Windows 10 october update glitches

[Stephane Dumas]

Looks like the latest Windows 10 updates for October got some glitches.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/problems-with-windows-10-october-2018-update/
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-delay-windows-10-october-2018-update/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/10/05/avoid-windows-10-october-update-until-you-do-one-thing/#50f8272f3e79

Microsoft's big Windows 10 Update version 1809 is here and it brings a wealth of welcome features like less interruptions and update nags during gaming (something Alienware nailed years ago by the way). It also takes an ambitious step toward making your PC and Android phone best friends. But (isn't there always a "but?") it's also causing a serious problem. One that can't be reversed. If you're not enthusiastic about potentially losing every scrap of data in your user folder such as music, photos and documents, please read on.


Credit: Getty royalty free

This article at ZDNet got my attention due to the particular severity of this update "bug." Granted, there's usually some level of anxiety surrounding every Windows update, but this time around you sincerely need to prepare for the worst. The site stumbled across longtime Windows user Robert Ziko who bemoaned the fact that he lost a whopping 220GB of data as a direct result of the Windows 10 version 1809 update.


Posting on the Microsoft Answers forum he says "I have just updated my windows using the October update (10, version 1809) it deleted all my files of 23 years in amount of 220gb. This is unbelievable, I have been using Microsoft products since 1995 and nothing like that ever happened to me." After it was suggested he roll back the update, Ziko reports that his files are still missing.

"I have lost my work all the files for the last 2 months, due to the upgrade," he says. It's important to note that the documents weren't hanging out in the recycle bin. The data was simply gone.

[CapeCodder]

Their last big update before this one has kept causing my laptop to crash. I get a Blue Screen at least three times a week. If I had the money I'd spring for a Mac.

[roadman]

Automatic updates are the most idiotic customer-unfriendly thing and should be outlawed.  And I'm still waiting for MS to develop a means to allow us to shut off keyboard commands (or just ditch them completely - ever hear of a MOUSE).  For those of us who type faster than most people, it's an incredible PITA when the computer suddenly does something weird because the outdated code thought we gave it a command.

[jeffandnicole]

Automatic updates are the most idiotic customer-unfriendly thing and should be outlawed.

Actually, the most idiotic thing will be forcing government to make a law about it.  Everyone wants less government in our lives...until they don't want something then they demand the government intervene! 

And I'm still waiting for MS to develop a means to allow us to shut off keyboard commands (or just ditch them completely - ever hear of a MOUSE).  For those of us who type faster than most people, it's an incredible PITA when the computer suddenly does something weird because the outdated code thought we gave it a command.

I've never had this happen at all.

Keyboard commands are still useful.  If I'm typing I can easily move my fingers to CTRL or ALT for the command, rather than stop to use the mouse.

[ET21]

Funny enough, my parents desktop completely froze after this update. Couldn't launch any program, start menu would freeze. We did a full wipe and made sure to keep the newest update off the list. Since then, it has worked fine ever since.

[jemacedo9]

The update in the OP is the Windows 10 1809 update, which Microsoft has stopped indefinitely until the bugs have been resolved.  There are other Windows 10 updates out there in various stages of rollout.

[paulthemapguy]

Those updates deleted the sound software off my girlfriend's computer. She had no sound drivers installed and couldn't hear anything. She had to do a system restore. Windows Update is my least favorite computer virus and it never goes away.

SM-G930P

[BamaZeus]

It did the same to my mother's laptop.  It caused her audio/speakers to show as not being installed, and she lost control of her mouse as well.  She rolled back the updates, and voila, everything worked perfectly.

[J N Winkler]

In regard to Robert Ziko's case, while I have much sympathy for his plight, I have to say I don't understand keeping such a large volume of data in a space that the operating system curates pretty tightly by allowing creation of subfolders ("My Pictures," "My Music," etc.) without user consent and that is involved in several pre-configured junction points that can complicate backup.  My "Documents" folder has just 2 GB in aggregate and the bulk of my working data (including 80 GB worth of signing sheets) is on other logical partitions when it is not actually on physically separate disks.

I think it is definitely worth disabling Windows 10 updates, which is possible with appropriate Registry settings and by disabling the "self-repair" task in Task Scheduler.

[bandit957]

This update was not "stopped indefinitely." Mine just updated yesterday, and it deleted my OpenOffice settings.

[bing101]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP62c5ZBlM4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ELLzILgTg


Yes and Twit did a pundit show all over the Windows issue. Also Now Linux is discussed as an alternative of Windows.

[Scott5114]

I switched to Linux in 2005. As long as you don't have any specialty software that only runs on Windows (e.g. games, or really specific stuff like "casino accounting software"), you'll be fine. Just approach it with the mindset of finding the program that does what you want instead of bringing your programs with you (i.e. don't insist on trying to run Word instead of figuring out how to get LibreOffice to do what you need).

[kphoger]

And I'm still waiting for MS to develop a means to allow us to shut off keyboard commands (or just ditch them completely - ever hear of a MOUSE).  For those of us who type faster than most people, it's an incredible PITA when the computer suddenly does something weird because the outdated code thought we gave it a command.

I've never had this happen at all.

Keyboard commands are still useful.  If I'm typing I can easily move my fingers to CTRL or ALT for the command, rather than stop to use the mouse.

I'm with you.  I do almost everything I can by keyboard alone, only reaching for the mouse when it really does take less time to do so.  I know a bunch of alt-codes for special characters, menu shortcuts in Microsoft programs, keyboard commands for getting to the beginning or end of a word or sentence or row or column...  I even love to use keyboard commands in Excel that are not part of the current version; many of them are still "understood" by Excel, and it just lets you know you're using something outdated.  For example, to change the width of a column in Excel to 15, I simply type  { Alt+O  C  W  1  5  Enter }.  Really fast.

[J N Winkler]

And I'm still waiting for MS to develop a means to allow us to shut off keyboard commands (or just ditch them completely - ever hear of a MOUSE).  For those of us who type faster than most people, it's an incredible PITA when the computer suddenly does something weird because the outdated code thought we gave it a command.

I am fairly fast on a keyboard (probably around 100 wpm), and I am curious as to how it happens that a keyboard command is accidentally triggered.  I personally would have reservations about a feature to deactivate them because on unfamiliar computers or with unfamiliar software, I often depend on the keyboard commands for basic functions (e.g. file save, file close, application close, view zoom) to avoid menu fishing.  The ribbon has been around for over a decade now and I still haven't gotten used to it.

Just approach it with the mindset of finding the program that does what you want instead of bringing your programs with you (i.e. don't insist on trying to run Word instead of figuring out how to get LibreOffice to do what you need).

I look at this from the standpoint of data portability.  I try to have everything I work with regularly in either plain text format (ANSI, CP 850, or UTF-8 encoding) or PDF (when formatting matters) so that I am not in the position of having to hunt for special viewers to handle proprietary formats if I change OS.  For this reason I don't use Word except for collaboration, and don't use LibreOffice much for my own writing--I have found LaTeX works well even for the occasional letter, all of the source files are plain text, and the pdflatex command produces very compact PDFs.

[Scott5114]

Just approach it with the mindset of finding the program that does what you want instead of bringing your programs with you (i.e. don't insist on trying to run Word instead of figuring out how to get LibreOffice to do what you need).

I look at this from the standpoint of data portability.  I try to have everything I work with regularly in either plain text format (ANSI, CP 850, or UTF-8 encoding) or PDF (when formatting matters) so that I am not in the position of having to hunt for special viewers to handle proprietary formats if I change OS.  For this reason I don't use Word except for collaboration, and don't use LibreOffice much for my own writing--I have found LaTeX works well even for the occasional letter, all of the source files are plain text, and the pdflatex command produces very compact PDFs.

I've found the OpenDocument file formats (which LibreOffice defaults to, and which are accepted and saved to by MS Office, the latter with a lot of complaining meant to be a barrier to entry to saving in OpenDocument) to be portable enough that it works just fine interchanging between Windows and Linux. OpenDocument is not a proprietary format and exists as an ISO standard, so theoretically any office program could make a perfect implementation of it. Usually I will only use PDFs if I want to use a nice font that nobody else owns (like Electra, New Caledonia, or something like that).

I've looked at LaTeX before and, while I'm a sucker for a good markup language, specifying anything other than the default Computer Modern fonts on vanilla LaTeX seems to be impossible, or at least very tricky. Thus, I haven't invested much time in learning it. I get the impression that LaTeX is great for the use case of complex, highly structured documents where a premium is put on efficiency in creation over freedom of design. I can respect that, but that approach is not for me. If making design choices was made at least as easy as CSS, I would probably use LaTeX all the time.

Plain UTF-8 text is good, but can be dodgy when transferring files between OSes. The reason is because Windows handles line breaks differently than the other major OSes. In Windows, a line break is encoded as a carriage return (CR) character followed by a line feed (LF) character. On all other major OSes, it's just a LF. (Things were worse back in the day, when pre-OS X Macs encoded them with just a CR.) This is fine going from Windows to Linux, as Linux software just ignores or removes the extraneous CR characters, but Windows software has a tendency to choke on just a bare LF. This can be mitigated by passing the file through a web browser, which must handle files from both Windows IIS and LAMP servers, and therefore has logic for twiddling the newlines to the proper orientation for the target OS.

This also assumes that the target software can handle UTF-8, and doesn't make the disastrous assumption that all incoming text is Windows 1252 ASCII. Again, this is something that you see mostly on the Windows side–Linux software is written with the assumption that it will be called on to handle output from Windows programs that don't know any better and thus often have some form of encoding toggle.

[J N Winkler]

Usually I will only use PDFs if I want to use a nice font that nobody else owns (like Electra, New Caledonia, or something like that).

I use PDF as an archival medium.  When I write a paper letter, I typically mail the paper copy and retain only a PDF for my records, to preserve searchability and avoid the need to store and handle paper.

I've looked at LaTeX before and, while I'm a sucker for a good markup language, specifying anything other than the default Computer Modern fonts on vanilla LaTeX seems to be impossible, or at least very tricky.

It is actually very easy now.  Nothing I have produced in LaTeX recently has used the Computer Modern fonts.  The LaTeX you can access now through the popular cross-platform distributions such as MikTeX is not your father's LaTeX.  Back in the late nineties, when I first dabbled with TeX, it took a massive amount of knowledge just to get started--in motoring terms it was like not being able to go forward without double-clutching.  Now you can just put it in D and go.

As an example, here is the preamble for a letter I wrote a few years ago:

Code Select Expand

\documentclass[letterpaper,portrait,12pt]{letter}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{fixltx2e}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
%% Please revise the following command, if your babel
%% package does not support English (UK)
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ptm}
\usepackage{times}
\setlength{\parskip}{0.42cm}
\usepackage[top=1in, bottom=1in, left=1.25in, right=1.25in]{geometry}

The "times" package results in the Times Roman type family being used instead of Computer Modern.

I get the impression that LaTeX is great for the use case of complex, highly structured documents where a premium is put on efficiency in creation over freedom of design. I can respect that, but that approach is not for me. If making design choices was made at least as easy as CSS, I would probably use LaTeX all the time.

I would say that LaTeX is now about as easy as CSS.  The appeal for me is that it offers much better control over reflowability when graphics and complex text objects like tables are involved.  There are enough advantages independent of its traditional selling point of rich structure that I am happy using it casually, not just for scholarly books.  I've found Wikibooks' LaTeX guide a helpful starting point.

Plain UTF-8 text is good, but can be dodgy when transferring files between OSes. The reason is because Windows handles line breaks differently than the other major OSes. In Windows, a line break is encoded as a carriage return (CR) character followed by a line feed (LF) character. On all other major OSes, it's just a LF. (Things were worse back in the day, when pre-OS X Macs encoded them with just a CR.) This is fine going from Windows to Linux, as Linux software just ignores or removes the extraneous CR characters, but Windows software has a tendency to choke on just a bare LF. This can be mitigated by passing the file through a web browser, which must handle files from both Windows IIS and LAMP servers, and therefore has logic for twiddling the newlines to the proper orientation for the target OS.

In practice, I find the CR/LF issue (which I do occasionally encounter in Notepad with *nix-born text files) not troublesome, since the tools I have that go line by line are agnostic as to line break convention.  A more serious worry (as you allude to) is dealing with extra-ASCII encodings.  Windows will work just fine with Unicode because NTFS has Unicode filenames built in, but working with them at the NT batch command line entails a codepage change (850 to 65001), Notepad drops a byte order mark in files it saves in UTF-8 which has to be taken into account in text processing (I've had to use a Windows port of sed to strip out the BOM when it causes problems), and plenty of command-line apps like findstr, pdftk, etc. hate extended characters.  Collecting 40 GB and 60 GB worth of highway construction plans from Russia and China respectively has given me a crash course in dealing with UTF-8.

[kphoger]

The update in the OP is the Windows 10 1809 update, which Microsoft has stopped indefinitely until the bugs have been resolved.  There are other Windows 10 updates out there in various stages of rollout.

This update was not "stopped indefinitely." Mine just updated yesterday, and it deleted my OpenOffice settings.

Are you certain it was update 1809?

[jemacedo9]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-october-2018-update-microsoft-releases-fix-for-data-deletion-bug/

After taking the unprecedented step of halting the rollout of the latest Windows feature update only days after its public release, Microsoft announced today that it has isolated the cause of the bug and is rolling out a fix to members of the Windows Insider Program.  (article dated 10/9)

[bing101]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2bhic9WhPs


Another Update on the Windows Fiasco.

[bing101]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoWqKsIP-wQ

[bing101]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2NKXUwsJKk&feature=youtu.be

[MNHighwayMan]

TL;DW?

And what does this have to do with the update glitches?

[D-Dey65]

Last May, they forced an update on me that they were trying to force me into during the previous months. As a result, I lost all the programs and functions on my PC, couldn't log onto any of the websites I'm on, including this one, permanently blocked Adobe Acrobat, and killed my ability to make screencaps from iTunes movies and TV shows. To make matters worse, they never let me set my PC to a recovery point before the update. iTunes thought I was operating from another PC... AGAIN! I talked to support teams from Microsoft and they sent me new programs that didn't do shit for me. They added a bunch of useless programs that were supposed to help me get around the problems I was having but none of them worked. Finally they decided to revert some aspects of their updates, but I still haven't recovered the ability to do everything I used to do. I still get "Error 23132" if I play my iTunes videos in any other format, and I still can't upgrade Adobe.

Apple wasn't so helpful either. I told them what was going on, and they insisted that their files weren't designed to be played in other formats, but that's not true, because I was able to do so until Microsoft's Spring 2018 blunder. BTW, I can play their audio files in other formats without any problems.


Now Microsoft wants to force another shitty update on the people, and I can't find a way to get out of it. And don't tell me to get Linux, or any other browser.

[wxfree]

I've had only minor problems with the updates.  One that recurs is that some settings return to default values after updates.  One that I notice is the disappearing scroll bar.  I don't know who thought it was a good idea to make the scroll bar usable only after you put the cursor inside a microscopic width, but I hate it.  After each update I have to turn that feature off again.

The last update messed up the audio so that the speakers didn't work.  I restarted and the audio came back, and that worked on the administrator account, but on the user account the audio was gone.  I had to uninstall the audio driver so it would automatically reinstall and now it seems to be fixed.

I consider debit cards to be "not ready for prime time."  I've seen people try to use them and not be able to complete their purchases too many times.  I prefer to use cash, or at least to have enough cash to pay for my purchase in case my card fails.  These frequent and unavoidable updates seem to be another example of technology being widely implemented before it was ready for the spotlight.

[SectorZ]

I did the update a few weeks ago. Amazingly, no bugs. More amazingly, a few minor bugs before the update were gone (very minor - but nonetheless now gone).