
Microsoft resumes rollout of Windows 10 version 1809, promises quality changes - ilamont
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-resumes-rollout-of-windows-10-version-1809-promises-quality-changes/
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lostgame
I’m not an ardent supporter of Windows, or, at this point any particular OS or
infrastructure, but, and especially after the ludicrous nature of Windows 8, I
have found Windows 10 to actually be a fairly stable and usable OS.

To hear the recent stories of updates causing issues is surprising, but with
so many supported configurations for Windows, I find it a lot more excusable
than MacOS or ChromeOS.

That doesn’t mean things like this shouldn’t be caught in QA, it just means
it’s not always easy.

~~~
Laforet
The previous file loss incident was more of a UX problem rather than a
technological one. To paraphrase, the update would , at one point, ask the
user whether they'd like to migrate their existing documents and settings. If
the user chose no then their documents will be deleted. This is why it only
affected some people, and a simple warning would have been sufficient to clear
up any confusion, though some might argue the option should have never been
offered in the first place.

This is the very same problem I had with the 1st gen clickwheel iPod. When I
first connected one to a new computer, iTunes asked me if I wanted to
'initialize' the device. Oblivious of its meaning I went with 'yes' and wiped
a borrowed iPod clean. Friendship ruined forever.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Wow. That reminds me of my experience with the Lisa back around 1983. It said
that the boot disk needed to be initialized, and my attitude (it a school
computer) was that if it was stupid enough to reformat the floppy it just
booted off of, I was going to let it.

Sounds like Apple just doesn't learn some lessons.

~~~
Laforet
Well that was almost a decade ago and I'm unaware of Apple making similar
mistakes recently, however I have never managed to figure out iTunes sync in
the meantime.

However this behavior is really out of the line for MS since they've got a
good track record on backwards compatibility and data preservation. Previously
during in-situ upgrades the installer would back up gigabytes of data in a
special folder on the off chance that they might be needed again in the event
of a rollback, and somehow they managed to drop the ball this time round.

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thibran
I wish Microsoft would update Windows to use a Chrome OS like update system
with delta updates and read-only system partitions. When partition A is in use
(mounted read-only), an update would create a copy of A on partition B. Then
download a binary delta and apply it to B to update B to the newest OS
version. On the next system start partition B would be booted, if there is an
error restart to partition A (a known working state), otherwise B is marked as
'good'.

It's 2018 and updates are still slow to apply and/or break computers... what a
strange world.

~~~
olyjohn
My Windows directory is currently sitting at 49GB. I don't think this is a
realistic idea for Windows-based PCs unless cheap SSDs start getting bigger
with a quickness.

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Narishma
Why is it so big though? On my system the Windows directory is only 5GB.

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jesseb
I did a clean install of Windows 10 on my workstation less than a month ago
and my Windows directory is sitting at 23GB, methinks something funky is going
on here.

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ConceptJunkie
Do you have a bunch of applications installed? IIUC, Windows keeps different
versions of each of its DLLs around for whatever apps requires them. I would
expect that installing applications might embiggen your Windows directly a
lot.

~~~
jesseb
I wouldn't say I have "a lot" of applications installed, although I'm not too
sure how to quantify that.

I assumed it WinSxS related as the other reply mentions, and upon
investigation found that it is 9GB alone! I don't run Windows outside of work
so I've just never really bothered looking into it, but if it continues to
balloon I guess I'll have to.

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maxharris
When are they going to make WSL usable for developers, though? I have a nice
Core i7 Surface Pro that's collecting dust because anything that touches the
filesystem under WSL is too slow to use for most of the work I do.

~~~
setquk
This is literally never going to get better despite promises. It’s a
filesystem limitation of NTFS. Small files cause MFT contention due to the
architecture of NTFS.

This has always been a problem. Check out a really big git or SVN repo on the
native box using native windows tools and compare to a native Linux install on
ext4. Ext4 can take 10% of the time to complete.

ReFS suffers the same fate too.

I can’t say anything more than walk away.

Using a VM is orders of magnitude faster.

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StanislavPetrov
Its a problem for Microsoft (or any other company) to force updates on
consumers who paid for the OS and don't want updates. It isn't about security
concerns, because the security-related updates are only a small fraction of
the overall changes that Microsoft forces onto our systems. This would be true
even if their forced updates worked flawlessly and didn't brick machines or
cause other unwanted problem. End-users should have the ability to turn off
updates and voluntarily accept whatever risks come with their choice.

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tkcins
I also made quality changes: I switched to LTSC.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Post-Nadella Microsoft is trying to project an image of being customer
focused. Well, what I'm seeing are a lot of customers who say that they don't
want Windows 10's feature updates, or that they want them less frequently.

It just so happens that the version of Windows these customers are asking for
already exists, as an actively-supported product. But you can't buy it. I
can't describe this behavior as anything but anti-customer.

~~~
nolok
> Well, what I'm seeing are an awful lot of customers saying they don't want
> MS's Windows 10 feature updates, or they want them less frequently.

This is similarity bias affecting your judgment.

I believe the way windows 10 currently runs update is wrong for me, and for
most tech users, by far. I'm glad it takes 10 second to fix it to allow
delayed updates again, but still I would like it to come out of the box easier
to manage.

On the other hand, for the very very vast majority of windows users, this is
superior to the end result they experienced before (updates never installed,
and not by choice).

What's wrong here is a clear case of "one size fits all", they apply the same
system they made for the majority to everyone, and it end up not work for some
users for a variety of reason, but it's (imho) wrong of you to think this is
not exactly what most users want: "do it like my phone/tablet, I don't care
about updates"

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Wowfunhappy
Just to be clear, I'm not saying a _majority_ of customers dislike MS's
feature updates, just that there are a lot who do.

The amount of people asking for something like LTSC is large _enough_ that
Microsoft really, really ought to make that version more widely available.
IMO, Microsoft's refusal to do so says a lot about their values as a company.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I would imagine that the vast majority either don't like it or are indifferent
to it because it's just something Windows does.

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ocdtrekkie
In retrospect, the October update's flaws were incredibly tiny: What had us
all scurrying to make backup copies of our Documents folder ended up affecting
only people with _really_ weird/niche configurations that didn't really make a
lot of logical sense[1]. Data loss is always bad, but it strikes me every time
I see this sort of thing that no other company[2] has even tried to maintain
compatibility with so many arbitrary niche options this long. Neither Apple
nor Google sell products which could have a weird configuration in a 2009 era
OS which could be upgraded and officially supported in 2018.

That being said, Microsoft's month-to-month patch reliability has been
absolutely terrible. While not causing _data loss_ , the monthly updates have
been regularly show-stopping of late, and anything that gets Microsoft to
realize it made a mistake on axing it's testers (and removing the ability to
cherry-pick security fixes) is something I can stand behind.

[1] Complete aside, I have actually heard of someone applying version control
to the folder that contains the Windows registry, and being upset at Microsoft
that it broke their PC.

[2] Linux is not a company, and truly open source platforms do some amazing
things for long term support. I think they just dropped support for 386
processors a couple years ago.

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TremendousJudge
>ended up affecting only people with really weird/niche configurations that
didn't really make a lot of logical sense

Did it now? afaik if you only had one drive, and one partition, and had
Windows installed there, and you didn't have enough free space, you lost
everything. That's not exactly niche

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ocdtrekkie
That's incorrect. You had to be using folder redirection (very rarely seen
outside of corporate environments, and no longer popular in those either), and
then placed files in the original folder that was supposed to be redirected
elsewhere, which you shouldn't be doing even if you are using folder
redirection. (In short, to have this issue, you had to use a feature almost
nobody uses, and also be using it improperly.)

Note that the reason that Microsoft failed to address it is because while a
Feedback submission had been made, it didn't have any upvotes, because it was
so niche that almost none of the Insiders experienced it. Despite the fact
that Insiders are the sort of power users most likely to have fiddled with
weird features like folder redirection.

Details are here:
[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/10/09/updat...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/10/09/updated-
version-of-windows-10-october-2018-update-released-to-windows-insiders/)

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TremendousJudge
I'm not sure that was the only way for it to happen. I don't have sources,
only the anecdote of a friend that got his install ruined and had to reformat.
I don't know what he did, but I'm 100% sure he wasn't doing any folder
redirection

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nikbackm
How would Windows deleting his personal files ruin his installation and why
would a re-format help in that case?

But maybe you're referring to another bug.

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TremendousJudge
I think it didn't just deleted his personal files; it corrupted the
installation itself. It might be another bug. I'm not sure though.

Searching around for some sort of source, I found this article[1], which says
"...some of my readers told me their hard drives were corrupted and thus were
unable to roll back the update." Of course this may be hearsay and false
information in times of panic, so I take the statement with a grain of salt.

[1][https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/10/06/micro...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/10/06/microsoft-
confirms-windows-10-update-mistake-was-your-data-lost/#2a737723665b)

~~~
Dylan16807
A corrupted installation requires a new install, but _not_ a reformat.

