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Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

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Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#181

Post by currysausage »

Zenst wrote: post #14

I've followed the instructions and understand that they may seem overwhelming for some users. Instead of using command line methods, I opted for Windows Disk Management to shrink the drive's partitions and create the necessary space. It's surprising that a script hasn't been provided for this process, which suggests the complexity and potential pitfalls involved. This leads me to believe that the absence of a scripte…

It looks like a PowerShell script is available now, but I don't think it's changing the partition size. Has anyone tried this out? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5034957-updating...

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#182

Post by mike_hearn »

cesarb wrote: post #118
maximus-decimus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I imagine the error code looks. How else can you even return the wrong error? ```c# public class FooError { public Message(){ //TODO: I copy pasted this from somewhere else. I still need to update to a meaningful message return "this is a BarError" } } ```

The code which outputs the error message is probably getting it from GetLastError() or similar (the Windows equivalent to POSIX's errno). But meanwhile, some error handling code has called some library functions (probably to restore the system to a sane state), and one of these library functions accidentally overwrote the global per-thread "last error" variable. That is, the error in the error handling routine would…

Yeah that's almost certainly the issue.

Last year I had to debug a Windows issue that caused the following: we get back a struct from the Windows API that contains an HRESULT style error code, and also a string error message in case of error. Printing the string revealed that it started with the error code in hex, so we just logged the string. As part of a workaround for another Windows bug we had to check the error code for a specific value and do something different.

Eventually we got a report from a Windows machine in the wild where the code seemed to be doing something impossible: the log indicated the error code we looked for was being returned, yet, the code didn't take the conditional path that checked for it. After a lot of head scratching we realised there was only one possibility: the error code printed in the error message and the error code returned in the structure didn't actually match. Sure enough that turned out to be the case. Somehow Microsoft had generated the textual version of the error successfully, and then the machine readable error code had been replaced with something else before it was returned. The fix was to compare against both the HRESULT and the stringified form.

Naturally, this error only occurred on some Windows installs and not others for no obvious reason. The core OS seems to have tech debt issues so severe that it's basically impossible to verify even for app developers - you can do everything right, test it all carefully, and your code will still blow up in the wild in an undocumented fashion because no two Windows installs are quite alike, even (perplexingly) for fresh out-of-the-box installs that appear to be the same version. At this point even Linux is more consistent than Windows 10 is. I can't imagine how painful it must be to work on Windows deployments at Microsoft. The install base has become so inconsistent that they're pretty much guaranteed to trash people's systems with every change they make by now.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#183

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #176

As former windows Dev, I remember getting supper frustrated with their Windows upgrade. You could no longer reliably write to your install folder. They started forcing you to write to the registry, then to data folder, then other places. So you had to split up the install "ten ways" how and where you kept your data. HKEY local machine, HKEY_Current_User, and so on .. then ask for elevation to install. I vaguely remem…

>You could no longer reliably write to your install folder.

I think that came in with Windows XP and it was a good thing. Letting user programs write into a folder full of executables is terrible for security.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#184

Post by muststopmyths »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #144
hknmtt wrote: post #36

i remember reading years ago about the reason windows updates since 8 or 10 were so bad was because MS fired all testers and scrapped their testing hardware and now they are testing virtually in cloud. I guess nothing has changed, still. cost cutting at its best.

> MS fired all testers and scrapped their testing hardware and now they are testing virtually in cloud. I'm fairly certain this isn't the case. 1) Microsoft still adds Microsoft drivers for hardware; this implies having hardware and people to work with it. 2) Microsoft has a massive base of corp and gov customers buying hosting, surveillance, etc. Widespread issues with Windows would could affect that. I'll go out on…

nope. as indicated by a sibling comment, Microsoft used to have parallel SDE and SDE/T tracks and orgs.

They killed the test org completely around 10 years ago because of course developers can just do TDD and ship an operating system with 30 years of legacy applications/hardware ecosystems around it. Or "telemetry will just tell us what to fix"

Of all the mountains of dumb shit this company has done in the past 10 years, this is actually what killed Windows for the people (like myself) who actually used to like Windows.

Edit: To add sources, I worked at Microsoft years ago and still have friends in those orgs.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#185

Post by dtgriscom »

johngossman wrote: post #101
EspadaV9 wrote: post #7

When installing the update, some users are finding themselves faced with an 0x80070643 error, a generic failure message. Unfortunately, according to Microsoft, "because of an error in the error code handling routine," this might not be the correct error. Error in the error code code is giving the wrong error code for the error. I'm curious how often the error code code needs touching that there is an error in there t…

Dating myself, but I used an OS/2 build that would occasionally report “This Error Message has been deleted”

... but isn't that good?

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#186

Post by ThrowawayB7 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #144
hknmtt wrote: post #36

i remember reading years ago about the reason windows updates since 8 or 10 were so bad was because MS fired all testers and scrapped their testing hardware and now they are testing virtually in cloud. I guess nothing has changed, still. cost cutting at its best.

> MS fired all testers and scrapped their testing hardware and now they are testing virtually in cloud. I'm fairly certain this isn't the case. 1) Microsoft still adds Microsoft drivers for hardware; this implies having hardware and people to work with it. 2) Microsoft has a massive base of corp and gov customers buying hosting, surveillance, etc. Widespread issues with Windows would could affect that. I'll go out on…

There was plenty of news coverage of the Windows test team being eliminated at the time of Microsoft's 2014 layoffs:

"Under the new structure, a number of Windows engineers, primarily dedicated testers, will no longer be needed. (I don't know exactly how many testers will be laid off, but hearing it could be a "good chunk," from sources close to the company.) Instead, program managers and development engineers will be taking on new responsibilities, such as testing hypotheses..."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/beyond-12500-former-nokia-empl...

There were also a lot of insider comments from affected SDETs on the notorious (at the time) Mini-Microsoft blog as well: https://minimsft.blogspot.com/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-g...

The burden of testing software was shifted over to developers after the layoffs. If you check Microsoft's job listings, there isn't even a category for software testing positions anymore.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#187

Post by theyeenzbeanz »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #35
yreg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do that (wait a bit) on macOS and iOS, but I wasn't able to explain to my Windows that I don't want to update automatically. Especially in the middle of some overnight computing task.

This is a pro feature on windows. But you can enable it on home editions with some power shell commands or by side loading the program used to set the relevant settings on pro editions (group policy editor).

I have pro and it conveniently “forgets” my update settings and will still do it whenever if feels like. Microsoft doesn’t understand that no means no.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#188

Post by fmbb »

EspadaV9 wrote: post #7

When installing the update, some users are finding themselves faced with an 0x80070643 error, a generic failure message. Unfortunately, according to Microsoft, "because of an error in the error code handling routine," this might not be the correct error. Error in the error code code is giving the wrong error code for the error. I'm curious how often the error code code needs touching that there is an error in there t…

It might not even be human error in QA. This might be a code error in the error code code error finding code.

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#189

Post by [deleted] »

zamadatix wrote: post #174
kotaKat wrote: post #107

Can Microsoft just bring back a proper QA department instead of leaving it to unpaid "Insiders" who drink the Flavor-Aid and think Microsoft can't code a single thing wrong?

Based on the feedback community I don't think that's a particularly accurate take of Insiders as a whole. That said it's been ~10 years now since they dumped the traditional QA department (which involved more than just leveraging external user validation) and I honestly can't say Windows is blowing up any more than it was the previous 10 years to that. I'd really like to see some actual measured statistics of e.g. pa…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get Windows 10 update installed

#190

Post by [deleted] »

mike_hearn wrote: post #182
cesarb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code which outputs the error message is probably getting it from GetLastError() or similar (the Windows equivalent to POSIX's errno). But meanwhile, some error handling code has called some library functions (probably to restore the system to a sane state), and one of these library functions accidentally overwrote the global per-thread "last error" variable. That is, the error in the error handling routine would…

Yeah that's almost certainly the issue. Last year I had to debug a Windows issue that caused the following: we get back a struct from the Windows API that contains an HRESULT style error code, and also a string error message in case of error. Printing the string revealed that it started with the error code in hex, so we just logged the string. As part of a workaround for another Windows bug we had to check the error…

[deleted]
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