Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/06/microsoft-suspends-windows-10-update-citing-data-loss-reports/

by doppp • 8 years ago

384 364 8 years ago

okket• 8 years ago

Previous discussion from 10 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154165 (34 comments)

Bizarre. I've seen something like this already in spring. A colleague lost all their documents, and calmly claimed it was probably "Windows Update". Apparently it is common knowledge in the office that Windows Update sometimes does that. I could never verify nor reproduce it, and chalked it up to "users say the darndest things". Files were simply restored from backup. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there was more to it.

That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...

coeroble5• 8 years ago

They released a new version of LTSB (well, they call it LTSC now) just a few days ago, based on this last version. I made a clean installation today.

en_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2019_x64_dvd_74865958.iso

No Store, no Cortana, no Edge, Windows 7 calculator, no Candy Crush, no bullshit. Don't miss out. ;-)

DaiPlusPlus2• 8 years ago

Slight downside: apparently Office 365 won't support LTSC soon: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/C...

gruez2• 8 years ago

and most important of all: supported for 10 years (from release), so you can conceivably use this for a decade without any issues.

StreamBright4• 8 years ago

How can i use this?

quickben2• 8 years ago

Apparently the rebrand of Windows as a Service started.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...

airstrike• 8 years ago

That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months.

I'm on the same boat yet somehow 8.1 still felt better...

mistermann• 8 years ago

I booted back into Windows 7 once and the scheduled windows backup ran, deciding to overwrite an absolute ton of files, even though it had been configured to write to a specific directory that still existed and with plenty of room. I can't even imagine how these things happen, do they have dumb interns writing this stuff?

dpkonofa• 8 years ago

How the mighty have fallen... :(

Krasnol• 8 years ago

I personally never used those folder for my documents/music/etc. It wasn't a problem until programs started putting their stuff in there. This is part of the "must-put-on-C:\" behavior you see in much win software that I loathe. A constant pain and reason that C:\ seems never to be big enough.

dzek692• 8 years ago

Funny thing..

What I heard - this problem (removing files from folders like Documents, Downloads) happens only when you actually move storage of these. Yes, you can move Documents folder into D: and things will work just fine. But this is where this bug will hit you.

I moved my Downloads folder, nothing much to loose here, but I'll surely do a backup of everything before updating.

Moru• 8 years ago

We just dont use the documents folder. Create a folder on D ans save everything there. Just dont tell windows where your data is and you are fine :)

user3359• 8 years ago

They're absolutely garbage at this.

When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere.

So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop.

A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder.

I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery.

I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.

I hope Microsoft dies andisgraceful death.

mehrdadn6• 8 years ago

I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.

Spearchucker• 8 years ago

And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.

SteveGerencser2• 8 years ago

We have 4 windows 10 machines here and a metered satellite internet connection for internet service. Didn't really think about it much until they pushed an update to all 4 machines the week after our monthly meter tripped on our service.

Next thing I knew I was on throttled internet for 3 weeks. Setting all the machines so that they don't update turned out to not be too hard, but was FAR harder than it needed to be. I'll decide when my equipment updates.

creato2• 8 years ago

I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.

Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch.

My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag).

On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.

Angostura• 8 years ago

I have to say those screen issues sounds as if you have a dodgy GPU there, and the battery drain also sounds like a hardware fault. Have you had it checked out?

dimgl• 8 years ago

Completely anecdotal. While we're sharing anecdotal evidence, I have not once experienced anything you're talking about.

hrktb• 8 years ago

Wouldn’t it be a difference in the software you use for one context and the other ?

OSX has its share of dirty bugs but nothing out of the norm. You could entrust me your surface pro, and I’ll make it crash randomly with only legit pro software.

tinza123• 8 years ago

not to defend them, but my experience with that particular issue is normally they put all your old desktop folder / document folder stuff in c:/windows.old

stepik777• 8 years ago

In this particular case files are outright removed, not moved anywhere

arthurfm2• 8 years ago

Ironically, if you had switched to a Mac sooner you may have been affected by Apple's data loss/corruption bugs. [1] [2]

Regardless of OS it's always a good idea to have backups of your important data.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-los...

[2] https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/

StreamBright4• 8 years ago

Unironically, I am in control of when and if any update happens on my Mac. Also unironically, the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop.

From the articles you linked:

"The images get corrupted on copies to the USB attached external drive. "

"However, as Bombich notes, ordinary APFS volumes like SSD startup disks are not affected by the problem described above, so the vast majority of users won't be affected by it – the flaw is most applicable when making backups to network volumes. "

I am not sure you have read the original article and the two articles you linked, otherwise it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity.

zawerf2• 8 years ago

Linux (specifically ubuntu in my case) also suffers from somewhat similar problems. Every time I update graphic drivers it's a diceroll on whether it will reboot into a black screen.

Sometimes it's recoverable from blindly pasting god-knows-what from stackoverflow. Most of the time I just have to do a complete reinstall.

(I guess it's not a complete brick on update because I have never suffered data loss, but it's similarly infuriating)

Tempest19812• 8 years ago

And you need to notice that files are missing before the backup history disappears.

newnewpdro2• 8 years ago

It has never ceased to amaze me the abuse MS customers continue to tolerate.

Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.

coeroble5• 8 years ago

I don't understand how having a data loss bug means Microsoft is "exploiting their users"

newnewpdro2• 8 years ago

The data loss bug is just another example of the abuse MS users endure.

The majority of the abuse both Apple and MS subject their customers to result from lock-in of various forms however.

My clarification was intended to deter Apple fanboys from upvoting my statement as if it were intended to imply Apple > MS. They're both awful, use and support free/libre software.

teddyh• 8 years ago

Anyone can make a mistake in making a new software update. But Microsoft, like any proprietary software vendor, is denying their users the right and ability to discover and fix problems for themselves, or to hire anyone to do it for them; Microsoft reserves this right exclusively to themselves, and thereby do their users a tremendous disservice.

quickben2• 8 years ago

It is simple. They are unpaid QA department now.

ttul• 8 years ago

Is this incompetence the result of Microsoft being unable to retain decent engineers? I mean, who actually would want to work on the next Windows release? You’d have to be a masochist.

abledon• 8 years ago

Well apple had that empty password bug on one release, everyone makes a mistake once in a while

josefx• 8 years ago

Microsoft already had its own empty password bug for the Xbox login. A badly placed trim call let you input a password consisting only of whitespace and it would pass as long as it had the correct length.

013a• 8 years ago

Hearsay: I've heard that at least Azure is having problems retaining and hiring talent. Apparently the platform was created in such a rush to compete against AWS that many of its core components are jumbled, unreliable messes, many people internally know this, and when Azure tries to recruit internally no one bites.

cataflam• 8 years ago

Interesting.

They do have Mark Russinovich of colossal SysInternals fame as Azure CTO though.

seiferteric• 8 years ago

It's amazing to me. With the resources MS has, they could rebuild a new OS from the ground up and finally get rid of all the cruft and legacy issues in windows once and for all and still support legacy software via emulation, virtualization or even a compatibility layer a la WINE or WSL. Why don't they do it? Google is building fuchsia, Apple/NeXT was able to take BSD and build MacOS X, certainly MS can do it right?

beagle3• 8 years ago

Probably not.

I'm not familiar with MacOS 9 interfaces, but there are so many implementations of Unix out there (including WSL, Cygwin, Linux, BSD, and another dozen independent implementations) because the Unix interface was, on purpose, very simple. That is, in part, what allows Fuchsia and Darwin to be feasible.

Windows, on the other hand, is not. It has thousands of system calls which aren't really layered in any way. Wine and ReactOS have been at it for over a decade each and they still have "not yet implemented" system calls.

Microsoft has the "reference implementation" to compare with, but the amount of work is enormous even for Microsoft.

StreamBright4• 8 years ago

And lose 90% of the user base (corporate users) along the way. I think at this stage they should just introduce a new OS for home users that copies the best parts of MacOS (non intrusive updates, UX, common task bar / top bar, single folder installs, unix/posix paths) and add the best parts of Windows (user space video card drivers, ???) and add some from VMS (keep file versions / purge). While at it, they could also do this on a much more secure way than before re-thinking the whole end user security.

Than I would be happy. Well, obviously this is not going to happen but I would have been nice. :)

I have big hopes for Google Fuchsia

bunnycorn2• 8 years ago

It also amazes me, they didn't need much effort, just a mechanism like docker does and it will be fine.

lenkite• 8 years ago

They have now started doing this. Windows Core OS (WCOS) is under development! GO MS!

https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/09/29/windows-core-os-rum...

technion• 8 years ago

Are they actively trying?

I'm thinking back across years worth of recruiter spam and Microsoft would be the only major company that's not represented.

kolderman• 8 years ago

I'm still on the April update. Skipped July update after all the issues there - thinking I'll just wait for the October issue where they will surely not make another mess of it.

Oh well, there's always 2019...

tonetheman• 8 years ago

Testing something like Windows/Windows updates at scale is hard. So bugs will happen. But deleting docs is gross.

I can imagine there was tense meeting somewhere in MS where the choice was made to stop the update. I would have liked to have been there...

whatshisface• 8 years ago

If you're a company the size of Microsoft, "hard" just means "expensive." There is certianly no question that Microsoft is able to produce Windows updates that do not have these problems. Apple has been doing automatic updates for years - but we don't hear similar stories coming from that camp, because they put in the necessary QA effort.

etaoins• 8 years ago

Apple had a very similar bug in the initial release of Snow Leopard:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-snow-leopard-da...

lifeisgood99• 8 years ago

The ios and Macos debacles say otherwise

supernovae• 8 years ago

I hope they get it fixed quickly and I hope they listen to user feedback more... I just hope we don't go back into old ways of years between service packs. I for one enjoy the frequent fixes - much better than those "Service pack" years of having to deal with crap for so long.

winrid• 8 years ago

The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerprints without confirmation. That's just one UI. It feels like some shitty enterprise software. Pathetic.

makecheck2• 8 years ago

Something is very weird about window displays in general. Take the list of wi-fi networks; sometimes the entire thing will just stop appearing, doing nothing when you click the icon! I eventually figured out that if I use Windows Search to pull up the WiFi Settings panel, and manually click the list of networks there, then the list is fixed (it does not appear in the Settings window though; it just pops up where it was supposed to be, near the taskbar icon).

I just don’t understand; I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.

lurker456• 8 years ago

The QA team got folded into the main org a while ago. I'd be surprised if the person today in charge of the full test coverage has anywhere near the resources or weight to make an impact.

mehrdadn6• 8 years ago

I cannot fathom what implementation could be so complex that they can’t achieve full test coverage on something like whether or not a damned window appears when required.

It does seem that complicated from my observations. Notice that it's not a regular window, but part of the overriding/overlayed renderer (DWM? something else?) that draws stuff on top with grayscale smoothing (Direct2D? DirectWrite? something else?)... which probably involves lots of communication between several processes. It feels like an incredibly heavyweight UI component, just judging from the lag between when the icon is clicked and when the list of networks pops up.

jimmaswell• 8 years ago

My anecdote: I've painlessly ran trough the windows 10 setup at least 3 times now.

GordonS2• 8 years ago

Was going to say much the same thing, except I've probably done it around 10 times - it's always gone fine, and it's so much faster than previous versions of Windows.

Frenchgeek• 8 years ago

I'm used to quiet and fast OS setup: Win10 doesn't goes well with me. If someone manage to find a way to strangle Cortana to death too, that'd be nice.

xxs3• 8 years ago

Alternatively, you work in a large organization, bake the SSD and clone it to all laptops.

Disabling cortana, xbox, candy whatever, news, telemetry, etc., setting windows not to maximize when dragged... is no fun

warent2• 8 years ago

... dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter.

I rarely get upset at computers these days, but this is one of the things that easily boils my blood. It happens with Windows and macOS machines at the most inopportune times. I'll be typing and hit enter, seeing a mysterious dialog appear and vanish in a flash as it stealthily hijacked my "Enter" stroke. "Great, who knows what I just accepted or declined."

It seems like a very basic UI consideration to discard any keystroke if the dialog spawned less than 1 to 3 seconds ago. Make it a global rule (Or better yet, a user setting) for all UI dialogs in the OS that is impossible for developers to override.

mehrdadn6• 8 years ago

This is already done though? It's known as focus stealing prevention. One of my gripes with Linux is that it doesn't work well there, but I've found it is already very well handled in Windows; the trouble only comes up if (a) you pause too long for it to realize you're still typing, or (b) the app goes VERY out of its way to steal your keyboard (like hooking global keyboard messages) which is extremely abnormal. I'm surprised if you regularly experience otherwise.

IanSanders2• 8 years ago

Could even be a dark pattern. After you type the pin several times it's fairly trivial to time that dialog just right.

consto• 8 years ago

Clearly you haven't been using enough shitty enterprise software!

userbinator3• 8 years ago

The product key re-entrance (or perhaps it was the first one? I don't remember now) dialog is also stupid in that the moment it detects you've entered the last letter, it immediately starts the activation process. Everyone who is used to typing in or pasting the key and then pressing Enter to submit it will end up canceling the activation, since the automatic focus immediately goes to the Cancel button when it detects the last letter entered. From my vague memory it was not like that in previous versions of Windows (enter product key, then press enter/click the button to continue) so what irritates me the most is that someone deliberately added code to implement this behaviour in opposition to probably every UI guide ever created.

sebazzz• 8 years ago

I did upgrade to Windows 10 1809 and fortunately didn't run into any issues. However, I suspect there is a memory leak somewhere. After running Visual Studio for a while, almost my entire system memory was eaten but the total sum of memory for the running programs don't add up to the amount of "In use" memory.

dzek692• 8 years ago

This is a common thing. I'm not such tech person to go deep into the details, but it's usually ok if you get back that memory when you close everything.

I had thison Windows 7 with Opera (can't remember if it was 12 or newer one already).

QuinnyPig• 8 years ago

Every time I get irked with MacOS, or get annoyed with the iPad, I weigh moving back to Windows. Then I see threads like this…

conradfr• 8 years ago

Maybe the real problem is that the two major desktop OS are currently bad.

wetpaws• 8 years ago

Hint: there is 3rd one

vbezhenar4• 8 years ago

I returned to Windows after few years in macOS and I can't say anything bad about it. It works well. I know many people who upgraded without data loss. Sure, bug is bug, but don't overestimate the probability that it'll happen to you, it's not like MS releases untested software, just keep your backups.

lostlogin2• 8 years ago

As far as I can tell, the plateau is reached where you have a dislike of every platform and settle on a choice that is least bad.

ezoe• 8 years ago

I keep Windows just for gaming so I am immune to this issue. Hell, I even wish Windows installation completely break so I can try Wine.

What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?

lostlogin2• 8 years ago

There is a teacher in the house and their relatively new laptop is a complete POS for many reasons, but the windows side of things is an abomination. It has to be opened for a few a while each week to let it download, restart and generally make a fool of itself. If you don’t the software update debt compounds rapidly and it completely breaks.

makecheck2• 8 years ago

Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does.

The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again.

I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.

g0510512• 8 years ago

You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working.

Things to check:

Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades.

Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".

Macha• 8 years ago

Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".

Worth pointing out you don't have to be sharing the drive with another OS to get this situation. I had a system which I upgraded from 7 -> 8.1 -> 10. My linux install and bootloader are on a totally separate drive. This left the drive with:

* 100mb system reserved partition (unused, created by win 7 installer)

* 250gb C: partition

* 400mb system reserved partition (created by 8.1 or 10 update, actually used)

Then I used the Samsung tool to copy to my new ssd and ended up with a 100mb system reserved partition and a 1tb c: drive. But the 1709 update tried to unpack the >100mb update into the too small system reserved partition and failed in a loop

slantyyz2• 8 years ago

I had that problem with 1803.

I was able to get the upgrade to finally work after I uninstalled the DisplayLink driver and a Splashtop app (for using an Android device as an additional monitor) and then it finally worked. I don't know which of the two (or both) were the exact culprit, but it was driving me bonkers trying to get that update to work.

raintrees• 8 years ago

For one of my clients, HP had a drive encryption program I had to uninstall for the update to finally go. Drives had never been encrypted, HP was just running it in the background from the start.

jasonjayr• 8 years ago

Do you have a copy of unsupported software hidden in a sub folder anywhere on your local drives?

Client of mine had an old copy of the Novell client installer (it was never installed on this machine) sitting in a folder named C:\Old_Computer\ . Last year's fall update kept aborting with an unclear error dialog. The install log only gave a vague suggestion that the issues was unsupported software and DID NOT reveal the full path to the offending file, just the title of the software.

Windows desperately needs a shibboleet option, so power users can stop fighting it.

wozer• 8 years ago

This happened to me, too. Made me switch to a dual boot Ubuntu/Windows 7 setup.

le-mark• 8 years ago

Do businesses even use windows 10? Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago.

krapp• 8 years ago

Every company I've been at has been windows 7, only one was windows 8.1 a couple of years ago.

How many companies are there, and how many companies have you been at?

micv• 8 years ago

Windows 7 is pretty close to EOL now. Companies might not have migrated off it yet, but they're going to have basically no choice in short order. I doubt Microsoft are going to suddenly change how they handle updating the OS in the next year or so -- at the end of the day, there's no real competition for the business desktop -- so I expect we all have some fun and games to look forward to.

Reelin2• 8 years ago

For what it's worth, I'm a home user still on Windows 7 plus a bit of Ubuntu. When Windows 7 finally hits EOL, that's it for Windows for me. After having had the displeasure of using family members' MacOS or newer Windows devices a few times, I'm out.

m-p-32• 8 years ago

We switched to Windows 10 LTSB. Even the Enterprise version of Windows 10 is mostly consumer-level garbage.

jangosister• 8 years ago

LTSB is literally the best operating system I've used, it's got none of the Windows app junk that the normal version is and it's super reliable because the only updates it gets are security ones. It's a shame they don't just release that as the main branch.

mr_toad3• 8 years ago

Numbers I’ve seen suggest it’s about 50/50, with almost no Windows 8 users. The 50% still on 7 will probably have to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Tempest19812• 8 years ago

This shows 50/37/10 (Win10/Win7/Win8.x). And 57/32/8 in the US. Win 8.1 isn’t quite dead.

http://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/deskt...

Droop• 8 years ago

We're migrating the last of our 7000+ computers off of 7 by December. Probably only a couple of hundred left running 7. There will be maybe a half dozen left on 7 for compatibility testing and because of legacy software. But 7 is functionally dead.

besfort• 8 years ago

I wish i read this just 30mins before :(

chrisper• 8 years ago

The sad thing is that this bug has been reported during the insider betas. But people didn't upvote it so Microsoft never saw them.

https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...

giancarlostoro• 8 years ago

That really is sad. They should of had a team review all the reports and look for ones that seem bad enough. What are the odds a dozen users losing files is their own faults... Sheesh.

cududa3• 8 years ago

That’s how it use to be. Now literally the entire team that use to do that are at Amazon working on Fire and Alexa.

arountheworld• 8 years ago

It seems like they forget people pay for this crap. I wonder if there is a class action possible against them.

JepZ2• 8 years ago

If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore...

By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.

z3t4• 8 years ago

I've never had a issue with Windows Update, but it can sometimes take hours and I like to imagine wth it's doing. My theory is that Microsoft has acres of test computers, so that when I run an upgrade they spin up a computer that match mine, install all the apps and drivers I have, runs the update, and runs some automated tests ...

JepZ2• 8 years ago

They probably just want to push their cloud services, so that you 'Never lose a file due to some broken update!' :-D

anticensor3• 8 years ago

Windows 10 Licensing terms § 6 says "The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice."

Havoc• 8 years ago

Well I've been getting bluescreens on reboots since the last round. So yeah it's not been peachy lately

kens• 8 years ago

I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you.

My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.

warent2• 8 years ago

I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition)

Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure

ledriveby• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is how ChromeOS' update system works.

mediocrejoker• 8 years ago

This is how some versions of android work. If a new update partition fails to boot, it falls back to the old one automatically.

Splines• 8 years ago

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-comp...

So when Windows says you have an update available, the design is that it did all the work that is possible and all that's left is (in theory) the copy bit that's left.

My completely ill-informed guess is that there are exceptions to this rule by teams that aren't fully aware of how updates work under the hood and as a result upgrading takes longer than it really should. As time goes by those teams get hit with a stick and they fix things, but the upgrade team probably plays a fair bit of wack-a-mole.

ndesaulniers2• 8 years ago

wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk

This is what ChromeOS and Android do. At least on Android Pixel phones, there's A and B partitions for each of the boot, system, and vendor partitions. The bootloader tracks whether A or B should be booted. Userspace downloads the updates and writes to the opposite-than-booted partition. On reboot, the bootloader boots the latest partition. Downsize is these partitions are now double the size, so less space for the user partition.

avip• 8 years ago

This is how embedded devices do firmware upgrade - I'm not aware of any other sane & safe way to upgrade.

djsumdog2• 8 years ago

The original devs for WinNT and NTFS made some interesting decisions with file locking. Hard locks in the Windows world are pretty difficult to identify, much less release.

The update stage all the files that need to be change and complete the release process on boot before any system processors are allowed to lock anything.

finchisko2• 8 years ago

Or maybe they can implement some overlay FS and updates will be stored in FS overlays. Writing to overlay would be possible even when Windows is running. Effectively shortening time when computer cannot be used due system updates. Basically the only disrupt would be just simple reboot to activate the FS layer due Windows file locking.

pixl974• 8 years ago

I dont think this is the problem itself. A lot of the problem is the user directory is a mess of both user created data and system data all jumbled about.

File copy speed itself is rarely the problem. IOPS, where hundreds of thousands of small read and write operations in the registry and other small files dominate the process.

RandomTisk• 8 years ago

That really long greeting that says "your files are where you left them" that you can't speed up or cancel out of makes me want to kick puppies.

aarongolliver• 8 years ago

You used to be able to ctrl-alt-delete to skip it. They disabled that after a while though :(

Razengan5• 8 years ago

The last time I installed Windows most of the greeting messages came off as patronizing or subtly sinister, like that one.

Throughout Windows’ history, even before I had ever used Macs, it has felt as if someone at Microsoft keeps having the wrong idea about what people adore about Macs, and tries to imitate that in a “we can do it better” way.

wstuartcl• 8 years ago

Is it trying to convince me or itself of that.

mandeepj• 8 years ago

Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.

cm21873• 8 years ago

Doesn't change the fact that you end up having to actively manage the OS not screwing up your workflow, that's not how I would define "good". Plus I would always forget.

xxs3• 8 years ago

Well you can set group policy and disable updates... but yeah not your average user experience. Pretty much I disable updates if I can.

mkl• 8 years ago

It's 35 days for me. There's also a nasty gotcha where I paused updates and then enabled them, and then it wouldn't let me pause again for some fairly long period.

All that is needed to make the system usable is the ability to turn off all automatic restarts; tell me to do it, even nag after a while, just don't ever do it automatically.

tom_2• 8 years ago

My own humble tip - switch this shit off. Here's what I've found to work for me:

0. install whichever Windows 10 has the group policy editor - I've got Windows 10 Pro, I think. (I'm at home right now and my work laptop is at the office)

1. run gpedit.msc

2. Go to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update

3. Double-click Configure Automatic Updates

4. Set up as follows:

   - Overall group policy setting = Enabled
   - Configure automatic updating = 3 - Auto download and notify for install
   - Install during automatic maintenance = unticked
   - Scheduled install day = 0 - every day
   - Scheduled install time = 03:00
   - "If you have blah blah" = Every week
   - Install updates for other Microsoft products = unticked

Result seems to be that updates are downloaded, and there are notifications, but there are no forced reboots.

Three things to note:

- this works for me. Ask yourself: are you me? But even if you aren't, don't let that put you off, because you might still get lucky

- there's a popup that pops up to say something like "updates are ready, click to install" - and this actually means literally precisely what it says, nothing more and nothing less, so for god's sake don't do what I did at first and click it thinking that it means you'll get the option of saying no afterwards and then wonder why all the updates are installing. Go to the updates section of the control panel by hand to see what updates are ready before approving them

- the above settings are just what I have set on my work laptop, copied out from the dialog box, based on a screen grab. Some of the settings may be the defaults. I don't remember which

lowlevel2• 8 years ago

Need them 100% off. Had to downgrade to Win7...

sundvor3• 8 years ago

It never stops to amaze me how unwilling most people are to explore the latest Win10 options to always defer updates by number of days (eg stay a week behind on feature updates to let others be more on the cutting edge), or even temporarily freeze the windows update service by up to a two digit number of days.

If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze.

Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.

jaggederest• 8 years ago

If you have to go into the settings to get a good behavior, it's useless for 95%+ of users.

On the projects I've worked on, most people never open the preferences or settings menu.

jackfoxy• 8 years ago

Even deferring updates is not really good about being in your face enough about having a pending update ready, so eventually it's going to update by itself anyway.

Regarding switching to Mac, it never ceases to amaze me all of my colleagues who opted for a company Mac when all the productivity tools they need run natively on Windows, and sometimes not on Mac at all. So they set up a Windows partition which is never big enough and they always have problems with. Their choice was purely out of fan-boyism, and they all regret it.

davidjade• 8 years ago

Just one note, once you pause, you apparently cannot pause again until all deferred updates have been installed. So yes it helps, but only for so long. The other deferment options seem like a more reasonable way to just purposely lag behind major changes.

gerdesj2• 8 years ago

I routinely use Linux (Arch, Gentoo, Ubuntu, CentOS, several others) Windows (98 - 10 (yes, really 98), server 2000 to 2016) and I speak quite a few other OS dialects (NetWare and FreeBSD fex).

The worst for updates, by far is Windows 10 and server 2016. I'd better qualify that. Gentoo can take a really long time to crunch through say 1GB of source code if not updated for a few months. Firefox can take an hour or so on its own and LibreOffice is a whopper as well. Older Windows versions, say 2008 R2 can take a good hour some months. NetWare updates need a skilled surgeon (or someone who can read a manual). pfSense (FreeBSD for me) upgrades can be a bit fraught but generally not. However all of those will get you there eventually.

W10 and 2016 are different beasts altogether. They do a pretty decent job of hiding the nitty gritty away from you and I actually like the auto "just do it already" approach and can set "active hours" to tailor the experience. However, it takes bloody ages to run and often needs more than one reboot - sometimes three (ie update, reboot, something doesn't work, reboot, still doesn't work, reboot, now it works).

The error messages you get are awful and generally need forensic analysis elsewhere - a naiive Google will get you to some MS forum and a suggestion to reinstall Windows.

Switching OS is not really a solution but whining about the update experience within potential hearing (HN) of those that might be able to do something about it is a good idea 8)

skytreader2• 8 years ago

I think the problem isn't just that Windows updates happen immediately by default. It's that Windows updates when you boot up your computer.

See, turning on a computer is an explicit declaration that you want to use it. Windows updates ignores this declaration by taking that time to itself. It doesn't matter if I can defer the update by how many days if one day it will stop/delay me from using my computer when I want to. Almost no one outside of IT Administrators turns on computers solely for updates and maintenance.

Contrast that with Linux (Ubuntu distro in mind) where updates happen when the computer is shutting down. In contrast with turning your computer on, shutting down is a declaration that you no longer need your computer. That's the OS' cue to chime in and perform some routine maintenance.

I wonder how much of this is an architectural problem. The first time I remember being frustrated with this Windows behavior was in Vista. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall that 95, 98, and XP used to do updates on shut down. I know Vista isn't fondly remembered but, gee, did they deliberately make it so that it updates when you start your computer? Why couldn't a company who takes pride in backwards compatibility keep the old update behavior?

To wit, people make a big deal about how immediately can you use your computer (i.e., start-up times) but all your fancy-schmancy SSD + hyperthreading set-up is useless if Windows decides to update just before that one presentation you've spent weeks on. Updating on shut down is the user-friendly way.

rsync• 8 years ago

"Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you."

This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos.

I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process.

If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.

JonathonW• 8 years ago

The distinction being that Sonos updates rarely take more than a minute or two, and I've never seen one that was actually mandatory (the controller app will bug you about it, but it usually works anyways). Would be nice if it could automatically update while idle and I never had to worry about it, but that hardly seems necessary IME.

Granted, I've also never had Windows 10 unexpectedly reboot on me or force an update at an inconvenient time, either. If you're proactive about running updates at times that are convenient for you, and don't just ignore every popup and warning that Windows gives you when it's waiting for a reboot, you'll never see it reboot when you don't want it to.

m3at• 8 years ago

I experienced the same when attempting to show Forza Horizon to a friend, not having played it for a bit it required a 300Mb update before launching. I could not find what was updated.

Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.

kgwxd• 8 years ago

This also exactly describes the modern gaming experience. It's infuriating.

Razengan5• 8 years ago

Thankfully most Japanese games still seem to be free of it.

sarreph• 8 years ago

It's funny you mention this as I had a very similar thought the other night when clean-installing an old gaming PC to try some VR stuff on.

I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users.

When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.

jpfed• 8 years ago

And then it wants to finish those updates after you restart. This cost my wife so much stress when she'd fire up her laptop right before delivering a lecture, only to find it busy for minutes completing the update.

Vektorweg• 8 years ago

Wouldn't be a straight Linux distribution the best choice to avoid anything annoying?

Salgat2• 8 years ago

It's annoying but if uptime is critical you really need to change the settings for that. The reason Microsoft forces updates by default is because of all the incompetent computer users out there (especially older folks) who bitch and moan about how insecure and unstable their Windows that they haven't updated in 2 years is.

Piskvorrr4• 8 years ago

If uptime is critical, what on Earth are you doing with desktop Windows? There are even server variants now, if you need to have the Windows flavor.

And worse: I'm all for auto updates...unless they break the system! (See article.) No wonder people are holding off upgrades. (Not Windows-specific, for sure - but Win10 seems to be the worst offender)

BuckRogers3• 8 years ago

That's easy enough to prevent if you peek into the update settings[0][1]. I have restarts blocked from 8AM-2AM, due to not wanting it doing it during the day when I walk away from work. You would want the opposite. Set that to 5PM-11AM and you'll never have a nightly restart again. I've used Mac and Linux but had issues with all of them, worst being desktop Linux with basic things (for a power user), and Mac software issues[2]. Windows 10 is in my opinion the best version of Windows yet, even if it's also imperfect. You definitely need to dig into the settings if you want things to be right for you, but that applies to every OS, including iOS and Android.

[0]https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png

[1]https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png

[2]https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0

exodust7• 8 years ago

That update option window says "max 18 hours". Doesn't help when leaving computer for 24 hours+ to render. The other thing is you might have critical work happening, and really don't want any risk of problems due to updates. So even if you're not using PC, you don't want updates to happen for a couple of weeks or longer until project isn't so critical.

The forced updates, even for advanced users, is the single reason I refuse to update to Windows 10.

lostmsu• 8 years ago

You should blame your simulation software vendor (which could be yourself, lol). Windows gives software a way to tell, that computer is busy, and if your software did not do that, I am not sure how is this fault of Windows?

Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings.

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase...

ryandrake3• 8 years ago

The onus should not be on the user or the user's application to tell the computer "don't do this thing". It should be up to the user whether some thing gets done. The user is supposed to command the computer, not the other way around.

xfer• 8 years ago

There is a setting for sleep timer, which people disable on desktops. It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest to call an api, to not randomly do things that the user didn't instruct.

bArray• 8 years ago

This is exactly one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux, it doesn't do anything unless I let it or ask it to - with few exceptions.

My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there.

FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.

shams93• 8 years ago

I switched to linux in 1998, it was much harder back then now its arguably easier to install ubuntu than to upgrade windows 10.

msaharia8• 8 years ago

I shifted to Linux full time this year from MacOS. The only thing I desperately need is a replacement for is MS Office. Any ideas? I'm a power user, which Google word is simply not good for.

rikkus• 8 years ago

I once had to leave to catch a plane and shut down my Windows desktop machine that I wanted to move somewhere first. I think this was as far back as XP days. It started doing updates on shutdown and I was concerned I’d lose data or break something if I powered it off (it did say not to!) so I was stuck waiting for updates but needing to catch a plane.

exodust7• 8 years ago

Well said kens, and those are great examples of having manual control over updates. There's a lot more examples too.

I'm still on Windows 7 and my laptop is Windows 8, where I can safely disable updates until I'm good and ready.

My understanding of Windows 10 was that there is a way to control when updates happen if using the Pro version? Is that not the case?

tootahe45• 8 years ago

I switched to Ubuntu, gave up hope MS would come out with a Windows-lite with how big Win10 is getting, and how they're trying to put Win10 on smaller devices. A lot of devices that come with Win10 really shouldn't have such a bloated OS, and I mean that even if they're just going to be using Office.

Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.

manmal2• 8 years ago

Why don’t they let people set a certain day in the week for major updates (E.g. Sunday), and only the most important micro updates are force-installed immediately?

anticensor3• 8 years ago

Some major updates replace other broken major updates.

finchisko2• 8 years ago

I wouldn't mind these forced updated, if they took seconds like on Linux. Why are Windows updates so slow? And why I cannot use my computer when updates are running (like on Linux). Part of the problem is that Windows locks files so they cannot be deleted/replaced when full blown system is running, but it has to be more I don't know about the update mechanism.

pixl974• 8 years ago

Very little time is spent in replacing actual files. Huge amounts of time are spend in the registry and other small IO operations. Also .net rebuilding wastes huge amounts of time.

amaccuish2• 8 years ago

What kills me is that the "active hours" setting stops you from setting longer than 8 hours. I want my server to install updates between 0100 and 0500, but that just isn't possible.

fstanis• 8 years ago

I just disabled Windows Update completely (by disabling the service) after 3 such incidents.

I'm aware it's a security risk, but I also keep nothing of value on that machine nowadays.

alan_n• 8 years ago

So glad now I turned off Window's updates (because no matter what I did they kept installing when they shouldn't have).

I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now.

I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.

diminoten7• 8 years ago

A real Sophie's choice: have your data stolen by hackers because you're vulnerable, or have your data deleted by the patches that secure your system!

userbinator3• 8 years ago

The former is blown out of proportion because the vast majority of vulnerabilities are only locally exploitable, and the rest is mostly "visit shady site in IE with default settings" with a tiny bit of "hackers can own your system if you connect it directly to the Internet and don't do anything other than leave it on." My thoughts on the above are, respectively, "meh", "why would you use IE with default settings" , and "yes I definitely need this fixed." Unfortunately Win10 doesn't give you that choice.

kurtisc2• 8 years ago

Are they security patches, though? The difference between a critical safety update and the update that adds new things to Candy Crush is imperceptible to the casual user who just wants to get work done and will foster an unfair distrust of the important need for these updates. Additionally, the implementation is frustrating and buggy.

If someone updated OpenSSL from an insecure version on my machine, I'd probably never notice.

rkagerer• 8 years ago

Why I refuse to have "upgrades" shoved down my throat on someone else's schedule.

cmurf• 8 years ago

If you aren't backing up your data, the data isn't that important.

slantyyz2• 8 years ago

I wonder if Windows File History (provided it was enabled before the update) could have helped with this problem. These days, it's one of the first things I install on Windows machines.

I had been very dependent on Time Machine before I switched back to Windows a few years ago, and I'm kinda surprised that MS doesn't push File History the same way Apple did with Time Machine. I don't see it mentioned very often when it comes to backing up data on Windows.

amluto• 8 years ago

I have a little Windows VM with a very small disk. It’s so small that Windows Update can’t run :)

shkkmo• 8 years ago

I have a dual boot machine with windows 10 on a slow platter drive and ubuntu on a very fast SSD. I only ever launch windows to play games... and I hate it. I don't launch windows very often and as soon as I do it starts hammering the disk downloading and processing updates. Even before it tries to actually complete the update, it makes the computer almost unusable for an unpredictable period of time.

ben_jones• 8 years ago

The only reason I use windows 10 is for gaming. The millisecond linux gaming is supported by all the games I love I will be paying whatever price necessary to drop windows for ever. I use OS X for work and find it a near perfect developer experience for my rather pedestrian use cases.

mikelward• 8 years ago

See if your games are supported by Steam Play (a.k.a. Proton).

https://spcr.netlify.com

art0rz• 8 years ago

I have been running Windows since 3.11 and have never had any of the issues with Windows Update described in this thread since the XP days. Don't think these issues are common, just the vocal minority.

JoshuaAshton• 8 years ago

You're obviously blind then.

chu121su12• 8 years ago

I am using Asus A442uq, and the latest update made secure boot inactive. I had the laptop erased.

spacehome• 8 years ago

Is it possible to use a firewall (pfsense or similar) to block all access to the Windows update and telemetry servers? Or will Windows just stop working after thinking it’s offline long enough?

bobbob1921• 8 years ago

it seems Windows 10 was where the tide turned on mandatory / forced automatic, while also making it pretty difficult to disable (and when you do disable updates other issues can arise that have nothing to do w the windows update service ,although pretty rarely )

I think the reason Microsoft decided to force these auto updates with windows 10 is due to the bad rap they got over the years for security and vulns ( in their defense part of that was just simply due to the insane marketshare windows enjoyed for so long, and still does for the most part , although to a lesser degree than before).

mkup• 8 years ago

That's why we developed a product which main feature is to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs:

https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/features_v3/install-w...

There's a growing community of users and developers who restrict themselves to Windows 7. Forever. Win7 EOL soon, so no updates from Microsoft? Fine. It's a feature. Updates from Microsoft are no good anyway.

paul-sebastianm• 8 years ago

Just yesterday I was commenting about how Windows developers are still adjusting to the corporate's latest business idea, rolling releases and hopefully TDD. Now I'm sorry to have been so kind. This kind of shit shouldn't escape testing. Touching files that shouldn't be touched? Really? Is that how much Microsoft cares about the safety of their user's data?

Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

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