Reports are increasing across Twitter and Microsoft forums that following the most recent Patch Tuesday update (KB4532693), users are complaining that their profiles and desktop files are missing, and that custom icons and wallpaper have all been reset to their default state. The KB4532693 update is allegedly causing much more serious headaches for some users. A newer report by Windows Latest cites multiple users in their comments section complaining that their data is nowhere to be found and allegedly not recoverable. Microsoft has now “yanked KB4524244 from its update servers…” reports ZDNet, “after acknowledging reports of ‘an issue affecting a subset of devices.'” Microsoft says customers who have successfully installed the update don’t need to take any further steps. Those who have configured PCs to defer the installation of updates by at least four days should also be unaffected. For those who are experiencing issues related to this update, Microsoft recommends uninstalling the update. This is common practice for Microsoft though, they are too lazy to bother testing updates, they just slap it together and use the end-users as the QA team, as due to restructuring of the company, they cannot hire an in-house QA team to test the updates before sending them out into the wild.
This is due to the fact that Microsoft cannot possibly test all possible hardware and software configurations and therefore issues like this will slip through the cracks. But seriously, this is a major issue and should be addressed at once. Windows 7 and 8 did not have problems like this. Linux updates are tested pretty well and do not cause such issues for the end-users that install them. Here is a listing of all of the files in the KB4532693 update: https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/7/9/979ac433-c25f-4399-8dc4-07187f21ebb1/4532693.csv. Hopefully Microsoft can properly test Windows 10 updates in the future, this will be very embarrassing for them if they continue to put out buggy updates like this one and erode confidence in the Windows brand. They used to be a great company, with great software, now it is going down fast. Can the company even recapture the former glory of Microsoft? Windows 2000 was a high point of the company, it had Active Directory and many security features to provide a worthy business operating system. Even Windows NT 3.51 was very good, it had a Windows 3.1 interface and a secure networking compatible OS. It even had the NTFS file system. Windows 2000 was supported for 10 years.
It was great to use on a network. At least Windows Server 2019 seems to have fewer issues than the desktop Windows 10 edition. It was possible in Windows Server 2012 to install various add-ons to the operating system and basically turn it back into Windows 8.1. I wonder if you can do that with Server 2019? That would be fun. Samba on Linux after version 4.0 is capable of running as an Active Directory Domain Controller, but with limited functionality compared to Windows Server 2008 and 2012. But worth a try though.