Yeah, let's just skip the testing phase. Surely the developers will get it right the first time and still have the time to check it all themselves. There's no point in spending all that money on...
Microsoft largely phased out its dedicated Software Test Engineer (STE) roles for Windows during a huge round of layoffs a year ahead of the Windows 10 release. Instead, it has favored developers testing their own work, or reports from the Windows Insider feedback program.
Yeah, let's just skip the testing phase. Surely the developers will get it right the first time and still have the time to check it all themselves. There's no point in spending all that money on testing teams and automated testing infrastructure. After all, when you have a monopoly lock on the market, you can let your customers handle the testing for you - it's not like they've got any competitors they can turn to for an alternative. What could go wrong?
Haha yeah I left a company just before they did a similar thing, bonus was that my new employer was able to snag a few good testers as they were realizing that developer tested code is no...
Haha yeah I left a company just before they did a similar thing, bonus was that my new employer was able to snag a few good testers as they were realizing that developer tested code is no substitute for good testers.
Yeah it's legit, a good long while ago. /r/Windows10 was not happy, but they usually aren't. It's bitten them right in the backside quite a few times since, but usually it was somewhat...
Yeah it's legit, a good long while ago. /r/Windows10 was not happy, but they usually aren't. It's bitten them right in the backside quite a few times since, but usually it was somewhat recoverable. Your machine might not boot, but your files were still around if you got a tech support service (or a Linux Live USB) to pull them off. If you could create an install media, you could probably just reinstall Windows and be back on your way. Totally unacceptable all the same, but at least to my knowledge this is the first time that they've actually lost/destroyed user data.
It seems unprecedented. I remember all kinds of Windows security holes and crashes since Windows 95 but an update causing data loss? How does that even work? What part of an update rewrites user data?
this is the first time that they've actually lost/destroyed user data.
It seems unprecedented. I remember all kinds of Windows security holes and crashes since Windows 95 but an update causing data loss? How does that even work? What part of an update rewrites user data?
No part, it's just a mistake. Steam had a similar bug a while back impacting Linux users. The bug was that steam would try to factory reset itself by wiping out its own data, and to do this it...
No part, it's just a mistake. Steam had a similar bug a while back impacting Linux users. The bug was that steam would try to factory reset itself by wiping out its own data, and to do this it would run rm -r $LOCATION_OF_STEAM_INFO/. Problem is, what happens when a bug hits that causes $LOCATION_OF_STEAM_INFO to never be set? You're just left with rm -r /, which'll erase any data the user has permission to erase.
It was a beginner mistake from a big company, and certainly not what happened here, but the point I was making was that you don't have to be attempting to rewrite user data, you just have to get your brain fried just enough to point you in the wrong direction when you're deleting stuff.
BUT, Microsoft released a big explanation of it, there's a tildes post about it here.
tl;dr of it is, Windows tried to remove what it thought was known empty, useless folders that actually still contained important user files.
You forgot to mention that customers don't necessarily have training or experience in testing. It's a little more complex and rigorous than just "let's click this button and see what happens"....
You forgot to mention that customers don't necessarily have training or experience in testing. It's a little more complex and rigorous than just "let's click this button and see what happens". Unless someone sits down and works out a comprehensive testing plan to test a feature under various scenarios, and then methodically conducts every testing scenario in their plan, they're not testing the feature with any reliability.
I think I was affected by this. Yesterday I woke up and my computer was at the Ubuntu login screen, I hadn't shutdown from my gaming session from the night before so this is typically a windows...
I think I was affected by this. Yesterday I woke up and my computer was at the Ubuntu login screen, I hadn't shutdown from my gaming session from the night before so this is typically a windows forced restart as Ubuntu is first in boot order. When I went to boot back into windows my computer was stuck in a reboot loop. My user profile was corrupted and once I recovered that just about all my personal applications we're missing, the exes themselves we're gone. Thankfully I had just rebuilt my PC this week so getting back was relatively painless.
I've really been regretting updating from Windows 8. I have had to do a full reinstall at least once because of broken updates causing boot loops, and I've had to restore a number of times. It's...
I've really been regretting updating from Windows 8. I have had to do a full reinstall at least once because of broken updates causing boot loops, and I've had to restore a number of times. It's crazy how poor the quality of these updates has been.
If you haven't read the open letter mentioned in the article, it's worth checking out. It's obvious that even at the enterprise level the quality and timing of updates is a huge problem.
Thankfully Windows is only my gaming pc and light coding, I do all everything else on my ubuntu partition. For me the last good release was Windows 7. The amount of hacking required to get that...
Thankfully Windows is only my gaming pc and light coding, I do all everything else on my ubuntu partition. For me the last good release was Windows 7. The amount of hacking required to get that level of UX in Win8 even after they rolled back some of the "tabletize everything" was too much for me.
This worries me on my business laptop. I had four hard drive failures between two machines in less than a year. I replaced everything with SSDs, but I'm still always worried about my main laptop...
This worries me on my business laptop. I had four hard drive failures between two machines in less than a year. I replaced everything with SSDs, but I'm still always worried about my main laptop that does 100% of my business, because that failure cost me a lot of money (one customer still refuses to pay me roughly $600 because I can't produce what exact jobs the invoices were for, despite the fact that I sent him paper copies before the crash that had the Job field filled in with that information—I hadn't done a backup in a week, and these were from that week).
I now back up almost daily, but I don't want to have to go through getting it all set up again in the case of a catastrophic crash.
I turned off automatic updates, I will be preventing them from getting installed as long as possible in case they have another critical bug and have to roll it back
I turned off automatic updates, I will be preventing them from getting installed as long as possible in case they have another critical bug and have to roll it back
The trick i learnt for this was to mark your ethernet/wifi as a metered connection. Although, even though its a windows 10 feature itself, many parts of windows wont play nice with it so if you...
The trick i learnt for this was to mark your ethernet/wifi as a metered connection. Although, even though its a windows 10 feature itself, many parts of windows wont play nice with it so if you enable it too soon then you'll just have to live with hourly notifications complaining about not being able to download something, or asking for permission, or whatever else it decides to throw a fit with.
But just last night I installed the ltsb version of w10 so i guess I'll see how much of a difference this is in terms of stability (things staying the same and not randomly changing one day)
I dual boot as well and I had installed Windows 10 LTSB because I didn't want to deal with crap like that. I want to try and move away from dual booting and just boot into Linux entirely but the...
I dual boot as well and I had installed Windows 10 LTSB because I didn't want to deal with crap like that. I want to try and move away from dual booting and just boot into Linux entirely but the gaming aspect is holding me back. Eventually I might attempt a GPU passthrough and Windows VM setup but it'll be a lot of work and I need a second video card.
Never played with GPU passthrough but it's always sounded like a pain to get it set up. Until Proton removed the need to, I was even too lazy to maintain a separate install of Steam inside WINE....
Never played with GPU passthrough but it's always sounded like a pain to get it set up. Until Proton removed the need to, I was even too lazy to maintain a separate install of Steam inside WINE. Any reason why you'd pick GPU passthrough over Proton now? I guess compatibility or maybe just to squeeze out every drop of performance?
Proton got me from about 90/203 games to 120/203 games, there's still a lot that aren't supported. Multiplayer games with 3rd party anti-cheat software are notoriously hard to get working.
Proton got me from about 90/203 games to 120/203 games, there's still a lot that aren't supported. Multiplayer games with 3rd party anti-cheat software are notoriously hard to get working.
Ah for me I went from ~180/229 to 228/229, just missing NBA2K17. That's a shame that you're missing so many, but it's progressing extremely rapidly and hopefully that'll improve soon.
Ah for me I went from ~180/229 to 228/229, just missing NBA2K17. That's a shame that you're missing so many, but it's progressing extremely rapidly and hopefully that'll improve soon.
Luckily my work is generally on the "slow ring" update cycle. We're only just now upgrading systems to 1803 (my computer is still on 1709). I also run Windows 10 LTSB at home with my dual boot...
Luckily my work is generally on the "slow ring" update cycle. We're only just now upgrading systems to 1803 (my computer is still on 1709). I also run Windows 10 LTSB at home with my dual boot setup and I'm not really missing any features. I enjoy getting new stuff but it's not worth it when problems like this can come up. On top of that I have more than enough work making sure my end user's applications work with each version of Windows that I don't want to be dealing with a bunch of OS bugs as well.
Slow cycle is the best way to handle updates imo, regardless of your OS/infrastructure. Let the people who enjoy the bleeding edge do the suffering, and get the updates after they've already been...
Slow cycle is the best way to handle updates imo, regardless of your OS/infrastructure.
Let the people who enjoy the bleeding edge do the suffering, and get the updates after they've already been fixed by the vendor. There's almost no reason to be 'completely current' with all updates on all systems. There are only a couple key systems that require that level of vigilance - firewalls, domain controllers, routers, etc - the core.
Any good SA should be subscribed to a group of mailing lists - one for each of your vendors, and a couple major ones like CVE. You'll know when a truly serious vulnerability comes around that absolutely must be fixed asap that way, and can jump past the slow update cycle when it's necessary.
Honestly with every update it feels like they're focusing more and more on shiny new stuff instead of ever revisiting and refining what they've already got. It's creeping up on 3 and a half years...
Honestly with every update it feels like they're focusing more and more on shiny new stuff instead of ever revisiting and refining what they've already got. It's creeping up on 3 and a half years since the initial release now and there's still so much stuff left around half finished. I'd really love a release where they just cleaned all that up.
I would love an update with the ability to choose the shit they pack in that you don't want. I have no desire to have Cortana lurking around my start bar, but every time they do a feature update I...
I would love an update with the ability to choose the shit they pack in that you don't want. I have no desire to have Cortana lurking around my start bar, but every time they do a feature update I have to go back in and disable all of the Cortana features. I also really hate all of the games and apps that they package with Windows 10 Home, It's all stuff I can uninstall, but I shouldn't have to. Just give me a menu after the update where I can choose which new bloatware I want, and which crap can go straight to the recycle bin.
I just received a notification to update my computer moments ago. Does this mean the update has been scheduled back on? I haven't seen any news that says they reversed the pull. Either way, really...
I just received a notification to update my computer moments ago. Does this mean the update has been scheduled back on? I haven't seen any news that says they reversed the pull.
Either way, really disappointed with Microsoft's approach to Windows 10. A lot of previous Windows versions had issues, but I could at least count on them for some basic things such as privacy (not sending MS my data), updates that were tested, and my files not being randomly deleted. Strongly considering switching over to Ubuntu more and more.
They've decided to release any updates on what's happening here as well. So the (potentially fixed) update is being released to those with bleeding-edge copies of Windows 10, but it isn't yet back...
We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809)* for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating. 0
They've decided to release any updates on what's happening here as well.
We have fully investigated all reports of data loss, identified and fixed all known issues in the update, and conducted internal validation. Also, Microsoft Support and our retail stores customer service personnel are available at no charge to help customers. More details are available below.
Today we take the next step towards the re-release of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update by providing the updated version to our Windows Insider community.
So the (potentially fixed) update is being released to those with bleeding-edge copies of Windows 10, but it isn't yet back into normal distribution.
It's articles like this which make me happy with my decision to never use Windows 10. I installed Windows 7 on my home computer a couple of years ago, and I'm going to sit tight with this OS until...
It's articles like this which make me happy with my decision to never use Windows 10. I installed Windows 7 on my home computer a couple of years ago, and I'm going to sit tight with this OS until Microsoft stops supporting it in January 2020. That's when I'll switch over to a Linux operating system.
Yeah, let's just skip the testing phase. Surely the developers will get it right the first time and still have the time to check it all themselves. There's no point in spending all that money on testing teams and automated testing infrastructure. After all, when you have a monopoly lock on the market, you can let your customers handle the testing for you - it's not like they've got any competitors they can turn to for an alternative. What could go wrong?
Haha yeah I left a company just before they did a similar thing, bonus was that my new employer was able to snag a few good testers as they were realizing that developer tested code is no substitute for good testers.
Is that quote for real? They "phased out" dedicated testing staff for Windows?
Yeah it's legit, a good long while ago. /r/Windows10 was not happy, but they usually aren't. It's bitten them right in the backside quite a few times since, but usually it was somewhat recoverable. Your machine might not boot, but your files were still around if you got a tech support service (or a Linux Live USB) to pull them off. If you could create an install media, you could probably just reinstall Windows and be back on your way. Totally unacceptable all the same, but at least to my knowledge this is the first time that they've actually lost/destroyed user data.
It seems unprecedented. I remember all kinds of Windows security holes and crashes since Windows 95 but an update causing data loss? How does that even work? What part of an update rewrites user data?
No part, it's just a mistake. Steam had a similar bug a while back impacting Linux users. The bug was that steam would try to factory reset itself by wiping out its own data, and to do this it would run
rm -r $LOCATION_OF_STEAM_INFO/. Problem is, what happens when a bug hits that causes $LOCATION_OF_STEAM_INFO to never be set? You're just left withrm -r /, which'll erase any data the user has permission to erase.It was a beginner mistake from a big company, and certainly not what happened here, but the point I was making was that you don't have to be attempting to rewrite user data, you just have to get your brain fried just enough to point you in the wrong direction when you're deleting stuff.
BUT, Microsoft released a big explanation of it, there's a tildes post about it here.
tl;dr of it is, Windows tried to remove what it thought was known empty, useless folders that actually still contained important user files.
You forgot to mention that customers don't necessarily have training or experience in testing. It's a little more complex and rigorous than just "let's click this button and see what happens". Unless someone sits down and works out a comprehensive testing plan to test a feature under various scenarios, and then methodically conducts every testing scenario in their plan, they're not testing the feature with any reliability.
I think I was affected by this. Yesterday I woke up and my computer was at the Ubuntu login screen, I hadn't shutdown from my gaming session from the night before so this is typically a windows forced restart as Ubuntu is first in boot order. When I went to boot back into windows my computer was stuck in a reboot loop. My user profile was corrupted and once I recovered that just about all my personal applications we're missing, the exes themselves we're gone. Thankfully I had just rebuilt my PC this week so getting back was relatively painless.
I've really been regretting updating from Windows 8. I have had to do a full reinstall at least once because of broken updates causing boot loops, and I've had to restore a number of times. It's crazy how poor the quality of these updates has been.
If you haven't read the open letter mentioned in the article, it's worth checking out. It's obvious that even at the enterprise level the quality and timing of updates is a huge problem.
Thankfully Windows is only my gaming pc and light coding, I do all everything else on my ubuntu partition. For me the last good release was Windows 7. The amount of hacking required to get that level of UX in Win8 even after they rolled back some of the "tabletize everything" was too much for me.
This worries me on my business laptop. I had four hard drive failures between two machines in less than a year. I replaced everything with SSDs, but I'm still always worried about my main laptop that does 100% of my business, because that failure cost me a lot of money (one customer still refuses to pay me roughly $600 because I can't produce what exact jobs the invoices were for, despite the fact that I sent him paper copies before the crash that had the Job field filled in with that information—I hadn't done a backup in a week, and these were from that week).
I now back up almost daily, but I don't want to have to go through getting it all set up again in the case of a catastrophic crash.
I turned off automatic updates, I will be preventing them from getting installed as long as possible in case they have another critical bug and have to roll it back
The trick i learnt for this was to mark your ethernet/wifi as a metered connection. Although, even though its a windows 10 feature itself, many parts of windows wont play nice with it so if you enable it too soon then you'll just have to live with hourly notifications complaining about not being able to download something, or asking for permission, or whatever else it decides to throw a fit with.
But just last night I installed the ltsb version of w10 so i guess I'll see how much of a difference this is in terms of stability (things staying the same and not randomly changing one day)
I dual boot as well and I had installed Windows 10 LTSB because I didn't want to deal with crap like that. I want to try and move away from dual booting and just boot into Linux entirely but the gaming aspect is holding me back. Eventually I might attempt a GPU passthrough and Windows VM setup but it'll be a lot of work and I need a second video card.
Never played with GPU passthrough but it's always sounded like a pain to get it set up. Until Proton removed the need to, I was even too lazy to maintain a separate install of Steam inside WINE. Any reason why you'd pick GPU passthrough over Proton now? I guess compatibility or maybe just to squeeze out every drop of performance?
Proton got me from about 90/203 games to 120/203 games, there's still a lot that aren't supported. Multiplayer games with 3rd party anti-cheat software are notoriously hard to get working.
Ah for me I went from ~180/229 to 228/229, just missing NBA2K17. That's a shame that you're missing so many, but it's progressing extremely rapidly and hopefully that'll improve soon.
Some games still do not work with Proton. Elite: Dangerous and Rainbow Six Siege for example.
Luckily my work is generally on the "slow ring" update cycle. We're only just now upgrading systems to 1803 (my computer is still on 1709). I also run Windows 10 LTSB at home with my dual boot setup and I'm not really missing any features. I enjoy getting new stuff but it's not worth it when problems like this can come up. On top of that I have more than enough work making sure my end user's applications work with each version of Windows that I don't want to be dealing with a bunch of OS bugs as well.
Slow cycle is the best way to handle updates imo, regardless of your OS/infrastructure.
Let the people who enjoy the bleeding edge do the suffering, and get the updates after they've already been fixed by the vendor. There's almost no reason to be 'completely current' with all updates on all systems. There are only a couple key systems that require that level of vigilance - firewalls, domain controllers, routers, etc - the core.
Any good SA should be subscribed to a group of mailing lists - one for each of your vendors, and a couple major ones like CVE. You'll know when a truly serious vulnerability comes around that absolutely must be fixed asap that way, and can jump past the slow update cycle when it's necessary.
Honestly with every update it feels like they're focusing more and more on shiny new stuff instead of ever revisiting and refining what they've already got. It's creeping up on 3 and a half years since the initial release now and there's still so much stuff left around half finished. I'd really love a release where they just cleaned all that up.
I would love an update with the ability to choose the shit they pack in that you don't want. I have no desire to have Cortana lurking around my start bar, but every time they do a feature update I have to go back in and disable all of the Cortana features. I also really hate all of the games and apps that they package with Windows 10 Home, It's all stuff I can uninstall, but I shouldn't have to. Just give me a menu after the update where I can choose which new bloatware I want, and which crap can go straight to the recycle bin.
I just received a notification to update my computer moments ago. Does this mean the update has been scheduled back on? I haven't seen any news that says they reversed the pull.
Either way, really disappointed with Microsoft's approach to Windows 10. A lot of previous Windows versions had issues, but I could at least count on them for some basic things such as privacy (not sending MS my data), updates that were tested, and my files not being randomly deleted. Strongly considering switching over to Ubuntu more and more.
They've decided to release any updates on what's happening here as well.
So the (potentially fixed) update is being released to those with bleeding-edge copies of Windows 10, but it isn't yet back into normal distribution.
It's articles like this which make me happy with my decision to never use Windows 10. I installed Windows 7 on my home computer a couple of years ago, and I'm going to sit tight with this OS until Microsoft stops supporting it in January 2020. That's when I'll switch over to a Linux operating system.