A Microsoft representative has confirmed that the October 2018 Update for Windows 10 suffers from a bug that acts up with ZIP files in certain circumstances, while providing advice on how to work around the issue for now.
We wrote about this problem at the beginning of the week, and on Microsoft’s support forum, a moderator from the company has now stated that if you copy or move files straight from a ZIP archive to a destination folder, if that folder already has existing files of the same name in it, you will not get a prompt asking if you want to overwrite those files.
The files will be automatically overwritten, or rather, as the moderator further clarifies, “it will appear that the files were overwritten, when in fact the copy action for those files is not executed and files have not been overwritten.”
Yes, it all sounds slightly confusing, but according to Microsoft, the upshot is that if you copy or move files from a ZIP without extracting them first, they “might not be copied or moved correctly”, even though it may look as if they have been.
The key point to take in here is that if you proceed with the operation without extracting the files first, something can go wrong.
In other words, don’t copy or move files directly from the ZIP archive to the destination folder, but rather, fully extract the files from the ZIP to another (placeholder) folder, before moving them on to their destination. This will ensure the files come out correctly, and any potential overwriting will be flagged up with a confirmation prompt.
Unintentional deletion
Check out Microsoft’s post for the full advice, including how to proceed with recovery if you did accidentally see files deleted during an extraction operation from a ZIP file.
The moderator further warns: “Do not attempt to Cut and Paste items from a compressed (.zip) folder. This may result in unintentionally deleting items that may not be recoverable.”
The post concludes with a note that Microsoft is currently working on a fix for this bug, and a solution should be available in early November, so that should mean within the next week or two.
Hopefully the problem will be cured when the rollout of the October 2018 Update is resumed again, what with it currently being paused due to another file deletion bug (yes, Microsoft is not having a good time of it at the moment).
We’ve previously heard that Microsoft has already sorted out this issue with the Windows 10 (19H1) preview build, which is the next big update due to arrive in the first half of 2019 (currently in the early stages of testing).
- Check out our guide on how to fix Windows 10 October 2018 Update problems
Via Windows Latest
