Windows 10 1809 update deleted all files from Documents!

Anonymous
2018-10-04T19:09:32+00:00

Last night I updated to 1809, and it all went smoothly, but then I find that all my files in Documents are DELETED. Gone. Poof. This included many crucial documents and financial info. Yes, I have a backup (I think - using Windows Backup to a NAS). But this is pretty bad. Did no one in the first two rings run into this yet?

I understand (from the news) that this happens to all files in Documents that aren't synced to OneDrive. Further, the Documents folder is really an agglomeration of "Documents" from several different paths - not sure how that works, and it may or may not relate.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-10-06T11:23:47+00:00

    Fresh reinstalls are not acceptable, and not a proper procedure anyway. 

    This is not a completely new OS, let's get that clear. It's a service pack at best. 

    I'm not going to spend several days reinstalling my programs and files and weeks getting things back the way I want them every time there's an update, anyone that does waste their time like that is a fool.

    Microsoft needs to have better testing and qc on these updates if they're going to force them down people's throats all the time. Thankfully I can defer the updates for a year, and I've further turned off Windows update in group policy until they fix this mess.

    If it is linked to foisting OneDrive on everyone, they need to give people more free space right up front, I have 51GB to back up in my documents folder, and I already pay for Dropbox and MEGA and have free Google Drive. I'm not paying for another service that I never wanted to use in the first place.

    Is there any truth to the rumor that it's related to the group policy setting for administrators that deletes user accounts created more than 30 days ago?

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  2. Neil D 34,280 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-06T11:42:20+00:00

    It seems MS have removed the version 1809 update due to these sort of problems.

    See sticky thread at the top of the Windows 10 forum.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-october-update-is-no-longer-being/62e8e6b4-0089-41c2-a104-5a5a768a48f6

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-10-06T13:29:16+00:00

    I never trusted Microsoft cloud services for my files, and here they roll out an update that deleted 50 gigs of work. Thanks Microsoft.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-10-06T14:11:41+00:00

    so, this is what happened for me:

    • After the Update everything was fine
    • in the evening i shut down my Computer 
    • on my next login, i was greeted by the same screen you get when you first login to a computer
    • All my Files were gone, all store-apps and other user-profile installed apps were gone
    • My profile had a new Profile-Folder, the old one only contained an empty OneDrive Folder
    • all bloatware-apps were installed again (Candy-Crush etc.) (on an Enterprise edition, but this is not the topic here...)
    • all Setting were reset to default
    • after checking my registry i noticed, that my user-account had a new SID

    So this "update" deleted the whole User-Profile, including all corresponding Registry entries. But did not do so during the update, but on the next boot. 

    If it was just files missing, i could just copy them back from my backups, but it took hours of work reinstalling and reconfiguring apps and programms.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-10-06T14:48:11+00:00

    Hi Tom -

    Alas - it gets worse. Microsoft's Backup silently stopped backing up back in February and didn't tell me, and I didn't notice. So I have maybe 100 hours of tedium ahead of me as I try to reconstruct my financial records... And the restart (3x) didn't do anything. Sigh.

    Hi Stuart,

    Did you try to recover your files using data recovery software? It might work.

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