Beware: October Update of Windows 10 might delete some of your files

A few days ago, Microsoft held a pretty announcement-packed hardware event. It also saw the unveiling of the sixth major Windows 10 update – the October 2018 one.

In a rather new and worrying development, however, Redmond has decided to temporarily pull the update, skipping its original October 9 public roll-out date and with good reason. Apparently, an isolated issue was reported by a number of early users and confirmed by Microsoft. It involves user files going missing after the update process. 

We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating. 

Microsoft on its Support page

Users who have manually downloaded the update have been advised to not “install it and wait until new media is available”. Microsoft has also provided links for people to contact the company through. “We will provide an update when we resume rolling out the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to customers,” the post added. 

Even if the chance of loosing data is fairly small, there is no real point in risking it. Plus, with Microsoft’s user base, even a 0.1% chunk represents thousands of potentially affected machines. So, good move by Windows. They must check their code branches as the users are experiencing these issues for a long time. Also, there is the matter of the pretty lapse review and quality assurance policy that appears to be underlying the whole fiasco.