Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

>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

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...

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

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.

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...

A corrupted installation requires a new install, but not a reformat.

> 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.)

I seem to recall reading that the "improper use" in this case could also consist of using a program that hard-coded paths and was not aware of folder redirection.

If I remember correctly, folder redirects were being set up by OneDrive attempting to mirror well-known directories like My Documents and My Pictures. Many people lost very important files.

The issues were not at all tiny: OneDrive is installed by default, I think (it is on the Surface Book), and it uses known folder redirection; yet it’s easy to end up with things in %USERPROFILE%\Documents as well as %USERPROFILE%\OneDrive\Documents, whether deliberately or accidentally. For me, I used to deliberately put some things in OneDrive and some things not in OneDrive, depending on things like their size and how often they’d change and how much I cared about them. After OneDrive app broke on my account, I gave up on using it.

All up, I think data loss was probably uncommon, but not rare. And data loss of such things is always severe.

The installed base is so huge that it will be a significant number of people affected no matter how weird the edge case. Also, if they’re going to implement a feature they should expect it to be used and know when they broke it (especially for a company with the absurd resources of Microsoft).

I believe you are undervaluing the consequences and likelihood of that bug.

These are one set of steps to be effected by the bug.

1. Have a primary hardrive that is nearly full.

2. Get a second hard drive to store more pictures to your machine.

3. Change My pictures folder location to save on the new hard drive. (The least likely step but not super unlikely if your searching ways to stop your primary hard drive filling up)

4. Click no when asked if you want to copy everything across to the new location (ignoring it saying it's recommended (but only so you can see your older photos easier))

5. Have the update roll out and delete all of the old photos you had.

Losing those old photos (perhaps of passed loved ones) you may not have anywhere else can be heartbreaking. The fact that a very small percentage of users is effected does not change the fact that as we're talking about a massive user base, the absolute number of users is always going to be high.

This seems like an excellent time to point out that storing a single copy of irreplaceable data like photos is a really bad idea.

I am certainly not undervaluing the consequences. Data loss is always huge, but I would say, comparatively, the likelihood of losing your data to this Windows bug pales in comparison to say, getting locked out of your Google Photos account and having no way to appeal. (I have a friend who is unable to get into a Google account with correspondence from a deceased family member.) I don't feel like Microsoft is even close to the industry worst in putting your data at risk because of this bug.

And with regards to the massive user base, bear in mind, this was caught in the very early stages of a slow, phased rollout process, explicitly for this sort of reason. So it was a small percentage of a very small rollout to begin with.

I don't know about this particular issue and how bad the fault was. But I do feel this aspect of Microsoft (regardless of how horrible they have been or is) gets downplayed to oblivion. OsX would have data loss every minor release if the current issues of the OS is anything to go by considering how few configuration it has to support.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com