Buggy chkdsk in Windows update that caused boot failures and damaged file systems has been fixed

A Windows 10 update rolled out by Microsoft contained a buggy version of chkdsk that damaged the file system on some PCs and made Windows fail to boot. The updates that included the fault are KB4586853 and KB4592438. Microsoft's notes on these updates now incorporate a warning: "A small number of devices that have installed …

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the wonders of continual updates......

I am one of "the small number" that had the pleasure of encountering this last week on my work Dell Had shutdown cleanly the night before ...went to power up in the morning it decided to do a chkdsk ...bang......6 hours and a re-install later.........I could get back to work....

[redpawn]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Thank you for being a valued Beta Tester!

[Version 1.0]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Yes, continual updates will fix the problem ... or move it to somewhere else ... maybe to the AV checker ... Windows will report that it's just checked your system and it's completely virus free ... everything has been deleted fixed.

[sabroni]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

No, of course you should only update sparodically. That way when it goes wrong you've got a nice, untested reversion process.

One of the things that Agile does in forcing us to release frequently is improve the release process. Continuous testing is better than building it then testing it after. Likewise the familiarity and frequency of the release process mean that everyone is much more capable and the process is more robust.

Fear of change isn't a useful attribute in an IT professional, though neither is jumping on every bandwagon that rolls along. The trick is to spot which way the industry is going. How many people think waterfall will make a comeback? Was it really better to try and design and build the whole system up front?

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

"Boeing was an early Agile adopter in 2008 surpassing its rival, Airbus, in 2012 by deploying a newly renovated 737 Max 8 faster to market. "

https://www.infosysconsultinginsights.com/2019/06/12/the-risks-of-moving-to-mature-agile-too-fast-a-cautionary-tale/

Well, that went well.

[Byham]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

As with most things it is not that simple. The built 737 Max system met the user defined requirement. The user defined requirement did not match the end user requirement.

I have seen this problem arise several times when the 'user representative' is an expert but the system is being built for current not so expert users. So imagine a self-driving car that in some contingencies may revert to a driver controlled car. Initially no problem, but after a decade or so the drivers are really not up to taking over - especially if it goes from fully automated self driving car to a manual (stick shift) with no synchromesh so double declutching required, no servo assisted anti-lock brakes and no power steering. The long time use expert enjoys driving the 'manual reversion' and cannot see a problem with using heel and toe to downshift while braking carefully but hard with regard to not locking the brakes while drifting the car around a corner. The normal users (like many readers here) do not really understand 'heel and toe' as a description and have never actually done it - that's the system's job.

So in your agile development the 'user expert' says sure that's not a problem to a manual reversion that requires double-declutching and heel and toe on braking - a significant number of the current crop of new operational drivers do see a problem.

The issue is not with agile - the issue is understanding the new users. Most of the major expensive errors are perfectly implemented errors in understanding of the user requirement. Having a 'user expert' in the agile team can actually be a problem if they don't represent the 'standard' user group.

[nematoad]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

"...a manual (stick shift) with no synchromesh so double declutching required, no servo assisted anti-lock brakes and no power steering."

You know, you have just described my Mini Cooper S!

Driving it is still the best fun you can have in a car on your own.

[Shadowmanx2012]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

"Driving it is still the best fun you can have in a car on your own."

Not if you live in London or any large metroplitan area as the proliferation of 20mph zones make it a little "trricky".

[herman]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

That actually describes driving an original AEC Routemaster bus.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Anything can be explained away if you try hard enough. And you did try pretty hard. You could just as well have said the humans are imperfect, and the world will end one day anyway.

[Chris 15]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

So the user defined requirement stipulated that the aircraft would attempt to dive into the terrain when a single sensor went bad did it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

I'm honestly having a hard time telling if you're being sarcastic or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Agile is crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

>Agile is crap.

What's not to like: risk transferred from SI/developer to customer, more profitable to the SI/developer as it is highly unlikely that a fully working (ie. fit for production) system will be the output from the 3 contracted for cycles of Agile...

The one big benefit of Agile is that a version of the system can be put before real users before everything gets fixed in stone, from my experience it seems people are better at critiquing a real system and identifying missing/overlooked requirements than doing similar with a set of paper specifications. So what is needed is early prototyping, something that can be incorporated into a waterfall development (I wonder how many successful real-world projects were truly textbook waterfall and not something more akin to DSDM/Agile...)

[needmorehare]

Doesnt this depend on the design?

Google Chrome seems to have no problems using what borders on Extreme Programming as a methodology. It clearly can work in many contexts but the software has to be designed in a manner which is intended to be highly fault tolerant or where persistent state (e.g. saved data) is not considered to be mission critical.

For example, an IRC client can easily be developed as an agile project very safely if each channel runs as a separate process using IPC to communicate with other processes handling server connections, which is glued all together by a lightweight shell to handle the UI.

An operating system being developed in an agile manner is probably a bad idea. That’s why even Microsoft thought it good to make the fully featured Windows Server versions a waterfall affair by default.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Continuous testing is better than building it then testing it after

Maybe so, but continuous change is not supposed to happen in a production environment.

The production environment is supposed to be used, not tested. If you're still testing, it's not ready for production.

[Roland6]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

>One of the things that Agile does in forcing us to release frequently is improve the release process.

It may do this (improve the release process), however, it would seem that, once again, in this instance the "reversion process" wasn't fully tested (ie. attempt reversion after file system has been corrupted by chkdsk update), leaving users to use the tried-and-tested wipe and reinstall reversion process...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......Waterfall?...

Well in my 40 odd years in the business the only time I saw Waterfall was for government contracts. Which is why almost all are such disasters. Everyone else used Spiral. Either deliberately or inadvertently. Because Spiral ships good product (that works) in a reasonable time frame without pointless death marches.

As for Agile my opinion of it has not changed in the last 20 plus years since it first reared its it ugly head back in the '90's. Under a different name. Agile means that none of the people on the team knows how to write a proper full spec for the project, architectural and implementation, and no one involved knows how to actually manage a team properly for the full development cycle. Which for any non trivial projects I've been involved with is at least 12 to 18 months and about 5 to 10 man years of work. Agile is just an obfuscating terminology invented by BS artists so they can do lots of hand-waving in front of white boards to equally BS middle / upper management types and pretend that they are actually doing real worthwhile development work. Whereas the final shipped results for Agile projects is just a permanent late alpha / early beta product.

If the results of Agile was a solid late beta it would not be so quite bad. But its almost always late alpha / early beta. When I find an actual beta that's halfway stable I stick to that and never upgrade unless there is a very very good reason to do it.

Written on a machine running Win7 SP1 and an old version of Firefox and seeing zero reason to upgrade either anytime soon.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

My virus checker detects me modifying a ZIP file and kills the running application - AND DELETES THE ZIP FILE!!!!. I have to turn it off for a couple of minutes while doing it. It's lately spotting another application creating RTF files and kills that as well. Grrr.

[Roland6]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

>My virus checker detects me modifying a ZIP file and kills the running application

Get this all the time with several useful NirSoft utilities...

Or better still, the AV detects the signature of the latest Windows/application update doesn't have an approved hash/checksum and so blocks it from being installed (and uploads it to its masters for examination).

[Efer Brick]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Send an Microsoft an invoice for their shitfuckery and add extra for stress

[Bogbody]

Re: Yes the wonders of continual updates......

Ah now this explains why I had to replace a disk last week on my home PC. At 4 years old I thought that bad luck had screwed the disc. It did a disc scan on start up and failed to boot.

7 days to get a new disc (thanks Covid) and a full evening to fix.

Great ........

[dhawkshaw]

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't

The way I understand this, KB4592438 is the Dec 2020 Cumulative Update. One of those 'you really have to have this to maintain security' ones. Which makes it rather difficult to avoid :(

What am I missing ?

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Damned if you do. Damned if you don't

What am I missing ?

A decent operating system?

[dhawkshaw]

Re: Damned if you do. Damned if you don't

In all fairness the day job requires me to manage windows on the desktop -- but I'm posting this from OpenSuSE Leap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Damned if you do. Damned if you don't

Paul Crawford,

"What am I missing ?

A decent operating system?"

You cannot miss what you never had !!! :)

[AndrueC]

Interesting. My new server died shortly after getting this update. It runs headless so I don't know if it tried to run Chkdsk or not but I'm now back to Win7 and old hardware. I might investigate the new hardware further over the holiday but it's probably a coincidence. The failed machine seems to be incapable of booting off anything. After the manufacturer logo it just switches to text mode and goes no further.

I assume that if this bug is the cause users would at least see some evidence of Windows starting up. Still, it's worth a look.

[Timo]

Maybe I was hit by this too

My parents have a mid aged desktop that ran Win7 and then got the upgrade to Windows 10, but the last week of November refused to boot and then wanted to repair itself back into Win7. As everyone is quarantined it was easier to order them a cheap laptop for them to pick up curbside than to take the trip to see WTF windows had done to itself.

[Jaap Aap]

If you run a windows "server" without any ipmi or other out of band management, it will always be a pain. Get some Linux or BSD experience and run that. And/or get a decent motherboard and some nice ECC memory. A good chassis with some hotswap drives is also nice. Don't become the idiot I was.

[sabroni]

re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

until you learn how to use it.

Much easier to stick to one OS, or a couple that behave very similarly. Then you can pretend the ones you don't know are wrong rather than just different.

[Jaap Aap]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

I said it will be a pain without ipmi. If you do not have console access remotely and have to schlep a monitor to the server each time something is not working properly, it really sucks. Especially when using an older desktop that has been commited to server duty.

[sabroni]

Re: I said it will be a pain without ipmi

So why mention Windows and put "server" in quotes if you want to discuss ipmi? Couldn't resist having a little dig?

[AndrueC]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

I said it will be a pain without ipmi. If you do not have console access remotely and have to schlep a monitor to the server each time something is not working properly

The only time I have to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse is when the failure is catastrophic. This has only happened three times in the 14 years I've been running this server. The rest of the time I just use Remote Desktop. I'd estimate the up-time of this server as being better than 99% (tentatively estimating a total of one week of it being dead during 14 years of 24/7/52 operation).

It doesn't do a huge amount but it is a mail, video and music server. It started off as Vista on a low-spec Toshiba laptop, then a Fit PC2. Then it was upgraded to Win7 and ran on a Fit-PC3. Then I bought an AcePC and it ran as Win10 for nearly a year. Now it's back on the Fit-PC3 as Win7.

The times when it was dead have been annoying and frustrating simply because losing a server always is. I did consider some flavour of Linux when thinking of Win7 but it meant learning too much new stuff and I couldn't find a mail server that would offer aliased addressing as easily as VPOP3 does. So in the end I just upgraded to Win7 which if I remember correctly took about an hour.

Windows is a perfectly competent server platform (even for things waaaaay beyond what I need). I am familiar with Windows and it's had an awesome uptime for me. Linux would have had to be very, very much better to attract me and I could see no evidence of that. Just me having to learn a load of new stuff and no expectation that it would be any more stable than Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

Sounds like a "Trigger's Broom" of a server!

[jake]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

Except after many repairs, the Ship of Theseus would still be perfectly functional.

[AndrueC]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

Yup, a fair description. But what matters is that it's been up 24/7/52 apart from a few days here and there. 99% up time for a home server is damn good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

Flippin' heck. Imagine how much electric that's chewed through in all those years. You could have bought something purpose made and probably still saved in the long run.

[AndrueC]

Re: re: If you run a windows "server" it will always be a pain.

None of the solutions I've employed have consumed much more than 10wh. It's possible that a cloud solution might have consumed less but it would have cost more. The current Win7 implementation is running on hardware rated at 20w maximum. Based on it being barely luke warm to touch leads me to think it's probably averaging a lot less than that.

Most likely it's idle and the idle rating is 7w.

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, why did chkdsk need touching at all, unless more file system support is being added?

[Anonymous Coward]

"why did chkdsk need touching at all, unless more file system support is being added?"

.. or in this case - no file system support.

[Byham]

From the article the fix did not involve touching CHKDSK so it would appear that a change was made in another function called by CHKDSK without regression testing of the impact on CHKDSK which may only be an impact on specific systems.

This is the problem with an 'OS' that is so large and used by such a wide range of hardware.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: it would appear that a change was made in another function called by CHKDSK

This has been puzzling me. If CHKDSK has not been altered and it presumably does not call any DLL's, how is it possible for corruption to occur when called from within the update, but not when called outside of it?

Has MS used some undocumented hook to call CHKDSK with? Or used something akin to SETVER which is only active from the update?

[jake]

Re: it would appear that a change was made in another function called by CHKDSK

"If CHKDSK has not been altered and it presumably does not call any DLL's"

From TFA:

"The chkdsk utility itself is not listed in the files that are patched by these updates, suggesting that the problem is with other system files called by chkdsk."

Worrying about .DLL files is a mental red herring. chkdsk might call any file for reasons only known to Redmondian logic ... And to make matters worse, .DLL files don't necessarily have to have a .DLL extension.

[Roland6]

Re: it would appear that a change was made in another function called by CHKDSK

> If CHKDSK has not been altered and it presumably does not call any DLL's, how is it possible for corruption to occur when called from within the update, but not when called outside of it?

Not quite right, CHKDSK failed (ie. corrupted the file system) when invoked from within the current OS image (ie. run chkdsk /f on next start up). What is not clear (from the blog) is whether the version of Chkdsk being run in offline mode was the same version as the updated version or had been created previously and thus was a different version - with all the same implications for the various DDL's etc that Chkdsk invokes.

What is also unclear is whether this problem just applies to builds 2004/20H2 or also applies to build 1908. Currently, it gives further reason to hold off upgrading from 1908...

[fidodogbreath]

It's actually "chuckdisk" now, and is working as designed.

[bombastic bob]

I recall that back in the DOS days the chkdsk program was SO bad [creating a bunch of cross-linked files more often than not] that the ONLY way to properly fix the file system was to use Norton Utilities.

But for this NEW b0rkage, if I read the article right, you could do a chkdsk /f in "offline mode" (or is that recovery mode?) and manage to recover the disk. Or is this NOT the case?

I know how easy it is to recover a b0rked Linux system. I normally use set of tarballs, then re-install the OS and un-tar my backups onto the system. You could even partition it yourself and use tarballs to restore the ENTIRE OS. This is the opposite with windows. The registry nearly makes that IMPOSSIBLE without ghosting the entire drive. And specialized Windows backup software does NOT impress me.

[Roland6]

>And specialized Windows backup software does NOT impress me.

The fact that 'specialised' Windows full disk backup/imaging software didn't actually do a full image/backup as it detected and fiddled around with the Windows activation to deactivate the restored image is the primary reason why I use Clonezilla.

[Steve Davies 3]

The Day is not done

until Windos won't run.

Deja-vu perhaps?

[jglathe]

Re: The Day is not done

Nah. Nobody remembers 1-2-3. I think these are signs of replacing the windows kernel with WSL aka linux.

[Ken Moorhouse]

/f

The simplest fix would be to amend the explanation of what the "f" option does in the command line help.

[ThatOne]

Re: /f

As in "/f you"?...

[Elledan]

When is it safe to make the jump?

Back in the pre-Win10 days, common wisdom was to wait for at least the first service pack before upgrading to the next Windows version. Even as MSFT released a new Windows, you could stay on the old Windows for a few more years while the new OS sorted itself out.

I'm currently still using Windows 7 on my main system. My new laptop has Windows 10, but with Windows Update set to use the super-ultra-slow ring for business users. I hope that keeps at least the worst stuff out.

None of it makes me feel like switching from Windows 7 to 10 on my main system (used for professional work as a freelancer) is the right decision. Windows 7 is stable and boring, Windows 10 has short patches of relative quiet before the upgrade train rolls onward and stuff breaks again.Even if I felt that I could live with the insultingly ugly UI and broken UX of Windows 10, news about more untested things being pushed onto end-users makes me just want to stick with Windows 7 for as long as possible.

Guess one could say that even as a life-long Windows users, I'm weighing my options instead of just going with the new thing. Says a lot, maybe?

[leexgx]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

Install windows 10 Pro and then use Gpedit to set updates to 20 days delay on normal updates and 150 days delay on feature updates, this prevents most issues because everyone els gets to beta test release updates before they get to you (if they are really bad they pull the update within the that 15 days so you shouldn't get a bad update)

Gpedit > admin templates > windows components > (scroll to bottom) and windows update > windows update for business users

Set "preview and feature updates" > set to 150 and semi-annual channel

Set " quality updates" the to 20 days or higher

Every pc i work on indo this

[DavidRa]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

For goodness sake. Windows 10 is more than five years old at this point. Windows 7 hasn't received security updates for a year.

You can pretend all you want that you're waiting to see what happens but reality says you've made the decision already to stay on old and familiar but increasingly insecure.

In my view you're the "XP is best" dinosaur from late Windows 7 timeframes.

[Roland6]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

>Windows 7 hasn't received security updates for a year.

So what?

Run a decent AV and a current browser and your risk of malware actually being able to run is about the same as it is on Win10. Problems only really start when AV and browser vendors stop developing for Win7.

Interestingly, there are major AV vendors who still support XP, combine this with MyPal and it's still pretty good to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

Get some VM running py-kms. Also get something to run WSUS. Only approve updates after a month. Stay on the same W10 version for a long time. Use special software to redeploy windows when you want to.

[Pascal Monett]

In other words, pay more money to be able to use the OS you already paid money for.

I don't see that as a winning situation.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

It depends on what you need the machine to do. If you don't have any high-end graphics requirements or specialised hardware then you can run Windows of various era fairly safely in a VM, obviously munch more safely if they don't need much internet access (so email/web on the VM host machine).

That way you can keep a backup/snapshot of the VM and restore it fairly painlessly to another machine if needed, and you can have a host that is subject to a greater degree of hardening and/or control then Win10 gives you (without the usurious fees for the enterprise version).

Also if you do plan a software upgrade or major change, you can make a VM copy just before the deed, and roll back almost instantly if it is broken. That is also made far simpler if the host has a file system that supports low-overhead snapshots (such as ZFS, or if you feel lucky punk, btrfs, or if an Apple fan then I think APFS has this capability)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

I would invite you to alternate OS land instead. Win 10 is not getting away from permanent beta. The exceptions are the LTS / enterprise editions though even then I'm still not convinced. For the few uses of windows at home now, I recommend Server 2019. Overkill? The ability to turn the telemetry off, control over patches and software package selection mean as a desktop, it's closer to the 7 experience than any current desktop release.

[Roland6]

Re: When is it safe to make the jump?

>I recommend Server 2019

The new Windows XP Professional x64 Edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the huge install base,

the success of the Windows-as-a-Service concept has become largely irrelevant. It is now like the belly-button, you get one not because you really want it but because it's become increasignly difficult, even risky to avoid having one.

[Terry 6]

Always

.......have a disk image ( or two or three or....) and a boot CD somewhere nearby. and another one a bit further away. And ideally another couple off-site.

Unless you are a bit paranoid, in which case better to have several more.

[jglathe]

Re: Always

Oh, and a setup where you can spin up the image as a VM just in case. Saved me a few times this year. Macrium FTW. Synology too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Always

Agree totally with the Macrium point.

It saves time and *works* !!!!

Even the free version is useful in an emergency !!!

[Only *before* you do something dangerous ..... obviously !!! :) ]

[Terry 6]

Re: Always

It's the one I use, too. Automatically creates an image on a partition on a second internal hdd one week. And an external USB hdd the next. An external USB Hdd which I swap from time to time. The internal drive doesn't host my internal data backups. That's on a backup partition on a third hdd.

The external hdds do host both types of backup though - I like to live dangerously.

[ecofeco]

Again?

This is SO last century. How could this happen again?!

[fobobob]

The Microsoft way.

Productising your beta testing for fun and profit.

[Blackjack]

Oh wow....

Why the hell did they even update such an important part of Windows to an evident alpha version? That would be like making an update that just erases the user files just because!

Oh wait... already Microsoft did something like that.

I miss when Windows had the option to just install Important Updates, those usually did not ruin everything.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Oh wow....

I miss the time when Windows was my OS to manage.

Now Microsoft is deciding what I can or cannot do on my PC.

The only reason I haven't changed OS is because all my customers use Windows, so I'm stuck with this bloated monster that doesn't even obey me all that much.

I look forward to retiring for two reasons : first, no more work days and second, no more Borkzilla software. I'll be on some version of Linux, and Borkzilla can kiss my arse.

Ten more years to go.

[jake]

How many ...

...cumulative hours has your business wasted on Microsoft fuckups in the last decade?

And you are STILL trying to defend your use of the toy OS in a corporate environment?

Glutton for punishment? Or just plain stupid?

[Blackjack]

Re: How many ...

I bet about a third of them are on Windows 10 alone.

[bdg2]

And where is the fix?

Great news, they've fixed it now.

But unless someone tells us what the fix is and how to get it this information is totally useless.

[A.A.Hamilton]

Re: And where is the fix?

Could somebody please explain, for us dumb users, why there has been no response to user bdg2's very relevant question ?

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: And where is the fix?

Because this isn't Microsoft's support pages? (If they have such a thing.)

[AndrueC]

Re: And where is the fix?

If you follow the links to the KB articles you will find the solutions on there.

[Timo]

Re: And where is the fix?

I read the KB linked in from the article here, and it seems that "chkdsk /f" is what they recommend to fix it? So the same chkdsk that trashed the computer will be the same thing that fixes it?

Or are they assuming that you can boot the machine to get the update, then run the check?

[Roland6]

Re: And where is the fix?

>But unless someone tells us what the fix is and how to get it this information is totally useless.

From my reading of the MS KB's and the blogs.

1. If you have installed either of the two updates (highly likely), don't run Chkdsk /f, although you might be safe running chkdsk /scan.

2. The fix is being distributed via the WUP channel. It would not surprise me if the fix is listed with the same KB number as the original update, it just has a more recent version number/date.

So if your system isn't enterprised-managed, ensure all updates are installed - given how Win10 systems can go looking for updates claim your system is up-to-date, yet an identical system next to it can be downloading more recent updates, I suggest you can only really be sure the fix has been applied until after the January 2020 cumulative update has been applied.

If you have accidentally run chkdsk /f and thus have an unbootable system then you need to use a working system to create a recovery disk/bootable usb and use that to run chkdsk on the crippled system. It is probably best to create recovery media whilst you have a running system and make a full disk image backup...

[Shadow Systems]

I'm wondering how

you are supposed to get & apply a fix to a computer that MS has just turned into a brick?

Don't say to use another computer, that assumes the person HAS another computer. Or the technical know how to research, find, download, copy across, & apply said fix.

Otherwise that non techie person will have to take their computer to BestBuy's GeekSquad & pay out of pocket to fix what never should have been broken in the first place had MS used any Due Dilligence at all. Why isn't MS on the hook for all such fixes? If I break something then it's my responsibility to pay for the repairs. If someone ELSE breaks my stuff, it's their responsability to pay for it. So why isn't MS up before a judge to explain why it's supposedly NOT on the hook for breaking our stuff?

Oh wait, it's buried in that gigabyte text file of a EULA you were supposed to have read & agreed to when configuring the computer for the first time. That EULA that takes another team of lawyers to decipher into Plain English so that us mere Humans can understand. The EULA that lets MS give us TheFinger when it comes to situations EXACTLY like this one.

Please, remind me again, why anyone would want to run Win10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm wondering how

Why do you think these shit cunts hide behind license agreements? Every patch that Microturd releases comes with ZERO warranty

It wont be long before a software update kills thousands of people accidentally. Thats where the stakes are leading us to.

If Microturd spent as much time writing their legal documents as they do testing their shitcode, then we wouldn’t be in the mess we seem to find ourselves all too often.

Just remember this, most of the worlds “human”population still shits in the ground like a fucken animal, but we can land rockets (most of the time)

[Roland6]

Re: I'm wondering how

Surely you meant:

If Microturd spent as much time testing their shitcode as they do writing their legal documents, then we wouldn’t be in the mess we seem to find ourselves all too often.

Or are you implying that if MS wrote their legal doc's as well as their code they would potentially have been successfully sued out-of-business?

[AndrueC]

Re: I'm wondering how

you are supposed to get & apply a fix to a computer that MS has just turned into a brick?

If you read the KB articles you'll see that repeated reboots should eventually result in the recovery console and from there you can manually run chkdsk/f and all will be fine again. It doesn't look to me like you need to download anything. Just reboot, reboot until either you get sick of it or the recovery console appears. I don't mind that idea but can't help thinking that if it could at least display a message eg 'Two more reboots and I'll appear' or 'Hold down F12 for recovery console' it would be more friendly.

I haven't tried this myself (and given how my PC is behaving I think it's a hardware fault) but recovering from this issue appears to require nothing more than some patience and rebooting the affected computer a few times.

Still a bit shitty but hardly the end of the world.

[Roland6]

Re: I'm wondering how

> Just reboot, reboot until either you get sick of it or the recovery console appears.

Been there with both HP and Dell systems, it does seem there is no sure fire way of triggering the recovery console, it would have been nice if MS had left the F8 boot function intact...

[That 8 Bit Guy]

Quit complaining

It keeps me in a job.

Last month was so quiet there was a big probability for the office to move to Jamaica without us.

Now we are getting calls again. "My PC won't boot" was music to our ears.

Quit complaining and please Microsoft, please fuck up on the next update too while you are at it?

Just not my Xbox. That is fine as it is.

[Sceptic Tank]

fsck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is just a turd slowly bring rolled in glitter

The trick is to make the software sticky enough to pick up all the shiny glitter

M$ and CrApple have perfected this art

[A.P. Veening]

Wrong, the real trick is making sure it doesn't stick to your fingers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Colour me suprised

They had 30 years of failure working to create a stable secure OS, now they're not even trying.

[David Gosnell]

Connected?

Connected with the unexpected boot-time "repair" my (SSD) PC carried out the other day? No obvious ill effects manifested as yet.

[jake]

Re: Connected?

This is the wrong place to ask such a question ... and in order to get an answer in the correct place(s), you will need to learn to ask technical questions properly. Learn how here.

[David Gosnell]

Re: Connected?

I think you confuse a "wondering" question with a "seeking specific help" question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Wtf were Microsoft doing fiddling with chkdsk anyway?

I mean seriously, what has changed in NTFS in the last decade?

Astonishing incompetence.

[jake]

Re: Seriously? Wtf were Microsoft doing fiddling with chkdsk anyway?

"I mean seriously, what has changed in NTFS in the last decade?"

As hardware changes, so must the code that directly deals with it.

"Astonishing incompetence."

Yes, but not for the reason above.

[Roland6]

Re: Seriously? Wtf were Microsoft doing fiddling with chkdsk anyway?

Well we are all assuming the responsibility for the problem lies with MS; however, it is worth remembering the NTFS.SYS update on Win7 which borked some systems, which was discovered to have been caused by some long undetected malware from some unknown third-party...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows.

Putting windows on your pc is like getting a 70s radio DJ to babysit your daughters.

[Anonymous Coward]

MS testing procedures down to their usual standard

You might have thought if they'd changed some code that did some really low level bit twiddling on SSDs that they might have gone and tested the change on a substantial number of models to check for problems. Obviously however that was the users job. Again.

[Adventurer]

Ahh this explains why my PC died during a reboot in November.

I now see how one of those M'$oft updates wiped out the operating system on my PC a month ago. I thought the SD was dying after 18 months of use.

Spent $300 having windows reinstalled. The blessing now being a quicker reboot, reinstalled software, old rubbished removed. This is some blessing and frustration with M'$oft updates. Luckily I was nearing the end of monthly backups. My blue screen was identical to the German user group.