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back to article If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

The 1809 build of Windows 10 and Windows Server is fast becoming infamous. Microsoft pulled it shortly after release when it started deleting people's files, and stumbling in other ways. Redmond reissued the software on Tuesday, and today it's clear you shouldn't rush into deploying it, if installing it at all, in its present …

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    1. Dave K
      Reply Icon

      Re: Pathetic

      I'm not surprised, I'd imagine the conversation at MS went something like this:

      Engineer: There is one notable bug, network drives don't work properly.

      Manager: Well, this update is only going out to home users initially and this issues won't affect home users right? I mean, which home users use mapped drives?

      Engineer: Some users may have NASs, or may map a drive for sharing files between two home computers?

      Manager: Yeah, but they'll be in a minority, and besides we don't really care about home users anyway.

      Engineer: I dunno, it's quite a noticeable bug that will affect some people.

      Manager: I don't really care. So long as it won't affect business users, we're OK. The update is overdue and our marketing people really want to get it released ASAP.

      Engineer: It might also hit some small busine...

      Manager: I don't care! Just get it out there now. Meeting our twice-yearly releases on-time is far more important than a few bugs.

      ...

      71 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pathetic

        I'm afraid you're being generous, it might have been much, much shorter:

        Engineer: There is one notable bug, network drives don't work properly.

        Manager: Shrug

        48 0 Reply
    2. Spazturtle Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Pathetic

      "It's bad enough that they don't do proper testing, but even when they actually find a problem they just leave it in and chuck out the update anyway!"

      I found a bug recently, my audio would constantly go down to 0, as in it will slide down, I could try and fight it by dragging the slider up but it would always win. I found people complaining about this bug going all the way back to the release of Windows 7.

      After less then an hour of diagnosing I found the cause, when you plug in an USB audio device windows creates a HID device for all the buttons on it, it assumes that the device has an audio up and an audio down button. But if you were accidentally pressing any of the buttons on the device when you connected the it (and even if you later let go) then widows thinks the audio down button is constantly being pressed, reducing the audio to 0. Windows seams to store a cache of device data so even uninstalling the device in device manager and reconnecting it doesn't fix it, this cache seams to get wiped whenever windows updates though.

      22 0 Reply
      1. nematoad
        Reply Icon
        Headmaster

        Re: Pathetic

        "...Windows seams to store a cache"

        Spelling! It should be "seems".

        Seams are what you get in trousers.

        12 2 Reply
        1. jelabarre59
          Reply Icon

          Re: Pathetic

          Spelling! It should be "seems".

          Seams are what you get in trousers.

          Well, MSWin is pants...

          20 0 Reply
          1. 404
            Reply Icon

            Re: Well, MSWin is pants...

            GTFO ->

            ;)

            1 0 Reply
  2. alpensturm

    Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

    Installed 1809 on three laptops - no issues at all so far!

    1 34 Reply
    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

      Hmm, I think MS have access to a slightly larger test fleet......

      41 1 Reply
      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Linux

        For all the good it does them . . .

        In any case, I'm glad Microsoft is doing its level best to promote the use of Linux.

        You really couldn't find a better advocate.

        43 0 Reply
        1. John 104
          Reply Icon

          For all the good it does them . . .

          In any case, I'm glad Microsoft is doing its level best to promote the use of Linux.

          You really couldn't find a better advocate.

          Indeed. After the update bricked my HP laptop, I installed the latest version of Mint and am not looking back. - Windows System Admin.

          5 0 Reply
      2. alpensturm
        Reply Icon

        Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

        … that may well be the case. I didn't state that the bug does not exist, I only said it does not occur on our network.

        3 5 Reply
      3. jelabarre59
        Reply Icon

        Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

        Hmm, I think MS have access to a slightly larger test fleet......

        Yeah, it's called "end users"....

        15 0 Reply
    2. katrinab Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

      I too am unable to reproduce the net share issue, because when I went to install it on a throwaway virtual machine, it said the update wasn't available.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

        I rather suspect that Microsoft is mucking around in SMB again, probably in an attempt to rearchitect/reengineer it yet again. You should, operative word should there, need to only step back and let a couple of months go by only, operative word only there, if you've completely screwed up and can't fall back as some other team(s) have made the new requirements irreversible. Network plumbing changes like these are very fussy. Notice, too, that Windows 8.1U1 and older don't seem to be affected. Maybe?Hopefully?

        That's my view of what probably happened, although I can say it's happened to me on several occasions, for instance, having to go in manually and transform all the databases due to enterprise guys making a mandatory breaking change without inserting code to do the transform due to that breaking change by hand. Not fun!

        [1] That's where I learned COBOL the hard way. By reading their source code and mentally making the transforms from prior to new. Sweet thing about COBOL, it's very verbose, and I liked it!

        [2} The Harris system engineer gave me my own system GENTAP with all their compilers, tools and, especially, the damed man pages.

        [3] God(s) bless some IBM system engineers who didn't mind taking a snot-nosed kid under their wing, who liked to hang around the computing center, and taught him to think this way when it's all FUBAR.

        3 0 Reply
        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

          I rather suspect that Microsoft is mucking around in SMB again, probably in an attempt to rearchitect/reengineer it yet again.

          I believe the issues with SMB mounts not reconnecting is due to activating the Hardened UNC Paths feature by default. So it's not "mucking around in SMB" in the sense of altering the protocol itself, but in adding security features to their SMB client implementation (which it desperately needs, of course) which break some existing connections. But I admit that's a subtle distinction.

          The October update broke Group Policy Updates to my corporate laptop, for example, because of an authentication failure. (I didn't bother investigating further to figure out which machine was failing to authenticate the other.) I had to configure HUP in Group Policy (on the client) to not require mutual authentication for SYSVOL shares to get it to work.

          There are various articles online discussing the issue.

          0 0 Reply
    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

      "Installed 1809 on three laptops - no issues at all so far!"

      I'm sure everyone who has this particular problem thought the same thing when they read complaints about the last problem. Don't assume your turn isn't coming.

      4 0 Reply
  3. Lee D Silver badge

    Yeah, this is why I stuck on Windows 8.1 (which gives me a few years before upgrade yet!) and don't automatically install any updates.

    Sorry, Microsoft, but if even 1% of computers fail your update with errors like "you can't map network drives", then that update isn't going to get applied. Simple as that. I'm not running around 1% of my machines diagnosing mystery issues that won't get fixed until next year.

    Have you not learned the lesson yet?

    Monolithic updates are bad.

    Updates which affect thousand upon thousands of unrelated files are bad.

    Untested updates are bad.

    Forced updates are bad.

    If you'd broken this out into lots of small patches, you could have a) not affected your bandwidth but let users download it piecemeal, b) isolate individual fixes into individual updates with almost no difference on the back end, c) allowed power users and your own testers (laugh) to isolate which parts of the updates are failing easily, d) let your users download all the ones that aren't broken and revoke just those that are, e) seen interactions such as update X only goes wrong when also applied with update Y and saved everyone a lot of time, f) let users isolate using binary-search and remove individual updates that happen to cause them problems even if you don't care a jot about doing that yourself.

    I really hope you continue to work like this, break so many critical updates, and get one of those "Whoops, you updated now and it's broke and there's nothing we can do" scenarios that you can just step back from, and start breaking people's machine irreversibly, so that you're made to stop with the forced updates. If you could manage that before 8.1 comes out of extended support, I'd be so happy.

    36 2 Reply
    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      This! I'm glad they're fucking up so spectacularly, sooner it starts to cost MS cash the sooner they stop with this bollocks.

      20 0 Reply
    2. Fibbles
      Reply Icon

      Jesus, you know things have gone to pot when people start consider Windows 8 as a better alternative.

      43 0 Reply
      1. Lee D Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Nothing wrong with 8.1.

        Slap Classic Shell on it, turn off all the Metro junk, it's pretty much Windows 7 with knobs on and the only real difference is when things want to jump into Metro for no good reason (e.g. some settings options).

        Literally, this place was a Windows 7 shop, that had tried to upgrade to 8 "naively" (i.e. not tried to customise it at all) and it was a disaster and reverted and "never again". I took over the IT, silently started rolling out 8.1 with Classic Shell and NOBODY noticed or cared and still haven't 4 years later. The only thing they noticed was the organisation logo in the start menu button, because I put it there as a bit of branding, and they all loved it. That's something that, as far as I know, you can't do with basic Windows alone with all kinds of messy editing.

        It's about how you manage it, not the fact that it's 7 / 8.1 / 10. The problem is that I consider 10 too big a leap for my users at the moment so I will lump it together with a load of other big-leaps so they just have to bite the bullet and change the way the work once, rather than 3-4 times over for different things. But that will happen when ALL my suppliers support 10 properly (and have done for a whlle, not just said "we now work on 10"), and the banks etc. are dragging their feet on that.

        12 3 Reply
        1. LeahroyNake
          Reply Icon

          I also prefer 8.1 over 10, it's a bit of a mess about to get the security updates to download as apparently the Ryzen 5 1600 is not supported even though it works just fine.

          The only other downside is AMD not releasing graphics drivers for 8.1... wtf is with that attitude ?

          And... a mapped network drive Qnap NAS / failed to connect happens every time I boot the thing even though when I try to open it / works just fine. Very strange.

          3 0 Reply
        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Windows 8.1U1 is perfectly loved here, once I step in and use Winstep Nexus Ultimate on the shell. But I've been doing that to Windows since WNU popped up on the 'net as soon as it was out. Basically same principle. Give the user their favorite shell, not some declared in Redmond mandatory, maximally stupid shell.

          0 1 Reply
  4. Giovani Tapini
    FAIL

    What I find really depressing

    is the basic nature of the issues. These are not issues with specific drivers, old hardware, or other unusual configurations. How TF do you break mapping drives which frankly even many home users do. Never mind removing access to personal files and deleting them etc.

    With an OS that seriously objects if you don't apply all the latest patches because it's trying to be a service it is even harder to dodge the tripwires being added to the platform. I don't want workarounds at an enterprise scale either. That may be OK for a techie at home or a small business with a techie, but when you are talking thousands of seats of both non technical, and access restricted staff these become a serious issue.

    Microsoft will kill their own business if the as-a-service model destroys more than it creates. Note to M$ slow down your release cycle, and start testing if you want to keep credibility and customers.

    37 0 Reply
    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: What I find really depressing

      "How TF do you break mapping drives which frankly even many home users do"

      You spend your ENTIRE life getting rewarded for PARTICIPATION instead of EXCELLENCE. And THEN you glide through "college" getting indoctrinated instead of educated, and then end up working for a mega-corporation with a culture such as the ones they have at Micro-shaft, Google, etc..

      (if you don't get why I said that, you probably aren't old enough yet)

      9 4 Reply
    2. Updraft102
      Reply Icon

      Re: What I find really depressing

      Microsoft will kill their own business if the as-a-service model destroys more than it creates. Note to M$ slow down your release cycle, and start testing if you want to keep credibility and customers.

      It is evident that they do not want to keep Windows customers. They're a cloud company now, right? Windows has gone from the jewel of the MS empire to its whipping boy. They seem to think they can pull off the scuttling of Windows while still keeping their cloud customers. Time will tell if it works, but I think that enough people still think that MS=Windows (including those who make the decisions over which cloud services to use) to make this a very risky proposition. They may be eager to shed Windows customers, but the part about credibility remains. If Windows is floundering, people will think MS is floundering, and that makes MS cloud look risky. Well, it is risky, of course, but I mean even riskiER than relying on someone else's server (where your data and livelihood can be held hostage) already is.

      0 0 Reply
  5. Semtex451

    When you said.....

    "All in all, try it out before you deploy it on a system you rely on"

    I read, "try to be out when you deploy it on..."

    Which might also be sound advice, especially if you work near your helpdesk team.

    12 0 Reply
  6. John70

    You experience the following issues in Windows 10, version 1809:

    In Windows Explorer, a red X appears on the mapped network drives.

    Mapped network drives are displayed as Unavailable when you run the net use command at a command prompt.

    In the notification area, a notification displays the following message: 'Could not reconnect all network drives.'

    Not just 1809 update. Been happening for years.

    28 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      And in my experience, any programmatic access to those drives will fail until explorer has been used to access them, at which point they magically reconnect.

      11 0 Reply
  7. Bob Magoo

    X marks the spot

    The Red X is cosmetic in nature only, the drive is still actually mapped and accessible. It's not a new thing in 1809 either...

    10 5 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      Re: X marks the spot

      "It's not a new thing in 1809 either..."

      It's 2018 here. You stick to your steam punk OS and I'll get some work done.

      29 2 Reply
    2. AJ MacLeod
      Reply Icon

      Re: X marks the spot (@Bob Magoo)

      Sometimes, as you say, the drive is still mapped and accessible - but not always. Just as often it's not accessible, and to make matters worse it can be almost impossible to actually delete the mapping and recreate it (Windows won't let you disconnect the drive because it's "already disconnected" and won't let you recreate the mapping because it's already mapped.)

      Definitely a bug that's been around for quite a long time, and very annoying it is too when it randomly springs up.

      10 0 Reply
  8. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Flame

    I think

    its time for the phone call to our CAM software suppliers and ask them a very important question

    "Do you do a linux version yet?"

    Flames... because m$ seem intent of burning themselves down

    25 1 Reply
  9. Steve Jackson
    WTF?

    Can somebody explain to me what Win-10-nic is supposed to convey?

    It doesn't scan or ring any bells with me. I'd love to be in on the joke, insult or whatever it is supposed to imply, assert or mock.

    Please and thank you.

    13 2 Reply
    1. jonathan keith
      Reply Icon

      I think it's an extremely laboured reference to the Titanic.

      31 0 Reply
      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        I think it's an extremely laboured reference to the Titanic.

        To be fair - Bombadil Bob is a rabid Republican so you can't expect *too* much in the way of thought processes from him..

        10 8 Reply
        1. #define INFINITY -1
          Reply Icon

          I'm not going to throw a snide remark, but how often I've heard wise men warn us against the use of the word 'democratic' for a nation or a party is cause for thought.

          Disclaimer: I get to watch the US show from afar. Serves them right too--imposing their Broadway _and_ Hollywood infections on the rest of the world.

          2 0 Reply
      2. Ken Hagan Gold badge
        Reply Icon

        "I think it's an extremely laboured reference to the Titanic."

        It's an exceedingly bad one, or at least one step removed from being one.

        Itanium -> Itanic is a reasonable step and Itanic is only one letter removed from Titanic.

        Win10-ic, however, is not an abbreviation for Wintenium and has very few letters in common with Titanic.

        Win10-ic -> Itanic works quite well, but you need to accept the latter as a real word rather than a joke in its own right.

        2 0 Reply
      3. MysteryGuy
        Reply Icon
        Joke

        Re: Schadenfreude

        > I think it's an extremely laboured reference to the Titanic

        Shouldn't that be 'The Titanic as a service'?

        4 0 Reply
    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Can somebody explain to me what Win-10-nic is supposed to convey?

      "Win-10-nic", a somewhat obvious pun on 'Win-10' and 'Titanic', similar to 'Itanic', someone else's idea that I borrowed from the 'Insider' program before this abomination was foisted upon the masses, and meant to convey the following:

      a) arrogance

      b) lack of proper safety for the passengers

      c) low quality materials/construction.

      d) bad design assumptions

      e) "icebergs ahead" --> "all ahead full anyway"

      f) is obviously NOT "too big to sink" nor "too big to fail" (see 'arrogance')

      g) Was intended to be a symbol of prowess and market domination, ended up as one of the worst disasters of its time.

      and so on.

      And Micro-shaft CONTINUES to "miss the boat" and GET IT WRONG on Win-10-nic, and continues to prove that I'm RIGHT about it.

      [if I could include the 2D FLATSO in that analogy I'd do it; sadly, that was a feature of 'Ape' (8) that unfortunately carried forward for ALL of the wrong reasons. The 2D FLATTY is a bit like 70's disco, in that "popular" music became dumbed down, as did the appearance of the Windows UI, to an oversimplified form, spawning a HUGE division between the 'disco bunnies' and the 'rockers', so much so that a Chicago DJ, Steve Dahl, held a 'Disco Demolition Night' (see wikipedia article for more info) at a baseball game, with 'interesting' results. Similarly, there's a real backlash brewing against Windows 10 that has yet to 'surface' (bad pun) enough to be overwhelmingly obvious, not just due to the 2D FLATSO but also the low quality forced updates, spying, etc. - and for now it just sits there ready to boil over at a moment's notice]

      4 1 Reply
  10. mark l 2 Silver badge

    It sounds like having Trend AV installed is a good thing if it stops Windows 10 automatically downloading the latest Win 10 'feature update' which contains very little I would actually want, and causes my PC to be tied up for hours while it downloads and installs.

    9 0 Reply
    1. LeahroyNake
      Reply Icon

      Maybe other AV vendors should take note and sell it as a feature ?

      4 0 Reply
  11. Vanir

    Just where are the software developers in MS?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

    The programmng tests that MS do to obtain the best programmers and software engineers seem to be for naught.

    What's happenng to MS, and has been for years, is the gangrene of corporate marketing wasting away the engineering muscle. The stench is palpable.

    It's happening to Google, Facebook and the other big techs it seems.

    Hopefully, Mr Torvalds' nice rants keep on being a good barrier to any gangrene getting into the Linux kernel.

    19 0 Reply
    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Just where are the software developers in MS?

      I'm also going to point the finger at the development method du jour, Agile.

      16 1 Reply
      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Just where are the software developers in MS?

        "the development method du jour, Agile"

        Agile is not a development method. It is a method for selling training courses.

        To achieve this, it needs to contain some obvious common sense, such as "try testing as soon as you have something to test, if not earlier", and some other stuff to catch your attention, such as "don't make any plans for version 2 coz you'd only need that if version 1 doesn't bomb in the marketplace". Obviously, with more than half a century of programming experience to draw on, there is very little overlap between the two categories.

        2 0 Reply

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. herman

    Vista anyone? Anyone?

    I think the purpose of Win10 is to make WinME and Vista look better.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Vista anyone? Anyone?

      Kubuntu doesn't look too shabby either.

      7 0 Reply
      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Vista anyone? Anyone?

        Kubuntu doesn't look too shabby either

        Initially I read that as "Kabuki doesn't look too shabby either"..

        I think my nightly watching of the current Sumo basho[1] is getting to me..

        Go Takayasu[2]! Go Tochinoshin!

        [1] Many years ago we used to get it on one of the random channels on Swindon Cable. And, when they dropped it, via VHS tapes.. It's now on NHK HD as a nightly half-hour highlight programme whenever there's a basho on.

        [2] AKA 'Butterball' (according to Mrs COCM)

        2 0 Reply
        1. Ozumo
          Reply Icon

          Re: Vista anyone? Anyone?

          Surely Chiyomaru is "Butterball".

          And Tochinoshin is getting careless. Not getting the left outer early enough.

          2 0 Reply
        2. DanceMan
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Up

          Re: the current Sumo basho

          Can be seen on NHK World live streaming (search those words) at the appropriate times four times daily.

          The daily highlights are about 20 minutes, followed by Sumopedia for about 5 minutes, which explains things for new people.

          Watched today's at work on Pale Moon in Linux Mint Mate, on an old X61t Thinkpad. Very interesting basho this time.

          0 0 Reply

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