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Microsoft Linux

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions (omgubuntu.co.uk) 281

Posted by msmash from the case-of-mission-partition dept.
Windows 10 Anniversary Update may affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk, OMGUbuntu is reporting, citing several complaints by users. "Broken boot loaders on an update are one thing but losing data, even entire partitions?" asks the author. Microsoft-centric news blog WindowsReport is corroborating on the report, adding that in some cases, the new OS was not able to detect some partitions. It says (edited): Many users are reporting that some of their partitions disappeared after installing the Anniversary Update. Usually, it's the smallest partition that disappears, although we couldn't say for sure whether the partition is deleted or if Windows simply doesn't detect it. Some users are saying that the partition is not allocated, while others can detect it once they install third-party partition management applications.We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when we hear back from them.
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Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions More

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions

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  • happened to me today (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @12:35PM (#52637141)

    lost my primary Linux partition which was my main OS. could not recover partition intact, only 120,000 files recovered with photorec. will use VMs in future if I need windows for anything

    • Re:happened to me today (Score:5, Informative)

      by psm321 ( 450181 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @01:03PM (#52637423) Journal
      Try testdisk (generally comes in the same package as photorec). It can find filesystems and fix the partition table

    • ...and this is why I always, always use VMs for that kind of crap. Keeps it contained.

      (besides, it's not as if Windows was any good at multi-partitions anyway, unless all of those partitions were either FAT32 or NTFS).

    • Re:happened to me today (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @07:43PM (#52640707)

      Indeed. Windows 10 must at this time be regarded as malware that needs to be isolated.

  • Just wait until Windows has systemd (Score:5, Funny)

    by mpercy ( 1085347 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @12:38PM (#52637167)

    I cannot imagine a worse combination.

    • I cannot imagine a worse combination.

      Systemd will have Windows - "windowsd"

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      Systemd is pretty much how Windows would do things. A massive binary that handles the job of many small programs and full of undiscovered security problems. Oh yeah and throw in binary log files (just like windows).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. The amount of stupidity that has gone into the systemd design and architecture is staggering. Unselfconscious design at its best and most stupid.

      • "A massive binary that handles the job of many small programs and full of undiscovered security problems."

        svchost.exe

  • pretty sure this has always been the case... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @12:38PM (#52637173)

    As in, installing Windows after installing Linux will mess with the boot loader.

    Everyone running a dual boot system should already be aware of this since the recommendation is always to install Linux second.

    New major updates to Windows 10 are basically entirely new operating systems. They just make the process more transparent these days.

    • I'm sure people who are dual-booting two different versions of windows will appreciate microsoft's foresight tin taking away the hard choices and simplifying their lives. Somebody should go over there and delete a few partitions - between offices and the enraged public.

    • Re:pretty sure this has always been the case... (Score:5, Informative)

      by RKThoadan ( 89437 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @12:57PM (#52637365)

      This is more than that... if the reports are true. They are reporting that it's messing with and deleting other partitions on the hard disk. It sounds like it's at lease messing with the partition table.

      • Re:pretty sure this has always been the case... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @03:36PM (#52638877)

        > They are reporting that it's messing with and deleting other partitions on the hard disk. It sounds like it's at lease messing with the partition table.

        The Win10 upgrader (from Win7) did exactly this to my Linux partitions.

        The upgrader needed a few hundred MB of space to create some sort of rescue partition. Rather than resize the 1TB NTFS primary partition at the front of the disk (of which 900GB were free) it decided that (because it didn't recognize the filesystem type in the partition) it was okay to _delete_ the first logical partition, resize the extended partition by a few hundred MB, and move the extended partition down. It then made another primary partition in front of the newly moved extended partition and formatted that primary partition with NTFS.

        I've _never_ had a Windows installer do so much damage. Overwriting the bootloader? Sure! That's shitty, but entirely reasonable. Deleting partitions that aren't FAT* or NTFS because you don't recognize what they are and -thus- assume that they're unused? That's _incredibly_ shitty.

        This is the kinder, more open-source friendly Microsoft, guys.

        I hope to hell that this Win10 update doesn't put me through this shit again. That wasn't a fun day.

    • Yup, that's been the case since at least the Windows 95 days.

      MS doesn't give a fuck about your respecting your partition table and "non-MS" OS's.

    • Service packs never made this in the past.
    • I think this first started with the Windows 8.1 update. I miss the service pack-style installation of previous releases.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      FYI, it's not just dual-boot situations that get borked. I have a plain old second physical hard drive in my computer, no unusual partitioning or anything, and it deleted the main partition. I restored it using Minitool Partition Wizard.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Messing up the boot-loader is not so bad. Messing up data-carrying partitions unless explicitly told to do so is at the very least criminal negligence.

  • Metered Connection is your Friend (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sydin ( 2598829 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @12:39PM (#52637183)
    While I imagine I'll have to bite the bullet on my sole Win 10 machine eventually and download the anniversary edition, I intentionally set it to "Metered Connection" for exactly this reason. I like to let major updates hit and assess the impact for a few days before taking the plunge, and currently telling Windows you're on a metered connection is the only way to get it to not automatically download updates. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit longer than I thought - would not appreciate my Linux partition going up in smoke.

  • smallest partition as in efi / dell utils type ones?

    Will f* an apple system in boot camp?

    • This was my problem with Windows 10 when I installed it a few months ago. It failed to do some update, so wanted to repair itself, but every time it tried it was trying to restore itself on the EFI partition, not the actual windows partition. Thankfully at that point I still had grub installed with the boot sector of one of my disks intact, so was able to boot into Linux via legacy option, but after many failed attempts to boot windows 10 and having it trash my EFI partition while trying to restore, I gave

  • "We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when we hear back from them."

    In other words, "We have reached out to Microsoft for clarification, and will update the post when they tell us to fuck off and stop complaining."

  • Locked BIOS interface (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @01:05PM (#52637449)
    I wonder how long until some automatic Windows 10 update will disable altering any BIOS settings via some rootkit for "security" reasons. I mean, if they're not going to get hit with antitrust violations or charges of abusing their customers for all of the things they've done already (force Windows 10 updates on Win7/8. 1 users, telemetry that deceptively appears to be able to be turned off but really can't, no unsigned drivers allowed, uploading BitLocker keys to their servers, remove features during routine updates, uninstall programs during routine updates, ever-growing built-in advertisements, etc.), then they can pretty much just do anything they like, including preventing other operating systems from booting (which, I add, is now the case both on Windows RT tablets and Windows 10 phones).
  • Well, now we are seeing where Microsoft's QA does not focus their attention. Why wouldn't Microsoft's QA test for this scenario? Possibly because Microsoft does not care, and does not want, other OS's on its hard disk in a dual-boot scenario?

  • is your friend.

  • 1) Ran update - it downloaded 3GB of stuff, ran for a while and stalled at 0% complete
    2) Restarted PC and update - ran for a long time (unattended) and rebooted ... back into (un-updated) original Windows.
    3) Repeat above (update downloaded 3GB AGAIN) - but watched. After 2nd reboot showed (briefly) blue screen complaining about driver issue (using stock Dell drivers) and then automatically rolled back to original Windows 10, & rebooted
    4) Updated ALL Dell drivers from Dell site.
    5) Ran update again and ye

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radish ( 98371 )

      Or Dell fixes their drivers. It sounds like the update did everything right - it tried to install, detected an issue and automatically rolled back. Better than carrying on with a b0rked driver.

  • I blame games developers (Score:3)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @01:12PM (#52637517)

    If they would only develop games so they supported Linux too, I could totally get rid of Microsoft's malware off my PC forever.

    • So many games on Linux now... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dr. Manhattan ( 29720 ) <sorceror171@nOsPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @02:04PM (#52638005) Homepage
      ...it's really not a big deal. Yes, it's not as many as Windows. However, there's so many just on Steam that it's plenty to fill any rational amount of leisure time. I've been mucking with The Talos Principle, Antichamber, and QUBE recently, on a bit of a first-person puzzler kick. Of course, before that I was playing Shadow of Mordor, Alien: Isolation and Tomb Raider (2013), along with XCom Enemy Within. Mucked around with Saint's Row 3 and Dead Island, too. That's just "major studios". But there's plenty of others I've been dipping into - The Fall and The Swapper, Sublevel Zero, Monstrum, Metro 2033, Victor Vran, Stealth Bastard, Doorkickers, the new Day of the Tentacle Remastered. Haven't had a chance to muck with Sir You Are Being Hunted. And I think I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time in Duskers.

      More games than I can handle, really. All full Linux ports. I do have Windows, but haven't booted it to play games in at least a couple months now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        I hear what you're saying but the Linux offering is still very sub-par.
        Pretty much all new AAA games at least that that I'm interested in (Fallout4, Elite Dangerous, No Mans Sky etc) all have developers that still apparently presume PC==Windows. So are both MMO games that I've been playing on-and-off: Elder Scrolls Online and World Of Tanks.

        A while back I bought an HTC Vive (most of my Vive-vs-Rift decision was based on Steam/Valve's clear commitment to Linux vs. Oculus announcement right after Facebook bou

        • Well, okay, if the things you want aren't on Linux, that's just the way it is, I guess. Of course, it used to be that way for games in general, but now a lot of "AAA" stuff shows up on Linux, too. If not immediately, then a few months down the road. As I said, I have enough games on my plate right now, I can afford to wait a bit.

  • suicidal update (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AkumaKuruma ( 879423 ) <Millenia2000NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @01:27PM (#52637651) Journal

    I actually had the issue of Windows 10 deleting its OWN partitions. computer started running funny, then it BSODed and then would only boot to a flashing cursor. Booted into repair only to find that my system drive was reporting as 100% available. not even the Windows 10 system partitions were present. nothing could read any semblance of a partition table from the drive to recover any of my data.

  • Also changes privacy settings (Score:5, Informative)

    by gearloos ( 816828 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @01:33PM (#52637711)
    Also - It installs Cortana and fully enables it, no surprise there, but if you go into all of the privacy settings it has changed the settings for items like writing monitor to "help Microsoft track how you type". Yeah they need to know that all right... as well as several other items I found had been reverted back to the non private settings. One, the diagnostic phone home, is again on and takes a registry hack to turn it back off again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      writing monitor to "help Microsoft track how you type"

      If you had written that five years ago I'd have ranted that MS may have done some ridiculous stuff but they would never go that far. The legal implications are potentially immense but they just do not care.

  • Typical of MS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melting_clock ( 659274 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @02:08PM (#52638043)

    Back in the late 1990's I was dual booting Windows and Linux. A PC magazine had included a CD with an early version Red Hat Linux and ran a series of articles on the strange OS. Linux had no problems dealing with the Windows partitions.

    Move forward a bit to Windows XP and more dual booting.Commercial and free partition managers support Linux partitions. Windows would still screw with Linux partition, particularly when installing Windows, so having keeping each OS on a separate physical HDD became critical. That way you could unplug the Linux drive to protect it from MS incompetence. Amusingly, Linux could mount Windows partitions to transfer files over and I was able to install a driver on Windows that allowed Windows to mount Linux partitions, however, Windows XP had no native support for non-windows partitions. Linux proves to be more capable in key area than Windows but I'm still using WInXP as my main OS.

    Jump forward to Windows 7 and Linux dual booting. The situation has improved a bit because you could technically let Win7 manage booting mulitple OS but it still screws with Linux partitions and has no native support for Linux partition types. Linux still does a better job and I can go months without booting into Windows anyway. More commercial software supports Linux, including games, and the open source applications available have greatly improved to the point of being better than MS products. I really hated the ribbon interface nonsense in MS Office because it reduced my productivity, it was nearly a stupid as having some animated paperclip jumping around on your screen while you're trying to work...

    Windows 8 appears and I decided than if I'm ever forced to replace Win7 I'll just give up on dual booting and just stick with Linux full time. Windows 10 brings spyware and adware built into the OS, setting a new low for MS and having some very surprising side effects; friends, family and people barely know are wanting to know about Linux and how they can get away from Windows 10. There has never been a version of Windows that happily coexists with another OS, why would anyone be surprised that Win10 is breaking Linux dual boots? It is either intentionally evil or supreme incompetence; MS has a history of both.

  • It also broke a friend's ability to read his external hard drive.

    Single, basic bitches NTFS partition. Perfectly fine in Windows 7. Perfectly fine in Windows 10 before the rapeiversary update. Now inaccessible, showing as raw in disk management, and Windows is begging to format it.

    Worse than the "lol that's a perfectly fine external drive you've plugged in and it works fine, but u wanna scan and fix anyway?" shit because the data is actually inaccessible on Windows 10.

    • Reminds me of an issue I have with WDC 'advanced format' drives (4096 physical, 512 logical sector size) plugged into my cheapo' external usb adapter. It messes up and treats them as 4096/4096 (or 512/512?) devices, so all the sector offsets are counted wrong. But sector 0 still works and so the partition table can be read. The contents can be interpreted properly using a geom gnop sector size adapter device, if desperate.

  • Happy Anniversary!!! (Score:3)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @02:31PM (#52638229)
    This is Microsoft's revenge for seeing another operating system on the side during your anniversary!

  • Win 10 ain't done 'til Linux won't run!"

  • I tried to upgrade yesterday, my machine has Windows 10 Enterprise and Ubuntu 16.04 on two separate disks. The machine rebooted while updating but would get stuck trying to install (once at 19%, the next time at 0%). To recover I had to power off via the power button and when booting into Windows again it would recover to a previous restore point automatically. Ubuntu stayed intact. After checking for the update again Microsoft have removed the option so it no longer appears as an available update, presumab
  • Any word on how it works on a Mac with bootcamp? I did the update earlier and am concerned about the OSX side. I don't really have resources to fix something like this while deployed. I'm primarily using the Windows boot anyway for Steam (I am Setsuna!), but don't want to lose my Mac interface completely for the next 5+ months.

  • My recent attempt to try Ubuntu failed because of dual-booting problems. I'm seriously considering getting a pure Linux box, maybe from System 76 or some other Linux place, and keeping it and Windows completely separate, so MS can't fsck with the good stuff.

  • Last Friday, after one too many "Microsoft disabled X" and "Microsoft changed Y", I have moved my two Windows 10 Pro licenses from the hardware to virtual machines. They can bork themselves all they want, the worst it would happen I have to scp the backup back and untar it. This is getting too far...

  • Dual boot advice (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Allsup ( 987 ) <slashdot@chal i s q u e.net> on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @05:13PM (#52639773) Homepage Journal

    Unless you absolutely have to, do _not_ install Linux and Windows on the same physical hard drive. For many purposes (e.g. basic coding and web stuff) a lightweight Linux distro will run just fine off a USB memory stick (I use Ultra Fit's in either the 32GB or 64GB size). Then, if you are buying a laptop and you're a techie, get something where it is trivially easy to swap out either the hard drive (i.e. not Asus crap where you have to remove the keyboard to get at the hard drive), or the optical drive. For example, boot Windows of one hard drive, and stick another in the optical drive bay. If you have a desktop, you have room for more than one physical drive. This also means that, during critical stuff like OS installs, you can physically disconnect your Linux drive so that Windows cannot get at it. My favourite example of Redmond silliness involved Windows 2000 appearing to enumerate partitions one way in the partitioning part of setup, and another way for the formatting part. Basically, on my dual boot drive, Windows 2000 setup ended up formatting the wrong partition. I say it had cocked up when I noticed the size of the partition it was formatting: my shared data drive. By the time I had stopped the process, of course, the FATs were already overwritten.

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