
Even After Fix, Windows 10 Update Is Botching File Operations - sharjeelsayed
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/10/even-after-microsofts-fix-windows-10s-1809-update-is-still-botching-file-operations/
======
xpaulbettsx
This article is super deceptive, these two bugs are completely unrelated, and
the one still standing is pretty obscure:

1\. You're extracting a Zip file and intend to overwrite your own data

2\. The data isn't overwritten, but it doesn't tell you about it

3\. You delete the Zip file, thinking that it's extracted.

I'm not discounting that this is a Bug, but I can't think of a time I would've
ever lost data because of this, and relating it to the upgrade bugs seem
downright deceptive

~~~
dx87
I know it was an error on my part, but I lost an updated password database
file because of unexpected behavior with the Windows file explorer. I had
mainly been working out of a single folder, so I didn't realize the next time
that I opened the file explorer that it was showing me "quick access" since
the file list was populated with the contents of the one folder I was using. I
dragged the updated database file to the explorer window, and didn't get any
notification. I'd thought it had overwritten the old file without warning, so
I deleted the updated file I had dragged over. When I went to load the
database, I saw it was missing recently added passwords, so I opened the
explorer window and realized that it defaulted to quick access and silently
ignores any drag and drop file copying.

~~~
gmueckl
This shows what a steamimg pile of incoherent features and behaviours the
Windows Explorer has been gradually turned into since Windows 7. It is quite
hard for average users to coax that tool into showing an actually honest
content of some directory on the hard drive. There are so many abstractions,
redirections, alternative view and on the fly translations (only obvious with
languages other than English) in there that the very thing it is supposed to
be good at becomes cumbersome and error prone. And you cannot easily disable
all these things that just tend to get in the way.

If anyone who is working on that program reads this: please rein in this
madness and turn the Explorer back into a decent and simple file manager
without abstactions and lies to the usera

~~~
wvenable
Microsoft seems to think users are idiots. And often they are. But you can't
help these people, every solution they come up just creates more idiots who
don't know how it works. Some point soon we'll all be idiots who don't know
how anything works anymore.

~~~
gmueckl
Maybe you can make computers easier to use by providing abstracted, context-
dependent views of the data instead. Mobile phones rely on that prerty
successfully. But they also do not merge these views with the single file
manager the system has. Therein lies the true madness of the Windows Explorer
in my oppinion.

If you want to have a view for the barely computer literate average user,
(ab-)use the myriad predefined folders in the user profiles and create a
launcher for dummies that starts a comtact manager for the address book, a
photo gallery for the photos and so on. And hide a file manager in this set of
tools that has no stupid extras like forced OneDrive integration and
Libraries.

~~~
wvenable
Mobile iOS don't abstract complexity; they don't have complexity. Mobile apps
are just silo's that can barely communicate with each other. Nobody working on
a PC wants that.

You cannot simultaneously give people the power to work on files between
multiple apps, organize them how they want, and make it as dumb as iOS. You
want to zip up your photos and email them to your boss? Good luck getting your
photo gallery to do that.

~~~
pjmlp
For sure you can do that on Android, and I guess with the new iOS file
extensions as well.

------
doodliego
An OS used by billions of people including government agencies, hospitals, and
nonprofits is not some videogame that needs new content. It's mission critical
software, and these utter delinquents are treating it like a Steam early
release.

If MS won't get its act together, they should be regulated, broken up, or have
their OS seized by eminent domain for the public good.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
> or have their OS seized by eminent domain

If there's one thing the government is known for, it's writing bug-free,
efficient software.

Also, for real, this bug is not _that_ bad. It's obviously a bug you'd rather
not have. But no user data is lost. It just fails to surface an overwrite
dialogue, and assumes the result is no.

~~~
dschuler
I know you're saying this in jest, but the (US) government wrote code to fly
to the moon and back, control robots on Mars, and model the earth (e.g. DoD's
WGS 84, all the work by NIST, etc.). Sure, healthcare.gov was not a smooth
rollout, but they do deserve some credit overall.

Now Windows on the other hand.... I just set up Windows on a new laptop I
bought recently.. just plain Windows as it shipped with my new laptop. Didn't
do anything "outside the box" here. I've let it update after this fiasco was
supposedly over, restarted - and, of course - can't boot, everything's
corrupted, had to reinstall Windows from scratch. Never had this happen with
macOS, FreeBSD, or Linux.

It's hard to believe, but it really is _that_ bad. I wish it wasn't!

~~~
ttty
Never happened to me with Windows. It's not the best, but works.

Linux on the over hand it's a continuous installation of drivers and fixing
functionality that works out of the box on my windows: graphics problems,
audio, screen, usb, WiFi.

Of course and then you try to install some module and says you have
incompatible modules. Then you need to figure out what modules you need to
change to match the version of the module to install. This was a few years
ago, but I don't have the time to do this.

Plus window management is broken on Linux, too many bugs. Last time I couldn't
even alt tab like windows.

~~~
HelloNurse
You don't appreciate the difference between knowing what's happening to your
system well enough to fix it and hoping that an "update" doesn't cause too
much unrecoverable damage when it installs itself behind your back.

~~~
ttty
I just need to do some work, not fixing the os

------
userbinator
It's not clear from the article whether this was just an old long-standing bug
that has now gotten attention, or if they really broke a basic piece of
functionality that has been around since at least XP if not earlier. I'm not
surprised either way, but unfortunately I'm leaning toward the latter.

I don't think I'm the only one when I say I want Microsoft to quit messing
around with Windows --- just fix the severe security bugs as they're found,
and stop rewriting things needlessly. Then again, they're probably doing the
latter as an excuse to insert telemetry and ads...

~~~
majewsky
So WSL is just "an excuse to insert telemetry and ads"? That's a very original
POV.

~~~
vlunkr
You’re really putting words in their mouth. WSL is not a core part of windows
that has been rewritten.

~~~
jessedhillon
WSL is one of the features which has seen major improvement from the updates
in the past 12 months.

------
drewmol
>The good news is, if you use a third-party app for archives, such as WinZip,
WinRAR or 7-Zip, you won't encounter the bug.

I'm not excusing the bug, but 7-zip had been one of the first tools I install
on any windows installation since XP, setting it as default application to
handle all archive formats it supports, .zip included. I'm surprised to see so
many comments about potentially running into this bug, doesn't everyone just
use 7-zip?

~~~
skolsuper
When I hear 7zip I associate it with security vulnerabilities. I remember
reading a couple of articles last year that said 7zip was maintained and
distributed by a single person with not-stellar security practices, and most
mirrors online are hosting old, insecure versions. Therefore I wouldn't
recommend it to anyone that doesn't "know what they're doing" wrt security.

source: [https://borncity.com/win/2018/02/21/security-risk-
avoid-7-zi...](https://borncity.com/win/2018/02/21/security-risk-avoid-7-zip/)

~~~
rrrttrrr
The author of that article's problems with 7zip can be summed up and dismissed
like so:

1\. 7zip has had security flaws - so does every other software that interacts
with untrusted data, and the author admits himself that 7zip's author has
responded quickly (it doesn't seem like 7zip has an abnormally high amount of
exploits)

2\. People are using/redistributing old versions of 7zip which are vulnerable
- and that's 7zip's fault how? 7zip's own website has an easy to use and up to
date installer, go after the people hosting the shitty mirrors

3\. 7zip doesn't use ASLR - the author of the article literally gives the
reason for this: shrinking the binary size (he then tries to pretend like this
is some gaping security flaw)

4\. 7zip doesn't use DEP on 32 bit windows prior to win10 - do people
seriously even use 32 bit windows nowadays? (also, this is as dumb of a "flaw"
as not having ASLR)

Fun fact: the article's author recommends you use the OS's built in tools (aka
windows explorer), so I guess I'll just have to pretend that any tar/rar/etc
files don't exist

~~~
skolsuper
Isn't it a flaw though? What is the point of ASLR then? Asking as a noob

~~~
Faark
I'd compare it to a classical steering-wheel lock. It makes your car a bit
harder to steal. Even without it, a thief would still have to get into the car
and start the engine. But not parking in a bad neighborhood will likely be a
more important factor.

ASLR makes it harder to exploit other bugs that might exist in the software.
Browser for example should definitively use it, since they are highly complex
systems while also your first line of defense against a somewhat competent
attacker. As for 7zip... it also can come in contact with dubious files quite
easily while also having to support lots of formats (huge attack surface with
potential bugs). I'm torn, but would probably prefer it to use ASLR.

------
thrower123
Yikes. This sounds, however, like a completely different bug, if it is only
triggered by unzipping archives. I'm sure that the situation is more
complicated than it looks - because it looks like there is just a shocking
lack of QA testing being done, if basic edge cases like this are resulting in
undefined behavior.

~~~
Teckla
I'm astonished Microsoft doesn't have automated tests for something as mundane
as testing their built-in zip archive extraction functionality.

~~~
SyneRyder
Peter Bright at Ars Technica had an interesting article on the Windows
development process, with a tidbit of information I thought was interesting.
Apparently it's permitted to integrate code into Windows that doesn't have
tests:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-
problem-i...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsofts-problem-isnt-
shipping-windows-updates-its-developing-them/)

------
Pneumaticat
Sounds like _Linux-class bugs_ (e.g. KDE copy/paste not working correctly
sometimes[0]).

I guess Windows has lost its advantage of perceived quality.

[0]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_ne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9a7k2i/psa_on_kde_never_use_the_gui_when_copying_a_large/)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
:D As a Linux-lover, Windows 10 has been an absolute gold mine. I get to roll
out all the old lines... "I need a system that just works", "I can't afford to
waste time fixing it after every update", "it's just a toy OS"[1], etc.

[1] Go on, tell me why Candy Crush is installed by default in the _Enterprise_
edition...

~~~
kurtisc
I like seeing how removing the latest unwanted feature requires 'just' a few
settings changes. Poetic.

------
Steko
Microsoft has turned Windows Update into a cancer that is the single reason I
am going to abandon their platform in future machine purchases. Can't believe
I'm longing for the days of Vista (well post-SP1).

~~~
stevenwoo
What are you switching to in the future for desktop/laptop?

~~~
pdimitar
Personal goal: gather ~$13,500 and buy the maxed out iMac Pro 2017 -- 4TB SSD,
128GB RAM, Xeon W (18 cores, 2.3Ghz, turbo boost to 4.3GHz, 42.75MB cache),
10Gb ethernet link, 4 USB Type-C ports, 4 Thunderbolt 3 slots, amazing
display.

I view it as an at least 7 years of investment, if not 11-12 even.

(Especially now that macOS has a dark theme as well.)

I have a very keen interest in Linux and the people who make it happen... but
reality is they are not dedicated teams of people working with high wages on
Linux alone so problems with desktop always arise -- also competing standards,
but the real problem is that a lot of end-user or specialized work software
just can't run on Linux (3D modelling, architecture planning, professional
design programs etc.). Truthfully, Linux on PCs is just fine but laptops are a
whole different story.

I love Linux but for all its amazing engineering it remains a mostly
programmer/sysadmin system and environment and nothing much else beyond that.
I need a lot of stuff done outside of that and I have hobbies I wanna work on
in the future and Linux just isn't cutting it. I don't want to hand-craft
clever command-line configurations until I die.

Windows 10 is... I don't know, feels like it's going downhill overall.
Important UX issues aren't being addressed for ages -- like the two sets of
configuration UIs (almost everybody I asked says they were confused by that).
WSL is good and useful, the cloud offerings look alright but something is just
missing. Maybe the fact that after the April 2018 update the Mail program
never managed to work with my mail again. Read about a "workaround" which
involved resetting your user profile and... yeah, gave up. Who wants to
restore their settings for a full workday just so a half-arsed mail program
can work again? These things pile up and now I can't even tell you all my
complaints nowadays because I never wrote them down -- only my accumulated
impression, which is disappointment.

Windows is, in my opinion, descending.

~~~
mehrdadn
> $13,500

> I view it as an at least 7 years of investment, if not 11-12 even.

Hmm, that's equivalent to spending between $1-2k to get a new computer every
single year. That sounds like an awful investment to me, and I don't think
most people would consider it a good investment to have to buy a $1-2k
computer every single year. How do you see that as a good investment?

~~~
windowsworkstoo
Not the OP but I bill around that per day, so the investment would only be a
days worth of billable time to stay cutting edge, so makes sense in that
perspective.

~~~
pdimitar
Funny username by the way. :)

Let me just be really honest and say: I envy you. I am working hard to become
as good in sales.

------
gruez
while technically true, the title is misleading because it makes it sound like
every file operation (copy, move, etc.) is botched, when in reality it's only
messing up when extracting from zip files and they already exist.

~~~
Spooky23
I see what you’re saying, but Microsoft is forcing the industry on a treadmill
to upgrade as quickly as possible as they aggressively break stuff on their
quest the twiddle Windows twice a year. They need to embrace quality control.

Handling zip files is a basic file system function in 2018. If they are
fucking up basic operations like this, imagine how bad other parts of Windows
are now.

~~~
jsgo
I agree with a lot of this, but I think if we are talking updates as upgrades,
the industry and consumers forced their hands with fast update cycles with
meaningful feature adds. Not excusing what is happening here, they allowed it
to be released, but I do think they were forced into the current position
rather than took it on their own.

~~~
GiorgioG
Somewhere at Microsoft some bean counters decided that formal QA was costing
them too much and “agile” was a perfect excuse to scuttle QA (move fast and
break things.) It’s bullshit that has been propagated throughout the software
industry. “Well, Microsoft doesn’t do it this way anymore so...”. I work for
an MS partner and this is exactly what’s happening in-house here. You’re just
making your customers the beta testers.

~~~
Damark
Agile has nothing to do with releasing products early or in testing. It allows
the development process to run more smoothly, but it should be completed by
the time it is released to the public.

------
ux-app
This is ridiculous, but to save yourself, run backups. I've been doing a full
system disk backup every 24 hours for the past 2 years. So far it has saved my
bacon once.

Fwiw, i use Acronis for bups. The restore process for a 128gb ssd took about
10mins.

~~~
starky
I started using Acronis to backup everything I don't want to lose about a year
ago. A couple months ago, one of my hard drives failed (which I've never had
happen before). Instead of trying to limp my files from the half-working hard
drive, I just restored to the new disks and remapped the hard drive to the old
letter, took maybe an hour and it was like nothing had happened.

------
chriscareycode
I ran the October update and lost my Desktop folder.

After install, a dialog box appears:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop is unavailable ..."

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Out of curiosity... why was your desktop folder there? That is a really weird
place for it.

~~~
JonathonW
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\" is the profile folder
(%USERPROFILE%) for the LocalSystem account; it doesn't normally have a
desktop folder.

If Windows is trying to find your desktop folder there when you log on
interactively, something's gone horribly wrong (but, frankly, that doesn't
surprise me with the 1809 update).

------
marricks
Didn’t Microsoft reorganize a bit ago and let go huge swaths of their QA team?
Seems to line up with their public beta version to try and get some free QA.

Like, it’s understandable that supporting so many chipsets is hard but it
really seems like they were doing a better job 10 years ago.

------
pletnes
Note that the windows implementation of zip/unzip does not always return the
original file contents after a round trip. Yes, I’ve seen it myself. That’s an
even more serious bug, but it’s been there since win7 at least. I don’t trust
the builtin zip at all.

~~~
lfam
Do you have any links to bug reports or other documentation about this?

~~~
pletnes
Unfortunately no. I experienced it when running software signed/hashed and it
just would not run. The dev told me that this was well known and that I should
not use the builtin zip. Sure enough, unzipping the file with 7zip worked like
a charm.

I’ve found the same when downloading a proprietary lib that would not link
with a C/Fortran application. The devs there tracked it down to the windows
zip being used to pack the file, which they did not normally do.

So, just hearsay, but I’ve never even dreamed of bothering to file a bug
report with microsoft. Is that even doable?

------
keypress
Why in 2018 do we still have lousy file managers?

~~~
ygra
Because for most people file management and document management are kinda the
same, so we end up with tools that are barely capable document managers that
end up exposing all kinds of details about the underlying storage mechanism
and both are kinda iffy. You cannot reliably do document management atop of
files while keeping file managers happy and the subset of document management
tasks that can be done at the file level is kinda limited as well. So we get
some weird hybrid that's horrible to use and still incapable of many
interesting tasks.

------
xaduha
If you're really tired of this shit, then get LTSB.

~~~
gruez
I'm not sure how LTSB could have prevented this at all. Ironically, 1809 was a
LTSB release, so if you were upgrading from 1607 LTSB (to get WSL working, for
example), you would also be exposed to this bug.

~~~
xaduha
Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it? So there you go, proof enough.
In any case it's not just that, there are lots of other annoying stuff that I
don't need in my life.

~~~
gruez
>Well at the moment LTSB isn't affected is it?

And you know that based on what? The lack of bug reports? The LTSB population
is obviously going to be smaller than the general population, so the lack of
reports of it happening on LTSB doesn’t really indicate anything. Besides, the
task manager bugs introduced in 1809 is in ltsb 1809 AND server 2019, which
makes me inclined to believe that all the windows editions come from the same
branch anyways.

~~~
xaduha
I don't expect it to have 0 bugs. But generally speaking less features means
less bugs. And as I said it's not just about bugs.

------
misterman0
What's a really good alternative to Windows Explorer?

~~~
lakkal
I use this for file viewing and managing:

[https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html](https://www.fileviewer.com/index.html)

(the web page describes it as 'an all-purpose File Manager for Windows with a
powerful inbuilt text file viewer')

------
OpenBSD-reich
This is why when I run Windows in virtuo, it's Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
Edition with the help of vlmcsd.

------
booleandilemma
Is Microsoft starting to hire bootcamp grads or what?

