Windows 10 October 2018 Update hit by apparent data loss bug

Microsoft's new Windows 10 October 2018 Update may bring ray tracing capabilities to those who have picked up Nvidia's latest GeForce RTX graphics cards, but it's bringing nothing but headaches to others - including reports that it is deleting data from users' hard drives.

While Microsoft had been planning on releasing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, the second of the year's feature updates for the company's flagship operating system, this month, its release earlier this week came as a surprise to most: The company skipped the Release Preview portion of its Windows Insider beta-testing programme, choosing instead to release the update to the general public without that additional phase of testing. Now, reports are suggesting that the company has made a mistake - including claims that a bug in the update is deleting personal files without warning.

Confirmed issues with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update include a bug in the way the Task Manager utility calculates CPU usage, of which the company was aware for at least two weeks prior to general availability, and incompatibilities with the Intel Display Audio Driver causing massive CPU spikes and dramatically dropped battery life - the latter prompting Microsoft to disable installation on affected systems until an updated driver from Intel is installed and the system rebooted.

Unconfirmed reports of data loss, however, are considerably more serious: Multiple threads on the social networking site Reddit, examples here and here, come from users claiming to have found their personal documents folders entirely empty post-update.

While Microsoft has responded to the less serious issues with its latest operating system update, the company has not yet commented publicly on the apparent data loss bug. Users have reported their issues via the company's Feedback Hub, but none have yet claimed to have received a response.