The next big upcoming Windows 10 update, due in October 2018, has been pulled back by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) after concerning reports of some rather serious bugs emerged over the last couple of days.
Microsoft’s market-leading desktop operating system, Windows 10, was due to receive a massive update in October adding a slew of new features, upgrades and quality of life improvements. The most notable of the promised new features is cloud sync and clipboard history, which would help greatly enhance the workflow by making the transition between different devices more seamless. Other significant new features include a new “Dark Mode” for default Microsoft apps as well as the addition of the popular Android and iOS keyboard, SwiftKey (likely targeted towards tablet/hybrid users).
However, it appears to be some fairly serious issues currently plaguing the new update. According to several users, Windows 10 1809 – the new update – wiped all files from documents and even caused damages to physical storage hardware such as the HDDs and SSDs.
We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809)*Â for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating, says Microsoft on its support site.
Needless to say, this represents a huge problem for Microsoft, and could even bring about serious legal ramifications. This prevalence of such a massively harmful bug comes as a complete surprise, especially considering no such issues arose during a large-scale test of the update when 10 million people helped Microsoft in testing the new build via the Windows Insiders program.
Microsoft’s troubles with the update of Windows 10 don’t end there. Besides this, the new update is also riddled with a number of smaller bugs and issues. According to some users, the update blocks Microsoft Store apps like Microsoft Edge browser from accessing the internet and functioning as intended. The update is also reportedly not fully compatible with some Intel driver software and Nvidia display drivers, and some users also reported excessive use of CPU resources, leading to high battery consumption and overheating on some laptop devices. A complete list of all potential bugs in the new update can be found here.
For their part, Microsoft took swift action and pulled the update before the issue spread further, and put out a statement warning users against manually downloading the update.
Unfortunately, the damage is already done for many; considering the popularity of Windows and its massive 83% market share, plenty of users could potentially already have been affected by this issue during the short period for which the update was live.
This is not the first time when Microsoft finds itself in hot water. Microsoft has already had more than their fair share of problems with software updates. The software behemoth was heavily criticized for its new approach towards user privacy and forced updates back during the launch of Windows 10 in 2015. Even as recently as 6 months ago, Windows 10’s April 2018 update was pushed back due to a bug which caused devices to become unresponsive and display the “Blue Screen Of Death”. However, this bug was caught during the testing phase, and rectified before the update was released to the general user-base.
Currently, as it stands, Microsoft has directed users suffering from the file deletion bug to contact Microsoft customer care, although users have thus far had no luck in recovering deleted data. it remains to be seen how widespread this issue actually is, but there is no doubt that Microsoft is already in full damage control mode.
