Windows 10’s latest update is deleting some users’ documents

Microsoft has really gone too far with OTA and automatically reverting settings to more grandma friendly options. I have a windows pc which every month will have some setting reverted without me touching it. It can be anything and it usually takes some time to discover it because it only presents itself when you perform some rare task. My network sharing settings and external monitor scaling settings has been lost multiple times after OTA.<p>I used to prefer windows but now it&#x27;s simply not reliable as a OS anymore. They treat it as the front page of Facebook. Every time you boot up its a surprise what you are going to get. Backwards compatability which used to be Microsoft hallmark has now sunk so low that even the user facing options and data are unstable.<p>I understand the need and desire for OTA and shipping new and modified features but whatever you do don&#x27;t break user settings unless the feature is so much modified the old setting doesn&#x27;t make sense anymore.

This is particularly scary when combined with Windows&#x27; propensity to commandeer everything you plug into it.<p>My only W10 machine is an HTPC in my living room, into which I&#x27;ve plugged a 4TB external hard-drive. That box has no other purpose than to run Kodi and serve up my media, so the primary drive inside the PC itself is mostly free and has plenty of hard-drive space.<p>Nonetheless, I periodically open the external itself in the file explorer to sync its contents with my backup drives, and discover that Windows decided to use my external drive to store logs, update files, and other garbage. It seems to have no concept of the idea that an external drive is for <i>my</i> storage, not Microsoft&#x27;s storage.<p>That lack of separation between the OS update process and userland worries me that the same bug which wipes out user directories could extend to the external, as well.<p>I&#x27;d just as soon unplug it before letting Windows 10 update, but then there&#x27;s that nasty habit of updating automatically without warning me...

As a vocal critic of the Linux Desktop, even I feel that soon Microsoft will have succeeded in making Windows so horrifically awful and user-hostile that the Linux Desktop will start to look good by comparison. I mean, if I&#x27;m going to put up with rapid update cycles that break things for no reason, decade old bugs going unfixed while features are added that no one asked for, inconsistent and redundant interfaces, developers who ignore user feedback and fetishize complexity, and fragile systems designed by Rube Goldberg, I may as well be using a Linux Desktop. About the only things holding me back any more are my unmitigated hatred for package managers as an application distribution model and crappy graphics drivers, otherwise Windows has achieved rough parity on bad system design.<p>For now, I&#x27;m staying sane on Win 10 by completely disabling all update functionality. I suspect that something will eventually make that untenable though. I&#x27;ve suspected for some time that it has been Microsoft&#x27;s goal to kill off desktop computing, and they seem to be succeeding handily.

It appears this has something to do with folder redirection and doing folder redirection to OneDrive. One of the workarounds might be to install the new OneDrive manually before updating.

windows 7..the last good Windows OS.

I use windows on many systems and have no such problems. What was introduced into the latest update is what is added into storage sense - if you enable storage sense integration into OneDrive then when you are low on disk space, documents are MOVED to one drive (offline). You DO have to opt into this.<p>Other people who have this problem with missing docs apparently have done registry hacks and sub mounted volumes to fake onedrive access to USB devices or to move things around in ways that were never supported - OneDrive has always attempted to block&#x2F;disable such hacks but people are creative... i have 0 sympathies for those users - but again - their docs are probably still on the umounted volume they could re-mount (assign a drive letter) or they&#x27;re fully migrated to OneDrive.

I still does not understand why can&#x27;t we separate out operating system from user content. It would be pretty simply just have OS snapshots that you can boot up and switch between them while having &#x2F;home unchanged.

I always find myself unable to delete any file on my computer, no matter I never needed it for years, nor I won&#x27;t need it again in the forseeable future. New features like this one from Microsoft can definitely help.

Even the very first Windows 10 version was deleting files on hard drive, if they were false positives of Windows Defender. I remember fighting it for a few hours once when I needed to run some (safe) utility (I compiled), but which was disappearing within seconds after Windows Defender ran scan on it. IIRC it was very difficult to find settings where you could completely disable Windows Defender.

I use both OSX and Windows.<p>Never experienced problems with W10 updates. Yes, eventual forced restarts are annoying - but I can see both sides, i.e. making sure users have latest security updates installed.<p>&gt; They treat it as the front page of Facebook.<p>I never use the Windows start menu. I use:<p>- Total Commander<p>- WIN+Q<p>- WIN+X<p>And I also don&#x27;t use a Microsoft account - when you install it just use a local account instead, just like you did when you installed older versions of Windows.

Look here to disable the setting with gpedit.msc (mine was off): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;sysadmin&#x2F;comments&#x2F;9lkera&#x2F;how_to_fix_windows_10_1809_profile_deletion&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;sysadmin&#x2F;comments&#x2F;9lkera&#x2F;how_to_fix...</a>

Windows update used to have a screen that said: “All of your files are exactly where you left them.”<p>I never trusted it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos.app.goo.gl&#x2F;WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos.app.goo.gl&#x2F;WLwfpg8PAzTfihSb9</a>

I hope it has something to do with DRM enforcement.