Microsoft Issues Warning For 800M Windows 10 Users

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordon...-10-upgrade-registry-warning-upgrade-windows/

Windows 10 is in a rut. The platform has been hit with multiple problems in recent weeks and partners have been making things even worse. But now an important new Windows 10 warning (and the failure behind it) falls squarely on Microsoft’s shoulders.

Picked up by the ever-excellent Ghacks, Microsoft has issued a warning to all its 800M Windows 10 users that a serious and long-running bug in the platform is not actually a bug at all. Instead, the problem was introduced “by design”. And it’s worrying on multiple levels.

baINLAUH.jpg
 
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Summary
Starting in Windows 10, version 1803, Windows no longer automatically backs up the system registry to the RegBack folder. If you browse to to the \Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder in Windows Explorer, you will still see each registry hive, but each file is 0kb in size.

This change is by design, and is intended to help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows. To recover a system with a corrupt registry hive, Microsoft recommends that you use a system restore point.
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So on the surface, sounds bad...but anytime I have recovered from a Windows error, I have used System Restore point. Which according to the above still works. I have never recovered JUST the registry. Using a restore point from a couple days previous has gotten me out of a jam. But, here is the danger. System Restore was turned off by default at some point in Windows 10. I don't know if they have re-enabled that by default. But I did get burned a couple times where I went to System Restore in the recovery screen and it would say "You first need to enable System Restore in Windows 10 first"......the fuck is this?!?!?!?

EDIT: I have since checked on a recent install of Windows 10 and System Restore points are enabled and show to be working.
 
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Soulstorm brew said:
"To help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows"

That´s classic.
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While I don't support this decision at all, especially when they say it's completed successfully and yet hasn't, one has to wonder if Microsoft can ever do the right thing in people's eyes.

If the reason was disk footprint, why say "that's classic"?

For YEARS people have been complaining that windows takes up too much space. They attempt to fix that issue, albeit with a ridiculous solution, and they get snuff about the reasoning.
 
Because we are talking between 50 to 100 MB (as stated in the article) of pretty crucial data. You even said it yourself , it´s a ridiculous solution.
 
It wasn't that long ago that MS changed things to reserve several gigabytes of drive space to ensure that the next mandated OS change had enough room and now they worry about saving a few tens of megs of registry space instead of saving data that could be critical in a recovery scenario? The more I learn about Win 10, the more I plan on keeping Win 7. I would rather have an out of date OS that I control then one that is supposedly up to date but is instead controlled by some overpaid group at Microsoft.
 
auntjemima said:
While I don't support this decision at all, especially when they say it's completed successfully and yet hasn't, one has to wonder if Microsoft can ever do the right thing in people's eyes.

If the reason was disk footprint, why say "that's classic"?

For YEARS people have been complaining that windows takes up too much space. They attempt to fix that issue, albeit with a ridiculous solution, and they get snuff about the reasoning.
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Their stated reason is to save disk space, 100M... Meanwhile WinSxS sits there storing instances of drivers because a piece of hardware was plugged into a different port, or dll because the lack of architecture to deal with version shared lib, or TELEMETRY... How much disk space does telemetry take (the runtimes and the logs) but sure, silently disable something admins probably rely upon OR even worse their process calls for it (so they fail an audit) with a reason of "disk space"
 
I haven't relied on Windows backup in a long time, I just deal with Macrium Reflect, after every major software install or update. I should actually revisit that, and see if there is anything better -- I've been using it at home since 2016, without any issues. It's always fun times fixing stuff that isn't broken!
 
I'm just hoping they'll come out with a new version of Windows once they discontinue Win7 in Jan20. I plan to build a new machine at that time.
 
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The only time I have ever use a registry backup is from when I was manually hacking the registry. System restore has helped a handful of times but 95% of cases I've either fixed the issue or reimaged the machine.
 
I'm still on Build 1709 myself and Waasmedic.exe or something like that keeps popping up in my Firewall (that is a process to try "repair windows update process", seems like blocking that is all that's needed to get the auto updating blocked)

I've now twice had to roll back to 1709 as going to the latest build after it installs an update the computer no longer boots for me, just a loading animation and black screen appears. Seems to be a pretty common issue after googling, are they ever going to fix it I wonder, I don't like wasting my time going back n forth... I might just stay with 1709 as it's been solid for me.
 
Dead Parrot said:
It wasn't that long ago that MS changed things to reserve several gigabytes of drive space to ensure that the next mandated OS change had enough room and now they worry about saving a few tens of megs of registry space instead of saving data that could be critical in a recovery scenario? The more I learn about Win 10, the more I plan on keeping Win 7. I would rather have an out of date OS that I control then one that is supposedly up to date but is instead controlled by some overpaid group at Microsoft.
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My thoughts exactly!
 
RPGWiZaRD said:
I'm still on Build 1709 myself and Waasmedic.exe or something like that keeps popping up in my Firewall (that is a process to try "repair windows update process", seems like blocking that is all that's needed to get the auto updating blocked)

I've now twice had to roll back to 1709 as going to the latest build after it installs an update the computer no longer boots for me, just a loading animation and black screen appears. Seems to be a pretty common issue after googling, are they ever going to fix it I wonder, I don't like wasting my time going back n forth... I might just stay with 1709 as it's been solid for me.
Click to expand...

Cndt tell from your sig but if you are using a Ryzen or TR based system, you REALLY REALLY want the 1903 release. It fixed a major bug with process spanning multi CCXs and improves things a ton scheduler wise.
 
I've always had that system restore shit turned off, and never have had to use a registry backup... maybe I have done that ONCE at work during 16 years of desktop support work... (many thousands of fixed OS issues). They cut something rarely if ever used, who cares. Probably a way to re-enable it with a registry key if you are just dying over the news...

FYI: Neither system restore nor a registry backup is going to save your shit when a HDD/SDD craps itself. Do normal, regular backups... veeam has a free version that works pretty well. You can make a bootable recovery thumbdrive that goes along with the backup files, put those on an external hdd. Your OS corrupts, or hdd dies, boot the thumbdrive, restore your shit.

The valid complaints: it reports a reg backup when one didn't actually happen. Turning it off without informing the user.. tho it is probably in some update notes someplace (buried). System restore should by default be OFF imho.
 
5150Joker said:
Well that's it, I'm uninstalling windows 10 and switching to Linux (said no one ever).
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Its not "Linux" MS needs to worry about its Chrome.

Google is moving a lot of chrome books the last few years... as...
first most people don't need a "desktop", a laptop type machine is fine.
second most people are always connected... cause what would you really do without facetwittagram access anyway.
third... it just goes and just works... and even if I switch devices, log in and boom there is all my stuff coolz

Seriuosly this type of BS although not major cause ya who really restores registries. Is just more bad PR that helps google move people away and into the cloud. The next few years are make it or break it for MS as a consumer company really... if Google manages to really push AAA gaming to the cloud, and their next Xbox really gets showed up by Sonys version. MS might be a 100% service company faster then I would have expected.
 
ChadD said:
Its not "Linux" MS needs to worry about its Chrome.

Google is moving a lot of chrome books the last few years... as...
first most people don't need a "desktop", a laptop type machine is fine.
second most people are always connected... cause what would you really do without facetwittagram access anyway.
third... it just goes and just works... and even if I switch devices, log in and boom there is all my stuff coolz

Seriuosly this type of BS although not major cause ya who really restores registries. Is just more bad PR that helps google move people away and into the cloud. The next few years are make it or break it for MS as a consumer company really... if Google manages to really push AAA gaming to the cloud, and their next Xbox really gets showed up by Sonys version. MS might be a 100% service company faster then I would have expected.
Click to expand...

Stadia is dead on arrival.
 
ChadD said:
Its not "Linux" MS needs to worry about its Chrome.

Google is moving a lot of chrome books the last few years... as...
first most people don't need a "desktop", a laptop type machine is fine.
second most people are always connected... cause what would you really do without facetwittagram access anyway.
third... it just goes and just works... and even if I switch devices, log in and boom there is all my stuff coolz

Seriuosly this type of BS although not major cause ya who really restores registries. Is just more bad PR that helps google move people away and into the cloud. The next few years are make it or break it for MS as a consumer company really... if Google manages to really push AAA gaming to the cloud, and their next Xbox really gets showed up by Sonys version. MS might be a 100% service company faster then I would have expected.
Click to expand...

Microsoft isn't going anywhere, I've read this BS of them dying the last 20 years from guys like you. Google Chrome? Stadia?? LMAO.
 
ccityinstaller said:
Cndt tell from your sig but if you are using a Ryzen or TR based system, you REALLY REALLY want the 1903 release. It fixed a major bug with process spanning multi CCXs and improves things a ton scheduler wise.
Click to expand...

that's good info. i have my (Intel) laptop on 1903 but my Ryzen desktop is still on 1809... guess it's time to update
 
Dead Parrot said:
It wasn't that long ago that MS changed things to reserve several gigabytes of drive space to ensure that the next mandated OS change had enough room and now they worry about saving a few tens of megs of registry space instead of saving data that could be critical in a recovery scenario? The more I learn about Win 10, the more I plan on keeping Win 7. I would rather have an out of date OS that I control then one that is supposedly up to date but is instead controlled by some overpaid group at Microsoft.
Click to expand...

I loved 7. It just worked. I installed 10 ONLY for DX12 thinking it would be the next big thing for games. So far it really isn't. I'm regretting my decision.

The interfaces sucks in many ways to the point that I had to find a replacement start menu. The configuration changes I had to make just to make it tolerable took a couple hours of my life. 3rd party software was necessary for some things. On top of that, it has bugs. A lot of small annoyances such as the hibernate not always working correctly. After that being around for so many years, I'm not sure how they managed to screw that one up. Most insulting of all, MS isn't fixing the little bugs. All they're doing is adding new features that most of UA don't care about and introducing new bugs along the way.

Only good things I can say is overall the stability is quite good and it is a little faster, especially on startup.
 
Dead Parrot said:
It wasn't that long ago that MS changed things to reserve several gigabytes of drive space to ensure that the next mandated OS change had enough room and now they worry about saving a few tens of megs of registry space instead of saving data that could be critical in a recovery scenario? The more I learn about Win 10, the more I plan on keeping Win 7. I would rather have an out of date OS that I control then one that is supposedly up to date but is instead controlled by some overpaid group at Microsoft.
Click to expand...

It was always the Windows 7 WinSXS folder that grew out of control and there was mostly nothing that could be done about it.
 
auntjemima said:
While I don't support this decision at all, especially when they say it's completed successfully and yet hasn't, one has to wonder if Microsoft can ever do the right thing in people's eyes.

If the reason was disk footprint, why say "that's classic"?

For YEARS people have been complaining that windows takes up too much space. They attempt to fix that issue, albeit with a ridiculous solution, and they get snuff about the reasoning.
Click to expand...

I use regback all the time to recover systems, especially since Microsoft in their ass about wisdom disabled System Restore by default under Windows 10. It takes up next to no space and is an important point of system recovery in quite a few cases where someone actually knows how to use a CLI.

This is a very bad decision.
 
THRESHIN said:
I loved 7. It just worked. I installed 10 ONLY for DX12 thinking it would be the next big thing for games. So far it really isn't. I'm regretting my decision.

The interfaces sucks in many ways to the point that I had to find a replacement start menu. The configuration changes I had to make just to make it tolerable took a couple hours of my life. 3rd party software was necessary for some things. On top of that, it has bugs. A lot of small annoyances such as the hibernate not always working correctly. After that being around for so many years, I'm not sure how they managed to screw that one up. Most insulting of all, MS isn't fixing the little bugs. All they're doing is adding new features that most of UA don't care about and introducing new bugs along the way.

Only good things I can say is overall the stability is quite good and it is a little faster, especially on startup.
Click to expand...
To each their own. While not perfect, I find the Windows 10 start menu to be a vast improvement over the Windows 7 start menu, once customized to my liking (using the default customization options, not any replacement program). Never used registry backup, and rarely ever used system restore, and I've been working on other people's computers for a long time. Just don't need those features usually.
 
I can't think of a real reason they would do this but I'm calling B.S. on the foot print excuse. Shaving 50-100MB off of a install that takes 30-60GB is like pissing in the wind as the titanic sinks. Something tells me there's probably an exploit they're not owning up to and this was the quick fix.
 
lostin3d said:
I can't think of a real reason they would do this but I'm calling B.S. on the foot print excuse. Shaving 50-100MB off of a install that takes 30-60GB is like pissing in the wind as the titanic sinks. Something tells me there's probably an exploit they're not owning up to and this was the quick fix.
Click to expand...

One backup, sure. But how often was it making backups and were older ones ever culled.
 
auntjemima said:
One backup, sure. But how often was it making backups and were older ones ever culled.
Click to expand...

Too true but even if there's 10 backups that might equate to upwards of half a TB, depending on the type of backup, and even then estimating same upwards amount for the registry might be a GB. Still pretty odd for them to believe that GB matters much in light of half a TB.
 
lostin3d said:
Too true but even if there's 10 backups that might equate to upwards of half a TB, depending on the type of backup, and even then estimating same upwards amount for the registry might be a GB. Still pretty odd for them to believe that GB matters much in light of half a TB.
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I'm not condoning this at all, just to be clear. I think it's shady as hell.

But I've known windows to hold onto shit for years, with the only way to remove them would be to manually delete it. Like windows update files that would just never be deleted.

I am just curious how often it was saved and if it was culled. Obviously it's a rhetorical question, as I'm sure it was never culled haha.
 
Dead Parrot said:
It wasn't that long ago that MS changed things to reserve several gigabytes of drive space to ensure that the next mandated OS change had enough room and now they worry about saving a few tens of megs of registry space instead of saving data that could be critical in a recovery scenario? The more I learn about Win 10, the more I plan on keeping Win 7. I would rather have an out of date OS that I control then one that is supposedly up to date but is instead controlled by some overpaid group at Microsoft.
Click to expand...

After using windows 10 for a year and a windows update decided to uninstall demon tools because it was incompatible ( with no information that i did what so ever i jstu had to figure it out from the logs), i returned to windows 7 and i never felt better.
Everything just works smoother
 
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Meeho said:
Whatever people's excuse for this newest fail is, whether they personally don't use the feature or there are possible half-remedies, this:

"As Ghacks spotted at the time, Registry backups would show “The operation completed successfully", despite no backup file being created."

is simply NOT acceptable!
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Well TBH the correct information about this procedure is only really relevant for the owner/adminstrator. and not the person just using the computer when allowed to by the owner.
owenr here does not imply you bought the computerinitially. With windowes 10 you sold youe computer way from a "free" OS "upgrade"
 
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