According to reports, a bug in the KB4532693 update is hiding user-profiles and their respective data on some Windows 10 systems.

Issues with KB4532693 have been reported on Microsoft forums (1, 2, 3, 4), Twitter, Reddit, and tech support sites like AskWoody, Bleeping Computer, and BornCity, ZDNet reported.

Users are reporting that after installing the update they can no longer view or access their original Windows 10 profile.

According to reports users are logged into a blank/default Windows 10 profile where all their previous data is missing. This includes access to installed apps, desktop wallpapers, desktops files, downloads, and others.

Multiple reports that the Feb Cumulative Update for Win10 (1903? 1909?) resets the desktop — custom icons missing, background set to Windows logo — and would not recognize the established logon account.

However, users need not panic. Their data is not lost, but merely hidden.

According to a report on Bleeping Computer, the bug is caused by a faulty KB4532693 installation procedure. More precisely, the bug occurs because the Windows Update service creates a temporary profile to handle the installation procedure, but fails to remove it after installing KB4532693.

When the update finishes, this temporary profile remains the one that users are being logged into.

According to reports, the original user profile folders are still available on disk but renamed with a .000 or .bak extension.

There is a way to recover these profiles, but the steps are too complicated and might lead to situations where users might permanently lose their data.

A simpler solution would be to uninstall the faulty KB4532693. Multiple users have reported that removing the faulty update restores their old profiles.

Not all Windows 10 users are impacted by this KB4532693 bug, and most will likely have no issues installing the update.

Those impacted can go to Windows Update >> View update history >> Uninstall updates and right-click on the KB4532693 entry to uninstall it.

Earlier today Microsoft pulled KB4524244, another Windows 10 update that was freezing new installations and causing booting issues for some users.

Microsoft has not pulled KB4532693, at the time of writing.

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Microsoft has a quality control problem. Right now, Windows 10 updates are a minefield with some updates causing more problems than they fix. And now new warnings suggest Microsoft’s latest Window 10 updates might be one of the worst, Forbes reported.

The September KB4515384 update is already a menace. Introduced to fix CPU spiking, reports state it has broken Windows 10 search, the Start Menu, Action Centre, USB connections and caused audio problems. And now it is gunning for your Internet access.

Windows Latest has spotted that users are reporting on Microsoft’s community forum, Windows 10’s Feedback Hub and social networks that network adapters have stopped working after applying this update. Impacted users primarily appear to have Intel chipsets (Asus, MSI and Gigabyte motherboards are mentioned) and both their Ethernet and WiFi connections are affected.

“Cumulative update (KB4515384) causes the NIC to fail to enable with a code 10 error,” warns one user on the Windows 10 Feedback Hub. “Reinstalling network drivers from Intel or Windows Update sources does not resolve the issue. However removing the update through the ‘Programs & Software’ panel or using a recovery point set *before* the update fully resolves the issue.”

“KB4515384 breaks ethernet and wifi adapters on my PC,” explained another on the Hub. “Appears to create new devices as they’re labelled ‘#2’ and when exposing hidden devices in Device Manager the previously named devices appear. Uninstalling these / new or old drivers do not fix the issues (i.e. ‘ethernet unplugged’ which it is clearly not). Only option was to uninstall this update.”

For its part, Microsoft has confirmed a new bug in Windows 10 1903 which can knock-out WiFI on Intel and Broadcom wireless cards but claims it is limited to NEC devices. So whether it is connected or another new WiFi issue, remains to be seen.

Needless to say, hopes will be high that Microsoft can issue a patch quickly but the bigger issue is whether you will trust that patch given. In the meantime, Microsoft continues to forcibly upgrade users to Windows 10 1903.

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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, Forbes reported,

What Microsoft confirms it did was quietly switch off Registry backups in Windows 10 eight months ago, despite giving users the impression this crucial safeguarding system was still working. As Ghacks spotted at the time, Registry backups would show “The operation completed successfully”, despite no backup file being created.

Backing up a registry is a crucial last line of defence for many businesses and everyday users. Should a Windows System Restore point fail, barring the use of third-party software, the registry backup is all you have. And yet Microsoft has now spelt out what was actually happening:

“Starting in Windows 10, version 1803, Windows no longer automatically backs up the system registry to the RegBack folder. If you browse to the WindowsSystem32configRegBack folder in Windows Explorer, you will still see each registry hive, but each file is 0kb in size.”

Windows 10 1803 was released in October and, despite the issue being flagged to Microsoft in its Feedback Hub service at the time, only now is the company coming clean about what happened. Ironically, this disclosure comes just two months after Microsoft pledged to give Windows 10 users more “control, quality and transparency”.

So why has Microsoft done this? In the company’s own words: “to help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows”. And how big is a registry backup? Typically 50-100MB.

In an extremely belated attempt to put things right, Microsoft has detailed a workaround. Ironically, it involves editing the registry but this will undoubtedly have come too late for users who, in their hour of need, discovered the registry backups Windows 10 told them were “completed successfully” were nothing of the sort.

In recent months Microsoft has intensified its attempt to move hundreds of millions of Windows 7 users to Windows 10. But it is actions like this, which is why many of them will resist to the bitter end.

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Using Microsoft’s work at Northern Territory fisheries as an example, Hickin said the implementation of AI can “take away what we would call ‘grunt work’ in jobs and functions”.

The AI fisheries project uses the company’s Azure Cognitive Service to identify and count fish in waters without needing to sort through hours of under-water footage. The solution has already shown that the local golden snapper and black jewfish species are overfished.

“We’re seeing a lot of scientific work going on right now, where it uses huge amounts of data and it’s just impossible for a single person to assess that data and make the number of decisions they need to make … you can use AI to simplify the process to understand data, but you’re still using the scientists to make the final decision,” Hickin said.

Speaking alongside Hickin, Tech Research Asia founder and director Tim Dillion added that the use of AI in natural environments, such as the Northern Territory fisheries, can put humans in safer positions to do their jobs.

“The person who is undertaking the fish analysis, they are very attractive to a crocodile,” Dillon said.

“Processes such as this previously required divers to go into the harbour, so if you can remove a person from the environment and have the AI do that massive project, and to take that role out of danger and actually have that scientist doing the analysis and actually adding more value over the top, this is not a replacement of the role, it’s a change and an improvement.”

While the panel expressed great optimism around the potential of AI, Hickin said Australian companies have been slow to adopt such technologies. According to Hickin, the main reasons for the unwillingness to adopt AI are related to risk of failure, lack of trust, and lack of clarity of outcomes.

To implement AI, Hickin said, companies would have to ensure they have strong leadership groups that understand what business outcomes they wish to achieve out of using AI.

“In order to be successful, without a doubt, where we’ve seen the most success — whether it be AI, machine learning, or IoT — is when you have strong leadership that enables that ability for the organisation to understand, adapt, and take advantage of the technology,” Hickin said.

But with the rollout of 5G networks set to increase internet speeds by up to 20 times, Dillon expects the upcoming 5G backdrop will lead to an uptick of AI implementation by Australian companies.

According to Dillon, mining companies are already developing AI-based apps for mobile devices which combine the functions of cameras inside a mine, location tracking, and biometrics to alert companies whenever an employee is at the mine when they should not be. Once alerted, the company can send a notification to the unauthorised person’s mobile device to leave the mine and put on safety equipment.

Much like the AI fisheries project, Dillon said, the mining-based AI improves the safety of mining employees by ensuring they are always at the right place at the right time. He did note, however, that AI development is still very much in its early stages.

“It is spot-fires today because we’re in very early times, but if you look at what happened with 4G, the growth of what came through, this is game-changing,” Dillon said.

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We now have it confirmed with both Razer and Microsoft, one the of retailers selling the Razer Phone 2, that the flagship will start shipping in the United States on October 22. Both stores offer free shipping, but apart from that, there are no incentives to get the Razer Phone 2 over other smartphones announced or about to be revealed this month.

Although Razer said that it has decided to partner with certain carriers across the world, including Verizon in the United States, we still don’t know what does this mean beyond making the Razer Phone 2 compatible with more network operators.

That being said, Razer Phone 2 is now available for pre-order for $799, which makes it $100 more expensive than the predecessor. Even so, Razer Phone 2 remains competitive price-wise considering other 2018 flagships.

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There are a number of interesting elements, including Microsoft’s suddenly aggressive move to use Azure as an Internet of Things host, which suggests that in the future, many of our homes and businesses (at least their lights, HVAC and security) will be managed remotely in the Microsoft Cloud. Don’t get upset, as this is likely a ton better than what we are doing today. (Yes, there is something called “smart home abuse,” and it is a real threat.)

There will be a ton of Azure announcements during the week: new servers, a vastly more powerful Azure Global Network, business intelligence, and SQL. What caught my eye was a product that’s free (at least initially) — a new version of Microsoft Teams. I think Teams could be a foundational way to fix governments in general, with a little extra help from artificial intelligence.

I’ll explain and then close with my product of the week: a new 10-inch affordable Microsoft Surface Tablet with a Pentium Gold processor (Pentium was one of the most powerful brands every created).

Why I Don’t Like Collaboration Products

Let’s start with why collaboration products in general often leave me less than excited. My educational background was in business, with a focus on motivation and employee development. One of the things I learned early on is that no tool alone will force people to do something they don’t want to do, and if they really want to do something, the lack of a tool won’t stop them.

Over the years, programs like forced ranking pitted employees against each other, effectively discouraging collaboration. Companies like Microsoft have discontinued the programs, but the related behavior generally continues. In general, incentives like raises and bonuses not only are less common but also are tied to individual or corporate behavior rather than team behavior.

Few employees have the power to impact corporate results, and if you are competing with others for your bonus, raise or promotion, why would you collaborate with them? A tool like Microsoft Teams, alone, can’t fix that — but it could become a foundational element to an eventual fix.

Dysfunctional Government

Perhaps the most dysfunctional “teams” you’re ever likely to find are in politics — not just U.S. politics, either. If you watch what goes on in other governments, where things often degrade into open violence, our folks actually don’t look as bad.

None of these groups are known for making progress, however, and collaboration — particularly between political parties in the U.S. — has been almost as rare as a unicorn. It is particularly fascinating that even though the overall approval rating for the U.S. Congress is so low as to suggest that every politician would be fired if an election were held today, individually we mostly seem to like the office holders (otherwise, they wouldn’t get reelected).

I think this is mostly because we have no real clue what our representatives actually are doing. We have a belief that they are doing a good job, but we don’t really have a good independent way of validating our belief. What’s more troubling is that instead of being in a situation where we influence our representatives, we’re often the targets of their powerful marketing efforts to sway our opinion, even in opposition to our own best interests.

What if we had a real-time tool to assess how well our elected officials were taking care of our interests? In a company, what if we had a way to ensure that employees were behaving consistently with company imperatives, strategies and goals?

Microsoft Teams + AI

What Microsoft Teams does is coordinate interactions. One of its most interesting aspects is that it can take notes at meetings automatically, index those notes back to a video of the meeting, and provide ways to rapidly locate key pieces of information.

In this way, it can document commitments, agreements, positions (and the foundational arguments that support them), and create an audit trail. This trail not only can help optimize a collaborative effort, but also can highlight team members who are unwilling to cooperate (there is always that one jerk who enjoys shooting down anything that might look like progress); or are abusive, discriminatory, racist, or two beers short of a six pack (I expect every one of you flashed on someone when I said that).

It also can showcase the heroes who drive progress, constantly act consistently with corporate policy and approved behavior; and demonstrate leadership skills along with the proper application of those skills.

Microsoft increasingly has been associating AI capability with this tool, but what if that AI could, after a meeting, send management a note with a performance review of everyone in the meeting? Who participated, who did their email, who moved the ball forward, who created obstacles, who behaved inappropriately, etc. What if you could get a report showcasing what you did right and wrong based on that review, so you could modify your own behavior to be a better team player and better employee, objectively not just subjectively?

Wouldn’t that motivate you to perform better, since you would know the reports was feeding into your own performance review, ensuring that you would get credit for the work you did as a team member, not just individually, by promoting team playing? It would also pretty much screw the assh*les in the meeting, so that alone would get me to consider it.

Applied to Government

In the case of government, you’d play the role of employer. You would see how well your chosen representatives were doing their jobs — at least with regard to what they said and how well they collaborated to get results — and they would see how well they were meeting your expectations.

These reports also would flow to the various political parties, so they would have more insight into when to support incumbents versus replacing them on the ballet because they weren’t doing their jobs. (Given Congress’ approval ratings, you’d think that just fixing the “do the job” part would have a massive positive impact.)

You likely could create this ad hoc, just by feeding C-SPAN into Microsoft Teams and then wrapping it with a report-generating AI that constantly would rank your representatives against your documented interests, actual progress toward those interests, and — using that same metric — against competitors, both inside and outside your party.

I’m willing to bet a lot of us would flip on our representatives if we knew whether they agreed with us and could see how well they carried the day. We’d want both, because someone who just agrees but can’t get support is nearly as bad as someone who isn’t aligned with our interests.

Privacy Questions

One of the complaints I can anticipate to this approach is its potential to intrude on privacy. However, politicians lead a public life, and what they say often is either misreported or taken out of context.

More important, when they do screw up, their first alert may come when the screw-up is reported publicly, rather than in real time when they could address it more effectively. With this tool, they or their staff could be alerted. Alerts even could be automated — for example, driven to their smartwatch or, even better, a surgically implanted cattle prod (to get their attention). Just kidding, sort of…

In most companies, there’s someone always trying to take notes, and it is hardly unusual for someone in a meeting who objected to their treatment or the outcome to run to management with a complaint.

Having a heads-up so you could apologize during the meeting — or have the documentation to defend yourself — could be critical to surviving the result. This tool, tied to an AI, could do both. In short, the privacy was never there, and this just better ensures a positive outcome from your participation in a meeting or presentation event.

Wrapping Up

In large part, the problems we have either managing effectively or ensuring that our politicians do their jobs have their roots in a lack of objective information on real performance.

Increasingly, everything we do is being captured by something. Right now, it is more likely that information would be used to justify an action against us or our employees and not focused on making both better.

Tools like Teams are designed to focus on making the collaboration process more effective, but they easily could be modified with AIs to allow both employees and politicians to change behavior and improve performance.

We need to get better, and our very survival likely will depend on improving the effectiveness of our governments. Done right, this eventually could result in a huge step: not only toward making our companies better places to work (by preventing the Harvey Weinsteins of the world either from being formed or from making it into management), but also toward eliminating the politicians who have been doing us the most harm.

Oh, and one other thought: At least with companies, there is nothing that would prevent a sharp manager from using the transcripts and records from Teams to assess behavior and better coach employees. Just saying…

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