[piker]

Happened to me 2 nights ago with a document my wife was editing on my laptop. I booted up Windows, which forced me to start some process while I was half paying attention. Windows booted normally but my Desktop was missing that critical file.

It was in my history? Check

Recent documents? Check

Visible in the file explorer? Check

Desktop? No dice

Try to open from the file dialog... error. The message? Can't get it from some URL.

My wife wakes up and starts crying. She's spent hours. What the fuck? I understand computers, and files don't just disappear.

"Were you editing it with Tritium?" (blames my product!)

Wait, a URL? I bet it's some OneDrive dark pattern.

Fix it by de-selecting "backup" multiple times and then clicking "submit". Files magically re-appear after I make sure to tell Microsoft to "keep my local copy".

[lostmsu]

This story is very unclear on what exactly happened and what caused files to be "deleted". I bet on user error.

[piker]

Read the article.

What happened is exactly what it suggests. OneDrive migration doesn't just copy your files to a server. While the migration is occurring, the operating system is optimistically re-mapping them all to a cloud URL and/or deleting them entirely.

Halting the migration and disabling "backup" returned the mapping back to the local disk, and I was able to open the file as normal.

I know, it's as crazy as it sounds and your bet was my bet at first as well.

[Rygian]

This being Microsoft, the null hypothesis is "user error induced by intentionally evil UX".

[vee-kay]

For decades, the unofficial Microshit motto has been: Intel inside, Idiot outside.

Because Microsoft treated users as if they were idiots.

So basically tons of Windows related websites teach this infallible little trick as solution when a user gets a Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death): Reboot!

Invariably, the reboot causes the Windows OS to start working again, till the recurrence of whatever circumstances (typically, hardware and/or software conflicts) caused the BSOD in the first place. It is left to the user to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent the issue from recurring again, as the BSOD messages are typically cryptic for the average user to decipher (maybe not so difficult in the modern era of AI assistants invocable from a handheld smartphone).

In fact, I would say the whole IT industry grew tremendously over the last few decades, because Microsoft's products were powerful, user friendly (to an extent, and until they worked), but quite complex to maintain (the dreaded Windows updates nightmares) and troubleshoot in case of issues. That's because every company using M$ products needed dedicated IT Support teams solely for such maintenance, help and fixes for M$ products. Even other vendors like Oracle grew as competition to Microsoft's corporate dominance.

The wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) world of antimalware software may not even have existed were it not for Microsoft products.

[Rygian]

Indeed. Up until the user-hostile turn of Windows 10 and 11.