Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#121

Post by lifeisgood99 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #14

tonetheman wrote: post #13

Testing something like Windows/Windows updates at scale is hard. So bugs will happen. But deleting docs is gross. I can imagine there was tense meeting somewhere in MS where the choice was made to stop the update. I would have liked to have been there...

If you're a company the size of Microsoft, "hard" just means "expensive." There is certianly no question that Microsoft is able to produce Windows updates that do not have these problems. Apple has been doing automatic updates for years - but we don't hear similar stories coming from that camp, because they put in the necessary QA effort.

The ios and Macos debacles say otherwise

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#122

Post by g051051 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #36

Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does. The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow r…

You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working.

Things to check:

Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades.

Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#123

Post by romanovcode » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

JepZ wrote: post #80

If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore... By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.

Never in my life I had 4h updates, not even 1h. Max I had like 10 minutes?

Not even a Windows advocate, just stop telling this BS please.

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#124

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #26

mehrdadn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.

And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.

That excuse almost made sense until they turned Windows Update into a marketing channel.

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#125

Post by mediocrejoker » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #118

kens wrote: post #115

I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doi…

I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification…

This is how some versions of android work. If a new update partition fails to boot, it falls back to the old one automatically.

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#126

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #54

barking wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to give you the choice on whether to update or not. If you choose not to they should just maybe give you a warning on every launch and leave it at that.

We're talking about herd immunity from viruses here. Imagine that there were a new deadly pandemic every few days. Should a human being, at that point, be allowed (by the social norms of their society, by law, whatever) to refuse to receive once-daily "vaccination updates"?

That's a ridiculous analogy. What if vaccines really did have a high probability of causing autism? Would you still argue that they should be mandatory?

How about if there not only was no FDA approval process for the vaccines, but the pharma company itself didn't bother testing them?

Because that's Windows Update in a nutshell. Every couple of months somebody breaks into my house in the middle of the night, even though I locked my doors and windows and posted a no-trespassing sign, and pokes me with a needle... and I'm supposed to just sit there and take it in the name of "security."

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#127

Post by GordonS » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #98

winrid wrote: post #19

The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerpr…

My anecdote: I've painlessly ran trough the windows 10 setup at least 3 times now.

Was going to say much the same thing, except I've probably done it around 10 times - it's always gone fine, and it's so much faster than previous versions of Windows.

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#128

Post by Splines » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #118

kens wrote: post #115

I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doi…

I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification…

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-comp...

So when Windows says you have an update available, the design is that it did all the work that is possible and all that's left is (in theory) the copy bit that's left.

My completely ill-informed guess is that there are exceptions to this rule by teams that aren't fully aware of how updates work under the hood and as a result upgrading takes longer than it really should. As time goes by those teams get hit with a stick and they fix things, but the upgrade team probably plays a fair bit of wack-a-mole.

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#129

Post by mehrdadn » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

hacst wrote: post #68

barking wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to give you the choice on whether to update or not. If you choose not to they should just maybe give you a warning on every launch and leave it at that.

Afaik you can still configure it this way in Pro and higher skews using the group policy editor. And it's not like they didn't try the "asking the user" thing before. It's just that many users will happily keep dismissing any kind of warning that doesn't immediatly make their computer stop working forever. That's just no longer something that's acceptable for a machine connected to the internet.

> That's just no longer something that's acceptable for a machine connected to the internet.

I'm not sure users have been finding the alternative that has been playing out any more acceptable. Does it look that way to you?

Re: Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports

#130

Post by Frenchgeek » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #98

winrid wrote: post #19

The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerpr…

My anecdote: I've painlessly ran trough the windows 10 setup at least 3 times now.

I'm used to quiet and fast OS setup: Win10 doesn't goes well with me. If someone manage to find a way to strangle Cortana to death too, that'd be nice.