Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions (omgubuntu.co.uk) 281
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.
happened to me today (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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...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).
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Why would I run Linux in a VM rather than MSWind?
Seriously, *is* there a reason? I don't know of any.
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However the MS Windows application they
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In order to authorize software which does DRM especially DRM based on "Trusted Computing based hardware that relies on keys loaded on the CPU or Trusted Computing chips on the motherboard. This includes but is not limited to the kernel.
Re:happened to me today (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Windows 10 must at this time be regarded as malware that needs to be isolated.
Re: happened to me today (Score:5, Informative)
So you don't do regular scheduled backups? Let this be a lesson for you.
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Blaming the victim? I suppose that's ok, as long as it's not rape.
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What if it were a disk failure instead? Cryptolocker? Inadvertent keystroke, or even cat on the keyboard?
The partition getting deleted is obviously Microsoft's fault. The fact that it caused permanent loss of important data however is more the user's fault. If it's important it needs to be on at least two different disks, and the further separated those disks are physically the better.
Just because someone is the victim doesn't make their actions or lack thereof perfect. If you're not backing up your im
Re: happened to me today (Score:5, Informative)
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Even with backups it's quite a job to recover the data and do a re-installation of the other system that was corrupted.
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Surely, an update should not kill your partition. But if you have any data that resides on a single hard disk, expect to lose it. Drives will crash, updates will fail, hackers will hack, and users will do stupid shit.
This is 2016. Put everything you can into github, as much as possible of the rest in some sort of cloud drive (dropbox etc), and sync the rest to another computer somewhere. And if something is really dear to you (or to your customers, tax department, or government) back it up somewhere safe. F
Re: happened to me today (Score:4, Informative)
I just use something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... [amazon.com]
It just turns the power on and off to different drives and installs in a drive bay.
I'd prefer a switch for the SATA data lines though, then I wouldn't need an overabundance of SATA ports on my motherboard. But I couldn't find a product like that and the power line switch is probably a more reliable method.
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The EULA's binding arbitration has already been shown to be a paper tiger. It is not being enforced by the courts.
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That depends on where you are, and most EULAs aren't even worth the electrons they are written with.
It's not binding until tried in court.
Re:happened to me today (Score:4, Informative)
The EULA prohibits users of Windows 10 from suing Microsoft.
That didn't seem to stop this lady from winning $10K [slashdot.org] or prevent two more suits [slashdot.org] from being filed last week. Also, the New York State Attorney General's office is soliciting reports [mspoweruser.com] from consumers who were damaged by Windows 10 installs.
Just wait until Windows has systemd (Score:5, Funny)
I cannot imagine a worse combination.
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I cannot imagine a worse combination.
Systemd will have Windows - "windowsd"
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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).
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Indeed. The amount of stupidity that has gone into the systemd design and architecture is staggering. Unselfconscious design at its best and most stupid.
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"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)
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.
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Re:pretty sure this has always been the case... (Score:5, Informative)
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)
> 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.
Re:pretty sure this has always been the case... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you keep using MS, expect it to get worse. The only way I'd use MS is inside a VM.
(Actually, because I can't accept the EULA that statement is chest-beating. I *won't* install MSWind. MSWind98 was the last version I know of with an acceptable EULA, though admittedly I haven't read most of the EULAs since then.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That only works if MSFT hasn't deleted or overwritten the original partitions, which it sounds like it may be doing.
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did you run mkfs.ext4?
Metered Connection is your Friend (Score:5, Informative)
MS can pull an t-mobile and have isp make update (Score:2)
MS can pull an t-mobile and have isp make update cap and roaming free?
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Windows Pro lets you defer also. One website recommended this with the phrase "let the Windows Home users be Microsoft's beta testers."
smallest partition as in efi / dell utils type one (Score:2)
smallest partition as in efi / dell utils type ones?
Will f* an apple system in boot camp?
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Lol, yeah......... (Score:2)
"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."
Re:Lol, yeah......... (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft has altered the deal. Pray they do not alter it further.
Locked BIOS interface (Score:5, Insightful)
jumpers can get around that (Score:2)
jumpers can get around that
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When was the last time you saw a jumper in a PC?
Microsoft's QA focus... (Score:2)
EasyBCD (Score:2)
is your friend.
Windows Anniversary Update Failed for Me (Score:2)
1) Ran update - it downloaded 3GB of stuff, ran for a while and stalled at 0% complete ... back into (un-updated) original Windows.
2) Restarted PC and update - ran for a long time (unattended) and rebooted
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
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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)
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)
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.
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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
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Ah, an AC. No, the games can be 64-bit, I run The Talos Principle that way, for example. As to source, for operating systems and utilities and most software, I want source. Games are an area where open-source doesn't work quite as well. I'm fine with closed-source and actually paying money for games. If you want to be a purist, you go on with your bad self.
suicidal update (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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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)
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.
Huge Fuck Up (Score:2)
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.
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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)
Past is prologue at Microsoft (Score:2)
Win 10 ain't done 'til Linux won't run!"
Upgrade Stuck While Installing (Score:2)
Bootcamp? (Score:2)
Fed up with dual-boot (Score:2)
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.
Windows 10 Pro, meet Virtual Machine (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Bork (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's more like "fuck", as in "Microsoft is fucking over anyone who puts another OS on their computer."
Good ol' Microsoft. Still evil after all these years.
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Still evil? They've gotten significantly more evil since Gandhi took over.
The old ways are the best ways. (Score:4, Funny)
Windows isn't done until Lotus doesn't run.
Re:The old ways are the best ways. (Score:4, Funny)
You should know that "Steam" does not begin with an "L". :(
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+1 Insightful, -1 Vaguely Racist
Re:Bork (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's more like "fuck", as in "Microsoft is fucking over anyone who puts another OS on their computer."
Exactly. So far as I'm concerned, it's not an accident on the part of Microsoft. They want to own your computer, and pwn you in the process. Any competing OS must be destroyed utterly. Wouldn't at all be surprised if it not only deletes the affected partition(s), but overwrites them first, rendering anything on them unrecoverable. What's next, Microsoft? Virus hidden in the reserved section of the drive, that thwarts any attempt to remove Windows? Render your hard drive unusable if you uninstall Windows? Reprogram all the VR's on your motherboard and smoke the processor core and PCH if you attempt to install a dual-boot? Assholes.
Re:Bork (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft Loves Linux*
*as long as Linux isn't running a GUI. From Microsoft's point of view you don't need a Linux partition any more. You can do your Linux script development under their Ubuntu on Windows thingy - and after all, Linux is only a server OS. No need for the GUI stuff. Of course no current Linux desktop users are going to be satisfied with that - but maybe some folks will find it useful as an addon to their current Windows-centric desktop worlds.
It seems like MS has accepted that they've lost the battle (if not the war) as far as Linux as a cloud-based app server is concerned. But it looks like they're still hoping that's the only place Linux will get traction. Of course, it's already got traction in mobile too, and MS seems resigned to that. But they're still in panic mode where the traditional is concerned. It's bad enough that they can't do anything about this ChromeOS thing. But on desktop PC's that also run Windows, they're still in control...
Re: Bork (Score:3)
"It seems like MS has accepted that they've lost the battle (if not the war) as far as Linux as a cloud-based app server is concerned."
either that or they are "embracing" it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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No sign of systemd here, yet. :)
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Troll? Misinformed? Astroturfer?
There are so many possible reasons for your post. Truth isn't one of them. I've run multiple Linux installs for decades now. Systemd is the second time I've had any problem. The earlier one was with Red Hat's security lock-down. Both were easily worked around without a re-install (though I did need to hand-specify the partition locations.)
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Oh? I must have imagined the last decade where I have been doing that reliably on multiple computers. The only problems ever where happening (not to me) when MS upgraded their sabotage-strategies. They are nothing but a criminal enterprise in this regard.
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I suppose this isn't entirely unexpected. Windows has never played well with others in a multi-boot environment. I recall that it doesn't preserve alternate bootloaders like Grub when installing a new OS, and I'd imagine that's how these major upgrades are treated. There were probably changes to the bootloader of some sort, and so it blithely "updated" it, wiping out the existing bootloader, apparently without bothering to confirm whether it *should* or not.
This is why my Windows dev machine is Windows-o
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The initial Win7->10 upgrade actually left my Grub and Linux stuff alone. I wasn't too worried as it was basically a toy installation but it was still nice to see.
What I've heard about the AU is that it just unchecks "Time to display list of operating systems" in startup options but otherwise everything is in place.
Anyway I'm in no rush to get the update so I killed the update service and will just wait until the dust settles.
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You know what else was awesome? How Microsoft took this opportunity to re-install the Get Office app (how I missed those nag screens informing me that my copy of Office 2010 just isn't shiny enough), and to put the Edge browser and MS Store icons back on my task bar. Because, my goodness, I had completely lost those apps. Thank goodness Microsoft is looking out for me by making sure I can find these valuable services again.
*tosses them into recycle bin once again*
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Further suggesting that this problem is intentional
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Further suggesting that this problem is intentional
Messing with Steam. Now effing up Linux partitions. Of course this is intentional corporate policy. It just reminds me why I will never deliberately give MS a single cent of money. It also reminds me to use alternatives to Office, such as Google Docs, LaTeX, and Open Office.
Windows Updates have failed on dual-boot, too. (Score:2)
There have been at least two Windows 7 updates I've had to temporarily disable Grub for, otherwise they fail.
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"Microsoft is fucking over anyone who puts another OS on their computer."
You misspelt "Windows 10" as "another OS" there, friend.
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Indeed. Detecting partitions and partition types (and then leaving them alone) is _easy_. This is intentional, no way around that. Oh, sure, they will have a very good cover-story for their criminal act (computer-sabotage) and who, if not Microsoft, will get away with a claim of incompetence, but this cannot be accidental.
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Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
To me it looks like Microsoft are repeating decades-old mistakes all over again, just with a new skin. Of course Microsoft now is quite a different company from back then with completely new people, so the people with experience from past mistakes have since retired.
But overall it seems to me that Microsoft is now under a great deal of stress from the Linux community where many different vendors uses Linux and other open source platforms in their solutions. E
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Well, yes. On engineering level stupidity is a distinct possibility. But on higher management-level it is far less so. One way to do very hard to prove sabotage in this way is to make sure the people responsible for the specific task are incompetent and arrogant. Not hard to do.
I do agree that MS may have overdone the push this time though. One can hope.
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I'm still on Win 7 and have made sure that I review all updates before applying them.
Now I'm not sure I want any further updates for Win 7 either. The malware risk seems to be lower than the risk of Microsoft trashing my computer.
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DirectX 12, for games, is the ONLY reason to ever touch Windows 10.
The only reason to touch Windows Server 2016, the new shares/spaces/whatevers, is fucking broken as shit. Stay far, far, far away.
For those needing to manage Windows 10 clients via SCCM, you can manually install the Configuration Manager client using SCCM 2012 SP1 (and maybe older shit, but if you're on SCCM pre 2012, it's time to upgrade) by skipping the prereq for the Windows Update agent.
ccmsetup.exe /skipprereq:windowsupdateagent30-x64.
You really don't know how bad it is! (Score:3)
Just look up "Using System File Checker (SFC) To Fix Issues"
A common problem with Windows 10 is the start menu will stop opening. This is caused by Windows 10 corrupting its core OS files. (Please note: it is Windows 10 corrupting the core files, not any other program) The exact case(s) for when this happens is not known. It is suspected that Windows Update is one of the main causes of this problem.
I personally ran into this on my Surface Pro 3. The easy
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We see corruption issues all the time at my workplace. It's a school - at the end of the lesson everyone wants to be out the room fast, so they hit logout, and when the logout process hasn't finished after five seconds they hold the power button down. Every now and again someone catches it at the right moment to mess up the filesystem.
Then I just do the net-boot and re-image thing.
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One of my disk partition tables makes gparted crash... I had to disconnect the drive to install Fedora.
fdisk however, doesn't complaint one bit.
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Windows 10 sucks, this whole community agrees. Stop posting stories on windows 10. Stop.
We could all do that, or the easier option is that you could just simply stop reading those stories.
Surely it is newsworthy that the update is completely deleting partitions. Why would you want to deny those that could be affected from being able to take preventative action simply bcause you are sick of hearing about Windows 10?