Lost all User documents and Program Files after Feature update on many domain PC's

[Guest Peter A. Schouten]

Since early this week our domain computers started to download the new Feature Update 1903 using Windows Update. On some of the computers the users are prompted with the choice to upgrade, on others the upgrade just started automatically.

 

However, on all computers that ran the upgrade so far, the documents folder was cleared and both Program Files folders were “reset” to default, resulting in a loss of all documents and applications after the upgrade. Currently (in our company of ~20 people) we have had 7 computers that are now “lost” and had to be reinstalled completely.

 

To prevent losing any further computers, after the third lost computer, I’ve quickly activated the (GPO) policy that set Windows update to defer receiving Feature Updates for 30 days. However, all PC’s that downloaded this GPO-setting only after downloading the update, still installed or prompted to install this new version.

 

Unfortunately, on 2 PCs (running 1803) an update was ready to install 1809 and this upgrade also resulted in exact the same problem, so it doesn’t seem to be specific to 1903. So I extended the deferral to 365 days now.

 

I know there was a big issue with the 1809 release with known-folder-redirection, however we do not redirect folders, so I don’t think that’s a problem here.

 

What I did see during installation is that the User folders and the Program Files folders are initially moved to a temporary folder before the reboot request pops up, but after reboot that temporary folder is gone (including all files in it).

 

Although most of our PC’s contain multiple applications, which could all be part of the cause, there’s 1 PC that suffered from this and only runs 1 small application (a batch file) and has Kaspersky Antivirus (Endpoint Security for Windows 11.1.0.15919) running. So, to make sure Kaspersky isn’t the cause, I’ve installed a Hyper-V virtual PC with Windows 1803, made a snapshot and first upgraded it to 1809 and 1903 without Kaspersky running and then recovered the snapshot and tried the same with Kaspersky running. In both cases all went ok and the documents-folder wasn’t cleared.

 

So, it seems to be caused by something else that was installed or configured on our domain-PC’s. We don’t have many GPO settings, so we’re now thinking it might have been another Windows (security?) update that is conflicting? Also, I’m not sure if the Feature Update actually succeeded or failed on those PC's, so maybe it failed and was unable to recover?!

 

We only have 1 PC left that’s not reinstalled yet, on which I might still be able to find some details on what Windows Update did/failed to do.

 

Has anyone seen similar issues and is there anything we can do or set that will ensure updates will succeed without data-losses, when I disable the defer option again?

 

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