect is fixing it until the next update. In the meantime, I'm going through the computer to see what else they screwed up.

This is not a matter of running in VMs, or performing arcane tricks to disable updates.

This is a matter of a company so incompetent that their updates are an attack upon it's customers. Attacks so nasty that malicious virus writers must be in awe.

Where an old operating system like W7 is more secure because it doesn't get updates.

Meanwhile, I've switched everything except that one laptop to Linux or MacOS. Where any update that screws the OS will be the first.

Re: FOSS vs Junkware

[cyber-vandal]

You mean Linux?

Use --metadata=1.0 on the boot partition

[raymorris]

Raid on the boot partition "just works", reliably no matter what, if you use mdadm --metadata=1.0 when you create it

What that does is put the raid metadata at the end of the device. Anything that isn't raid-aware (your bios) just sees a standard filesystem, and doesn't care about the other parititions or whatever else comes AFTER the filesystem. Once the kernel launches and starts mounting filesystems, it session the raid metadata and treats it as raid.

That works because the things that don't understand raid, such as your bios, only read the data, they don't write to it. Therefore there's no worries about writing the same thing to both copies. It's only written to after the raid is mounted.

If you test that out, check to see if both drives are marked as bootable in the partition table.

If both are already marked bootable, you're good to go.

  If they aren't currently and you change that, making that change could change which drive ends up being called sda.

If they aren't currently both bootable and you do not mark the other one bootable, you'd need to do so if the bootable drive fails.

Re:Guess I'm sticking with Win8.1 and classic shel

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8.1 is not Windows 8! 8.1 is supported till January 2023.

Microsoft was badly managed 10 years ago.

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote the parent comment: Microsoft's "... insane unpredictable chaos..."

The Microsoft chaos existed 10 years ago, but yes, the chaos is worse now. See this Scientific American article: Microsoft Vista voted tech world's top "Fiasco" (Feb. 26, 2009)
It's amazing that a company can be so badly managed that there is an article about it in Scientific American magazine.

A year before that article: Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure. (April 21, 2008)
Some of John C. Dvorak's complaints:
6) Bogus Vista-capable stickers.
7) Missing drivers.
8) Conflicting advice.
11) Performance. You're not supposed to deliver a new operating system that's been in development for more than four years yet performs worse than the previous OS.

A Slashdot comment I wrote 10 1/2 years ago: Microsoft: "The whole world is our beta tester." That comment was way too positive, I realize now. Part of that comment seems correct to me:
"Another problem at Microsoft is apparently that the good people have left, and the people who remain are not knowledgeable enough to do the work."

It's time to stop joking about the many, many problems at Microsoft. (Regarding the parent comment: Cocaine will not fix the problems.)

Microsoft needs a new CEO and a re-organization of management.

See my comment posted yesterday: Microsoft is poorly managed? Plenty of evidence.

Oh my

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Either tests do not exist at all for this code (and I've been told that yes, it's permitted to integrate code without tests, though I would hope this isn't the norm)"

Oh my, so so so so much to unpack in that one sentence.

The fact that this bug got shipped should tell you a lot, and none of it's good.

Re:The Result of Laying Off Your QA Team?

[mea2214]

Now, I am a big fan of automated testing, but not as a replacement for qualified QA professionals.

You need QA professionals to write automated tests.

Re:Others

[Ol Olsoc]

Apple shipped hardware if you hold it wrong, the cell radio doesn't function.

Seriously, you just defended Windows fuckups.

What the fuck kind of asshole defends Windows deleting files, rendering computers inoperative, and renaming drivers so that they fail with stupid fucking Apple's antenna problem?

Are you stupid, being [paid by Microsoft to make retarded comments, or what?

Whataboutism of your level is only effective with peopel weho are as stupid as you.

We need a -5 troll mod.