Windows 10 October Update Reported as Fixed By Microsoft

After the Windows 10 October update kept deleting user files and profiles from a few systems, Microsoft decided to stop the rollout of the update last week. But it seems that the company found a fix quite fast and the new version is currently being distributed for testing, before the update will be released.

Microsoft claims that the number of users that lost their data was minimal and the reason why action was delayed was because the bug reports were too low and did not manage to trigger a response from the engineers in due time.

The company now has released a thorough explanation of what had gone wrong.

In a nutshell, the bug in question came about due to the way Windows handled the Known Folder Redirection feature where folders like Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc. are being re-assigned to different locations on the machine’s hard drive. The method used by the 1809 version to clean up the folders, which were useless, sometimes resulted in Windows just downright deleting everything within a directory that contained actual files.

Microsoft, according to the newest report has also enabled a new feature in the Windows Insider Feedback Hub and “have added an ability for users to also provide an indication of impact and severity when filing User Initiated Feedback. We expect this will allow us to better monitor the most impactful issues even when feedback volume is low.”

Hopefully, this will keep other similar issues at bay in the future.