I’ve just got in from helping a friend roll back from W10P 1809 updated this morning, to his previous ‘Feature’ version 1709 and restore his ‘vanished’ data. (We had already rolled back 1803 in April after it locked out anyone not an Admin).
I never thought M$ would be stupid enough to issue an automatic ‘Feature Update’ that would wipe your data. I can image all the litigious US sending in their lawyers to recover costs incurred from lost business while sorting it. Fortunately M$ have paused the push-out. I’ve just found this article on the Beeb, it is relevant.
Last year I was able to freeze our W10P machine on 1703 after problems with 1709 and finding info on the web about which bits to switch in the registry (exactly the same arrangement as it was in W7), but it is not something to do trivially. Fortunately the Security updates still happen, just not the Feature upgrades.
Forcing people to accept updates was always a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve had several occasions with W7 when everything turned to crap after an update went wrong, but at least you had a choice with W7, no such choice with W10. I’ve avoided W10 so far but have helped a few friends sort out problems with it. Sounds like I might be helping again soon.
Unfortunately if one buys a new computer it will have a 7000 series cpu (or later), and these are part of the ‘security arrangement’ with Intel to prevent “downgrading” to an older OS like W7.
Or at least you can; as a test in 2016 I put W7P onto a blank HD in our new W10 box, and almost everything worked, but for one small detail - the graphics were basic VGA, and with no possibility of being able to use two or three 1920x1080 screens.
I was lucky to get this old W7P laptop as a special offer from Dell because it was an end-of-run and one of the last 6000 series cpus they sold.
It is trivial to install W7P onto a clean HD in an older PC (6000 series and earlier) supplied with W10. A couple of years ago I did so on several for friends, and made sure they were aware of the GWX stealth attacks and how to survive them.
I’m not the Censor The software comes pre-loaded with a long list of banned words, every now and again something hits a banned word where the context might not make sense or the idiom use be different in UK English. As you can see we have the ability to make adjustments and even sometimes have the odd humorous thought, though I know that can be difficult to interpret sometimes.
The April Win10 update failed to install on my PC, then I started to get BSOD with Critical Service Failed. I found the way around that was to boot with driver signing disabled. Then the update installed and everything seemed to be okay, till the latest update broke it again. SFC /Scannow reported corrupt files it couldn’t repair, so I ran a backup, crossed my fingers, gritted my teeth and allowed the media creation tool to reinstall Windows. That appears to have gone okay. At least I still have my apps and data, plus SFC is now clear.
Whether it’ll survive the next update is another matter. I have a laptop running Linux, but there’s still things I can’t get to run.
Umm, OK, I am the first to admit that I am a ‘techno-thickie’, and I’m sure that nobody will be surprised to learn that I do not understand any of the above post either !
I don’t know what’s going on here, but in my original tongue-in-cheek post (no.4), I did not type anything about chickens - I wrote G O B B L E D E G O O K in a normal manner, and had it censored, which is why I subsequently re-typed it in capitals and using spaces.
Somehow my original text has been completely re-worded, and makes the whole thing sound totally bonkers !
I am currently away so have missed the whoha around this, but did get a couple of bulletins.
Just a question for clarification, is the update actually deleting or is it just not finding the old data? ie are they still there and recoverable without specialist DR tools ?
Read Ian’s previous post. The word g o b b l e has sexual connotations, out at least can have, so it is replaced with the phrase about chickens as a light hearted censorship system. It’s common across many forums. My girlfriend visits a forum where shitake mushroom becomes pooake mushroom (It may well do here too.) I think the replacement words thing is by default used for less obviously offensive words like “gobble” where more obviously offensive words like “■■■■” just get the CENSORED treatment.
It’s a standard feature and the list of (usually US) words can be edited but 99% of the time there’s no need to.
I’ve updated 6 Windows PCs with the new update now without issue. Like most things IT-related, it’s probably only a small percentage of total users with an issue but, when there are hundreds of millions of users that’s an awful lot of people having their computers messed around with or worse…